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Why would the PC need a 4k output to run on a TV with 1920 x 1080 resolution??? My whole point in considering this is so I can sit further away from the screen. I don't have a timetable for doing this, so I don't mind spending some time researching things. I'm currently sitting 43" away from my 27" monitor (which I mistakenly identified as 20-23" in the first post in this thread).

My current widescreen monitor is somewhere between 20-23" with 1980 x 1080 native resolution. My parents' monitor just died so they're currently using a 17" CRT (fun!!!). I can order them a new monitor, but I've also been considering giving them mine and getting a 40-43" LCD/LED TV to use as a monitor. Who knows, maybe even a little bigger than that since they can be had for under $350. I Googled about using an TV as a computer monitor, and all the info I read basically said the same thing. That is, if you go from a typical size PC monitor to a large LCD/LED TV with the same resolution, you'll have the same number of pixels, but they'll be much less densely concentrated, so things will look pixilated when you're sitting the same distance away from it. [emphasis mine] I understand that, but I'm not interested in sitting the same distance away. My reason for considering getting a bigger monitor in the first place is so I can get further away from it and have things look the same, not so I can get more stuff on the screen at one time. I'm fine with 1980 x 1080. Screen real estate was at a premium back when I was using a 640 x 480 14" CRT. That monitor practically had noseprints on it because I was so close to it. That's not the case anymore. It just seems strange to me that none of the info I read mentioned being able to sit further away from the screen when using a large screen TV as a monitor. It all specifically mentioned how things would look pixilated when you're sitting the same distance from it as you would a smaller PC monitor. Am I missing something here? Is there any reason I shouldn't consider doing this?

Thanks for the input, everyone.

So the only reason to install in a VM is if you don't have an extra HDD or partition available? What about my speed question? How quick would it be to install in a VM vs. a HDD?

I'm playing around with NTLite and some other 'slimming' tools, trying to tweak a future unattended Win 7 install. Much like I did when I was trying to slim down XP with nLite, after each session of tweaks and adjustments, I'm installing the new source to a spare HDD to see if I like the results. The other day I read (not here) that it was suggested to do 'test installs' in a VM. I know nothing about using VMs, so my question is, why? Could someone explain the benefit of doing the install in a VM vs. a HDD? Is it speed? Currently I'm tranferring my tweaked source to a USB 2.0 drive, which takes 4+ minutes. Installing from USB then takes about 8 minutes. Would it be more efficient time-wise to do this with a VM? If not, what is the VM advantage? Thanks.

Thanks for the replies. I had already shut off indexing and tweaked my services before I posted. Since then all I've done is shut off superfetch, but I haven't noticed a difference. Even if I didn't have any complaints about speed, I'd still be looking to slim down the install, so that's my next step. I just have a lot of reading to do, as there are quite a few different "slimmer" programs out there for Win 7, whereas for XP it seemed like pretty much everyone used nLite.

I'm always a late adopter with OS's. I didn't switch to XP until 2008. I pre-ordered Win7 a year later for no reason other than it was offered at 50% off. Now, 6+ years later, I finally have an unactivated copy installed on an extra HDD in the same system that I have XP installed on: SATA 2.0 Gigabyte mobo (P35, ICH9), E8400 Core2 Duo, basic video card, and 2GB DDR2 RAM (just doubled to 4 GB since I installed Win7). The Windows Upgrade Adviser says it should run Win7 without issue, and my Windows Experience Index numbers are 7 for the CPU & RAM, 3.3 for video, and 6 for the HDD. I'm underwhelmed so far. Basic things I do in XP take longer in Win7. Opening up Computer Management > Disk Management in XP happens almost instantly, but takes 3 seconds in Win7. Opening Firefox with 10 extensions in XP takes about a second, but again takes 3 seconds in Win7. My XP install has been customized with nLite. I didn't even remotely try to get it as bare bones as possible, but I removed a bunch of stuff, and there are less than 5000 files in the total install. To contrast, there are literally 10x as many files in a fresh Win7 install right from the DVD. I know there are programs for slimming down Win7, and I'm curious how much differently a slimmed down Win7 install would run, but at this point I'm hesitant to permanently install and activate Win7 on my current setup and was wondering how any of you feel who have also installed Win7 on an older system. Thanks.

...but it worked! A million thanks to you. I had it jumpered as Master, like I have with every other PATA HDD that was the boot drive of the system. I don't know if I would have ever eventually tried messing with the jumper settings, but I'm sure glad you found that for me. I don't have it jumpered as CS now, I just removed the jumper entirely which is the setting for a single drive system, and by the time the CRT monitor warmed up it was just finishing showing the desktop. Who knew it was so easy to get excited over a PC that's almost 10 years old? Thanks again for your help, I really appreciate it.

