My rig has herpes

I feel for you Dte. I have no ideas that would help, but I had problems with my old rig and was without a pc for gaming for a few months. It sucks. I will cross fingers for you.

As to the house sale, my sister went through the same thing. I wonder why the indie market is so much worse?

The bad part about it is that I can't do a Windows update since the system won't recognize the wireless network card. My XP disc is old enough that it's directX 8. That means even "lo-tech" games like UFO:ET won't run. I'm thinking about trying another Wiz8 run. That might be old enough to run properly and take long enough that I'll be able to get a new shiny and pull data off the current HDD until I can do a complete "green field" startup and pass the current beast on to the Wild Dogs. I can't run native resolution on my monitor because Windows won't make proper use of the video card. I think it's forcing the system to use the MOBO on-board video parameters.

@cm- I think the mortgage crunch is what's hurting me most. The house in Indy is a starter home (3BR, 1250sqft), perfect for first-time buyers (like we were). In general, first-timers don't have a pot to piss in which means they have to get "marginal" financing. Right now, that's tougher to come by. Market-wise, Indianapolis is neither particularly good nor particularly bad. There's quite a few houses for sale in our area, but there always has been- people get a house there, start a family, get better jobs, and move to bigger homes after 5-10 years. We may have some social issues hurting us a bit. The house is decorated pretty girlie, and rather, well, ummm, caucasian. That may not be the best match for the direction the neighborhood is headed. Sorry if I offend anyone- that's just an observation and not a judgement.

About Trend Micro:

They offer a free sysclean package

It is compatible with their current virus pattern files

readme

The reason the market is tough in Indie, is it has too many Red Wing fans!! I prefer Trend to MacaFEE ever since it wiped/scrambled my HD during an update!!

Sorry to correct you, old man, but there's probably 5 people in the whole state that even know hockey exists. During the winter, they play basketball. During the summer, they play AAU basketball. During the fall, they practice basketball. During the spring, they talk about basketball. Bunch of pansies…

After fighting my rig some more yesterday, I've officially given up. I'll either buy a new HDD or I'll buy a complete new rig. Putting more money into the old monster is really a waste, and I don't have the cash for a new shiny, so I'll porbably just sit and complain for a few weeks. Not having internet access at home is a bit of a pain, though.

Good luck at toughing it out, Dte. When lightening fried my modem a few years back I lasted about eight days….maybe I have an addiction?

And never underestimate the power of complaining. Look as pitiful as possible while doing so, in a subdued and brave but slightly quavering voice. Someone may take pity on you.

Sad part is that Tyco has a deal with Dell. I get special pricing and can do it on payroll deduction spread over 12 months. Since I've already got the good monitor and printer and such, I can spend all my money on the brain box. I won't be cutting edge, but I can do pretty well. $1200 worth of new shiny would only be $25 a check. It's soooo easy…

Have you tried to take it to a shop for a look see? You didn't add any new hardware to it did you? I put a new video card in my old one and it acted nuts and then died on me. I swapped the new card out for the old one and it ran fine. Dispite what the specs on my power source said, it was overwhelmed by the new card. Runs fine now for the grandkids.

My wife was giving me a raft o' shite about calling the Best Buy Geek Squad. I figure that between what I've dug up and what I've gotten here, I've probably covered most of what an "expert" could do for $100/hr. I haven't added any new hardware outside of swapping in a new DVD drive for the old one, and that swap was a good 2+ weeks before the problems cropped up. I actually paid a little extra back in the day for a 300W power supply (200 and 250's were the rule back then), so I should be good for the antique hardware I'm running.

It would be simple if I didn't have to save some of the data on my HDD. With a CMOS reset and a diskwipe, I'd be walking in tall cotton. As it stands, I need a bug-proof 2nd HDD to pull the data with. Whether that's a new HDD or an entire new rig is probably an expensive coin flip. Then I could hit the old drive with a big magnet and load up our 2 dozen Barbie programs for the Wild Dogs.

Do you have a friend with a PC? All you have to do is plug the drive into his secondary controller, copy everything to his disk and then burn it onto a DVD. After that you can destroy the HDD, sell the rest on eBay and buy a new PC.

I could probably track down someone to help me out, but I'd worry about the virus getting into their system. As nasty as this bug has been, I'm not comfortable saying the mere act of copying files won't somehow transfer the virus. It could be hiding in any (or many) file(s) and NAV certainly won't catch it if that's what the buddy is using.

PIA for sure. If you ever get a handle on this one let us know what it was.

Originally Posted by dteowner
My wife was giving me a raft o' shite about calling the Best Buy Geek Squad.

I know this thread is kind of old but…..

Stay the hell away from Shit Buy and their Geek Squad! That store is one of the worst retailers you could possibly do business with when it comes to computers. Their customer service is atrocious, and the majority of their employees are a bunch of teenagers making $8.00\hour who don't know their ass from a hole in the ground.

Can you tell I don't like Best Buy?

On a side note, new hard drives are super cheap now. Go to pricewatch.com and check some out. You can buy a 500 GB HD for $130 - $150. Stay away from OEM parts though.

Good luck with the puter; I had one fry out on me the same way several years ago. I know it's obvious, but check to make sure there's no dust build up on your heat sinks.

FWIW, right now I think Comodo firewall and Avast are the best freeware options for internet security.

Originally Posted by JonNik
Anyone cares to post their recommendation for a free AV-Firewall ?

Buy a hardware one. I got one for 50€ 3 years ago. It has lots of other stuff too like internet connection sharing, etc.

Spybot search & destroy is good for cleaning registers btw.

I love Best Buy, but I don't think I've ever asked a single clerk a single question, not even "Where'd you hide the DVD drive shelf?".

