Computer issues

Aquarius, try http://aberdeeninc.com/
I've bought parts from them before. They will honor their warranty too. :)



cgrabe, sounds like one heck of a box! Whatchya got under the hood?

Here's my current specs:

MSI VIA KT600
AthlonXP 2500 CPU
512mb DDR400 RAM
Radeon 9800 XT Pro 128mb 8x AGP
Creative Audigy 2 Sound Card
160G Seagate HDD
Plextor PX-708A DVD Writer
Windows 2000
XBlade Case

We have three other machines in the house but I can't remember what's in all of them. LOL
 
Asus P4S8X - My one big mistake with this system
Intel P4 2.4b GHz (533 MHz FSB)
1024MB PC2100(DDR400) DDR RAM
Asus V8460 Ultra (nVidia GeForce 4 Ti4600 128MB 4x AGP)
On-board C-Media 9739 6-channel audio
2x WD1200JB (Western Digital 120GB w/8MB cache) Mirrored
1x WD1200JB standalone
Sony DRU500A DVD+/-RW
Windows XP Pro SP2
Lian-Li PC-65B Aluminum Case
Water-cooling system using an Eheim 1048 water pump and Innovatek copper water blocks cools the CPU, Northbridge, and video card GPU. Passive heat sincs attached to video card RAM chips using Artic Silver Thermal Adhesive. Two fans on the front, one in the top blow-hole, and dual fans on the 450 watt PSU.

It's not a screamer by today's standards, but it's still very snappy and nearly problem-free. I don't believe I've made any major upgrades since I initially built it though it did take a few months to build into its final form. It should be very easy to upgrade though when I feel I need to.
 
Glad to hear that your PC is working better. Right after the first couple of posts my thoughts were on Spybot as well. The symptoms that your PC was having are classic to adware. some files work the CPU very hard which in turn heats it up. This will of course heat up your keyboard. If the CPU heats up to much, it will shut down or short out to the blue screen as you found out. One thing you might want to do is to open it up and blow out any debris that has acumulated over time, especially on the fan.

Did your machine come with a CD writer? You can download all of your music onto CD's if you wanted to reformat your drive. It really isnt that hard to do. I like to reformat quite often to be honest. You will need to reconfigure your e-mail settings and stuff which is probably the biggest pain.

AS far as antivirus goes, I cant stand Norton. Mcafee is a good step above Norton, however, I am very partial to Panda. Panda doesnt slow your system down and it has great features that come with it.

As far as building a PC goes. Its fun to do.
I put about $1100 into my fun one and this is what I have. Keep in mind that I went close to top of the line with this.

Motherboard- Gigabyte 8IK1100.
Processor- P-4, Northwood 3.0ghz at 800mhz FSB (running at 3.6 ghz).
Memory- Kingston KHX pc3200 cas2 1gig matched.
Main drive- 2 Western Digital raptor 10k rpm 36gig SATA working in raid-0.
2nd drive- Maxtor Diamondmax plus 120gig ATA133 w/8meg buffer.
CD writer- Samsung 52/32/52
DVD- Liteon 16X DVD-rom
DVD writer- Liteon SOHW-832S 8X Double Layer DVD Dual Rewriter
Video- Saphire Radion 9600xt w/256meg memory (overclocked).
Sound- Turtle beach Santa cruise (still a good ol card).
Power- Enermax EG651p-ve 550 watt power supply w/dual fans.
Fan control- Enermax UC-9AFATR2S Multifunction Panel w/USB,1394,mem card slots.
Cooling:
CPU- Thermaltake spark7 full copper heatsink. CPU idles around 37c
Case- 3 120mm Thermaltake thunderblade fans (2 intake, 1 exhaust).
Case- 1 Vantec Tornado 80mm (loud, rarely used above 1500rpm's).

Dont think I forgot anything :D
 
I was looking at those cases and opted to reconfigure one of the many cases that I have. The only drawback with the one that I used is, its full :D It only has one 3.5 front bay and having two is nice for copying disks. Thats OK because one of the other ones I have has two.
 
cgrabe said:
Just to chime in on the AV issue, I'm very happy with Eset NOD32. It's very lightweight and works well. I don't care for either Norton or McAfee AV.
Click to expand...

I'm going to have to agree here, IMO either Kaspersky or NOD32 is the way to go as far as AV software is concerned.
 
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Slow and running hot

I sort of browsed through the different responses and came across one referring to your machine as a laptop. Here are some things to try for starters (not necessarily in any order of priority) for both the heat and slow problems.

1. AdAware - even if all you find are tracking cookies, blow them away... there is one lately that practically keeps machines from booting up, they are so slow. Most of all, make sure you have the latest Reference file. If not, download it and run another scan and blow all the resulting finds away. I bet this takes care of the slow problem.

2. Norton - If you happen to be connected to a home network with a server, make sure you don't have auto protect on for any of the network drives. Also, make sure you aren't scanning the drive everytime you boot up. Make sure you have the latest signature files and then do a full system scan to make sure you don't have any viruses hiding.

3. Do a Defrag then reboot and see if your boot up is any faster.

By the way, have you added any programs lately (besides sp2)? The Weather Bug is a memory and processor hog. Check to see what you have in your system tray and see what the settings are. You may have something starting up at boot that doesn't need to be there, but is taking too much resources.

4. Make sure you have the lates bios update. There is a history of some laptops (usually newer though) that have been overheating and they required a bios update.

5. You may need to have the fan and related circuitry replaced. Does it run at all or all the time?

6. Ensure nothing is blocking the vents on your laptop, especially underneath (or on the back or sides). Interestingly, placing your laptop on your lap may block the vent(s) underneath. If your laptop is on your desk or table, place something beneath the laptop to add clearance. There are actually products on the market for this purpose, but just to check it out, a stack of post-it's works. Make sure you don't block any vents.

6. Browse the Dell site for issues. You may find something related.
 
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