bonestonne

yea, its true, but don't just look at one place, my parents made that mistake buying these computers....they bought them one day, if they waited two more, there would have been a huge sale, so don't buy off season unless thats your game...labor day was right around the corner, but he didn't wait... i haven't seen many apples really advertised in stores around here, but there may be some good deals online starting right after thanksgiving, because thats when the christmas sales really ring out...sometimes even a day or two after christmas there are gigantic sales...

thats well and dandy, but if you don't use IE, what does it matter? also, i don't use windows update, so even less of it matters. lastly, my sister manages the network, i just manage my router, so all this networking stuff doesn't matter, its already covered. why update to, or install a program you never use? its like dual booting windows/linux/mac and only using windows...whats the point? to say you have it? i prefer Sp1, a lot of you prefer Sp2, i guess thats just a difference we all have to work around, because it doesn't make my computer any more susceptible to a virus or trojan or attack than you. software security is no better than user knowledge.

SATA drivers? thats something i noticed...there may be a problem with that.

its a really strange issue...in the past hour of wrestling it, i have an old version of opera working, so far no problem... whenever i would try to go to a web page or click a link it would give me a dialogue about saving it. other times it wouldn't load, or just the text and links would appear, no links. or even worse, here i would just get a 0 and it would double post or something...tomorrow i'm going to get myself out of my misery and swap drives with my sister...take her maxtor, install xp on it, transfer my files from this onto that, and be done. its really stressful to me because i finally got settled in with this computer, i didn't want to be reinstalling or anything until i get a laptop which will be towards the middle of december really...quite nerve racking because my dad doesnt like my other PC [its faster and didnt cost a thing] but arg.... getting settled and have issues like this is a problem for me because i want to not have computer problems like this....makes me go crazy..im already slightly dependant on certain things..i'll leave it at that.

1) SP2 is a placebo for XP...don't try to tell me otherwise, i know from experience that it doesn't do squat other than change around security settings a change icons. 2) no, i did not remove IE Core

ok, so i'm running my nice small and cozy nLited Windows XP SP1, nothing more than that really, its got DX 9c and the few little goodies and programs i feel i should use.... but back to browsing the internet. while im surfing the net, with opera or firefox, it gives me this save dialogue...but then if it does save, its like a webpage on my desktop...is there a problem with windows here? it only takes 20 minutes to install fully, another 20 for me to get my programs installed, and 30 to transfer my music...but what the dilly? what would cause it to do that? i tried unistalling firefox, and running firefox in safe mode. i use comodo firewall, avast antivirus, adaware SE..i've scanned several times and not come up with anything, so i'm dry as a desert with ideas for whats causing this. does anyone know how i can stop this from happening? also, there are times when i'll refresh a page here at msfn.org, and what happens is it loads a blank page with a "0" at the top left corner. its really bugging me, and the problem started happening when i installed firefox 2.0, but i deleted it and installed 1.5.0.8, and it still happens...

yea, a bad PSU can cause the problems, because too much, or too little power going into the motherboard/disks and drives cause mondo problems. just a small bit of advice, which can be argued either way, but a couple months ago i was talking to a guy, and he told me that if i ever go to buy a computer in pieces or any computer to make sure it has onboard video. even if its low quality, i will have an easy way to trouble shoot problems left and right. also, the thought occured to me, it may just be the hard drive. you said that reinstalling solved the problems until you went to use a burner, so maybe its just the hard drive thats causing problems, if it has a bad sector or is corrupt, it could be almost anywhere, from graphics display to general programs. its just a thought to throw onto the table. i hope things work out for you

sounds like a power supply problem. my dad would love to argue with me about it, but not having a live power source into a computer for a long time can do it, but thats obviously not the case. if you're using a graphics card, and you have onboard video, i'd suggest taking out the card, and storing it safely, and using the onboard video for now, because it will reduce the risk of the graphic problems. if you are using onboard graphics, then its most likely your motherboard, but the problem could also lie within the powerpack. if the graphics card is old, or if it doesnt have a heatsink, that could be another problem. and while i'm on the heat thing, if the case is well ventilated, this would be between motherboard and PSU, but i don't know what your rig looks like, so i can only list things. if you replaced the BIOS battery, then that would cause the strange dates. when BIOS has no power it looses its settings fast. if the battery is out for more than 5 minutes, it completely resets the bios, which is very hard to fix. check the mobo in another computer if you can, then check the power supply in another mobo if you can, and that will give you the answer. i don't want to jump to conclusions, but i think this is a power supply problem, although if you're using onboard video, it could be the motherboard. what kind of hardware is in there? like any PCI cards, processor type, motherboard and PSU.

have you tried putting the card in after booting, or is it required to be in before?

is the RAM compatible with the board? meaning registered/unbuffered and by clock rate and size. can your motherboard take it?

firefox does the same thing internet explorer can do only much more secure. firefox is also completely independant of IE, although when first setup it may ask if you want to import bookmarks from IE, which isn't necessary. as for Prefetch-Cache, its really user determined. if you want windows to try to start programs faster, keep it. firefox will always have a somewhat slow startup. i can't find the topic on why though, i remember reading it here before though. Prefetch-Cache isn't important to windows, so it can be deleted for size, or kept in the hopes that it works.

