Dalo Harkin

What are you using to configure the 2 screens (Windows?) Try swapping the monitor cables on the GPU and see if you get the same problem, but on the swapped monitors. Its not uncommon for just one of the ports on the back of a GPU to fail.

It could be a number of things:- Heat:- on the first boot up after the PC has been off for a few hours, the CPU should not generate enough heat to shut the PC down at the startup section, within a few minutes in windows yes thats the sort of time it would shutdown due to heat, and when you try and restart the machine it would shut down immediately again due to the heat. The HDD check could just be because the PC is shutting down early, or it could be a fault with the HDD itself which the chkdsk would fix automatically unless there is a mechanical fault with the drive, which 99% of the time the drive makes a clicking sound. If you can enter the BIOS you can check the CPU temps and shutdown temps (monitored by the MOBO) while they are not 100% accurate they are enough to give an indication if there is a problem

You dont need much to be able to actually play those games, you just wont be able to have all the AA and AF turned to MAX. depending on the size of your monitor will depend on what cards to choose, so let us know that and we can go from there

Thats the whole point WHS can be made from 'leftover bits of older systems' as its Windows Server 2003 based then the hardware in 2003 has come on along way nowadays. if you are streaming HD quality media, then the emphasis is more on the network than the CPU/MOBO. like I say on my 5+yr old equipment I stream HD quailty all over my house, sometimes 2 or 3 PCs at a time and it never falters. just make sure that whatever you get ideally has Windows 2003 drivers or at the VERY minimum XP drivers.

You also say a disk check never completes, is this because it restarts before it completes or it just sits there doing nothing. Either way it could be related to an HDD problem, run chkdsk and let it finish to repair any problems there may be (if it cant finish then the drive is probably fluffed)

I work in the printing industry and while there are many companies that use scan to email/scan to fax most people stick to email. most MFDs and MFPs if thats what yoyu are using have built in software for such applications

Did you do anything yesterday such as install and programs or modify anything in any way? you should be able to see in the logs who stopped the scan, if its not you then the system has for one reason or another, will it allow you to check for updates?

Just buy a PCI RAID controller card like this RAID card, Computing, Collectables, raid card 4 port items at low prices on eBay.co.uk Add the drives into the PC connect to the RAID card, add in RAID cards when the BIOS posts have like their own mini post where you can press an F key and configure a RAID setup. configure them back as RAID 0, I am not too sure if this would work, but just throwing it out there if you end up with no other choice, rather than an expensive data recovery company. What pins exactly are you referring to that you broke? pic if possible? For future reference I would perform manual backups onto DVD-R for anything you could never replace such as photos etc, even with Mirrored RAID it only duplicates the data, it does not help if your system decides to eat the disks

No worries and if you do have any issues then you know where we are :)

Corporate versions of AV are meant to be installed on a server and then distributed to client PCs If you dont have the server then it wont work as it should. if you do have a server is the above how its been installed?

Ok there are a couple of options here, you can go straight to windows update and look at the optional updates, under hardware there should be one for your CD/DVD rom drive. If not then you would either need to tell us which computer/lappy make and model you have and I can source one, or you can click install driver in device manager and it will load the 'standard' drivers

64 bit edition of XP was always very cluncky when installing drivers and programs, there are not many companies that support the 64bit version of XP, while nearly all of them do for Vista and W7. Vista and W7 are VERY VERY different from XP. XP is getting on a bit now and they are dropping support for anything prior to SP3 if your hardware can handle it I would look at upgrading or using 32bit

Whats the old printer? Most devices are compatible with W7 as windows 7 is based around Vista, and Vista has been around for a few years now. You could also run any printer programs you need in compatibility mode

go into device manager and uninstall the CD/DVD rom driver and then reboot, when windows starts again it will automatically detect the driver required from either windows update or the standard drivers installed with windows. If that doesnt work then we can go further - GOKU did post a 'fix' that I cant seem to find

