CoffeeFiend

Working fine here. By the looks of it, almost half your posts on MSFN are related to a connection problem of some sort (slow connection, 404 errors, etc). The problem is on your end.

Please check the date before replying to a post. I would think they figured it out since then. It was asked 28 months ago (more than 2 years).

Some people have their beanie on a little too tight I think. Zero facts in that post either, not really surprising (and of course nothing to back it up, as it's just not the case more than obviously). Some people chose to embarrass themselves in public, it's kind of entertaining. I hope they don't let facts or reality stand in their way (and stop) as we'd totally miss out...

Some people bash Vista, but it's also all these little things I love: Vista does add support to enable & disable NICs using the Win32_NetworkAdapter WMI class There's so many of those enhancements all-around it's not even funny (MANY of them pertaining to WMI). On XP, your best bet is making use of a command line util to handle this for you (e.g. devcon), or writing your own if you really feel like it.

Tabbed browsing. Somewhat better security, somewhat better page rendering, RSS support, etc. Some other little things. There's no real reason to stick with IE6. Why would anyone wait? IE8 will be a lot better seemingly (at least when it comes to rendering pages properly), but that's no reason to wait... Not that I actually ever use IE... Hmm, no. Not quite. There's a lot of big and fundamental differences.

It's on wikipedia so it must be true! Seriously, not sure what page you checked on there, but it's definitely not an AV review site, there is no testing involved there at all, and that content may have been written by *anyone* in the first place -- including anyone without a clue, or someone working for them (I'd like to find that claim, and refs backing it up). That site is TOTALLY worthless. Their ratings are absolutely laughable. Beyond pathetic. Besides, they do make money from referrals on sales, so they have a financial interest in what is claimed to be best (my guess is, whoever pays them the biggest cut gets rated first). The best? There's threads with hundreds of (mostly pointless & boring) replies, and there are some sites that do actual testing on them... VB100, AV comparatives, etc.

It'll still be overkill in a few years

NVENETFD.SYS is a nvidia driver, so you can't be really surprised to be getting BSODs like that... Very poor driver quality. Try updating your network drivers, and cross your fingers. This is why I don't buy anything nvidia. I value stability. Edit: BTW, memory dumps would help, but when you see a BSOD with a driver name that starts by "nv"...

Wow, so much FUD and anger in one post. Just because the preinstalled (by your OEM) Vista sucks and is slow (just like their XP installs for that matter), then Vista then it's a conspiracy involving the RIAA & MPAA, your power bill spikes thru the roof (LOL), Vista sucks and all that. Whatever. I think you forgot to say it causes cancer and AIDS too. Seriously... Edit: No 3 second delays on anything here, on my not exactly new box.

NO! They just split the available 50A across 4 rails. You can use up to 18A on each rail, but the combined power on all of them must not exceed the total it can handle. If you draw 18A on all of them it will either 1) shutdown (but here it doesn't have OPP, so that might not happen), or 2) fail (the *boom* option). Their label is also designed to make you think 680W is the combined power for the 12v rails (that would mean 56.66666 A) which makes it look better than it is, until you notice the little "rectangle" also includes the other rails, and the small type that says 50A max... Deceptive and misleading, and I hate that kind of stuff. And again, the 50A is at 25°C, it's less than that at typical temperatures (transistors derate with higher temps), and there's parts you're just not going to be able to use if it's on connectors you have no use for... For example, I need a lot of power on SATA connectors (12 HDs -- about 24A peak when they all spin for that alone), but I don't have a single PCI-e connector (nor a need for them yet). With split rail configs, the power has to be split according to your usage/needs, or you won't be able to make use of it, at all.

The OCZ is made by FSP. The Corsair is made by Seasonic. Two quality units. Power on the 12V rail(s) is very similar. Corsair: 52A, OCZ: 50A. The OCZ is rated at 25°C, whereas the Corsair is rated at 50°C, so not much difference in overall power. Both are 80plus certified, have nice cables, good protections, clean power, built from good components, etc. Between the two, it comes down to individual choice, if one prefers one or more 12V rails (neither one is inherently better). Multiple rails is better *if* the power is split properly (which connectors on which rail), IMO. Preference in brand names too arguably (OCZ/FSP or Corsair/Seasonic). Out of the two, I prefer the Corsair: -more power connectors (molex/sata) which I very much need -I'm not real keen on how power is divided (which connectors on which rail) in the OCZ, I couldn't use much of it... -couple more amps on the 12v rail -not real sure how much of that 700W you'd get at a "real" operating temperature in the OCZ (and it already has less power on the 12v, and less usable being split) -the OCZ lacks OPP and OVP protections (no varistor either), which the Corsair has -the OCZ uses Taiwanese caps (some being rated for 85°C), whereas the Corsair uses all Japanese ones (all rated for 105°C) -the somewhat misleading "combined power" on the OCZ label (680W isn't just for the 12v rails! it says in small type 50A max elsewhere, so it's 600W) -- I absolutely HATE that stuff -the fan on the Corsair is quieter -I like Seasonic a little better Doesn't mean the OCZ isn't a good unit, it's still better than like 90% of PSUs out there... But the Corsair goes to 11 In your case though, I would basically recommend neither unless the price is quite good. It's just WAY overkill. Unless you plain on upgrading to some SLI setup with two high end cards or something... Your current box would have some overhead left on a good 350W unit. They're both great PSUs though.