sorry, im slightly dyslexic and it stabs me in the back sometimes...now i see whats going on. that setup looks pretty good, it should run at a fairly quick pace, maybe not the leaps and bounds of highend PCs, but it'll do its job. at least party like i said before, just test it in a virtual machine if possible to make sure it installs properly. i'm sure your friend will like it.

the PC i'm using now just has onboard video [for the time being] and i get an amount of lag from it, my CRT is a lot worse, sometimes not coming on until i move the mouse around...which is very annoying. DVI is a lot nicer, if i had a DVI moniter i'd be much more into gaming, but a lot of the games i used to play just got slower and slower on my PC... the verdict: you're not crazy, moniters do have an amount of lag to them

i did a search with firefox, and IE Core appears to not come up, that could be a source of problems. Internet Explorer are slightly dependant on that. but you should install it on a virtual drive to finalize that everything works.

im not anticipating either way, but if anything, i hope just the RAM...its a lot easier to get than a motherboard that fits in this PC...

i haven't tried updateing the bios, i'm still going through HP's site trying to find an update...so far i've only found the same one i have. overnight or when i cleaned the contacts, the 128MB chip now works, and one of the 256MB chips works. im using them now...my only concern is the other two. when one of them is in the board, i get several beeps from the board. when the other is in the board, i get no graphics. while i did this, i unplugged my HDD, and just went into bios to check them, rather than risking windows with the constant on/off. i may try one of my sisters computers later to see if it works in those, but i can't try my other working PC, because it takes RD-RAM which is foreign to me, i just don't take it out too often because if it dies, i don't have any to replace it with.

the thing is, they've worked before for me. so this issue of them not working bothers me.

uhm. didn't you start off saying you wouldn't recommend nLite? im not going to play devils advocate either way, but honestly. pick one opinion and stick with it. if you're going to change, don't sound like you're bashing anything in the process. heres the thing you can do, like i have done, keep the windows XP CD handy, and if you run into a problem with an nLited version, you have the full version at your fingertips. can it be any simpler than that? at all? that you can simply put in the CD if theres a problem and install it? "its so easy even a caveman could do it." honestly. i'm 15 and i feel like i have more common sense.

ok, so i'm running a somewhat older PC [actually all of mine are old but i wont go into that]. i have 4 SDRAM ships, and i know they at least used to work. totals to about 896MB, which i want for my Xeon board, but i'm slow on getting the power supply because a certain girl is a bit more important. back to the topic, i went to add some RAM to this computer, so i could get the VPC to run better, it was microsoft virtual PC 2004, i was using it to test the nLited XP i'm running now. problem is, none of it was recognized by this computer at all, three 256MB RAM and one 128MB of RAM...none of them came up in bios, it said there was none in the slots. is there a way i can solve this or is that gone now? i can always use the RAM from this [i don't like it so i don't care] but i would like some more RAM in this..right now its got 256MB, i have 896MB sitting on my desk here, and none of it works... any ideas on why? i had it in the Xeon motherboard, which is on the floor in my room mounted to the plexiglas on some motherboard mounts. did something 'staticafy' them and kill them, or is it just a matter of cleaning the contacts, because i kinda need it. BTW, they've been in the motherboard before, and i've removed them and brought them home [they used to stay at school when i was cutting the plexi, and i could use them without problem]

what do you mean by mounted on the top edge? its pretty much where ever the heatsink is hottest, which is usually the processor, so where ever that is... there are no real normal fan mounts...some cards dont even have fans on them...like my GeForce Fx5200...theres a plug for a fan, but i can't get one mounted or to use the power source on the card...

i think that he's got PCI slots maxed out, so he can't move any to sport a larger fan. hes got the room from the where the heatsink ends to the top of the next card down, which isn't much. if theres a card you can remove, like a modem or something, i'd suggest removing it for the space, but its hard to say without knowing exactly whats in the PC

at least to me, it looks like the fan/heatsink is removable. you can remove it and put a PCI slot cooling fan under it for the time being, or you could hop onto ebay like the rest of us lazy people and see if anyone has the fan/heatsink for it...or you could contact a vendor and see if they have replacement fan/heatsink parts for it. http://www.impactns.com/images/MSI%20NX6600GT-VTD128E.jpg ^thats what i'm looking at, i'm only assuming its what you have, or close to it. i would not suggest leaving the fan on the heatsink, if you can get the fan off, you should put the heatsink back on, but the fin on the fan will trap heat, thus doing harm.

while nLiting XP did you remove any Ethernet drivers?

windows XP is packed with languages, although the place where its sold determines the default language. towards the end of nLiting XP in the unattended part, theres a place where you can select a language...also you can remove plenty of unused languages with nLite. my XP uses english, and only english, every other language was deleted when i nLited it. yes you can change it, but it'll take some searching for, its in the unattended part i think.

removing the internet explorer core was the problem. the usage of explorer.exe is partly dependant on the core, so theres no easy way to fix it. as long as you're still creating and testing, not fully installing, i'd say start over and leave IE core in the .iso because that way you wont run into many problems