Zxian

Happy birthday!!! Hope you have fun!!!

@jcarle - well.... I just got my hands on a near-free Zalman CNPS3100+ heatsink, which is about the best low airflow socket A/370 heatsink out there. I was hoping to use it to make this system nearly passively cooled (PIIIs generate next to no heat). @LLXX - through the side of the socket... you mean through the "holes" on the top there? From what I can see, those aren't really through holes. I've been looking at the possibility of just buying some thermal adhesive, and gluing the heatsink to the whole CPU. Any thoughts on how this might stress the CPU itself? These are ZIF sockets afterall, so I don't think that the CPU itself was designed to hold up a 300G heatsink.

So... I've got this old system here - PIII 700. Old socket 370. It's great for a basic fileserver, audio player, word processor, etc etc... The only problem is, the clip on the socket that holds the heatsink on is chipped, as seen here. Any thoughts on how to fix that? A dab of epoxy to make a new one or something? Or am I stuck with using thermal adhesive on the heatsink (even though it sucks to do so)? Thanks in advance.

Check the task manager. Is the CPU usage at 100%? My guess is that it is. Grab a better anti-virus program, such as Avast. Chances are AVG is just missing anything that's on your system. There's a whole forum on malware cleaning and prevention here. Have a look to see what information you can get from there. Disk fragmentation can also cause your system to slow down, but not in the way that you're describing. Once you're absolutely sure that there isn't any malware left on your system, you can start to worry about that.

You've forgotten about jcarle's utilities!!! WUD is awesome!! jcarle's Utilities

Well... I actually already got one of my Christmas presents - a new set of pots and pans. I had been using this tiny little pot to make pasta, and it would always overflow... Anyways - the new set is actually a used one that my dad and step-mom had on their boat, but who cares!!! I can cook food better now!

Didn't I answer the question first?

Office XP is an Office suite. Windows XP Professional is an operating system. And please don't double-post. You'll get your answers better if you pick the right forum and only post the question once.

I must have added NSIS to my last post as you were writing yours...

Umm... I've always just known them by instsrv and srvany. Instsrv will add the necessary information to the system (mostly just the registry) to add a service. Srvany will make any program run as a service. For example, How to setup Hamachi to run as a service with Srvany Edit - To add to the list: Nullsoft Scriptable Install System. Very simple install system that adds very little overhead to the files being installed.

instsrv.exe - 18KB srvany.exe - 15KB Tools to help you run (almost) any program as a service. I've found other download sites, but figured I'd host them myself.

First off - you need to tell us what kind of RAID you want and why. If you want RAID1 for redundancy, then the total size of the array will only be as large as the smallest drive in the array. In your case, it will end up being 250GB. As for the second part of your question, Intel RAID controllers allow you to partition part of your drives and run part of them in RAID1 and part of them in RAID0. IIRC, the feature is called Intel Matrix RAID. http://www.acnc.com/raid.html <-- one of the best resources on RAID.

I'd much rather work on my 15.4" WSXGA (1680x1050) screen than a 17" WXGA (1280x800) screen - anyday. Resolution is what you want to go for - and what you'll end up paying for. IIRC, the MacBooks come with 1440x900 resolution by default. If you want a larger screen and/or higher resolution, you might have to move up to the MacBook Pros. If you're doing a lot of image work, then WSXGA is the lowest resolution that I'd recommend. I've got it on my Dell laptop, and it definately makes whatever little graphics work I do a lot easier than with my old WXGA screen.

Tornados are horrible for their noise. Even undervolting them won't help much... If you want quiet fans, Nexus or Scythe are the way to go. SilentPCReview.com is a great place to look for quiet computing tips.

How do you mean memory leaks? Just because a program uses a lot of memory doesn't mean that it's leaking that memory.

Hmm... it rulesPlayer doesn't seem to play well with AveDesk. Maybe both of them are trying to capture the same "layer" of the desktop... When AveDesk is running, the only time you see anything in rulesPlayer is through the black text of the menus. If AveDesk is closed, then all works as it should.

Antec Solution SLK3800B - Bigger Antec Solution SLK1650B - Slightly smaller Both will fit ATX mobos (it's a bit of a tight fit in the 1650), and both come with excellent Antec power supplies. If you're worried about expansion space, then I'd recommend the 3800, otherwise, the 1650 is an excellent case. I've built two system srecently with that case, and it's nothing short of great. The price is right too.

Testing this now... MPlayer definately is cool...

Does your BIOS support a "wake on keyboard" feature? That's really the only thing I can think of - that your keyboard/mouse is causing it to wake up. Otherwise, a Wake-on-lan function might be the culprit.

If you used nLite to remove something, then you should post about it in the nLite forums. As cluberti said - please don't double post. If you pick the right forum, you'll get your answer. Moved to nLite forums.

If you continuously clear out the prefetch folder, your system won't have enough time to organize the files in the order they're listed - where the real system performance boost comes in. If you haven't noticed a difference one way or the other - why bother clearing it out? It's one more thing that you have to do... for no benefit either way (according to you).

@crahak - the 3ware doesn't have a fan... meaning that it'll be quieter... <-- is a silent freak

My statement was referring to the fact that doing so would make no difference whatsoever. The prefetch files are only accessed when the program is loaded. If the program is removed, but the prefetch file is still there, it won't do anything (aside from taking a couple of KB of hard drive space). There's no difference between a "new" prefetch file, and an "old" one. Chances are, they'll hold the same information - more or less. Old prefetch items are automatically cleaned out to allow for new ones (a maximum of 127 items IIRC), so there's no need to do any manual adjustment of the prefetch files. My recommendation to everyone is to never touch the prefetch folder or anything inside it. It's one of the parts of Windows that takes care of itself well.

It has been said many, many, many times. SATA and SATAII are interoperable, but they will just run at SATA speeds.

Sorry for the late reply on this. Finals are in season... Anyways - to reply to the start/stop cycles allen2, I don't think that either the pure spinning or start/stop cycles will affect the life of the hard drive. Like the article says, if you start and stop your drive once or twice a day, you'll never reach the expected maximum start/stop cycles. On the other hand - a spinning hard drive generates heat and noise. That's why tend to recommend that people have them spin down. Power consumption is less, and there's less heat going into your system. Cool hard drives are happy hard drives. @hmaster10 - To be honest - it's up to you. You can try it both ways and see what works best for you. You're not going to hurt your system by turning that setting on or off.