akoum

Half Life did not run at all for me with the 21.83 series drivers. Get the latest 23.11 and then use WinUpdate to get 23.12. Also make sure Half Life is up to date. Good luck

That Epox mobo and a P4 2.2 will do you good. At least as good as PC-133 allows it to get.

You should leave it enabled and just lower the amount of bandwith it reserves. I believe its default is 20% which i definitely recommend you lower to 0. To do this right click on My Network Places on your desktop, then you should see a new window. Then select your connection(I only had one icon for my Local Area Network connection) and finally right click on it and select properties. Under properties select the General Tab and select QoS Packet Scheduler and select properties. Here you can lower the amount it reserves for other apps, but I do not recommend shutting down completely. Good luck.

Which is better, Cable or DSL? The DSL service gives me 1.5mb/128kb, unknown on cable. I was thinking DSL only because of the sharing issue. DSL is offered by Verizon and the cable from AT&T. I would appreciate any opinions. Thanks

Thanks for the info, the site was very informative. Anyway I got AT&T cable and the speed is incredible. I actually see 1-5MB all the time while downloading, but usually hovers at 400kb in explorer. Uploads are just as crazy. I hope it stays like this. I think its cause they got Boston covered with cable.

You should do a clean install of WinXP. Upgrading to WinXP from 9x/ME has been a disaster for most. If you have an internet connection download all the new drivers for your hardware, then just format, reinstall WinXP, and install the new drivers. You should have no problems and Blade will work perfectly.

If you are running WinXp or 2000 don't forget to get the nVidia Refresh Rate Fix. WinXP and 2000 default to 60Hz when using a nVidia chip, even if you choose a higher setting from display properties. If you experience tearing in most of your games get the software.

I have noticed a good increase in speed since I broke my 40gig drive into 2 partitions. SiSoft Sandra confirms it, 22000 before - 26000 after. I think its because the drive can find data faster in smaller partitions. Go for it.

I have a DVD drive installed on my system and I don't really watch DVD movies. I also just got a CDRW that I will be using the most. My question is: would I see a recording performance increase if I set the CDRW drive up as the master drive and move the dvd drive down to slave? The only thing is that my dvd drive reads CDs at up to 48x unlike the CDRW's 40x. Could my DVD drive still read CDs that fast set up as slave. I would appreciate any ideas on how to set them up. I run WinXP Pro, and the drives are a Matshita DVD-ROM SR-8586 and a Yamaha 3200E CDRW. If it makes any difference I am using the built-in IDE channels of my crappy 815 mobo. Thanks in advance.