For you perhaps. I first installed Vista x86 after SP1 came out, and I've never, ever had any of those issues. In fact, on many file operations, it's noticeably faster. Either ways, I certainly wouldn't want to run Vista on 512MB, much less the x64 version (6GB here, moving up to 8GB in a few days). In fact, I wouldn't even want to run XP on that much... Buy some more RAM if you don't like having a slow PC. Oh, and BTW, most external drives are kind of slow (USB2 controllers are like that, most of such devices top around 30-some MBs/sec in real-life, nothing to do with Vista).

It's not that AMD makes really fast chips (in fact, it's anything but the case right now). The thing is, P4's are pretty old & slow compared to today's CPUs. My old & discontinued CPU I bought for $70 over a year ago runs circles around the P4 3GHz it replaced (3x faster).

Update: thanks Zxian! I tried build 64, and no more issues. Everything defrags 100% fine, no more driver or startup issues or anything weird. The vmware version works great BTW. Much better than diskeeper, but then again that ain't saying much. Edit: BTW, I also tried the latest diskeeper 2008. That trash filled my event viewer with TONS of error messages too, like "Unable to check the VSS Shadow Copy status for volume {[GUID here]}:\ ." and tons of totally unhelpful crap like: The description for Event ID 111 from source Diskeeper cannot be found. Either the component that raises this event is not installed on your local computer or the installation is corrupted. You can install or repair the component on the local computer. If the event originated on another computer, the display information had to be saved with the event. The following information was included with the event: {{[long and useless GUID here]}} Hundreds of that one... Thankfully it's all gone now. PerfeckDisk working as great as it used to

Google-fu. OEMs can be tracked down from the UL number and such. No magic here. Coolermaster's Real Power series is quite good (in fact, I got one in my main box), the OEM is Enhance (and seemingly it's one of their nicer units too). Very good build quality, solid design, it's no lightweight POS. 80 plus and all, LOTS of cables, and long ones too. No complaints whatsoever. Very good reviews everywhere, like this one. Their eXtreme Power series however is a different story. It's not built by the same OEM at all, and it's their budget series. They're in fact built by different OEMs, some being complete trash IMHO (hipro). The 500W one is a 450W in disguise (a Seventeam ST-450ZPF, which is OK seemingly). Then again, don't expect to get a quality, solid, well built 500W unit for $20. This review did no actual testing whatsoever, and merely reprinted what's claimed on the manufacturer's website. In fact, I'd hardly call that a review... Now, if you do go check good review sites, you won't see so nice things about it... First, you could check the previous review of the other PSU based on the same design (the one that says 56% measured efficiency and that it failed). Then there's silentpcreview who outright refused to even review it. Or how jonnyguru made one, sort of. It took two attempts. 1st: "Nothing to see. Just a loud bang." -- it died well short of its rated wattage and well cooled too, dead transistors... 2nd attempt: "nMedia asked me not to put the review up." -- it actually was available for a short while too. 500W is peak, and that's at 25°C... No name (KSC & Jpac) caps, the PCB says "350-450W" on it (that's more like it), etc. I can't really think of anything good to say about it.

A nice blue screen with a driver name that starts with "nv", how unsurprising. Thankfully I don't get those on Vista, but it's not like their drivers are any better because of it...

