CoffeeFiend

That PCI card came out in 1998, back when most people were still using Windows 95 on their Pentium 1's. It's going on 12 years old. And you expect to find 64 bit drivers for it? Newegg has several cards that cost $25 or less, have more inputs, better video quality (that 15 year old SAA7110A chip isn't exactly great by today's standards), and even come with a remote. There's even a PCI-e card in that price range...

I haven't had single problem with Vista myself. However, several things did give it that bad reputation: -OEMs shipping computers with way too low specs (512MB RAM, integrated GMA video...) i.e. a cheapo low-end XP box, knowing full well it runs like crap (and then loading it with crapware too) -some pre-SP1 issues -drivers that weren't up to par for a while (*cough* nvidia *cough*) -lots of people moving to 64 bit, and blaming those problems (lack of 64 bit drivers for any version on Windows) on Vista -folks that have used XP for many years and don't welcome change or are afraid of it ... Many little things, most of which aren't Vista's fault.

That's already a MUCH better option. Decent brand, 400 "real" watts (and not at 20C either), 31A on the 12v rails (372 out of 400W), 80plus, active PFC, decent quality power (decent regulation & low ripple, good parts), 3yr warranty, decent protections, decent set of connectors (sleeved 18AWG cables too), 140mm fan... A few extra bucks goes a LONG way. Not a great choice. G31/ICH7 isn't exactly amazing. And you only get 2 DIMM slots (big deal IMO), limiting how much RAM you can use (and having to discard the old to upgrade). Intel says G31 is limited to 4GB as well (even though asrock says it supports 8 somehow). And it's likely not a great overclocker either (no vcore adjustment seemingly), so you'll likely want to upgrade your CPU sooner. Not very future proof either (no PCI-e x16 2.0, limited ports and slots...) I'd make I at least get a board with 4 DIMM slots. Having a top of the line CPU with a low amount of RAM is kind of pointless. And if you want to use it for gaming in the future, when a PCI-e x16 2.0 slot might be a good idea. If you buy too low end, you'll be spending more because you'll be replacing it again soon.

I'd love to see those "reviews". That's anything BUT a quality PSU. I wouldn't put that in one of my boxes, even if they gave them away. As for 4850's, they're hardly power hungry monsters. A lot of reviews show system loads 250W and under while gaming (or running benchmarks) with one. The cards' power consumption seems to be around 100W total (at full load). Like I said, you don't need crazy high wattage in the first place. And this 800W junker is probably worse than a lot of "just OK" 450W'ers out there. I'll take a quality 350W unit over that any day. Edit: here. Look at what you can expect from such units (a 650W unit that dies at 184W load). There's just no way they can bring you anywhere near 800W on that much money. Absolute junk.

I definitely wouldn't buy this! Let's look at other offerings in that 800 or so watts range (newegg's prices): CORSAIR CMPSU-850HX 850W $200 CORSAIR CMPSU-850TX 850W $140 SeaSonic M12D SS-850 850W $230 SeaSonic M12D SS-750 750W $200 SeaSonic S12D 850 Silver 850W $180 SeaSonic S12D 750 Silver 750W $160 ENERMAX REVOLUTION85+ ERV850EWT 850W $250 ENERMAX INFINITI EIN720AWT 720W $190 Antec Signature SG-850 850W $230 Antec TPQ-850 850W $150 Thermaltake W0296RU 800W $250 SILVERSTONE DA800 800W $230 ZALMAN ZM770-XT 770W $215 ENERMAX INFINITI EIN720AWT 720W $190 ... Do you expect a rebranded, no-name PSU that's ~1/5 of that price (~$40 USD) to be any good? When it looks too good to be true, it generally is. When it comes to PSUs, you really do get what you paid for. $20 says that PSU dies under half load (and hopefully doesn't take the motherboard out with itself). You can barely buy a good quality 350W or so PSU for that much money e.g. a SeaSonic SS-350ET or such, or a "just OK" 450W-ish PSU. jcarle's pick is just fine. Same as before. Don't bother. Just like puntoMX said. That freebie PSU is also junk and so is the case. Here, for half the price of a basic case (e.g. Antec 300 or similar CoolerMaster models), you get a flimsy case that seems to be all about looks (windows and blue LEDs), and a even worse PSU. You want a quality, solid, well built case that will last a while and have good airflow. Along with a decent PSU (which doesn't actually need to be super powerful). Like others have said, you need a good base first. That 250W PSU will have to go for sure. And that no-airflow over-packed acer case too if it's like all the others I've seen. Then you can worry about the rest, and power & heat won't be an issue. Afterwards, you can worry about a new motherboard (previous asus/gigabyte recommendations are just fine). And like puntoMX said, there's plenty of life left in that CPU. I'm still using a 2 year old E2160 in this box right now, overclocked by 85% and it's still plenty fast for just about everything you could think of. Chances are you can push that E2140 pretty high with a decent board and later on upgrade to something fancier. Then again, depending on what you want to do with it, you're likely going to want to upgrade that video card as well (likely well before the CPU, especially if it's OC'ed)

