Zxian

Yuna wallpaper Enjoy.

Antec and SeaSonic are the only two that I'll ever consider using. Also - getting a 500W PSU for a standard home computer (even a decent gaming rig) is completely overkill. Chances are 350W will do you just fine. See here

I haven't gone through the whole thing, but there are a few that I'd point out as being a bad idea to apply: 1) Never Set a process to RealTime priority. If the application hangs, you'll pretty much need to restart the system to regain functionality. It's just a bad idea. 2) All the "tweaks" in the Memory Management section don't do anything for XP. They used to apply in Win98, but don't do anything for the XP kernel. 3) If you have AutoEndTasks=1, then you won't get any notification about saving your files before the system restarts. Not to mention, programs might not be able to save their settings if you have this applied. You're essentially killing the program when you go to shut down. Why not give it that second it needs to wrap itself up?

Wow... that's impressive. It's interesting to watch though, since he actually uses MSPaint like a canvas. He sketches the basic idea out first, and then goes over it. He's lucky that he's able to swap colours like that on the fly - you can't do that in real life...

Not this again... *shakes head* So... if the prefetch entries are used to determine the optimum order of files to be loaded, why would you want to remove them?

Umm... me? Set up an account on my "image hosting", and I can change the permissions to include .zip or .rar files as well. Just let me know what your user name is on my hosting.

Thanks for that jcarle. A much needed reminder for all. Stickied

I've gotta disagree with allen2 on this one. I'd say that it's actually better to have the disks turn off after a certain period of time. If your system is on all night, but doesn't do anything, it's better to have it turn off, then on rather than have it spinning for those 8 hours, wearing out the bearings, generating heat, etc etc etc. @TheFlash428 - the two events are different in terms of what the system does. Turning "off" the hard drive actually only stops the hard drives from spinning, but the control circuitry on the drive is still active. This means that the system still sees the drive, but when a request is now made, it takes an extra amount of time for the drive to spin up (usually only a second or so) and then read/write the data. Putting the system into standby puts all current processes "on hold" and shuts down the majority of the hardware systems (including the hard drive). When the system resumes, all the memory that was used is still held in RAM, so the "startup" time is very short. Hibernation saves the current contents of RAM to the hard drive and then powers off the system. In this state, the power draw from the system is essentially zero - save the standby load of the PSU. When the system is resumed, the RAM data from the hard drive is read, and then written back to RAM, and the system returns to the way it was. This takes much less time than booting the system (all you crazy nLite-ers don't count).

I'm gonna answer this in terms of music, since I listen to music more than I watch video. Winamp!!! There isn't another media player out there that has the same kind of UI as Winamp, nor do they have the same kind of functionality built in. Winamp 5.31 syncs with my iPod, manages my music, plays most formats out of the box (ok... no flac or ape by default). What more could you ask for?

Jaqie isn't a "sir". Just because a PSU is new doesn't mean that it's good. Malfunctioning PSUs can cause all sorts of strange behaviour.

Have you had a look at SequoiaView? From what I can see, it has the same basic principle as this program. Just another alternative for you to try out.

LLXX - That won't change the images for you automatically on a timer. Some people like to have pictures of their family on their desktop and have them rotate on a timer. This program has functionality beyond simply setting the wallpaper. Why don't you have a look at the feature set before being cheeky next time...?

Honestly - if you're running SDRAM, forget about upgrading. It'll be way too expensive, and you're better off saving up for a newer system. 300GB 7200RPM will be plenty for you. You can always use the 120GB HD for storage from now on.

First and foremost - SLEEP!!! School's been driving me nuts lately. I'll be really glad on the 18th when I'm done all my exams. I'll have plenty of time to spend with my girlfriend and family. And time to clean my place... Non computer list: New covers for my couch A nicer digital camera (I've been eyeing a Canon for a while now..) New coffee table A proper entertainment center Pots and pans for my kitchen Some really good cookbooks - not to just read from, but to get ideas. Good food can make a crappy day turn into a good one. As for computer stuff... Seagate Momentus 5400.3 160GB Hard drive 2x OCZ 1GB DDR2-533 200PIN SODIMM Memory 4x Western Digital RE2 RAID Editon 500GB SATA2 7200RPM 16MB (for RAID5 setup) SATA RAID controller (don't know exactly which one yet) A lower power HTPC system. Oh... and I'm really looking forward to going skiing this year. I've got my season's pass to Whistler/Blackcomb. w00t!!!!