I've had F12 disabled in the BIOS, but it didn't make a difference. You can hit Ctrl+S to get to the Intel Boot Agent setup, and I've messed with the limited options there, also to no avail. Network Boot Protocol: PXE or RPL (remote program load) Boot Order: Use BIOS Boot Order (this is the only choice, and the order I selected is HDD first, CD-ROM second, network disabled) Show Setup Prompt: Disabled Setup Menu Wait Time: 0 seconds Legacy OS Wakeup Support: Disabled Nothing has worked. It insists on looking for a way to boot from a network and adds 33 seconds to the boot time. After it gives up and goes to the HDD it boots up right away. On the "Windows XP" screen the moving blue dots only go across the screen 1 time and then right to the desktop. It's not that big a deal. It bothers me more than it will my parents, but I'd like to eliminate the delay anyway. Edit: You edited your post while I was composing The F9, F10, & F12 options in the BIOS only seem to change whether or not you see F9, F10, & F12 on the screen during boot. Their functions work whether you see them or not. It seems like F12 is being held down automatically during POST! As far as what you quoted, the Network Service Boot, I've had that disabled since the day I got the PC... still no change.

I've tried, but it doesn't work. I've Googled about it and it seems to be an issue others have had too. What about resetting the BIOS with the motherboard jumper and/or removing the battery? Is it possible that with the type of PC I have (former school PC) that some BIOS settings have been password protected?

Just thought I'd update my progress.... I used Ghost 2003 to image the C: drive, then used Norton's Gdisk (Norton's version of Fdisk) to partion the HDD the way I wanted to. Installed the HDD in a working XP system to format it, then put it back in its original case, booted to Ghost and restored the image file to the now smaller C; drive, and everything worked perfectly. I was a little hesitant to try it because of the trouble someone else had in trying to do the same thing (mentioned in the link in post #4. He tried it and the re-image kept hanging at 99%), but it has worked without a glitch for me. Thanks for all the replies and efforts to help. Next on the list: trying to figure out how to disable the PXE/network boot thing that adds at least 30 seconds to the overall boot time. I've been through the BIOS a dozen times but no change I've made has made any difference.

Update on this issue: until last night nothing had changed... it was still randomly flickering sometimes when I manually turned it on. I'd then shut it off, wait 10 seconds, and turn it back on and it'd be fine. Last night I was out of the room for just a minute, and when I came back in the screen was all black and showed the message you'd see if you turned on a monitor while it wasn't connected to a PC... "no connection detected" or something like that. The DVI cable was secure, it hasn't been abused or bent, and I'm the only one who uses the PC. Out of frustration I replaced the DVI cable with a VGA one, and I'm typing this message right now, so it worked. Now I'll have to see if the random flickering continues. With regard to the DVI connection, I'm wondering if the issue is the cable itself, or the interface/internal workings on the monitor or video card. Any thoughts?

Thanks for the additional info, Ponch. I have a better understanding of the 'license stuff' now. Since I'm more familiar with Ghost I'm going to give that a try first. It's a pretty spartan install of XP. I think Office was installed on it at one point, but there are no signs of it now, and my parents don't need it anyway. Total disk usage on the machine (including the page file) is around 2.5 GB, so I should be fine, space-wise. All that's getting installed on it is Firefox, Sandboxie, and CCleaner, and I'll be moving My Documents to a different partition. This is just going to be a PC for them to use for e-mail & web browsing. Oh, and it's a 2.4 GHz P4 with 512 MB of RAM. A local PC shop sells used 1 MB DDR chips for $8, so I'll add one of those as well.

Yes, I did that last week before I called Microsoft to ask them about doing what I wanted to do. The rep told me it wouldn't work. So I have the product key, but in your 'just in case' scenario, what is having it going to do for me? The school's name shows when I right click on My Computer and do a Properties. I don't know what to say about it. I can't say I'm surprised by it though, the way people do things these days. I don't know what to think now. I went and checked the case and it has a Windows 2000 Pro sticker on it.

That was easy. It's 640 = VLK.

There isn't any private data on these PCs. I don't know what method they used, but they've been restored/re-imaged to 'almost' their initial condition. When looking through Explorer I saw some folders that wouldn't be there on a pristine install (like stuff for specific printer models and a few other things), but I deleted all that stuff. Oh, and no hidden partitions, either.