I would do a complete OS reinstall first as the lags can be just years of rubbish installed and uninstalled and orphan files etc. If you do a reinstall (make sure you get any data you want to keep off the drive) if when you have reinstalled to the point where all the Windows updates are installed (service packs etc) and its still slow then you can either replace the HDD or as you say get a newer PC

lol - yeah its just a case of fixing in place like you would an optical drive BUT I would have thought you have a specific section in the PC for HDDs, if you whip the side off and they have used drive rails then you need some of them too they basically attach either side of the HDD and make it the same width as an optical drive ;) plug the SATA cable in (SATA2 latch cables are best as they click and hold into place) whereas the SATA1 just plugged in and had a habit of wabbling loose :eek: you will have to go to control panel>advanced options>disk management and initialise the disk for it to be seen in windows but thats it No jumpers with SATA no they are all primary (the witchcraft that you MOBO does may show it differently in the post screen but dont worry :D) No I dont have the disk that the Government 'misplaced' (there have been so many misplaced it would probably accumilate to more than 10TB :p) If you have plenty of PCs/do lots of streaming and have some old kit lying around then it does automated backups, streams, duplicates data. I love the WHS OS as its based around Server 2003 and any old drives can just be added to the storage pool or backup pool and away it goes. Just checking I covered all your points before I got carried away trying to plug WHS :D

Alcohol 120% is a cracking piece of kit, aimed more at advanced users though in my opinion, I must admit I do find Roxio too basic compared to Nero

Hi Kev, The documentation says it will support 4x SATA devices so you have no problems upgrading. With expansion you need to check the cost per GB, while the one you listed is around £25 for 250GB a 1TB drive is only around £50-£60 now if that. just get the biggest you can afford as you will be amazed how much you store on it when you have the space readily available. I have a WHS with over 10TB and im running out of space :D

Personally I would recommend either:- NVIDIA MSI N260GTX-T2D896-OC Graphics adapter - 896 MB - GDDR3 SDRAM ATI ati 4770 - Google Product Search While they are a few years old they are more than capable of 1680x1050 at the time they were 'high end' now they are more like mid (but for the cost they are extremely powerful cards still). They do require some power though, so you will need to just let us know what PSU you have. There are cards that are cheaper for what you need it to do, but personally I would use one of the above as they will capable for the next 2-3 years I have the 260GTX, and have since it was launched and it still handles all modern games on high with AA and AF

No problem, Any issues you know where we are :)

In my personal opinion I would disable/remove Norton and use the windows built in firewall with a free AV/Spyware program such as MSE (Microsoft Security Essentials) Nortons 'home' software is completely useless and I only use Norton on my servers (as their corporate stuff isnt bad :)) You should find that if you remove Norton your system is quicker too as Norton is extremely resource hungry (not as much as a few years ago but still more than it should be)

That error code that points at RAM is normally attributed to Win7 :) But glad you got it sorted :)

if it says bootmng is missing then that means its looking for it on the HDD, you need to have it so it 'appears' there is no OS installed and to do that you need to set the boot priority to first boot device CD/DVD second, third and fourth boot device DISABLED It will currently say/from 'stock' it says: first boot device CD/DVD ROM second boot device HDD third boot device Floppy drive when you set the first to CD/DVD rom and disable the rest, do not forget to SAVE and EXIT the BIOS

So have you been into the BIOS and changed the first boot device to CD/DVD rom if using a CD/DVD and disabled the rest?? for USB you would need to set the first boot device to USB (if there is an option for it as there isnt always) when this is done it should start the install process after the post screen.... it will say booting from cd/dvd press any key to continue...then do just that, it will ask where you want the OS installing to (at which point you can FORMAT the drive and then reinstall or INSTALL to an existing partition) if you have already use partitioning tools then I would say go for the first option as you may well and truly have nerfed the partitions and starting a fresh is the best option unless you have a recovery partition that can be accessed after the BIOS post (are you sure you didnt delete this part as thats bad) The fact that you mentioned using ISO to burn the CD/DVD suggests its not legit, and yes there are issues associated with burning your own bootable OS disks, if your CD/DVD burner is not running at 100%(ie even slightly faulty) you can get missed data etc

Certain types of Malware affect programs differently for example IE is more commonly used than Firefox and people target IE for maximum effect due to the user rate. You may not have any Malware, BUT if you do it can cause the issues you are experiencing and more. are you using Windows firewall and an AV program or a suite like Norton or NOD32? Some of the settings within firewalls and AV can cause issues in say IE and then not in FF