Zxian

You still use AdMuncher instead of the built in Adblocker in Opera? Craziness... But that's beside the point... what happens if you disable the pop-up blocker (gasp) and browse around? Still the same lag?

Well... the wireless card is the only part that I had troubles with. And it was actually HP who started the BIOS-lock on their laptops, and ported that over to the Compaq lineup after the merger. I just updated my sig with my laptop specs, and the only original parts there are the CPU and video card (since I don't even know where to start for replacing those... ). The RAM and the hard drive went in without a hitch. Other than this incident, the computer itself has been pretty good. The display doesn't have any dead pixels, and is still reasonably bright. For being a 1.5 year old laptop, it still keeps up pretty well, but that probably has to do with the upgrades I did...

Eep... now I understand why you'd want to use an external monitor. I'd say just use one of the monitors as your primary. Most laptop video cards can barely handle two independent displays well anyways.

Interesting. Have you perhaps installed any updates since you installed XP? An update may have overwritten the file with a newer one with the old bitmaps.

First off... you're mixing Apples and Oranges. The messenger that is on Windows Computers is Windows Messenger which, as you said is version 4.7 (at least with SP2). MSN Messenger is currently at version 7. Do some searching around in the Application Installs section. Dexter made a good silent installer for MSN 7 that also gets rid of all the advertising crap. EDIT - I should add, if you don't want to use MSN messenger, you can find the Windows Messenger 5 download from the Microsoft site and install that instead. It should have all the security holes patched.

You'd probably take a big performance hit with an external video card. PCMCIA and USB simply don't provide the same bandwidth as a built in AGP connection (yes, even USB 2.0 isn't fast enough). How big is your screen by the way?

True... it does depend on what a person needs in a program. I've used both Outlook and Thunderbird (well... 1.02 was the latest I used), and they are both good programs. I use Outlook more though since I use the notes and Calendar as well. I also just like the three vertical pane layout of Outlook better than Thunderbird.

What do you mean that the subfolders are at the same level? Something like /Languages /Plugins /Skins /Shadow 3.1 /Tranquil or rather... /Languages /Plugins /Skins /Skins/Shadow 3.1 /Skins/Tranquil The second option is more like mine (with the skin folders in the Skins directory), but you're saying it's not like that...maybe a similar screenshot would be easiest (a picture is worth a thousand words).

I just figured I'd share a story about a success that I had last night. A while back I had thought about upgrading my wireless card in my laptop to get better transfer rates over my home network and help with signal strength at school (everyone with a 802.11g card did better than my 802.11b). I contacted Compaq tech support and asked them if I would be able to do the upgrade, since I had hear that some manufacturers had BIOS-locked their wifi cards. The guy on the tech support said that I wouldn't have any troubles. So I go out and buy Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG miniPCI card** (on sale for a really good price) to upgrade the card that I had in my laptop (2100B). I got home all excited, took out the battery in my laptop and popped off the cover to the miniPCI slot. I removed the old card and insterted the new one (and attached the attenae). I put the battery back in and plugged in the power. Press the power button and... "104 unsupported wireless network device detected. remove the device and restart. system halted." WTF....I thought, so I unplugged everything, checked that the card was properly installed and all that jazz. After about 20 minutes of not being able to boot (not even into BIOS), I took out the new card, put in the old one, and was able to get into Windows no problem. I contacted Compaq tech support again, and they then told me that I would need to buy an 802.11g card from them to be able to upgrade. After bitching with them for a good long while (I wouldn't have bought the card if I didn't think it would work), I gave up. So... that gets me to yesterday. I did some reading and apparently the BIOS-lock only came into effect as of BIOSes released after Jun 2004. Since I bought my laptop in Dec 2003, if I put the original BIOS on there, it should work, right? For once, the answer to that last question is yes! I was able to boot into Windows, and using my ethernet adapter, download the drivers from Intel for the card. After a bit of work trying to get the drivers and not Intel's ProSet software installed, I was off to the races! So now I'm sitting in the fast lane! I was able to stream movies over wireless before, but it would usually take a while to find the next keyframe in the movie if I wanted to seek through the movie. Now it usually takes less than half a second. Hopefully someone else will read this and benefit from it. **I wanted to buy an Intel card so that I could still keep the Centrino sticker on my laptop without lying...

hold on... I think you misunderstood... You upgraded your drivers to the v4.0 from Linksys, right? I'm talking about the hardware revision of the router. It's on a label on the underside of your router. The current version of the firmware doesn't matter at all when changing to new firmware.

