CoffeeFiend

Hey now, don't forget about RAM boosters, registry destroy... err I mean cleaners, super-duper magic windows tweakers and all those too

It's funny, I could swear you just said being unable to use windows software is a feature By that standard, a broken car is definitely the safest, because it can't get into an accident

Does it beep? Try pressing tab, that usually gets rid of the logo, and shows you the text instead, so you might see where it actually stalls. Try clearing the CMOS using the jumper. While you're in the case to find the jumper, have a look at the caps too. If you have spare parts of any kind, it would be useful to testing things out...

Sorry to hear that Personally, I've been extremely happy about my BenQ FP241W, but it's probably hard to find. I was getting either that, or the 2408WFP, but the Dell was like $200 extra or so (and then taxes on top of that extra $200). S-IPS is nice, but not $200-something nicer than P-MVA. It's got HDMI, DVI, VGA, component, s-video and composite inputs, flips on its side, 1920x1200 too, etc. But if I had the money and wanted the very best, then I'd sure be buying a 2408WFP. Good warranty too seemingly. Your old one is likely fixable though, and it might even be cheap to fix (although it would likely cost money to just have it looked at). It could be just the power supply or something easy & quick to fix (backlight even? or no power LED either?)

Of course it's slower than your internal HD. USB 1.1 ports are VERY slow. 12Mbps tops, but in practice you get even less. Current SATA drives use a 3Gbps bus, or about 250x faster. Of course the platters aren't that fast, but a modern drive can still push data a LOT faster than a USB bus. Nothing will give you 2.0 speeds on a 1.1 port. It's not possible. USB 2.0 ports are a lot faster (480Mbps, 40x faster), but faster transfer speeds mean higher CPU usage. There is no "fix" here, as there is nothing to fix. USB 1.1 is pathetically slow, and *nothing* will ever make that fast. If USB 2 is too heavy for your CPU, it just means your CPU is very, very slow. Nothing will make faster transfers use less CPU power either. If anything, your fix is a modern CPU. BTW, USB 3.0 controllers will start being available later this year.

Year-end update! I added Win2k, we can clearly see where the curve is heading: towards the bottom, with all it's win9x "friends" and NT too (which hit 0.34% this month -- a new record low) Combined Win9x market share and the iPhone both tied at 0.44%! Linux's market share is now nearly double of Win9x's -- not that their growth is fast at all: Macs gained more users last month alone than there are Linux users altogether! (says a lot, don't it?) Vista still climbing, XP still dropping... Trends aren't changing much overall. Other news? Yes! Browsers: Google is telling IE6 (yuck!) users to switch to better, non-outdated browsers for gmail (news here). IE6 having ~20% left, we can expect that to have a noticeable drop quite soon (Firefox should go up a bit, so will IE7 -- especially in the corporate world). All web designers and developers rejoice! Opera still stable at 0.7%... No signs of it ever increasing. Chrome is up to 1%, and might go up because of gmail IE 8, despite still being beta, is already up to 0.82%, which is more than the current versions of Opera and Chrome.

More extremely irrational, unthinking, paranoia-fulled, asinine claims! How thoroughly un-surprising of you. Because you can't understand what others write doesn't make me wrong. CPUs use use more power with load indeed, which still won't double your computer's power usage (lots of it is coming from other devices in the first place), which won't nearly double your houses' total electricity usage, clearer now? You talk like running Vista is going to cost me $3000 in power a year. Whereas my CPU still idles at like < %1, and CPU consuming tasks, like watching 1080p H.264 movies (all decoded in software no less) still take no extra CPU power. Funny, but my electrical bill hasn't gone up by a single dollar. If anything, it's gone down, thanks to actually working power management! There's thousands more people that would say exactly the same. You only managed to make yourself look like a nutcase yet again. :lol: :lol: :lol: x 10^6 trillion Is there any need to even reply to this? Jealous of a guy who's proven his incompetence publicly? Am I supposed to be into self-humiliation or something? The fact this guy still has a job is nothing short of unbelievable... Don't let facts get in your way this year either, it's quite entertaining reading about all your half-baked conspiracy theories and feebleminded delusions. Do you also believe in the time cube by any chance?

No need to use the ipconfig or ping executables to do any of this, nor having to parse the text from their output and such. Look at the Win32_PingStatus and Win32_NetworkAdapterConfiguration WMI classes (fully documented on MSDN). Everything you need is right there.

