Dalo Harkin

LOL - at this moment in time AMD is getting beat hands down by INTEL - and its the INTEL chips that offer more bangs for buck - the GPU market is a different matter - ATI is ahead of NVIDIA but only marginally ;)

When you say that you installed the driver from the disk - you ALWAYS need to get the latest drivers from the manufacturer and in your case NVIDIA, visit their website and download the latest driver and install that.

Are you using the Gigabyte Ethernet on the back of the MOBO or an add in Network card - if its an add in one - remove it and reinsert it and then turn the PC on - windows should recognise as a new device and load drivers via windows update. If its the GIGABYTE ethernet then you need the Ethernet drivers as listed above.

Have you been messing in the BIOS at all - if the power cut out then it could have reset the BIOS also, there are temperature settings in the BIOS and they control the CPU temps and basically if it gets too hot, it shuts down to avoid damage to the CPU - but you can lower/higher the variance depending if it is accurate of not - pop the CMOS battery out (watch battery) at the bottom of the Motherboard and leave it out for 2 mins and then reinsert it and see if its ok then, the battery could have died and that would cause the BIOS to not hold its settings and I have seen this trip a PC out a few times.

Agreed - people normally use whatever is on their system and 9 times out of 10 its software that comes with their printer - HP for example and if you have not installed that software for the pronter then the files will appear to be in an unknown format.

Glad that we could help :) please feel free to ask anything else.

Hi - unsure of your budget but here is a cheap one Scan.co.uk: Speed-Link SL-8866-SRD 5.1 PCI Card HRTF 3D Audio with support for DirectSound 3D and A3D interfaces

Right - lets start from the top - most of the Hardware you have selected is cutting edge stuff BUT they are not needed yet - by the time they are needed they will be so much more cheaper. So what I have highlighted in RED (and I apolagise for red writing as its rude) The CASE is the best that is available at the moment for air cooling so good choice! MOBO - these are outrageously expensive and offer no more benefits than most other boards you are paying for the cutting edge technology that no game or application uses, the same si true of the CPU and the RAM - DDR3 is so expensive its not a good choice to opt for hardware like that when it will be obsolete by the time anything uses it - the CPU is overpriced and no better than a Q6600 as with the Velociraptors they are fast but get 2 Samsung 1TB F1 drives and RAID then in STRIPING mode to get performance (these drives are £70 in the UK now, so 2 is still only half the price you are willing to pay for the others and you get FAR more storage) Again the soundcard is expensive. Leave the 64bit OS's at the moment for the sotware compatibility reasons. If you want to spend a fortune on a PC then there are much better solutions out there - dual CPU boards for example. Come back with a budget that you want to spend and I will recommend the hardware, but saying that if you do want to spend a small fortune on all this hardware then that is up to you, I am here to help so please feel free to argue any point :D

Right - lets start from the top - most of the Hardware you have selected is cutting edge stuff BUT they are not needed yet - by the time they are needed they will be so much more cheaper. So what I have highlighted in RED (and I apolagise for red writing as its rude) The CASE is the best that is available at the moment for air cooling so good choice! MOBO - these are outrageously expensive and offer no more benefits than most other boards you are paying for the cutting edge technology that no game or application uses, the same si true of the CPU and the RAM - DDR3 is so expensive its not a good choice to opt for hardware like that when it will be obsolete by the time anything uses it - the CPU is overpriced and no better than a Q6600 as with the Velociraptors they are fast but get 2 Samsung 1TB F1 drives and RAID then in STRIPING mode to get performance (these drives are £70 in the UK now, so 2 is still only half the price you are willing to pay for the others and you get FAR more storage) Again the soundcard is expensive. Leave the 64bit OS's at the moment for the sotware compatibility reasons. If you want to spend a fortune on a PC then there are much better solutions out there - dual CPU boards for example. Come back with a budget that you want to spend and I will recommend the hardware, but saying that if you do want to spend a small fortune on all this hardware then that is up to you, I am here to help so please feel free to argue any point :D

Ok - I take it that you are connecting the Monitor via DVI? are you running the monitor at its native resolution - I would have thought it would be 1920x1200. Do you have the latest GPU drivers etc. I have seen similar problems - I know it sounds weird but try the DVI cable in the other slot on the back of the GPU

Norton did used to be very good, but I would only say on the corporate level. I am guessing that you have a router - and if it has a built in firewall then thats more than sufficient - if you are looking for free AV then AVAST or AVIRA are 2 of the best. If you are looking for paid AV then you cant get any better than NOD32

Hi, welcome to FPCH :)

Hi, Welcome to FPCH :)

Hi, Welcome to FPCH :)

Hi, Welcome to FPCH :)

Hi, Welcome to FPCH :)

You could upgrade the RAM - but I would not upgrade the speed of the RAM - only the amount - If you are playing games then I would recommend about 2GB of RAM and as for Clocking which is Overclocking, I would stay away from it as you need to have adequate cooling for the Overclock in the first place and it all involves spending more money. Upgrade the amount of RAM if you fall short of 2GB, if not then wait and save the money for a full upgrade in terms of the MOBO, CPU,GPU and RAM. And you are more than welcome :)

Vista uses DirectX10, if you go to windows update - if it needs an update for the DirectX it will do it there - failing that it will have DX9 on the SIMS disk - if you right click the Optical drive for eg D:/ and click explore - there should be a DirectX distributable file - run that and it should all work.

To be honest that MOBO seems really old and you could do with a new one - what do you mostly use the PC for as you could keep the CPU but upgrade the RAM and the MOBO - but even then you wont notice a massive difference.

Hi, Welcome to FPCH :)

It makes no difference other than the amount of photos that you have a CD will only hold 700MB of DATA whereas a DVD will hold 4.7GB

lol - no - there should be a free version on there?

I personally try and avoid 'virtual' programs - my experience with VPN's put me off enough to leave the rest WELL alone.

Asus Motherboards have the ability to do this from within a windows environment - gone are the days of loading a BIOS onto a floppy and having to mess with it.

Asus Motherboards have the ability to do this from within a windows environment - gone are the days of loading a BIOS onto a floppy and having to mess with it.