Yeppers, that's the one. I'm using the 2.02.2.6 version right now and I haven't had any problems with it. Just make **** sure that the version that you download is compatible with your version of router (i.e. WRT54G V1.0, V2.0, etc). It should say what version you have on the label on your router. If you flash with the wrong firmware, you'll end up with a really expensive paperweight. I think that this firmware will only work for v1.0 and v2.0, but not anything above.

The wallpapers aren't stored in a dll file. They are bitmaps or jpgs typically. The default wallpaper is found at C:\WINDOWS\Web\Wallpaper\Bliss.jpg.

It sounds like you've got the right idea...here is a screenshot of my directories just for refrence. Does this happen with all skins, or just one? It could be a poorly made skin file with a bummed ini or something...

I'm using the latest drivers from Intel for my wireless card, and as I said, I can't assign a static IP within Windows, since I use my wireless connection in other places as well. Not to mention the fact that this isn't just with my wireless card! It happens with my ethernet card on both my laptop and desktop (running Win2K3-SP1).

How GPS works The reciever is just the part that you hold in your hand.

@wicket20519 - It could just be the craptastic Linksys firmware. There are known problems with them. Like I said before, go with wifibox. I've never had a problem with that firmware, and I've been running it for a good few months now. I use BitTorrent frequently and surf the web as well. Even with 4 computers all running at the same time, the thing just keeps on trucking at full speed. Now... if someone could only get a proper VPN server working on those firmwares... *drools*

You can't really completely disable the laptop screen (at least on any laptop I've seen). The video cards are usually hardwired to the laptop screen and have extra settings built in for them (for display switching and such).

You just need to select another skin, and the menu will then be refreshed. Make sure that the skins are not buried another level below the skins directory (i.e. /skins/blah/blah/<files>), which can happen sometimes with certain decompression programs.

What screensaver is it? Does it use OpenGL? Some screensavers, like Flurry for example, require a lot of processing power.

The problem with the repair is that it never seems to work for my wireless connection. I've got a 802.11g network setup with WPA and it won't even renew my IP address...

What does XP have to do with it? Win2K will do that fine for you as well. Can you load Win2K on the good drive to get the computer management? Troubleshooting this in Win98 would probably just be a nightmare.

I doubt that you're going to get this working. Having two monitors is usually the most that any one video card can handle. I know that my laptop runs a bit slower when I use an external monitor (32MB ATI Radeon 9200 Mobility), so I wouldn't even want to think about using a third monitor. Is the rest of the laptop's hardware really worth it to use two 19" monitors? What kind of stuff are you looking to do with the computer?

Too thick of a layer will actually hinder heat transfer. With too much thermal paste applied, the heat can't transfer to the heat sink properly, causing higher temperatures. I remember one guy who emptied almost the entire tube of AS5 on his CPU... and then wondered why it was running at 65C idle...

I will second the Linksys WRT54G. Run that with wifibox firmware (you can find it at linksysinfo.org) and you're unstoppable. I don't think that there are any routers with VoIP and wireless, but I could be wrong. There aren't too many pre-n routers out there at the moment. You're probably just better off sticking with the tried and tested 802.11g networks for now. I've never had a speed problem with mine, and I constantly stream movies over wireless.

umm... it did? or your file did? A badly patched file will cause your machine to not boot properly (if at all). I'd suggest using a patching program for the uxtheme.dll file instead of manually replacing it. Another alternative is to replace the uxtheme.dll file on your Windows install CD. That way you'll have full theme support without any hassle.