breadandbubbles

alright, so far, the advice ive received in these forums has been fantastic. ive learned so much from the posts here, its unbelieveable. i have an immense amount of respect for the knowledge shared here. but i cant imagine. how anyone could help me with this. i have been having some strange problems in Windows XP Pro. just a huge build up of registry errors and spyware and....well. we all have to go through that learning phase. right? so i decide to reformat. i have a 250gb hard drive, so i put 80gb aside, neatly organized all my files, and put them on the partition. in this partition I also put all my installers. i keep every installer i download that i use. every single one. i even keep disc images of my driver disc, microsoft office disc, etc. so i format my C: partition. The one with windows on it, naturally. i boot up for the first time and i am extremely pleased with having a clean install on windows, and its only a matter of bringing all ym files back and going through relatively painless and sometimes educational experience of updating my software. i like doing it. i have no interest in integrating these apps into my windows install. no nlite. no unattended. i like it the old fashioned way. anyway, heres where my problem came in: i had installed a number of applications, Office, Microsoft Student, WinRAR, Alcohol 120%, etc. whatever. when suddenly my PC rebooted. and i dont mean shut down properly. i just mean...rebooted. as if i hit the button. alright fine. maybe i kicked the reset button. no problem. but then..and i couldnt believe it..... once my desktop had come back, my icons and taskbar had about 2 seconds to settle in before my pc rebooted again. i noticed as windows loaded the second time, that when that startup windows happens where it says..i cant really remember..."windows is initializing" or something liekt hat? whatever message appears before the logon screen, which i had turned off so it just said "welcome"......well...it took like....30 seconds. and when the desktop appeared, i quickly hit "ctrl+alt+delete". i dont know why. its all i could think of. but i didnt have time! my pc rebooted again! this time i tried hitting F1 as it was booting, trying to get it to boot in safe mode or something. it wont respond! it just booted up, and reboooted. again! on and on. i walked away for a phone call for about 20 minutes, came back, and it was still int his continuous cycle! so....i quick formatted the partition. reinstalled windows. and tried again. this time, i decided, that maybe it was one particular application. so after every installation, no matter how trivial, i would restart, to see if it was the culprit. one by one, i instaleld. finally, after...i had lost count of how many, but finally, it went into that cycle again. same thing. so this time i did a FULL format. the long version. waited an hour or whatever. blah blah blah, the last app i installed was Alcohol 120%, and it didnt even have time for me to finish looking at the message saying "you need to reboot for the settings to take efft..." before...it rebooted. all on its own. now i KNOW acohol isnt the culprit because the time before that i installed it as like..my third installation! and actually set it up! and it worked fine! . this time it was WORSE though. NOW, it doesnt even make it to the desktop. NOW, that "windows is initializing thing" comes up for a full two/two-and-a-half minutes, before rebooting. i neevr see the desktop. and i cant reboot in safe mode! the worst thing about this is that CLEARLY, reformatting it does nothing. nothing at all. the problem keeps coming back. so what do i do? throw away my reently built-by-myself PC? im pretty much literally sititng here waiting for an answer from you fine kind merciful folks. end my torment. please. what can i posibley do?! * Title edited * Please, use [TAGS] in your topic's title. Follow new rules --Sonic

alright, i am an Alcohol 120% user. it works GREAT, and its extremely uncomplicated. i dnt know why anyone would want to use anything else. but then i tried playing a disc image on Black and White. it didnt work, because i was using a virtual cd drive (actually, if anyone knows how to help me out with that, please do. is there a way to save my game to my hard drive so i dont have to use the discs?) so i thought id tr Daemon. see if that would work. and ....MAN. i couldnt believe it. first, after i rebooted, i had probblems. my screen went black. so i rebooted again and it gave me the option to boot with my last known good configuration. after i finally got back into windows, i finished the installation, and alarms started ringing. antivirus programs, spywar programs, firewalls. just....red windows popping up everywhere. apparently, theres adware in Daemon. why would i want that? so now i just use alcohol again. i jsut wanted to take this chance to say that i was incredibely disappointed with Daemon considering everything ive heard. im hoping someone can enlighten me, maybe help me use alcohol to play black and white, or show me a way to play the game off my harddrive. otherwise, tell me why i should like daemon. really, why?

you have tried just going to control panel and, under networks or whatever, clicked "create a workgroup"? it gives you the option to create a network setup disk after you set up the network on any one PC. or, the easiest way. create the workgroup on each PC. just make sure each has the same workgroup name. youll get to a part where you have to name the workgroup. its defaul "MSHOME" i think. anyway, mine "LEMONPIE". i tried making it distinguishable so id know it when i saw it. if you just do that with all of your PCS, they should autodetect each other. its like...tuning walkie-talkies to the same frequency. just name the frequency!

i knew id get suggestions to use winamp man, i lvoe windows media player. all it needs and some codecs, and it rocks. i love its library format. easy to use. but if it uses so much in resources, i guess i have no choice. i figured i had enough resources to give though. 3.2 Ghz is a lot. ah well. ill have to try winamp... its rerally interesting to hear you say that though LLXX. ive been wanting to overclock for a while, just to squeeze out another few hundred Mhz, but my temp. is so **** HIGH. i think youre veryy right about underclcking, but if i could get my CPU temp down, could i actually overclock it?

alright, i had a huge problem placing this one. it seems that windows media player is the problem but im definately eyeing my system in general, also windows media player 10 is, i thought anyway, exlusive to Windows XP. so if anyone wants to move this thats fine, and im sorry. but im certain im having a problem with Windows. alright, to get started. when i play music via Windows Media Player 10 on my Windows XP Pro PC, it stutters. freezes up. i have a 1GB (two 512 sticks of OCZ DDR2 800mhz ram), and a 3.2 ghz pentium (i know, i KNOW, i shouldve gone with AMD). anyway in my system processes it says im using up about 55 - 65 percent of my CPU. man. it DOES NOT take that much CPU to play a song! it also says "system" is using about 25 percent. now, i have noticed my PC is running hottish. i mean i know its a prescott, but its running on idle at about 60 degrees celcius. i posted last year about a freezing system and asked if it was heat and when that was confirmed, i got some ARCTIC SILVER and brought my CPU temp down like 15 degrees on idle. \ very nice. but its STILL freezes up easily. do i need to invest in some serious heat sink? or is it something to do with XP? because windows media player certainly doesnt use that much CPU. oh i should clarify that ive always had this problem. is there any more information i need to post that might help anyone reading this? just let me know (and let me know how to find it). thanks all.

thanks guys!

this is probabaly a straightforward thing, but i cant find a way, anywhere, to have default folder settings. for instance, in My Documents i, like most people, have a My Music folder. in that folder i have folders by artists, subfoldering the artists albums. in each album, whever i go there, i have to go to view -> details. and then i have to choose which details to display, because the default istn to my liking. for example, i like to see the bitrates, but the default has no bit rates, so i have to right click the top bar and choose bitrates. with EVERY FOLDER. is there a way to apply a default setting or something? anyone?