Cerd_Fen

I stand corrected. If I remove all cords from the computer's outside (but nothing from inside) and remove the CMOS battery for a while, and then plug just the keyboard, monitor, power, and CMOS back in, everything will work fine, and I can connect everything else after I'm in windows. It may be taking a few steps more than I need, but I know if I just leave everything connected and turn off the computer, then turn it back on, it freezes at the 'press del to enter setup' screen until I do all of the above. I'm pretty sure my motherboard's giving out on me. *sigh*

&%#%$!!! Bleh, just when I had it working again... I installed the drivers for my motherboard, my video card, and my mouse. I then reset the computer, and it continued to work fine. I let it sit overnight, while it apparently downloaded and installed the automatic Windows updates. I came back the next morning to find it frozen at the boot splash screen (The one with the 'press del to enter setup') I held the power button to turn the computer off. Pressing the button quickly did nothing. Turned the computer back on. It was still frozen. Freezes at the 'press del to enter setup' screen. I can't even press del and have it respond. I think my motherboard might have given out on me. ASUS A8N5X Removed the CMOS battery, disconnected the hard drive, CD drive, network cord, power cord, USB keyboard and mouse. I let it sit for a little while, and then plugged back in the power cord, CMOS battery, and a PS/2 Keyboard. Turned on the computer. It's working now, kind of, but it keeps shutting off about ten seconds after entering Windows.

Success! (I hope...) I realized just about an hour ago that I had a virtual hard drive stored on my machine, with the same Windows Professional CD Key installation. I booted up Ubuntu Linux off the CD I made (I'm liking that thing more and more all the time now) and grabbed that .vhd file. Then I stored it onto the machine I'm using right now (My brother's) and installed Virtual PC onto my brother's machine. I ran my virtual disk off of that, and was able to use a CD Key retrieval program (Only works while you're in the Windows you're getting the CD Key from -- seems almost useless in most application, but it worked for me). Apparently the CD key that didn't work before, that I thought I'd gotten was actually my -brother's- CD Key. He uses Windows Home Edition. Anyway, I've deleted both of the 20GB system partitions off of my own computer, leaving just the 200GB Data partition. I'm reinstalling Windows XP Pro on the now blank 40GB partition. And now that I have a working CD Key (I recognized this one as definitely mine) I hope that everything will work out just fine -- barring any problems with the PHYSICAL portions of the hard drive itself. Or any nasty lingering things somewhere on it, such as weird stuff in the Data partition -- which I doubt is likely at this point. Update in half an hour, to an hour, once Windows is done installing. And... the CD key entering portion just came up, and the key worked successfully! Edit: Yes, it's working perfectly now. I'm using the computer in question right now, to post. Things look great! Also, as a curious note: My Windows install ended up on the D: drive. Data is on the F: drive, and there's a strange little 9MB partition for C: to store those important system-wide files. A note to be learned from all of this: No matter what partition system you have, and no matter what drive letters your windows installations are on, your C: drive is very, very important, if you use windows installations.

That Ubuntu Linux worked... but only under a safe-boot mode. :/ Anyway, I did manage to retrieve and backup my important files onto another hard drive, which I am now in the process of writing onto a CD for safer keeping. However, I was unable to retrieve my Windows CD key from the NTuser.dat file by the method I was trying to. (It gave me something that looked like a CD Key, but I didn't recognize it as the one I've entered multiple times [i've memorized at least the first 5 characters] and when I tried to enter the key upon installing Windows onto the blank partition, it said it was invalid.) I need to find a method for retrieving that CD key now. I don't want to have to pay $100+ for a new copy of Windows XP Professional, or whatever operating system, and I'm pretty certain my family won't be able to use Linux while I'm away. This problem's getting old, fast. I'm feeling stupid here, beaten, and grumbling about it the whole time. Anyway, I now need some way to retrieve my Windows Pro CD key. I -do- have access to all my files now, and am able to run Ubuntu Linux on my computer, as well as having a way to transfer files over to and from a Windows XP Home machine. I've tried searching Google for a way to retrieve the key, but haven't found a successful way yet, and because of the busy schedule I have right now, I'm not able to do a lot of digging. Any extra help anyone has would be greatly appreciated. *runs to curse at his computer before heading to sleep once again*

After looking through everything a little better... It seems my boot.ini file is COMPLETELY MISSING. I can't locate it in the c:\ root directory (Somehow my Windows partition has moved itself back to c:\) with a dir command. Trying to do an "attrib -h c:\\boot.ini" or a "attrib -h boot.ini" while in the c:\> prompt tells me it can't find the file. Trying to run a "bootcfg /rebuild" command--gives me an error within the console about being unable to complete the command or something, after the options portion of the first time I attempt to use the command. It gives me a buffer overrun BSOD after the second attempt. That Linux CD didn't work. I put it in, it gives me a pretty boot menu. Either doing "Live CD" from the options, or "Safe Boot" gives me a long list of loading up with [ok] messages I'm familiar with from working with Novel's operating system... but after those all scroll by, I'm left with a black, blank screen, and a solitary mouse cursor floating in the Void that is made of my monitor's display. I'm getting closer, I think. Giving the bootcfg /rebuild command a few more tries, and if it continues to frustrate me, I may try to plug in another hard drive with Windows XP already on it, set it as the primary hard drive, and manually insert a boot.ini file onto the root of the first drive's file system. Update: The bootcfg /rebuild command works as following for me -- It says I have one operating system installed, on my C:\ drive. All well and good. It asks me if I want to add that to my boot list. I enter yes (or "y" in this case). It prompts for the boot identifier. I enter "Microsoft Windows XP Professional". It prompts for options. After reading through various websites, I've come to believe I should enter "/fastdetect /noexecute=optin" there, as I have an AMD 64 bit processor [apparently with nx Buffer Overrun Protection]. Either that, or simply "/fastdetect" or "/noexecute=optin" or "exit" give me the same error message: "Failed to add specified boot entry to the directory list" Sometimes it gives me this error directly after the boot identifier prompt. And occasionally it gives me the Buffer Overrun BSOD instead of the "Failed to add..." I'm stumped, tired, angry, confused, and a slew of other unhappy emotions. I'm going to bed now, and I hope to find some answers tomorrow. If anyone can direct me to a better (working) Linux CD download site, I may try that again, and either manually copy over a boot.ini file that I think may work, or just grab my XP key through Linux, and reinstall the whole mess. Provided Linux will install for me.

