Shane

Given the use of API's built into explorer, people were bound to start reverse engineering it sooner or later. As far as I'm concerned the best thing to do is worry about the project and wait for DRM until you're close to a commercial release. You're not EA.

Avast works pretty nicely

How likely is it that they'll be able to patch the exploit that you're using out? For obvious reasons I'll be a bit reluctant to spend money on something that could be screwed by a patch

You're making fantastic progress, keep up the great work!

I doubt that 8 really even needs NX to function, it's probably to enforce a minimum standard of security.

The re-arm setting is deprecated. I can't find it on TechNet yet, but the ADK says that it was removed from Windows 8, yet to use a different one... which only mentions Vista and Windows 7. Sooooo I actually don't know whether or not you can use it in Windows 8 or not. I see, so once your 30 days runs out you lose functionality, like you used to?

It's the older Athlon XP processors that lack SSE2 support. All Athlon 64's have it.

How long do you get between rearms if you use this method, and how many rearms does it give you?

Works brilliantly, great job!

Any chance this will have full X64 support at any point in the future, and does it also disable the explorer ribbon?

My hardware is still being powered, I hear my hard drives spin up, whatever it is, it's specific to the VGA x16 slots

Hmm, interesting. Just a question for those of you in the know, if the power can be provided by the slot, will the card draw power from the slot before the PSU connector? If the answer is yes, it could be an indicator that my motherboard's circuitry could be the issue

Unless there is a severe bulge or leakage, yes. That type of cap is popular on boards now, the MSI and Intel boards I looked at just now use them. Maybe they are more resistant to the bulging? The only other way would be to use ye-olde-multimeter (and some math skills) to make sure you are getting the correct readings as marked on the caps. I don't have a multimeter, are they expensive? When I did my inspection I looked pretty closely, and I didn't notice any underneath leakage The card I had previously was a 4850 not a 4870, and it only had one 6 pin PCI-E connector Is the power draw significantly different between the 4x and 16x slots?

All of my caps are of that kind, does that mean that if I do have an issue that I am unlikely to be able to identify it because of the type of casing DFI used?

Ok, I appreciate your effort, thank you Upon examination, my caps appear to be in pretty decent order, no electrolyte leakage or bulging that I can see, I have taken a couple of photos as well in case you can see something I can't (all of the capacitors are in this condition) http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/706/img20110713153442.jpg/ http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/809/img20110713153459.jpg/ As for performance, I haven't actually noticed that much of a drop in most games, the only one where it's really noticeable so far is COD: Black Ops, Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2, and Bioshock 2 all seem to still run normally

The only other card I have is a PCI 4 port USB card, so unfortunately I can't test that theory out. I am not 100% sure why, but before DFI pulled it, they had 2 different download pages, the one that I got the BIOS I am using no longer exists. I have no idea why it's not listed on that site. And the BIOS file I am using is modded, but none of the BIOS instructions themselves have been altered, just has a newer Option ROM for the AHCI component of the Intel ICH9R onboard RAID controller, and a newer ROM for the onboard JMicron JMB363 controller. However I thought myself that may have been the problem so I tried flashing back to an older bios (X48CD725) and clearing / resetting CMOS to default, however that didn't seem to make any difference. I haven't tried any of the other BIOS files, because I figured that if the problem persisted across a couple of different ones that it's probably not the BIOS. I could retry flashing the initial release if you think it may make some difference? And yes, I have tried the safe boot method by switching the safe boot jumper, again though it didn't make any difference. (I presume that's what you meant anyway, I think you may have downloaded a different version of the manual to me, I have the European version, and page 38 of my manual is where the French section starts )

I have tested the slots with both of my graphics cards, and both give me the same error, I don't even think anything other than graphics cards goes into the x16 slots does it? If there are other devices that go into them, I am afraid I have no other devices I can put in, I don't have anything to put into the x1 slot either, unfortunately. Also, what values exactly did you put into the PSU calculator? because I put the values that I am using (3 GHZ at 1.35 volts). I can't imagine how the value could possibly be that high, but I believe you may have entered something wrong. I just redid the calculation to factor in 100% load, and 20% capacitor degradation (which is only likely to apply after 3+ years) and it recommended me at 621W, which is still less than I actually have, I have looked at this from as many angles as I can, and I am sure the problem cannot be the PSU. And the card's power draw would not actually be that much lower with an x4 slot than an x16 anyway. Here's a screenshot I took so you can see what options I selected in the calculator (I had to guess with the cooling kit, as it came with the case and afaik doesn't have its own brand name, but I don't think the difference would be large enough to make an effect): http://www.diigo.com/item/image/1ibsc/iwx8 As for the other question you asked me. If I put the card in slot #1 (nearest the CPU), it does absolutely nothing, no POST at all, the diagnostic LED's don't even turn on. If I put it in slot #3 (middle slot) the system posts properly, but when the diagnostic LED's hit number 26 there are 3 short beeps (diagnostic code 26 indicates VGA error), after which the board continues to post and correctly loads (Diagnostic code FF, indicates correct boot) but VGA doesn't initialise And in slot #5 it posts normally.

