phill
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Posts posted by phill
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From the hardware aspect of the argument, there is little to no difference between leaving a machine on for long periods of time and shutting down and starting up when the machine is not in use. Alot of people argue that starting up is hard on the system or an idle CPU is an unhappy CPU, but after extensive testing by different groups, it doesn't matter.
The software arguement, its a little more....well its a grey area. If you know what you are doing, you can target the problem areas and free up the resources causing the slow down without having to reboot. Same goes with many of the updates that come out, things can be done so you don't need to reboot. It is however, less work to reboot your machine then go out of your way to avoid reboots.
Then there is my arguement, its called money. It is cheaper, period, to shut down your machine when you don't need it. Yes, there is a range in how much you save, some will only save a little, others like me save alot...my machine is basically a server with a video card.
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with the last Toshiba I owned I ran into this problem as well and to fix it I had to go into the Mouse Properties (see control panel). Though, by the sounds of it, it's no longer there so there may be a "Toshiba tool" somewhere in the start menu used for adjusting such settings, but knowing toshiba it has some retarded name to it making it a pain to find.
Edit: Did a quick search and a number of posts still refer to Mouse Settings as the place to look.
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As far as I can remember Lavos is a vbs script run by a worm, this actually explains why you have a dozen wscript.exe running. I'm not the best person to ask for cleaning your machine, a few years in corporate IT has made me realize that reimaging (aka format and install) is actually less work then hunting down tools and hoping they work. But I would guess there are online virus scanners or bootable cd with virus scanners that will work for you.
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I haven't seen a USB capture device thats cheap and does component. After a quick search, and I stress quick, the only thing that came up was this
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815116030
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That's what returns are for.
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Portal one sounds like it might be a video card issue.
Indeed it does, make sure your drivers are up to date.
For the AI Disabled problem, here is a quote from another site:
Here is the solution for A.I.disabled bug:Go into your .\Steam\steamapps\<username>\half-life 2\hl2\cfg\ folder, and create a txt file, inside this text file, write the following lines.
ai_norebuildgraph "1"
ai_disable "0"
Save, then rename the text file to ai_fix.cfg, right click the file and set it to read only.
Next, open up valve.rc in notepad, you should see the following
// load the base configuration
//exec default.cfg
// Setup custom controller
exec joystick.cfg
// run a user script file if present
exec autoexec.cfg
//
// stuff command line statements
//
stuffcmds
// display the startup level
startupmenu
under "exec autoexec.cfg", add this line
exec ai_fix.cfg
Save the file and your done!
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I would save up some more money and purchase a better system, will be worth it in the long run, plus building a system around a Phenom II chip will give you more bang for your buck. Spend $400-500 on an AM2+ mobo, 4GB memory, Video and hard drive plus whatever a Phenom II 955 black edition costs and you'll be good for a while. The Phenom II are comparable to the Core 2 Quads, and cost a little less...like 20 bucks less for the 955 BE vs the Q9550, but the savings on the mobo (decent ones atleast) makes up the difference.
Or you could blow your money on the Intel i7 processors and have a cpu that is currently unmatched by AMD in any way. It would only cost you $400 to $1500 for the process plus a $200 mobo, $200 per gig DDR3....well you get the point.
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Phill, what is the anime in your sig? I really like the art style.
I can't remember for the life of me and the two wallpapers I have handy don't help much. But maybe someone passing through can help.
http://www.angryitch.com/Gallery/Wallpapers/305250.jpg <-current wallpaper
http://www.angryitch.com/Gallery/Wallpapers/1238723989413.jpg
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Youngsters these days making birthday threads, back in my day......GET OFF MY LAWN.
Happy birthday man
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mephisto, I'm all for replace old crap with known problems with new crap with new problems but the guy doesn't want to spend 100 bucks on repairing the current problem which is fixable by either himself if he wants to tackle it or someone else. Just relax man, and give fixing it a chance.
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If you didn't live out east, I would be all over that $50.
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I'm not really recommending anything else, I'm just whining/warning about the hardware design. To remove the heat sink, you have to remove an X bracket from the underside of the main board, which is not screwed on, its...snapped on. To get it off you basically need to wedge a screw driver in just the right way and if you slip, there is always the risk of taking a chunk out of your board. Once the bracket is off, the heat sink should come off, and the cleaning and application of new compound can be done.
See this Vid
its basically what you want to do. Not hard to do, and as long as you don't do anything stupid, it should work out nicely. Oh and ground yourself, don't need to fry anything. -
Why is it retarded? What are my other options? I'm not paying $100 and waiting 6 weeks for a repair.
Not retarded in a can't do it yourself type of way, more of a...needlessly complex? I don't know, I just don't think its the best way to hold a heatsink in place, you need to remove the X bracket from the bottom which snaps into place rather then using screws. Similar to some third party video card fans/heat sinks I've installed. Take a look at a few youtube videos and all will be explained, the only thing you need to worry about when removing is that your screwdriver doesn't slip and jam into the board.
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Removing the heatsink is retarded (personally) but there are a few dozen youtube videos showing how its done. Applying AS5 is fairly easy though, use alchohal to clean off the old crap (which may actually be a giant fucking mess) from both heat sink and processor, apply as per the instructions that come with the AS5, replace the heatsink and press firmly and reconnect the bracket that holds everything together..
Depending on who you ask, the E74 and RROD errors are common enough to make voiding the warranty something to care about, but what your machine.
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You realize you voided your warranty correct? That fine warranty that MS gave an extra couple of years too. Anyways, according to the intertubes, turn it off for a couple of hours, grab a can of wonder air, blow the hell out of the XBox and see if that fixes things. Otherwise, yee ole tech support and warranty repair.....hopefully they won't notice.
