davismccarn

I searched Google shopping for "Seagate Momentus ata 120GB" and got $48 at ZipzoomFly: http://www.google.com/products/catalog?q=s...title#scoring=p Some older systems will hate a drive larger than 128GB; but, if you want to change the size and see what pops up.

Careful! Hard disk drive quality is a moving target. IBM sold its storage division to Hitachi (2002ish?) because of the infamous "deathstar" drives; but, Hitachi has since reengineered their drives and current models are very good. Seagate has been my vendor of choice; but, they currently have a defective series which came from a plant in Thailand and some are still on retailer's shelves. Western Digital has accounted for more than 50% of the data recoveries I have seen in the past 7 years, followed by Maxtor at about 20%. Right now, I would choose Hitachi, Seagate, Samsung, or Fujitsu with Hitachi edging out Seagate because of their handling of the defective drives. P.S. I have been doing data recovery since 1979 (on cassettes and floppies!) and have seen well over 20,000 failed drives.

The hardware failure; then, is unrelated to the viruses and the question is whether you need any data from the failed drive. If you don't, faster replacement drives can be surprisingly cheap and you then need the recovery CD/DVD's.

We don't know; but, if he uses cable internet, most cable modems assign an ip address that is not one of the standard, private ones. (Time-Warner uses 71.xxx.xxx.xxx and Earthlink 24.xxx.xxx.xxx) Setting him up to use a crossover cable would clobber his ability to connect to the internet. And yes; you would need several switches to get 255 PC's on one router; but, it works just fine. Excepting some Netgear routers which don't acta as DNS forwarders, every other router I know of works great if you just plug in the PC's and use automatic everything with the advantage being they remain as flexible as possible. If the router fails in a thunderstorm, just plug in another one; if its a laptop, they still work great on the road, and so on.... I use static ip's for servers, printers, and gateway devices; leaving everyone else to be automatic.

OK, basic CPU 101.... The bigger the cache, the less often you have to come out of it to access slower things AND The FSB (Front Side Bus) speed affects the communication with the rest of the system. The E8400 has an FSB of 1333Mhz (almost double the 800 of the E5400) and the 6MB cache is as big as it gets..... If you install it yourself (easy, as you found out), it's $167 at ZipZoomFly (they've been around forever) http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetai...rodlist=froogle

OK; you're right, he doesn't say he wants to share the internet; but, we're going to have him set static ip addresses so the crossover works and then undo that every time he wants to use the internet or buy another network card so he can share the connection on the desktop when a router is plug it in and it works? Now; technically, his scanner will need to support network scanning (which is ify unless it is an expensive model).

Here is Avid/Miro/Pinnacle's page on EOL (End of Life) products. It has a link for the Studio DC10 update; but, it is not for Vista: http://avid.custkb.com/avid/app/selfservic...ilite=dc10#dc30

Well, bust my britches! Dell didn't limit the CPU FSB so you can go beyond the E5400. In this thread at DELL, the user upgraded to a Q8400; though, I like the E8400 which ought to seriuosly kick that system into high gear: http://en.community.dell.com/forums/p/19290903/19540330.aspx

That's a real shame! It looks like Dell has you throttled back to a maximum 800Mhz FSB; but, I'll bet that systemboard would run a 1066.... And yup, the E5400 is the highest, 800Mhz chip (course its way less, like $69.00) http://www.google.com/products/catalog?hl=...&sa=title#p

He wants to share the internet, printers, and files. A router will run about $40 and give him a firewall, to boot.

Most cable internet companies will require you to turn the modem off for two minutes+ before it will connect to a new device. Did you do that? And/or, did somebody clone your mac address to the router aeons ago to get it working? If they did, reset the router to defaults, turn the modem off for two minutes, and see if it isn't a lot better.

C'mon guys! What you need is a router which will then let you have up to 255 PC's, sharing an internet connection and folders or printers. The key to getting started is to make sure the systems are in the same Workgroup. Go to the Computer name tab in System Properties (right-click My Computer, left-click properties) and, if necessary, change the workgroup name to be the same. http://www.practicallynetworked.com has a lot of help.

No, there are no trojans/malware that I know of which can cause hardware failure. On the other hand; numerous Trojans will eat your permissions (which may look like a failed drive) when you hurt them badly. If the system says no hard drive, that's hardware. If it won't let you login, it may be damage caused by the malware.

Without the model number of the Pinnacle card, we are powerless to help you.

Get the free version of http://www.memtest86.com (get the ISO and burn it to a CD) Then, simply boot it and let it run for a few hours. If the bottom stays empty, your ram is good, if it gets any errors, it isn't.