The Win7 UAC settings don't get in your way that much. The only time I seem to encounter it is when I install something new. I might see the popup like twice a week or so. Can't be bothered with running an antivirus as they're only useful to make your PC slow (been many years since I caught one last), anti-malware apps which never find anything and all that other junk.

That's why you research it or ask for advice *before* you buy Not having wasted money on the entry level underpowered parts (E1400 and 3450), you'd have saved enough to have a significantly better computer. The Celeron is aimed at entry level stuff... It's not exactly a great CPU. Then again, that board only has 2 DIMM slots (4GB max as well...), and you've filled them with small 1GB sticks (and there's no PCI-e x16 2.0, it uses the old ICH7, etc) And cheap no-name PSU as well (like Sl@y3D for my n@me pointed out) In all cases, nice parts which are also future-proof wouldn't have been much more expensive (there's some nice stuff on the AMD side as well) A $50 mATX mobo isn't exactly the perfect overclocking platform either... Edit: a newegg review currently listed at the bottom of the item's page: "Cons: Board would not o/c my e5200 at all, couldn't even get 201x12.5 out of the board even with bios tweaks." Ouch. ^^ What he said. Now, for the actual problem: Well, if you want to play GTA4, then start by looking at the official requirements (repeat the process for other games you want to play): Video Card: 512MB NVIDIA 8600 <- your 9500 is a bit better than this, and this is the recommended card. So it's most likely not causing problems. Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo 1.8Ghz <- Your CPU is a very cut down version of a C2D (1/4 or less of the L2 cache), which is the *minimum* requirement. Recommended is a Core 2 Quad (not dual core, much less a very low end dual core, and which should be clocked faster too). Also, they recommend 2.5GB of RAM, which like jcarle said would help a bit... Especially if you plan on running something newer than XP, or have anything running in the background, etc. But then again, you already filled both your DIMM slots with 1GB sticks... You've already replaced the video card, now it's the CPU and likely the PSU, and in a not too distant future, you'll most likely want more RAM (and you'll have to again replace what you have now), and eventually you're probably going to want to replace the motherboard (for PCI-e x16 2.0, eSATA, more DIMM slots or > 4GB, etc). Buying too low-end only costs more in the end as you slowly replace everything, especially since it doesn't save you a whole lot in the first place.

It's a powershell script (BTW, you don't want the line numbers in there), so .ps1 extension, and it requires you to have powershell installed (you don't say which OS you use, and in case you're still using XP, then you'll have to install that -- not sure if the ngen issues have been fixed either). And depending on your particular setup, you may have to digitally sign the script for it to run (I have it set so no unsigned scripts will run here, and that's the default -- in Win7 at least) i.e. use makecert to make your own or buy one, then install it on all your boxes, then sign all your scripts (or do the insecure thing, and configure it to run anything). You also have to specify the full path to the script so it'll run, and can't run it by double clicking either. And this particular script runs for 60 mins (then it starts kicking in afterwards), unless you pass minutes as a parameter to it, so you better know how long your movie watching will last including any possible breaks/pauses... Powershell rocks, but this is *way* over-complicated IMO (and way too high a learning curve for most end-users who just want to watch a movie uninterrupted) MPC HC just works

I know Media Player Classic Home Cinema does this. The screen saver never kicks in while we watch a movie. Not 100% sure about the others.

The thing is, it's very hard to find a "real" hub these days, unless you go hunting for antiques on ebay. Most devices sold as "hubs" these days are in fact switches too... It's been a lot of years since I've seen one.

You don't need a hub, you need a switch. You connect your modem in the same port as you usually do (the one port by itself on one side). Then you take a patch cable, and connect it in one of the ports where you normally connect your PCs and plug the other end in your new switch. Then you plug everything else in the new switch. That's all there is to it.

The question was answered, and we're quickly drifting towards ban-worthy comments so I'm locking this one.

regedit

Because they contain no executable code. Either he really has no clue what he's talking about (wav files cannot be infected, nor can mp3 files, avi files, text files and so on), or perhaps he meant that the CD you bring in could also have a virus written on it along with the wav file (still highly unlikely)

mp3 and wav files cannot be infected.