Oh, also should note, if you do re-seat your heat sinks, you will need new thermal compound for them. Compound is a single use type of thing and any re-seating, replacing, etc requires new compound application. Seems like a good number of people have replaced their stock compound with aftermarket stuff (like Arctic Silver 5)with good results. Would make me a little nervous to do such a thing to my XBox, Microsoft can be a little...or really uptight about warranties and licenses and voiding a warranty on an XBox is not a good idea (RROD and all that)
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Hmm, I stand corrected, but thanks for being polite and helpful about it. My sister-in-law was told her whole life growing up that there are two kinds of chickens, one that lays chicks, and one that lays eggs for the store, and was shocked to find out later in life that was not the case. I feel about that stupid right now yeah, lol. My knowledge on the subject was based on some trusted friends and resources, but when I looked into it I couldn't believe I hadn't seen this info before.
If you don't mind my asking though, what do you know about XP SP2 and PAE mode? I think that's what I might be misinterpreting. I don't get the support for more physical addressing, yet it seems like turning it on actually hides more memory. All the info I've found is way too jargon-ish. Seems like if there's more bits for addressing, why wouldn't there be plenty of room for the i/o devices and RAM? or is it all still bound by hardware limitations regardless?
If I ever come across as a dick, well its because I can be at times...there are a few threads and users that will attest to that. Ah, good ole PAE mode, as Mephisto mentioned, it is pretty much useless. It is something thought up by Intel that Windows is suppose to support but as far as I've seen, for the consumer end of things at least, it doesn't work. It is similar to the BIOS option I mentioned, but instead of moving the MMIO hole, PAE, I think, just gives access to a larger address space including addresses outside the 4GB range.
The large MMIO is a product of the "who the hell needs 4GB of memory" era. With only 2^32-1 addresses for memory AND hardware, a region in that address space needed to be mapped to hardware devices. So, 750ish million address where picked to handle them and any time there is a conflict between memory and hardware, hardware wins.
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That is exactly what I needed, thank you. The other two are suppose to be pre-defined accounts with limited permissions used for specific things. They may be hidden or there on mine because of some of the things I have installed.
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There is a reason you don't know what I'm talking about, its cause your an idiot. There is no way for standard 32bit x86 hardware(along with several other hardware architectures) to avoid the memory mapped IO hole, its a fact of life built in to the architecture. It is not magically hidden and controlled by the OS, it is gone...ish. It is essentially the address space of the hardware, back in the day when you wanted to change what was displayed to the screen, you would write to the appropriate address range and those changes would be reflected on the screen. A program like MSInfo32 may report that there is 4096mb of physical ram installed, but guess what, it cannot address it for none hardware things, programs can't be put in it, windows can't be put in it, it's a hole.
It should be noted that some motherboards offer an option to shift the MMIO hole out of the 4gig range. My mobo has it, doesn't do anything for the 32 bit OS's I have installed at the moment and lacking proper documentation, I'm not actually sure it does anything for the 32-bit OSs. I get the feeling that it only helps the 64 bit OS's but I'm far to lazy to find out.
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I recently had a hard drive fail on me, weirdest way I've seen a hard drive fail too, and now that I got all my data moved to the new harddrive I am having to reset the permissions of the profiles since I don't want to reinstall windows(There is a reason and if you really want to know feel free to ask). The regular user profiles were easy, didn't take much to remember and set those up. The special profiles, for a lack of a better word, I can't for the life of me remember or find the default permissions. If someone could check the permissions under Windows XP for the folders 'All Users' 'LocalService' 'NetworkService' and 'Default User' that would be awesome. That is assuming you have all of those profiles, if not give me what you got and I'm sure I can hunt down the others.....eventually.
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There are none. MIDI files aren't audio: they're closer to taking sheet music and encoding it. Figuring out what notes are playing from an audio file is a very hard thing to do for a computer.
I bet that would be a decent project for a doctorate or masters student. A method for not only separating and identifying multiple instruments from a single audio stream, but assigning appropriate musical notes to those instruments without killing an average computer.
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I mean plug something into the XBox and back up to that, the XBox does have usb connections right.....right?
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You can't plug in a decent USB stick or harddrive and copy things to that?
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This would be one of the reasons I got my PS3, none of the pesky conversions between formats whey playing movies/tv. Oh and the games, but alot of it was the movies and such.
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In the grand scheme of things, vista (64-bit or otherwise) isn't really worth it even for free. It would be wiser to stick with WinXP until Win7 is finished and you can pick up a "student" copy of that. The hole in your memory really isn't because of your video card though, its due to how memory mapped IO works with the x86 arch. Same problem occurs on the 64-bit x86 arch, it just happens that where it occurs is out of reach for most...if not all consumers.
Task Manager Won't Launch.....
in General Discussion
Posted
Generally speaking, failure rates on a machine that is on all the time and one that's rebooted on a regular basis aren't all that different and from what I've seen and read you won't be spending more money on hardware replacement in either case. You may see individual pieces of hardware fail sooner in either case (always on vs rebooted) but it is not going to be years apart.
If a piece of hardware fail long before its EOL, then it is likely caused by something other the average usage. Faulty manufacturing process, heavy constant usage (marathon rendering sessions on regular basis) that sort of thing. A computer that's on but idle isn't really being stressed so it really doesn't have that much effect.
As for the power consumption issue, there is a reason there is a push for companies to shut down idle computers. It will save the company millions of dollars each year, billions nation wide. Shutting down your home computer may only save few hundred bucks, but that is still money in your pocket.