We're not always so fortunate to have a router at our disposal. I'm writing this from my university, which has it's own wireless network (which I have no control over). Some people might want something to keep random people out.

The other thread has been closed. Please don't create multiple threads for the same problem. Like you can see, you've got answers in both, and it only makes it harder to find the right information.

Since we're dealing with the Windows XP firewall here, I'm gonna close this thread, and discussion should continue in the other one. Link to discussion in Windows XP Forum Topic Closed

Hehe... so it was Alcohol...

Definately the larger hard drive. 1GB is plenty of RAM for most systems (and considering that you tweak your system like mad to have as low RAM-useage as possible). 7200RPM and 8MB or 16MB will do WONDERS for your speed.

Enough with the Micro ATX vs Micro ITX discussion. It has nothing to do with the original question. People are bickering for no reason. Next time people go at it like this, warnings are going out. @Digerati - Looks like people have given you quite a few options. I've also been looking at some form of NAS to setup and run. My personal idea was to take a VIA C3 system and add a decent PCI RAID card (HighPoint or the like). With a few large SATA drives, dump some basic Windows or Linux on it and run the whole setup headless. The advantage of this is that you can also run this "NAS" as a downloader or the like, and have it save your files to the massive storage space (something the TeraStation can't do).

Are you running virtual device software (Daemon Tools, Alcohol, etc)? There's a known conflict between these types of software and PerfectDisk. You'll need to disable the virtual device drivers before running your offline defrag. I can access the page from here...I've saved the HTML and uploaded it here. Raxco_support_page.htm

He's talking about his onboard, you're talking about the card. That's why he said 33MB/s. No need to blow up at him ("Where the hell did you hear that? ")

His motherboard doesn't support UDMA-6! From the sounds of it, it's UDMA-2 (max transfer speed of 33MB/s). There are different levels of transfer speed over PATA, you know... @bonnestone - Now that that's been said, I think I might be able to clear up some confusion. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you dont' want to get a PATA PCI card because you think that it'll only run at 33MB/s, right? The PATA card has it's own controller, and therefore will be able to run at whatever its rated maximum is (which is in all likelyhood, UDMA6, or 133MB/s). This will ultimately be faster than the USB solution, since the maximum theoretical transfer speed of USB2 is 480mbps, or 60MB/s. However... data transfer over USB2 isn't very efficient. Have a look at USB external hard drive benchmarks. Here's one for example. The maximum transfer rate of the system over USB2.0 is only 25MB/s for a sequential write - that's on a 7200RPM Seagate!!!. The same drive connected through PATA is at least 35MB/s. There's also the problem of the overhead in USB communication - it's really not the greatest standard if you want performance. Also - if the drives are going to be inside the case, why on this earth would you want to open it up and remove them...Unless I'm missing something - this is a very bad idea. I've dealt with a LOT of computer systems, and unless I would NEVER unplug anything from a computer while it's on, unless it's from an external USB port and the case is closed. In the end, I think you're getting confused with MB/s and mbps. I too would recommend that you get a PATA PCI card and run your extra drives off it. If the fact that the drives are NTFS formatted is a problem when booting linux, make them FAT32, or ext3 if you're running Linux all the time. There are ext3 drivers for Windows as well, that work quite well - see here.

If a Windows thread is running on one core, and it needs to access the thread running on the second core (simplest example I can think of is to close a program for example), then there would be communication between the two.

First off - why do you want RAID? The two RAID levels that you mentioned (0 and 1) are about as far from each other in terms of features/functionality as it gets. First off, RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks. Typically, it is used in situations where data reliability is critical. For example, I store all my important files (school files, work files, pictures, etc) on a RAID array to make sure that I don't loose them. For more information, read this site. Once you've got more of an idea of what you want, let us know. Like jaws75 said, RAID0 is used in situations where you need speed, while RAID1 will give you data security (but it's slower).