I received permission from She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed to buy a new shiny. I'll have to do a Dell with my discount thru work, but I figure I can get a pretty nice brain box for a modest outlay.

So, as usual, I have a few questions for discussion. I'm so far behind on hardware these days that I'm sure a few of these questions will be retarded. My apologies in advance.
#1- Vista or XP?
#2- graphics card: I'm no gfx whore and I don't play FPS. NWN2, X3, and maybe Hellgate London are probably as hard as I'll push. My choices are: GF8300 GS, GF8600 GTS, and GF8800 GTX. Note that that top one is an extra $400, so that will take some convincing if that's your choice. They also have one set with dual 8600GTS's. Worth the complexity?
#3- CPU: Who is winning the chip war now? Looks like AMD hasn't done anything since their Athlon64X2, which would push me to an Intel Core2 Duo setup, E6320. Is that OK, or is it alread behind the times?
#4- BluRay or std DVD?

Thanks, folks.

Originally Posted by dteowner
I received permission from She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed to buy a new shiny. I'll have to do a Dell with my discount thru work, but I figure I can get a pretty nice brain box for a modest outlay.

Buying a dell is like throwing money away. I hope you have a really good discount.

#1- Vista or XP?

You have to abandon all windows games pre XP and som XP ones too if you change to vista so make sure you dont miss any old stuff. So its kind of up to you. If youre okay with playing only the newest games and have dx10 capable graphics card then Vista might be the best choice.

Cant you use the windows (XP?) from your previous computer?

#2- graphics card: I'm no gfx whore and I don't play FPS. NWN2, X3, and maybe Hellgate London are probably as hard as I'll push. My choices are: GF8300 GS, GF8600 GTS, and GF8800 GTX. Note that that top one is an extra $400, so that will take some convincing if that's your choice.

Very limited choices there. 8300/8600 are worthless cards. They have dx10 but not enough power to actually run it. dx9 card might be a better choice in this case. They can atleast run dx9 fast.

If you want to play dx10 games then buy 8800GTX. Its pretty good card. Runs pretty silent even.

Too bad 8800GTS isnt a choice. ITs cheaper than GTX but still powerful enough for dx9 & dx10 games.

They also have one set with dual 8600GTS's. Worth the complexity?

No. Youll just double the powerusage (more heat, more noise, more energyusage) and with the money invested you could have bought a better single GPU that most likely is equally powerful if not more.

#3- CPU: Who is winning the chip war now? Looks like AMD hasn't done anything since their Athlon64X2, which would push me to an Intel Core2 Duo setup, E6320. Is that OK, or is it alread behind the times?

Core2duo is the best cpu for long time. It uses less energy, generates less heat and less noise while offering more power, etc. Superb choice overall.

#4- BluRay or std DVD?

Dont you have dvd in your previous computer? Now is not a really good time to buy bluray etc because they havent developed fully so Id go with dvd.

I received permission from She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed to buy a new shiny

Yay for ya, dte. So was it the whining, the wall-crawling, the crankiness or the discount that did the trick?


Semi off topic:
@ zakhal: Why do you say Dell is a money waster? Bundled software? Pre-designed? Or what? I've had five Dells over the years and had no problems ever(except that wonky nvidia graphics card which they replaced for free)
Granted, you used to have a lot more leeway in picking out your components, but you still can go to their "Gamers Only" page and build your own XPS. For those of us who aren't expert enough to build from scratch,of the premade variety, is there a reason that Dell is worse than say, Hewlett-Packard?

Not being negative; I'd really like to know

Actually, the sugar that made the medicine go down was that Tyco employees get free financing via payroll deduction over 18 months (in addition to a corporate discount). Or maybe it was the babysitter-n-dinner-n-movie on Saturday AND Sunday…

Originally Posted by magerette
@ zakhal: Why do you say Dell is a money waster? Bundled software? Pre-designed? Or what? I've had five Dells over the years and had no problems ever(except that wonky nvidia graphics card which they replaced for free)
Granted, you used to have a lot more leeway in picking out your components, but you still can go to their "Gamers Only" page and build your own XPS. For those of us who aren't expert enough to build from scratch,of the premade variety, is there a reason that Dell is worse than say, Hewlett-Packard?

I think that out of the large system builders Dell is actually one of the better ones. Personally, I would always prefer to build myself or to get a custom PC from a local retailer but if you have to or want to buy from the likes of Dell, HP, Acer, Lenovo (formerly IBM), Toshiba etc then I guess that Dell is an excellent choice.
The disadvantage to custom built systems is that Dell is very often using Intel OEM mainboards for example. These mainboards are not very well supported (some other manufacturers like e.g. Asus deliver BIOS updates for boards that are several years(!) old) and you will often run into restrictions when you're trying to upgrade a system based on an Intel board.
Same goes for the PSU. It is often tailored to power that exact system configuration with only very little tolerance for a heavier drain so there is some potential that you might run into power issues when upgrading.
It can even happen sometimes that the case is not 100% standard ATX and that you can't use certain other 3rd party components/replacements with the system than those that originally came with the computer.
It depends on the individual system and series but those are basically the issues you could at least theoretically encounter when buying a Dell since those are rather typical problems of systems that are made by the large OEMs.

If you just want to buy a decent system though that suits your needs perfectly and if you never want to touch it again (upgrade etc) then a Dell, HP, Acer, whatever can be the perfect choice, of course. You will usually get a very good, high quality system from these manufacturers. Service and support is expensive so it's only in their own best interest to ship a good and stable system to you. And you can be pretty sure of that since they have very strict testing criteria for new systems. These systems aren't inherently bad. They are usually great "as is". The problems can arise when/if you want to change or upgrade stuff but if you aren't into that at all then you'd probably never even notice the restrictions that come with a Dell or any other OEM's system.