hougtimo

well, everything seems to have copied correctly, and I can now boot in safe mode... However when I try a normal boot, I get a BSOD with the error "Unmountable Boot Device" - anyone have any ideas what this means?

Hi, I have a client's pc here (amd 550mhz, 256mb ram, 12gb hdd) and he wants me to replace the 12gb hard drive with an 80gb. Both drives are IDE and work no problems. I tried to clone the 12gb to the 80gb drive using Acronis Trueimage...everything went smoothly (although it took 3-4hrs to copy 8gb data). So whern it was finished, I took out the old hard drive, set the new one as master..turned on, got asfar as the XP bootscreen and BSOD. Not a proper one though, no error code just a blue screen with something about %systemroot%/system32/ntdll.dll in white writing at the top. # So, not to be deterred, I formatted the 80gb drive and tried again using Partition Magic, again everything went fine but when I try to boot the computer claims that there is no boot device installed. I tried to set the 80gb drive as "active" in XP, but that option didn't show up on the menu like ti usually does. Help!!!!!! What do I try next? HougTimo

I can't as the board is specially manufactured for Packard Bell / NEC so its an OEM board so anything of any use in the bios is hidden

I have this pc to upgrade and it was all going fine. I upgraded the cpu from 1.7 to 2.8 skt 478 p4. Booted fine, checked the speed and it said 2.1ghz. humph. so I upgraded the bios (msi ms-6506) to the latest from packard bell which " adds code for new Pentium 4 and Celeron Processors ". well its still being recognised as 2.1 ghz. Is there anyway at all I can get round this without a new motherboard? Thanks HougTimo

Wellhe's playing stuff like BattleField, and WoW etc... With a budget of £120 its a bit tight to upgrade the whole lot. He doesn't want vista and is happy with xp. I was thinking maybe along the lines of 1gb ram and a 2.4(ish) P4??

I had a client bring a computer to me because some games were choppy. he wants it upgraded so it can play games smoothly. The current specs are: 1.7ghz P4 512mb ram ati radeon x700 he has a budget of £120 what would you reccommed to upgrade, my thoughts are cpu and/or ram. any info is appreciated hougtimo

grow up, please? the guy really is't bad.

oooh, right. will geton to that! Thanks for the heads up!

Hiya all! Well Ive finaly given the finger to wordpress, as it was getting on my nerves and generally didnt do what I wanted it to. So after a morning of coding, here is my new blog. Hougtimodesigns Please let me knowwhat you think of it, and ways in which i can improve it thanks HougTimo

Nevermind. Just noticed the huge scorch marks, and dried on thermal paste on the underside of the card. Looks like the card wasn't new, as they said it was.

I have an old emachines (1.1Ghz celeron) that I am turning into our families media center pc, and the 32mb onboard graphics won't work with MCE. I went out and bought a 64mb Geforce4 mx440 PCI card. I have put it in and set the primary graphics adapter to PCI in the BIOS, but I get NO output from it at all. Nothing. When i boot using the onboard windows does not recognise that the new card is there, the BIOS doesn't. What have I missed? The computer is an Emachines 140dvd - a. Thanks HougTimo

yep....a day later and still no joy.

I tried everything everone has suggested. the drive is fine, i blanked the whole thing so it was one large 80gb space...still no luck! reset the bios ... you name it, i've tried it! i really don't kno what to do now...

XP reinstall didn't work. straight after the test-based portion of setup....wouldnt boot. same as before just a black screen with flashing cursor. I'm runnin out of ideas here.....

Trying that now on a sep partition. I'll let you know how it goes.

EDIT :: Just tried XP recovery console and tried fixmbr and fixboot - still no luck.

Hi, In my brothers pc (sempron 2800+ am2, 512mb ddr533 ram, 80gb hdd, 20gb hdd) the 80gb drivejust won't boot. We have had windows on the 20gb drive because of this, but the time has come forme to need the 20gb drive again. So I used acronis trueimage to copy his windows installation to the first partition on his 80gb drive, tried to boot and nothing. No boot menu, no errors nothing. Just a flashing cursor. Things Ive checked: Drive Jumpers Cables IDE ports boot files on the drive the partition is active The OS is XP Home. The drive is fine (i think) as when we boot with the 20gb drive (which works fine) all the partitions on the 80 gb drive are there and we can access everything as normal. It just won't boot windows from the 80gb drive. 80gb drive - excelstor 20gb Drive = seagate (Both drives are IDE) If anyone can shed any light on what is wrong it'd be very helpful! HougTimo

