I modified a standard oscillating fan. I added extra resistance to the power cord (with a 60 watt light bulb). this allows the fan to spin very slowly. It moves enough air, but I don't hear the fan anymore .
So I fixed the problem you described under "problem 1"

I had several comments, but I couldn't get it into one nice post: so this one has to do ;) I had 4C temperature difference with my C2D (E6600). After I polished my heat spreader the difference was down to 1C difference :), It could be that your heat spreader isn't flat, which leads to bad contact be...

Good find!!. I hadn't thought of that one, although I have had similar issues a long time ago. I found a description on the microsoft website, describing the thing, for the interested readers.

I would be really really careful with your bios update / upgrade. If only a small component isn't identical, for instance a clock generator, it could render your board as dead as it can possibly be. If you get to this scenario you have to re-flash your bios chip in an other board or a flash-chip wri...

Mozilla thunderbird is a really nice email client, and open source, freeware etc. The enlish version can be found here.
It is way faster than outlook and outlook express.
Open Office is something you can always try for free

I tried Partition Magic myself a long time ago. It also screwed up my partitions. The only thing what finally did remove the errors was: delete all partitions, powercycle, create new partitions, full format, and try again. Just reformatting a partition wasn't enough. I had to delete all partitions t...

When using a wireless network sometimes a packet gets delayed, due to several technical things. (I won't go into details here).
This looks normal and fast.
Have you tried your internet connection already?.

Ehm... I decided to change the multimeter's battery ;-) I got 5.02V on the 5V rails. I'll RMA the Velociraptor. But my last question still stands: Is it possible that one failing HDD can somehow prevent other HDDs from showing up on BIOS? It SEEMED like when the Velociraptor was still limping it wa...

I once short-circuited my psu while connecting a fan. No harm done as far as I know, but I won't hot-plug anymore, just to be sure I don't short circuit anything anymore.

If somebody is uploading heavily on a shared connection, in case of an p2p client, all other users suffer greatly. When the p2p client is using all the bandwidth, there is (almost) no bandwidth left for other communication, such as web browsers asking for websites etc. Also some cheap routers can be...

My windows Vista runs faster than my windows xp (dual boot), vista never crashes, always works,is 64 bit . So for me it is Vista
But I wouldn't buy Vista now, if you are going to buy, I would wait for windows 7.

I'm also thinking that I might take your advice and loose 4GB and keep with Vista 32. I have seen some reports that Vista 32 will only recognise 3GB out of a 4GB set up, had anyone had any experience of this? Windows 32 bit (all versions) do have 4gb address space. THis address space contains the m...

lm wrote:sjoukew: No you don't need Dual Link DVI for 1920x1200.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Visual_Interface wrote: (Single) WUXGA 1920 × 1200 @ 60 Hz
(Dual) WQXGA (2560 × 1600) @ 60 Hz

At the moment I wonder how I did read wikipedia last time lm is right. I hope I didn't confuse to many people.

In order for DVI to get the requested resolution you need a dual DVI cable, and a dual DVI capable vga card. Old vga cards with a DVI port are only single link. The resolution problems you are encountering are suggesting that you hit the single link DVI barrier. Those cards can output the correct re...

I always calculate the power consumption of both machines.
If if the new machine earns itself within 3 years on my power bill, I will buy it. If the old machine is cheaper I use an old one.

I am still happy with Total Commander.

Vista 64 bit works perfect, if you have decent hardware ( no budget el-cheapo brands), no problems at all. I benchmarked my pc (c2d E6600, 4gb ram, ati X1950 pro) and in vista 64 bit it was faster than the 32 bit versions, in everything I tried. No driver issues, no problems just perfect .

Maybe it is just your vga card which is broken and can't handle full load anymore. As earlier discussed here nvidia has serious quality issues. Replacing your vgacard and re-checking your pc could be an easy solution. Or try to test your vga card in another pc and see what happens if you put it to t...

It sounds like a hardware problem to me, I shouldn't re-install windows to see if it helps. If an computer crashes really badly because something is broken, the bios gets corrupted to. I would look into your PSU and all capacitors on motherboard and vga card, also check all powercables if they are s...

The biggest problem with visualization is that the hardware acceleration for 3d games doesn't work. Not in VirtualBox or VMWare.
This is something wine can do, but as you already said, it is not always perfect.

I have an E6600, scythe ninja (no bolt through kit) inside a antec p180. My temperatures are in the same range as yours, for 2 years now and it is still working

I would let them all go down. Probably some new company will start making American cars again which are worth buying. That's probably easier to say when you don't live in the U.S. :) I'd have no problem saying that. Capitalism is supposed to let bad business' fail , not bail(out). That is the point...

If they did build brilliant cars which everybody liked, they didn't went bust. If they had good management, they shouldn't run into such financial problems. Giving them money now will probably not improve the situation and they won't produce better cars which are more desirable than the current line...

An overclocked vga card only delivers about 5-10% more performance, for a lot of money. If the game you are running runs fast, 80fps becomes 80*1.05 = 84 fps. If the game is not running fast enough, lets say 25fps, 25*1.05 = 26,25 fps. In both cases it doesn't make sense to buy an overclocked vga ca...

Why we need the same 7-8 vehicles with 4 different skins/interiors is beyond me. I guess you need to cater to each of the following: young/first-time car buyers (Pontiac), the nuclear family (Chevy), old people (Buick), rich(er) people (Cadillac). I guess you could throw in the Adventure/Pimp crowd...

I used AVG for years, but when Version 8 came, it gave a lot of trouble, freezing windows very often, updates which failed, a tremendous slowdown of my entire pc. When I switched to Avast, everything worked perfectly again, it updates, it doesn't slowdown my pc that much etc. So I am using Avast for...

Your XFX Geforce 6200 will do the trick, maybe you can even find such a thing second hand, far cheaper. They are fairly old so they should be available, could be worth the gamble. With your computer , 2,4 GHz P4, i would strongly advice not to upgrade to Vista on that machine, it will not run smooth...

If cpu's and gpu's do overheat they clock down to prevent damage. You should make sure all your temperatures are OK, all fan's are spinning as they should and there are no dust clouds in your computer case. Also update all device drivers for your motherboard, vga card etc. That can also help. Viruss...

p2p programs do also run perfect on those boxes

Aegia made the physx card, but ran into financial trouble and is bought by nvidia. NVidia is now embedding the physx into the nvidia vga cards, an old vga card is faster or equally fast as an physx card.. Besides that the support for the physx card is minimal and nvidia is planning no support at all...