Exactly. I bought a pair of 350W Seasonic PSUs for the kids' new boxes a month ago. It's plenty for "normal" uses. Exactly. Not all PSUs are equal -- FAR from it. And wattage alone (especially on cheaper/no-name units) means very little these days, just like wattage on cheap computer speakers. I'd be surprised if that PSU can handle 400W of power for any amount of time, even if it says 500 on it. The lower wattage better brand name units are 99% of the time FAR better... Haven't looked at that vid card though (I'm a total non-gamer), no idea how much power it actually needs. Edit: the modu82+ is nice, but no need to spend $160 to have a decent PSU either. My (albeit lower wattage) Seasonics were $30 each which is also 80plus certified -- typical efficiency almost 84% and average is 82% (PDF with curve here) Not enough wattage for a SLI system perhaps, and it's not modular, but hard to beat for the price! But anyways. 56% efficiency is beyond horrible (assuming it's like the other PSU from the same company). Buying a 80plus certified PSU would cost him less than $0: it would pay for itself in under a year. If his rig uses 150W average (may or may not be the case; I just gotta start from something), assuming cheap hydro power @ 10 cents/KWh and sales taxes around 15% it costs about 1$/watt of power used 24/7. His current PSU power usage: 150W/0.56= 267W from the wall; A decent 80plus PSU @ say 82%: 150W/0.82= 182W from the wall: a net saving of 85W, or about 85$/year, which over a 4 year or so lifespan will save him close to $350 (more if power costs more over there). BTW, the outervision calc says that rig with that new vid card could work on a 270W PSU.

Weak 12v rails, around 320W combined seemingly (doesn't say on the label either -- not a good sign!). The parts inside are ~99% the same as their 400W model (not impressive). The OEM is Shenzen Chi Yuan, which also make similar models like the NorthQ NQ-4800-400 which are reviewed here (summary: overstated power unsurprisingly, died during the test, thoroughly unimpressive, save the having the worst efficiency I've *EVER* seen in any PSU: a horrible 56%!)

I think what he was saying here is more like "fully unattended install for OS and apps & all configuration settings and preferences and such for every single app". OS & apps already would take a lot of time (starting from scratch), but settings too? That's like 100x more work. Tracking where every little change is stored for every app, in config files buried deep into the user profile, or often strange and subtle changes in the registry you have to find out... Doing a lot of system snapshots to compare them, and then testing everything to make sure that's it, and then making some script to back all these things up pre-format and then another script reimporting it all post-reinstall. That's just about what I'd call mission impossible. It would take just WAY too much time. From things that are sometimes nearly impossible to backup or just plain too complicated/time consuming (e.g. parts of XML config files), to paths that change (yes, you use environment vars, but you know something will screw up eventually), and fairly major changes/differences in the OS used (my last 2 installs went XP -> Vista x86, and then Vista x86 -> Vista x64; next will likely be to Win7), and many changes in where things are stored, and also things like UAC. It would have been impossible to plan/test for those before installing the new OS first. And when I reinstall, most apps have new versions and likely couldn't use the old apps' settings. I think anyone can start to see the ridiculous amount of work involved to maintain a script that would do all this... Most people I've seen that make such "complete" unattended installs for themselves seem to do mostly that with their PCs: unattended installs (and very little more). By next week, you know there will be new builds of basically everything on the disc & updates for the other half. Then they update all the installers, test it, find out something doesn't work anytime, fix all those, try it ~50 times in VMWare, add new Windows updates, etc. Repeat all over again next week. I would call these people "reinstallers" I guess. Some people may recognize themselves here...

It would take MONTHS of work to automate all that & get it perfect, not hours (and clearly, it's time I do not have). Big parts of it aren't exactly trivial either (editing parts of XML files for config and such). And by the time I need to do it again (in a couple years or so), it would all be out of date anyways. Large parts of it wouldn't be applicable/work anymore (e.g. my old photoshop CS3 workspace would be useless for the new version, or the last time I would have made this, it would have been for MS Office 2003). Even when it comes to unattended apps. They're not that big of a time saver. Yes, XP was a real pain to install, and if you installed that often or deployed lots of machines, it was well worth the effort. But now with a Vista SP1 disc, there's very little to do and I just can't be bothered. Apps? By the next time I'd install, all the apps would be like 3 versions & 150 builds out of date. Mass deploying stuff? Not in my current job (most are restored from ghost images anyhow & we "reinstall" perhaps 1 PC/month)