Old news for most users of those tools. And it's not surprising they're dropping support for a 10yo OS with < 1% market share (and still dropping at an incredible speed) like Win2k, which is also 4 versions behind. Might be something with Win2k or your hardware. I can "disconnect" from a sample trace with ~250k entries in about a whole second (that message flashes so fast you couldn't even read it, it's there for 30ms or so) Edit: Win2k's market share:

No, that definitely wouldn't cause a BSOD. Again, we need a crash dump.

$20 on your NIC drivers, especially if it's nvidia Or one of those firewall/security suites that hijack your TCP/IP stack if you use one (or malware)... Then again, that's just pure guesswork. If you want a factual, no guesswork explanation of what causes it, create a memory dump and share it with us (zip/rar/7zip it then upload it anywhere like megaupload.com and give us the download link). Then we can work our winbdg-fu.

Only because it flew WAY over your head. Tables for layouts change nothing to the context of words. Either ways, it's quite a stretch to go from someone who admitted to knowing NOTHING about web design (by saying things "I'm positive that a website will look fine on IE6 even if never tested on this browser." which no one who's done any kind of web development would ever claim), to contradicting the vast majority of experts in the field by saying "it's a myth!" Says you. Except, it actually works great for most people. That's a myth? Who claimed you could do anything without thinking? CSS positioning works very reliably across the vast majority of browsers, providing the person who does the job has a clue. Except, it's really nothing like that. Misusing tables along with your general distrust towards modern techs like CSS makes sites crappy. It's like hobo style (tables) vs professional. Wow, you meant some people can misuse techs (just like tables)? Color me surprised. A couple folks didn't use it as intended, therefore it must be universally bad. That was your point? It just sounds like you're trying to fight progress and advances at large (from OS, to browser, to markup, to design and everything else). You thinking using <strong> over <b> is insane (despite being more semantic -- and deprecated in XHML 2, and not actually bolding text in HTML 5 and as stated "should be used as a last resort"), and not getting why using paragraphs isn't better than a billion <br> tags just goes to prove the point. Or perhaps you know better than all of the W3C members too? Have you noticed it's been 10 years since there's been any cheese in your part of the maze?

Says some random guy on the internet... Unless you can cite a credible source on this? Because pretty much everybody agrees otherwise.

We'll pretend you didn't even write this (nor "I'm positive that a website will look fine on IE6 even if never tested on this browser."). It's better this way. Quick and lazy answer for those who would have said something like the above, while being serious. Welcome to 5+ years ago. What's next? Animated GIFs, hardcoded font tags everywhere, sprinkled with blink tags? Yes, let's bring down web design and development to the absolute lowest common denominator (making it suck for everyone) because a handful of people don't want to ever upgrade, right.

Like I said, use the /extract switch... office2007sp1-kb936982-fullfile-fr-fr.exe /extract:C:\somewhere_you_want\ More infos here

Why would you want to use nlite or vlite for that? There are standard ways to do this. Use the /extract switch of the service pack to extract it anywhere you want. Then copy the files to the updates folder on the Office 2007 disc. Or combine both steps, and extract the files directly in the updates directory. That's all there is to it.

...until you start using it Digging through a handbag for stuff piled on top of each other and no organization whatsoever gets old. I'm using something most like jcarle does. The little compartments are used for RJ11/RJ45/snap-n-seal F-type connectors, self-adhesive and screw mounted cable tie holders, etc. Then I have several larger compartments which are very handy for separating tools in bunches, like general tools (pliers, side cutters, spare/old leatherman, etc), coax-related tools (crimper for F connectors, acutrac sat finder, etc), network/phone related (RJ11/45 crimper, bix/66/110 punch tools, toner, butt set, etc) and other odds & ends (flashlight, weller butane soldering iron, electrical tape, etc) elsewhere. It's pretty crammed in there though and I'd love to fit lots more in.

New processor (and video card for games) would solve this. However, any newer CPU won't fit on that ancient socket 370 board. And that DVD drive you have needs replacing too. And if you go for anything modern (as in new parts or recent stuff) then the RAM definitely won't work, the old power supply won't either and so on (basically you'd have to buy a whole new PC). Around here you can easily find 2nd hand PCs (old P4's) that run circles around this one for free... You're very much overdue for a big upgrade. If that puts it in perspective, that particular CPU you have scores 173 in the passmark test. There are CPUs out who score over 8000 on this test. There are basic $50 CPUs that score 1500 and over.