I just came home from college. Brought my computer. It was working perfectly fine about an hour before packing up for home. The computer rode home with me in the front of the car, as it didn't fit anywhere else. When I got it all plugged up at home, it gave me an error: "ntldr is missing" assumedly after running the POST. I tried using the solution [link=http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000465.htm]here[/link] under "Windows XP users" involving copying the broken files from the Windows XP CD. (With changes to my appropriate drive letters, of course.) My computer is formatted into three partitions. An empty c:\ drive, Windows XP on the d:\ drive, extra data on the e:\ drive, and the CD on the f:\ drive. After running that copy fix... my computer no longer recognizes my d:\ as a windows drive, and thus cannot boot up. I would simply install a second Windows copy onto the empty drive, and try to fix things from there, but the paper I have with the windows XP key is missing, and I had the information archived in my Gmail account, but Gmail decided to mysteriously delete all by my few most recent letters in my inbox. I need to know a fix for how to get my computer to recognize d:\ as a windows boot drive again, or I need to find a way to recover my CD key from that partition. Also. My computer uses an SATA hard drive, and none of the other computers in this household have SATA compatable motherboards. However, I -would- be able to rip a hard drive out of one of the other computers, and probably set it up as the primary hard drive in my computer, boot in safe mode Windows from that hard drive, if I needed to do that as part of the fix.

Err.... 25 hours in front of Super Target... in weather that didn't once get above 33 degrees Farenheit, with wind and snow through the night. For a Wii... for my little brothers for Christmas... I'm crazy, I know. Edit: This was from 7:00 AM on Saturday the 16th, to 8:00 AM on Sunday the 17th. Third launch of the consoles at that store, and our family's last sure chance of getting the console for Christmas. Here's to hoping it was worth it, and hoping I score enough brownie points with the siblings to ensure I get a good deal of use out of the Wii before I ship back to college.

4 WU completed thus far, on my single rig... that I often use for gaming. And if all goes well, I should be finishing my fifth some time tonight or tomorrow morning.

I calculated... if I ran my computer nonstop, I'd do about one workunit per two days... (The x/400 thing is one workunit for the 400, right?)... but I don't plan to be going that hard on my new equipment, so it'll probably be more like one WU per week or two.

I'm in... F@H: Working (6/100)

If this song isn't a testament to this site's longstanding tradition of quality, I don't know what is. The very first remix ever posted here, and still one of my favorites. Very nice beat to jam/headbob/DJP along to. Quite a lot of panning effects, so your ears don't get bored listening to it. It's techno style, and yet it still sounds distinctly ninja-chinese.

Very good jazzy style remix of an old good song. Even if this particular track's been more or less beat to death, I'm still liking this remix. (Yes.. Posting this here mostly because there's gotta be a nice review on the page for a nice song. ) Anyway, a few posts ago, I made a serious error: That's not from FF9, that's the Chrono Trigger main theme at about 2:58. And I'd hardly call it ABRUPT. I thought mv mixed it quite well with the Zeal theme. Having gone through and downloaded all of the 1-1250 remixes offered over bittorrent, I can safely say my problem was similar to that skipping stuff casued by playing while bittorent has half-finished downloads. I have no idea how I ended up getting a bad download of the song, but it's much better now that I've got the right version.

Very good ambience type music, smooth sounding, got that nice jazzy feel. My only question is, though... is anyone else reminded of that one Carpenters song (I can't remember the title) when the sax comes in at 1:07?

Way to astound us with yet another awesome remix, DJP. I guess I must not have a very trained ear for this sort of stuff, because I can't seem to find any glaring flaws with your voice. The echo effects no doubt serve to tone down whatever flaws might be there. All in all, I say you should cultivate this talent you have for singing, regardless of what some woman said about your voice. It seems to me, with practice, you'd make an excellent singer. Funny thing, before I listened to this song - and even a while after listening to it - I had assumed you were a girl, because of your avatar. Crazy ignorant newbie me. Anyway, great song. This is a nifty little site I've stumbled across whilst searching for the lyrics to Chrono Cross's Unstolen Jewel. It has lyrics to a number of Square songs, including this one, as well as a bunch of other neat notes and such.

How about... do you got anything to blackmail him with? If not, then find something logical that you could potentially blackmail him with.