$150 + taxes and shipping for EAX and DTS connect? Ouch... (alright, a very small change in the line noise in the analog outs if you still use those, and ASIO too)

any particular reason? The other card is much nicer, especially for HD content. Nah, it really is a Core 2 Duo in everything but name. Same Wolfdale core and all, it's just not *marketed* as a C2D... Also, you'd be surprised how easy it is to overclock those things... On the stock cooler, stock voltages and all... You can easily make it 50% faster (my puny E2160 has been running OC'ed by 85% since day 1, no problems whatsoever) Most software can't make use of 4 cores yet... The main uses right now would be things like running a lot of virtual machines at once (with a fair amount of load on each), doing some fairly AV encoding (with the few tools that support it), and stuff like that. For everyday tasks, 4 cores just means your CPU sits even more idle.

I had expected it to be a line in your hosts file, but like I said, you probably have malware, which can add that line again anytime, and it can have embedded itself in your TCP/IP stack and everything else. You got to clean your PC from that stuff first. A hijackthis log would be a start.

You can try fiddling with VIA's USB drivers, filter patches and such, but as far as I've seen, the only way to have properly working USB ports (that work for good, reliably and all) on a board that uses those older VIA chipsets, is to not use them i.e. get a card. Those old VIA-based USB ports are the very worst and the most flaky I've ever seen (and thankfully they don't make chipsets anymore!)... Newegg has a 4 port PCI card for $6.50, it's not like they're expensive.

Old VIA chipset, just like I expected... I would personally buy a USB PCI card.

It likely has a DVI->HDMI adapter. The codec on that board is limited to 7.1 ch linear PCM, and it only works over HDMI. Onboard Realtek is quite good IMO. Easily the best sound card I've ever had... 0 issues using the toslink & spdif outs (using both on this rig), great drivers (compared to creative trash -- not that it's saying much!), decent set of interconnects (better than a X-Fi), supports every codec out there (including those used on Blu-Ray discs), etc. No complaints at all, whatsoever. The only nitpick I could think of, it that it doesn't have DTS connect, although some other/fancier Realtek models actually do. I'm sure there's some gamers that would miss their EAX, and it's totally inadequate for musicians as it's no low-latency multitrack ASIO monster, but for everything else it's great. I have no plans on ever buying another sound card...

Yep! That card has its own audio codec onboard, for use with HDMI connections.

That already helps a lot! Vendor ID 0x1002 is ATI. It's something to do with audio on your vid card, likely for a HDMI output. You do anything to your vid card lately? I'd try reinstalling those drivers instead.

Well, if all else fails, and that you also paid with your credit card, you can call your credit card company and explain them it doesn't work at all, many problems, definitely not what you'd expect for your money/you're dissatisfied, and that you're not willing to pay for it. It may not so much a "nice" thing to do, but as a last resort, it does the trick. The credit card company will tell tiger they won't give them the money for it basically (i.e. a chargeback), so they'll be forced to take it back. Honestly, I don't think I ever had this many hardware issues with a computer, and when it's sold as a kit, it's expected that the parts should work together (been tested), otherwise it shouldn't be sold like that! (nevermind again the super slow hard drive and all) Out of $500, what would I get? First attempt, right from newegg.com (picking parts based on price pretty much, as you want a "deal") GIGABYTE GA-EP45-DS3L $80.99 (after MIR though, but it's only $15, and the only MIR -- still better than the tiger MIR); nicer all-around IMO, and importantly, still uses inexpensive yet fast DDR2 There's a fair number of 2x2GB kits of PC6400 CL5 (various brands) $40 and under... pick one -- this is significantly better/faster than only 2GB! Nothing will make your computer slower than not having enough RAM. Intel E5200 CPU, $82.99 -- still more than enough for HD and all (the quad core mostly "goes to waste" here), especially with a good vid card... Sapphire Radeon HD 3450 512MB, $36.99 -- yes, this one even comes with a vid card! And it does 1080p H.264 decoding in hardware too... Passively cooled too (no fan, no noise!) WD Caviar 640GB AAKS series, $64.99, MUCH, MUCH faster, more space and all... (no point in having a quad core if it'll spend half its time waiting on the hard disk either) Antec 300 case $59.95, 'nuff said PSU wise, there's some Seasonics, Antec Earthwatts and what not between $40 and $50 that are more than sufficient for such a basic rig tons of good DVD writers around $30, pick one... Total? $450 or so. That includes a better case, a better PSU, better motherboard, twice as much RAM, a vid card (the other didn't), a DVD writer (the other didn't), a bigger and more importantly WAY faster hard drive, and better motherboard, along with a still plenty fast CPU, for about $50 less. And no hardware issues or any of that. That $50 extra can go towards a overly fancy PSU, or an extra 2x2GB kit of DDR2 to bump it to 8GB and make it really scream, or an extra nice motherboard... And you can still get a quad core if you really insist, for not too much more.