Ponch, you kind of lost me with the VLK license on top of the OEM one. If they have 50 computers with OEM license(s), what is the purpose of the VLK on top of it/them? I don't understand the 'doubling up' of the licenses. Is it because the PCs would be being used in a professional context? (as opposed to a home user, I mean). Why not just have/use a VLK from the get-go? To your other point, how would I find out if the PC had an OEM preactivated install before it was reinstalled by the school? The PC is a Compaq Evo D510 CMT. I don't know what kind of BIOS it has. It doesn't say during boot nor when you're in the BIOS itself, and the options in the BIOS are pretty minimal compared to others I've seen. It does say this on the screen during boot: Initializing Intel Boot Agent v4.1.08 PXE 2.1 Build 083 (WfW 2.0), RPL v2.74 Wikipedia just told me what 'PXE' is. I guess that's because the PC was a part of the school system's network, and I guess I can either shut that off or go into the BIOS and change the boot order. All of this is irrelevant to the reason for starting this topic, however. I've done some Googling on restoring a Ghost image to a partition smaller than the one it was made from, and it 'might' work. That being said, I'm a little uneasy to try it because I don't want to end up with a boat anchor. I found a discussion on a Norton forum about using the Terabyte Unlimited BootIt partition manager program to resize the current partitions and avoid using ghost entirely (other than making a backup image after the partition resizing is done). It's mentioned in message 15 in this thread: http://community.nor.../highlight/true Any thoughts on trying to accomplish what I want by doing things that way instead of making a Ghost image of the current install?

A local school upgraded their computers and sold off their old ones (Pentium 4, XP Pro, 40 GB HDD), and I bought one to give to my parents. The HDD is formatted as one large partition. My thought was to reformat & partition it the way I like to have a HDD set up, and then reinstall XP and use the product key it's currently using. I talked to someone at Microsoft and gave them the current product key and they said this wouldn't be possible. I don't completely understand how all the VLK stuff works, but I guess because I don't have the original VL media or something? I guess it won't work if I reinstall XP from my own CD and then use the current VL product key. I'm not trying to do anything illegal - the PC would still have all the same hardware... I just don't like the way the HDD is set up. I don't know why I didn't think about this until after I was done talking to the rep from MS, but instead of reinstalling XP, what if I made a Norton Ghost image of the current install, and then reformatted and partitioned the HDD the way I want to and then restored the image to the 'new' C: partition? Would that work? I've used the DOS-mode Ghost 2003 for over 10 years and it's always worked perfectly for me, but I've never tried to use it in the way I just explained. Thoughts? If the Ghost option won't work, what about one of the various 'partition manager' programs that are available? Thanks for whatever help you can provide.

I never even thought about the BIOS, but I already have the most recent update.

It has a standard 3-prong cable. For now I'm going to stick with handling it as I currently am . A daily reboot isn't a big deal. If it gets worse I guess it'll be new monitor time.

Windows XP Pro 32-bit About a month ago my 3 year old LCD started flickering when coming out of power saving mode. I have the screen saver come on after 5 minutes, and then Windows turns it off after an hour. It flickers rapidly for about 5-8 seconds and then goes black. I hit the reset button on the case and when XP rebooted everything was ok. After this happened 2-3 times I changed the power saving settings to not turn off the monitor at all, and I physically turned it off myself if I was going to be away for several hours. No change - still does the same thing. The one thing I haven't done is to leave it on 24/7 and just let the screen saver run. I haven't had any issues when coming back from having the screen saver on. I also put a 'reboot' shortcut in the corner of my desktop that I can click fast when it does this so I don't have to reach down and hit the reset button on the case. When XP reboots everything is fine, and the picture looks as good as it did before this started happening. If it flickered after a reboot I'd assume the monitor was on its last legs, but since it doesn't I thought maybe something else was going on. So what's the story?

I have a few files I want to send to a friend that are too large to send as e-mail attachments. My ISP doesn't offer an FTP service so I guess I have to use a site to host the files. I have ZERO experience in this area so I don't know where to start and what sites to look at and which to avoid. I've had two suggested so far - http://www.dropbox.com/ and http://www.filedropper.com/ but don't know anything about them. Just looking for some suggestions from people who use these types of sites on a regular basis. Thanks.

Thanks guys, I appreciate the input.

http://memory.datara...oftware/ramdisk Just wondering if anyone here has used this program and what their thoughts are. I remember setting up an XMS/EMS ram disk back when I used Win98 to try to improve my internet browsing speed, but that was a long time ago. I was wondering if it might be worthwhile using this program and thought I'd ask if anyone here had any experience with it. Thanks.

Thanks. I've given up on the whole thing. I think it's going to be easier simply tracking down an older Soundblaster card.