Hey all, i know it's been ages since I last logged on here. Had a lot on at the moment. Anyways, thought I'd pop in and say a big hello to everyone! @WolfX2 - Are you still here? And if you are you still doing graphics? your stuff was getting really really good! Would love to hear from ya. Anyways, things that have changed with me: 1)Vista / Windows Sucks 2)Linux Rulez ok 3)Overclocking is cool (still...) 4)Graphics are cool ...ok, thats the new rulez according to HougTimo LoL Anyway, here it is, what you've all been waiting for. My new artwork. I knocked it up quickly in the GIMP. I am primarily looking for some feedback so I can get me hand in again with all this. It's made from a Linux Wallpaper I made ages ago (background), Some Vista Icons, A Tux png image and some creative text be me. Enjoy, Look forward to feedback, and I'm sorry for the slightly odd post. Love and kisses HougTimo

Yeah, I didn't say anything fancy was needed... it just looks awfull right now. all they needed to do was a bit of "Loading windows" text

In a finished product I would expect something better....eve in if it was only a bit of text saying "Loading Windows vista..." or something. BTW : Has anyone considered the posibility that Paul Thurrot had it running in a VPC, and the boot screen requires a decent graphics card or something? Maybe it is there but the VPC isnt powerfull enough in someway to power it...

I know the sidebar is supposed to be like that (obviously as it's hit RTM) but why? It is a waste of space and the colours are horrible...I'm sure they could have done something about that. Yes, I like the way the clock is positioned, but having the icons a pixel higher makes things look out of line and slightly crude, it just irritates me. And I understand microsoft wanting to keep specific tray icons seperate from others, but they could have had a container for those icons which maybe housed them and the clock, and the others seperate rather than having a random gap between all the icons, which makes it look odd, and kinda disfunctionate. And yeh, I've done a lot of shell theming. I'm a long time themer at wincustomize, and in my line of work I design User Interfaces (possibly why i nit-pick), but yeah...I wouldn't of let vista out like this.

Oh also - the clock is out of line with the tray icons

I'm not spreading fake news....Just that I think the UI in vista is terribly inconsistent and drab in some places. I DO like vista and will definately buy it, this is only intended as constructive criticism. 1) The scrollbars are horrible. The look horrible, they don't fit in with the UI, I feel a less showy design would be better for them, and also lose the fade effect. They only slow people down. I feel a nice lightish blue would have faired much better colour-wise. 2) The explorer sidebar isn't fine. There are literally three text links on it, and the amount of space they have wasted is enourmous. Wouldn't a little bar across the top of the explorer window be much better for the text links? It would certainly save space, and may look better too. I also hate the colour of the sidebar...I originally thought there would be animated Aurora artifacts there, which would have made things better...but the colours they have done it in remind me of a stagnant pond. 3) How is the tray supposed to be like that!? There is a hug gaping gap in the middle of the system tray! If the icons nearest the clock are supposed to be seperate, there should be some sort of separator clearly 'stating' which icons belong where. Right now it just looks like the system tray is floating in the middle of the taskbar. As I said, in general I am a big fan of Vista's UI and think they have done a great job SO FAR... I (and a lot of other people I have talked to) feel that finishing touches are needed to make things look a little better. HougTimo

Right...Vista has hit RTM, and Paul Thurrot among others, has some screenshots going. I have been a member of MSDN all the way through Longhorn/Vista's development and to be honest I really hope this product isn't finished. Here's why: 1) No Boot screen! - This in my eyes, in unacceptable for a final release. 2) These scrollbars look horribly unfinished. Sure, the fade effect of the buttons is nice...but they look well...as if they aren't there when you're not rolled over them. 3) This sidebar that can be seen in various places in explorer, in my view, is hideous. What a waste of mucky green space for 3 text links. 4) Why on earth is there a massive gap between network connections and the rest of the system tray icons? This has bugged me in several builds and they STILL haven't fixed it. 5) Help and Support = fugly Ok, don't get me wrong here, I think Microsoft have made a big improvement over XP. Unfortunately Microsoft are well noted for having inconsistent User Interfaces. They said they were going to change this with Vista but I just don't think it is there yet, graphically. What would please me immensely is if Microsoft got a patch out before January to fix these issues, or with a service pack sometime soon. /rant over HougTimo

Thanks for the replies guys. Would I not be able to bring the temps down a bit with a better cooler? Right now, my vcore is 1.475v cpu running @ 2.64Ghz (440MHz OC - is this good for a 4200+?) And temps are reaching 54-56'c max under prime95 24hr testing. Are these temps ok? or should I do something about them? Thanks HougTimo