That would be my option too... It's not really an incredible deal in the first place, not so much hardware I would have chosen (Intel brand board, not much RAM and DDR3, etc). And seemingly it comes with its share of problems.

You don't want to use coax, it's the worst quality interconnect of them all. You'd be better to run a different cable (s-video preferably, otherwise composite) to an analog input on the capture card. And then usually the remote control base thing has IE blasters, that you'll have to position somewhere that can make the box change channels.

If he's that strapped for cash, and doesn't have requirements past "watching mov files" which would probably even work on a P3 (depending on the codec: sorenson or H.264, bitrate, etc) then that's the obvious answer. The $6.50 solution! (Not that I tried that particular card, but there's dozens of them to chose from, and they should be easy to find locally too) But if I was upgrading, I'd surely go with that onboard ATI over nvidia too! I'll gladly pay extra NOT to have nvidia stuff.

It looks like audio, but the only way to be 100% sure of what it is, and what drivers it needs, are to have the vendor & device IDs. Look under the "details" tab, then select "Hardware Ids" from the dropdown. I'm assuming you also tried to force it to reinstall all your audio stuff (delete all the audio stuff in device manager & reboot) and such steps.

Completely false. No facts to back it up obviously. Anyone with more than two brains cells would know it's impossible in the first place. Even if your CPU was peaked @ 100% 24/7, it wouldn't double your computer's electricity usage, which is only like 5% tops of total power usage. This holds no basis in reality, just like all your claims. Expert? ROFL :lol: That's got to be the funniest usage of "expert" in a sentence I've EVER seen! He's the renowed laughing stock of the IT industry (and more). He made a bunch of wildly inaccurate and ridiculous claims, did no research at all obviously, and been proven wrong on all counts repeatedly. I'd sooner listen to the ramblings of a random drunk at closing time at any local bar. Expert clown perhaps? Just read this and this. You'll quickly see he was COMPLETELY wrong, 100% wrong, on all and everything, since the very beginning. *ALL* of his laughable claims have been thoroughly debunked several times over. There's even a lot of his claims you can actually test yourself, and you'll easily see he was also wrong on those too... Obviously you're basing your opinions on sensationalist FUD written by a know-nothing nutcase. So what? Hard drives have increased in size since 2001. Back in 2001, a 40GB WD drive was $250 and now you can get 1500GB'ers for half that. And BTW, OS X and other modern OS'es are no better. At current storage prices, that's $1.50 worth of storage space, you seem to worry a lot about what amounts of enough change to buy a medium coffee at a local shop. Install it on 6 computers, and you've wasted almost enough money for a discounted Tuesday afternoon movie ticket! Again, beanie on too tight? There are no facts anywhere in your post, much less in this part. Oh noes! Run for the hills! They're coming for us! You're only embarrassing yourself here. Yeah, no kidding.

That goes directly against mine. ~100% of the time I've seen such problems, it's been a problem with the USB controllers on the motherboard. And like he said, the drive works perfectly on other computers. VIA chipset by any chance?

Well, it's not THAT simple. If the partition is on the same disk, same partition (just formatted in different ways), clean/with no fragmentation, and the same background processes and such, all running on the same machine (of course)... You can do some benchmarking, but you have to be careful with your setup for those to be truly meaningful. Anyhow. I've done hundreds of hours' worth of analog capturing on NTFS partitions, without even a card that does hardware MPEG2 encoding, on lowly P4 class 1.x GHz boxes (AMD ones too, without SSE2 or anything fancy), and had 0 issues over the years. Anyhow. I forgot to mention in my previous post. With Vista (and Win 2008) now we get self-healing NTFS It can be managed with the fsutil cmd line util. Yay for extra reliability.

It's likely malware, especially if it's just sites like Microsoft's, and that you also happen to be a IE user...