Yeah, only a few hours if you already spend a few hours preparing for it. And then, you conveniently "forgot" the step that takes like 90%+ of the time: all your custom settings. From setting the _NT_SYMBOL_PATH environment variable, to reinstalling altium designer libs, custom photoshop/bridge/raw workspaces & actions & plugins & all, recreating font sets (organizing your fonts) in suitcase, reinstalling visual studio plugins, reconfiguring cruisecontrol.net (fun!) & tons of other dev tools, reinstalling tons of SDKs & tools and such little things for development and sys admin, reconfiguring many system components' (e.g. IIS) settings, setting up your mailbox & signature and all in outlook, re-adding previous accounts & databases in SQL Server (and other DBs), re-adding old vmware machines back & configuring networking (2nd NIC too), customizing your mp3 player app (and making it use your old "ratings"), mounting partitions how I want them (as subdirectories on the C: drive), setting up my gfx tablet, patches/SPs/updates on everything, wireshark settings (like ignoring checksum errors on NICs that do TCP checksum offloading), setting up desktop & quick start shortcuts, defragmenting your drive(s) post-install (nevermind reindexing everything), tweaking machine/group policies to your liking, removing startup junk with autoruns, configuring what app makes it through your firewall or not, configuring various apps to use the same ports as you already had open in your router (depending on your network setup), sidebar gadgets, firefox exensions & restoring old bookmarks (and also things like adding settings back for debugging proxies and such), settings default columns in the task manager & process explorer, configuring various codecs' settings so stuff plays properly (e.g. AC3 passthru for SPDIF, or which fourcc's are handled by what codec), hunting down every avisynth plugin I need, ngen'ing powershell so it starts up faster, setting your printers' default settings, various templates to add (like MS Word .dot[x] files), RSS feeds in my feed reader, setting up your wallpaper & screensaver & windows' sounds, power management settings (i.e. sleep), the language switcher thing for different keyboard layouts, going over the event log looking for things that need fixing (very common to find little issues), setting up my new newsgroup reader, setting up existing ftp accounts in my ftp client, etc. I could go on for quite a bit longer. I'd say my previous estimate of "a week" is WAY too low actually (it's been like 2 1/2 weeks, and I'm not even done yet, but it's not like I'm only doing that). Yeah, those who use their PC as nothing more than a glorified Xbox might not have to spend so much time, but those who actually use their computer for something surely do.

That pretty much sums it up. Most people made the switch with Win2k almost 10 years ago and didn't look back since then (in fact, many of us sort of already had before that -- with Win NT or HPFS on OS/2) FAT32 is a lowest common denominator thing -- everything reads and writes it, including embedded devices. Besides that, it's about the worst filesystem still in use these days (e.g. compared to NTFS, ext2/3, ZFS, etc). NTFS has ACLs, is journaled (WAY more fault tolerant), supports encryption (EFS/bitlocker), supports larger files (e.g. large multimedia files, large disc images, large VHD/VDMK files, etc -- TONS of uses), isn't commonly limited to 32GB partitions, supports having more files, supports unicode file names, has the same [default] cluster size as memory page size (faster), directory junctions, soft & hard links, more attributes, alternate data streams, volume mount points, volume shadow copy, transactions, quotas, sparse files, reparse points, etc. And the list goes on. LOTS of useful stuff in there. FAT32 performs poorly on anything but tiny partitions, has extra overhead as the Fast FAT file system driver keeps a copy of the entire FAT in RAM (~8MB extra per partition IIRC) and that evens slows down the boot process a little bit (having to read it, and it also has to calculate the free space), is "commonly" limited to small 32GB partitions, is more error prone (all these scandisk errors, .chk files and all), wastes a lot of disk space (bigger clusters), etc. There's simply no contest here. Nah. Same amount of writes to the drive (a cluster is like a group of several 512 byte disk sectors). Just wastes significantly less disk space. Vista works great BTW

Oldish? I just got rid of my ~15 year old HP LJ4, and that was quite overdue. So a LJ III would be more like 19 or so years old by now -- right out of the MS-DOS 5.0 era, a couple years before Win 3.1 came out. Of course, but if you want, I'm sure there's one for WordPerfect 5.1 DOS Time for an upgrade perhaps (before it turns 20yo)? A $50 Samsung laser is significantly better...

I think there may be a "if the" missing in front of this (not all cards do MPEG2 compression in hardware). But nowadays there's probably only like $10 difference between the cards that do and those that don't, so no real point in trying to save money there. Either ways, capturing isn't that CPU demanding using several codecs (e.g. MJPEG). I've done it hundreds of times on an old 1.x GHz box with great results. But yeah, using a DVD recorder to record the output from the VHS player is simpler, and for just one tape, I wouldn't bother to buy stuff to do it, I'd just hand the tape to a shop that does this for a small fee.

You need a capture card. There's loads of them around $50. Don't go for something too cheap, Hauppauge cards are OK. Some cheaper cards suck quite a bit (especially the drivers -- sometimes the generic bt8x8 drivers help though, but still a bad idea). Software wise, I haven't kept up with it all. Personally, back when I was doing analog capture, I used to use VirtualDubVCR which was quite good at handling all the little issues (like sync problems that you get with VHS tapes and what not; compressing with a MJPEG codec). Then if you want to transfer to DVD, you'll need an MPEG2 encoder and something to author your menus and all that. There's probably software suites that do all of this these days (probably not quite as well, but closer to a "one click" operation)...