Ok, I will address your points one by one Firstly, I have tried unplugging all of my drives. The rewriters and the hard disks. One by one, and all at the same time, and it made no difference Secondly, yes I cleared the CMOS, again made no difference. Thirdly... I see the card even under the highest load possible, from a stress test only consumed about 107 watts. To be safe, I just did a calculation with this site (taking my overclock and liquid cooling components into account): http://extreme.outervision.com/PSUEngine And it listed my recommended PSU requirement as 475W, so I presume 650 should be more than enough I do appreciate the help and I apologise if I seem overly dismissive.

I'm not familiar with Caps, how do I go about looking for them? As for config, if that was an issue wouldn't it have always been a problem rather than something that went away with my old card, then came back randomly after a couple of monts of normal operation? From what I can gather my board has a Crossfire chipset so surely it shouldn't have a problem with ATI graphics cards? I guess it does predate the 5770 but the 4850 has the same error. The BIOS I have is the newest available but it's from 2008, I don't know if that has any relevance or not? I am prepared to try things that I believe are relevant, but I have had 3 different PSU's in this computer and it occured under all of them, and the PSU I currently have is brand new, which is why I don't believe the PSU is the cause. My calculations suggest that a 650W PSU should deal with my setup comfortbly. I have however tried unplugging the power to my hard disks and that made no difference. As for the board, unfortunately it's about 3 months out of warranty, the warranty on it was only a year so unfortunately I can't request a replacement.

Yeah, I know X48 was designed as a DDR3 chipset but I think DFI adapted it for use with DDR2 in this particular board. There are no DDR3 slots on this board. Also, would it being PCI-E 2.1 make much of a difference? I'm pretty sure the older 4850 wasn't V 2.1 and this problem happened on that card as well, but then I am not 100% on that

My old PSU was a 570 W Psu, that faults started coming back even after I put a 650W PSU in. The 5770 isn't a high draw card, and powering the sytem on shouldn't tax the PSU that hard, I am not convinced it is the problem, especially considering the card was working in those slots before, with the same PSU

Ok, first of all my hardware config: Q6600 @ 3 GHZ (tried returning all overclocked components to stock speeds and voltages, no difference) 8GB Corsair XMS-2 PC6400 DDRII Memory Various hard drives (2x Seagate 7200.12 500 GB, 1x Samsung F1 HD103UJ 1TB, 1x Samsung HD753LG 750GB, 1x Maxtor 6L200SO 200GB, 1x WD IDE Drive 250 GB) Pioneer SATA DVD-RW Drive Pioneer IDE DVD-RW drive Thermaltake Kandalf LCS Silver case HP L2151WS Monitor 1920x1080 @ 60HZ DFI Lanparty UT-X48-T2R motherboard running bios X48CDC24 HiS ATI 5770 1GB Graphics Card And now onto the issue: My computer started acting up, so I attempted to restart it, upon shutting it down it would no longer POST (the error code lights on the board don't even light up, so I couldn't diagnose a fault that way). After much fiddling about I discovered that I had a strange fault with my motherboard. For reference here is a photo of it's layout: The 3PCI-E slots nearest to the CPU socket are an x16 slot, the standard x1 slot, and another x16 slot. The bottom of the board is an older x4 PCI-E slot For some unknown reason, when I put my graphics card into the uppermost (closest to the CPU socket) of the X16 slots, my board will not even post... not even to the point of displaying diagnostic error codes. When I put the card in to the slot below the x1 slot, the board will post, but will sound 3 beeps on diagnostic code #26 (VGA Error) The only way that the card will work fully is in the x4 slot at the bottom of the board. This problem actually happened before, with my older ATI 4850 card, I made the assumption that I had fried the card, and brought a 5770, and as that particular card worked straight away I had no reason to doubt that assumption, however I tried the 4850 in the x4 slot on a whim and it also works, which means this problem went away for a while and came back which is very puzzling. As neither graphics card is faulty, and as the board still seems to work properly if you have either of the cards in the X4 slot I am working on the assumption that it is not a hardware fault. I have poked around in the BIOS and only found one setting, to change the functionality of the x4 slot, but I couldn't find anything else. And as I had not made a BIOS configuration change before the problem started happening with either the 4850 or the 5770 I am absolutely stumped, I cannot figure out what could be causing this problem, so if anyone could offer me any suggestions I would be grateful. Thanks