Zxian

Windows XP Media Center Edition is a version of Windows XP that is designed for media organization and viewing in mind. The thought was that you would use XP-MCE to run a home theatre system. Windows XP Tablet PC Edition includes the neceesary files to make use of the touch-screen capabilities of tablets. This includes things such as text recognition software, Windows Journal, and some other features. How did you "acquire" these versions of Windows?

The program registers all necessary files in Windows. Have you made sure that the file in question actually exists?

Good to know about the files. Just wanted to make sure.

How are you going to configure the two Raptors? If you're going for RAID1, then I'd highly recommend getting another drive for storage. Also - get the Pioneer DVR-112D or DVR-212D. Nothing else compares... and the difference between 18x and 20x is negligible. I never burn at anything over 8x anyways - anything more results in a lower quality burn.

Google - Dial-A-Fix Not to be cheeky, but a simple Google search would have found you the answer to that question...

Check under device manager, under the "Computer" tree to see what HAL is installed. It should say something like "ACPI Multiprocessor PC". Check to see in BIOS if there are any auto-start or power resume modes. For example, I can set my computers to return to their previous power state in the event of a power loss. If the power goes out while I'm using the computer, it will automatically start up again when the power returns. Try looking for that option in BIOS. Alternatively, for your sake and everyone else's, try clearing the BIOS completely.

That's not quite true. The difference between 80GB (gigabyte) and 74GiB (gigibyte) is nothing. They're the exact same amount of space. The difference comes from the fact that manufacturers use the term GB to represent 1,000,000,000 bytes, while computers read 1GB as 1,073,741,824 bytes. The 82MB in this case are reserved for NTFS information. It's perfectly normal for this space to be used.

Have you tried reinstalling .NET 2.0? You could also try running Dial-A-Fix.

@Memnoch - Thanks for the great information. From your recommendation and explanations (and jcarle's constant bugging me) I think I'll switch over to the 3ware 9650SE card for my controller. I also read about the 2TB limit, but from what I understand, it's not a Windows or NTFS issue - it's the controller. People have usually been able to get around it though by building arrays up to 2TB, and then merging them with other arrays by using JBOD under Windows. To be honest - I would never setup such a system (any recovery from outside the OS is nearly impossible), but that's how others have "fixed" the problem.

Thanks for the points nmX. You're helping me lean towards the 3ware cards... You mentioned SAS controllers. Aside from the ability to run SAS drives (which I don't really plan on doing any time soon), what would be the advantage of that over a SATA controller? Also... a lot of RAID controllers I'm seeing now are using ML connectors (like the 9650SE-8ML). From what I understand, it's 4 SATA ports on the one end, and one special plug on the other. I'm assuming that it's not required to use all four of those cables at once, right?

@nmX - I965 chipset or higher - will do. I do take your recommendations very seriously, but as any customer who's gonna spend money, I'd like to know more about why you like the 3ware cards. Is it stability, support, ease of use, performance... etc? You say that you're happy about them, but why? @jcarle - I guess the HX620 it is... or something like it. Another option would be to run my two OS drives on the molex connectors that they have, and keep the SATA connectors for devices that need them. From what I've read, the 3.3V line is primarily used for hotswappable drives, which those two would never be anyways.

So... I'm looking to build a large file server to handle all of the data in my household - backups, music, video, installers - EVERYTHING. Motherboard ASUS P5GZ-MX mATX LGA775 945GZ CPU Intel Celeron 440 2.0GHZ RAM OCZ Gold XTC PC2-6400 2X1GB OS Hard drive 2x 80GB Seagate 7200.9 in RAID1 (already have in another system) Storage drives 3x Western Digital SE16 500GB - WD5000AAKS RAID controller Areca ARC1220 with BBU PSU Corsair HX520 520W I'm going to be starting with the 3 500GB drives for 1TB and then expanding the array as needed. All of this is going to go into my CMStacker 810 case, so that's taken care of. This system is going to be serving files, downloading torrents, and running BOINC projects when idle. That's it. Chances are it'll still be faster than any of my current systems, but in terms of high end CPU or motherboard performance - I don't need it. The only problem I can see at the moment is the fact that the HX520 has only 4 SATA connectors. Does anyone know of a PSU that has more, or are there SATA power splitters like there are for molex? I'm guessing there are, but I've never seen any. Any thoughts? Suggestions?

What kind of media are you playing during this time? or is it just when it's idle? Is your hard drive being accessed during this time? It could be that WMP is building it's media library from your music and video files (a process that takes a little while).

Cooooool. I'm assuming that the Intel Matrix RAID is also supported on this chipset? I love Intel. They know when to cut their losses and make something great. I really haven't heard anything new or exciting from AMD lately, and Barcelona is starting to get the feeling of vaporware...

Not to take this thread off topic, but I too haven't used nLite in a long time. I used to be all about the tweaking here or there, but ultimately, there'd always be something that I just couldn't do, or something that wouldn't install. People who have been on this board for a while can probably atest to the fact that I'm not a complete moron, and have some pretty good debugging skills. Ultimately, it came down to something that nLite did (9 times out of 10) and the only way to fix it was to reinstall the OS. There was one term a few years back where I reinstalled XP 6 times on my laptop. That may not seem like a lot to some people, but when it's my primary work computer and there are programs that cannot have silent installers, you're pretty much screwed. When a new forum member who has used nLite comes here and asks about how to solve a problem that they're having, my default response is "don't use nLite". It's simply not feasible for an environment where things need to "just work".

If your host's TOS lets you. You're buying a service from them, and generally speaking, resale is not permitted.

You keep referring to RAID0 as something that's meant "for gaming". It's not. It's meant to increase the effective read/write speeds to your hard drives. The fact that games benefit from that is secondary. I'm currently in the process of ripping my 100 or so DVDs to XviD. What I'll typically do on any given day is rip the raw DVD to disk using DVDShrink and then queue up the DVDs in AutoGK. Those raw DVDs take up a lot of space, and since most of the DVD ripping (not the encoding) is limited by the transfer speed of the DVD drive and the hard drive, it would help if I had RAID0. On the other hand, all those DVDs take up a bit of space (5-8GB each) so storing them all on a single disk takes up a lot of space. The encoded videos (1.4GB) go on my 500GB RAID1 drives. With RAID0, it would be win-win.

I was asking the OP, but it's a statement in general. I've got my workstation here that I use for classic gaming, but putting in a ATI x800 AGP won't do anything for my framerates, since it's all built over a PIII and SDRAM. The Ti4200 that I've got isn't the bottleneck for this system anymore, so there's no need to upgrade it. For most "day to day" tasks, the CPU is rarely the bottleneck of the operations. It's either network speeds (from the internet) or the hard drive. What everyday programs are too slow on your Opteron170? Would the upgrade really be worth the price? That's the real question here...

From what I see, you have two options. One - limit people to only being able to use their own section's printer. This isn't really ideal, but it'll cost you nothing more than a little configuration time. Two - Buy a network print server for each printer. These devices will connect to your network, and you won't run into troubles of the limited number of connections. These devices are usually pretty cheap - $50-$100 each - and would cost much less than a server licence for each partition (which is what you'd otherwise need). Something like this is what you're looking for. If it were my office, I'd go for the print servers. It's a bit more expensive, but it makes the printers independent of any systems in the office.

Do you really need the latest bleeding edge CPU to power your next system? The real question to ask is whether or not the CPU will be the bottleneck of your system overall. In otherwords, will you really notice the difference between the 6850 and the 6600 or even the 6400 in real-world tasks? I'd save the extra money and put it towards a RAID0 OS drive configuration.

The world's best case won't do jack if there are large IDE cables blocking airflow. I'm not saying that his P180 is like that, but you can't assume that the same case will perform the exact same as yours does.

I'm just wondering why you need the 6 different printers in 6 different locations? Are they each for different purposes, and does everyone in the office need access to all of them?

Gimme. Now. But seriously - that's just nuts. Go swedes! We should contact her and have her run SpeedTest and post in this thread!!!

Yup - AFAIK, the PSU itself is dead, so I use it for demonstration purposes (like this one) and for salvaging some easy molex connectors. I made a "mini-PSU" to power a fan or two for my entertainment unit.

First thing that you'll want to do if you want to open your PSU is leave it plugged into the system, unplug the power from the wall, make sure it's on, and then hit the power button on the computer case. You might notice things start to power up for a split-second. This will help drain any remaining power from the PSU. Now remove the PSU from your case and put it on a non-conducting surface (i.e. not a metal table). You'll see the four screw holes on this side of the PSU (the bottom side). Remove these screws to loosen the cover. Gently lift up the cover - be careful if you've got a 120mm fan in there, since the power cable for it will still be connected to the rest of the PSU. You should be able to lift it off and place it beside the rest of the PSU. The innards there are the heart of your PSU. I've taken apart lots of PSUs, but I still NEVER touch any of these components. There's generally no need to and like others have said, it can be dangerous. The black strip at the bottom of the previous picture is the 80mm fan in this particular PSU. Once you've got to this part, your best bet is to take a can of compressed air and blow out any dust that there is in the components. Once you're done, simply slide the cover back on (the edges fit inside the base) and fasten the screws. Hope this helps, and be careful. A general rule for safety - if you're not sure, don't.