jmmijo

Is the sound coming from the floppy drive or the power supply ?!? If it's coming from the PS, make sure that the busy light is not on all the time once you power on the machine, if it is this just means you have the data cable on backwards, just flip it around and try again. If it comes on then goes off again but the sound is still present then it's possible that for some reason either the floppy drive is failing or perhaps the sound is coming from one of the components inside the PS, perhaps one of the coils is rubbing against another or the side of the power supply casing. These PS units now employ a switching design which means they operate at higher frequencies and this can sometimes cause some extra noise to be heard, could also mean a flakey PS unit

Quote: Ok, silly question. Can I test a power supply that isn't hooked up to a motherboard, or does it need to be hooked up and running? There are some ATX PS testers out there however they still only do a static test, PS's will and can behave differently under load so it's best to actually have the machine turned on and an OS running with something in the background that really taxes the system, like 3D Mark for Windows. I'm sure there are similar things for Linux as well

If up[censored] the chipset drivers doesn't help then do you have another machine you could install this drive into and test it out there, just to see if the same thing occurs or not. Basically if it works in another machine it sounds like your current machine doesn't have any dvd codecs installed like DivX or one of the commercial players like PowerDVD or WinDVD installed.

In this case it maybe worth it, however if you have access to another PS then I would try that out first to see if the readings you're getting from the monitor are about the same or different. As for the VM, these are so easy to use, they all have digital displays now, although some really good ones will still have some analog display meters instead Anyway, just set the range for something like 25~50vdc, not AC as most VOM's will also test AC. The black probe you just touch one of the black colored wires going into the main ATX connector on the motherboard and the red probe will touch one of the red colored wires. Now if you look at how the wires go into the connector you'll see you can wedge each probe into the same hole as the wire, just don't press to hard but firm to make contact with the actual metal contact, usually something like a brass/gold plated type connector. You'll see different colors in this connector as well, some are +12vdc power rails and you should be able to read these with the same range on the VOM as the +5vdc.

It could be the power supply however you need to look at a possible motherboard issue as well. Why, cause you really can't rely on the system monitor for very accurate readings, they are good general sensors but the way to really make sure is to get a good quality volt meter, Flukes are really accurate and then read from a ground lead to one of the +5vdc leads and monitor this while running an app like 3D Mark to really tax the system. Since there are multiple power rails including +12/-12vdc you should monitor these as well. When looking at the voltage at the ATX power connector, this is the output from the PS unit. There are a number of voltage regulator circuits on the motherboard as well and if one or more of these circuits is failing this can cause anomylous behavior like random lockups. If you notice the voltage dropping at the main ATX power connector then I would indeed suspect the PS, however Antec makes some very good supplies, just like Enermax, but of course these are man made products so anything is prone to failure at some point

How many drives/partitions do you have ?!? It will be on the first physical drive and the first partition of that drive. Because you can install NT/2K/XP on a drive other then the first one, it will only be located on that first partition Also it may have it's Hidden attribute set so be sure to set explorer to view all files.

Besides the latest DVD codecs, make sure you have the latest chipset drivers for your motherboard running under XP also it wouldn't hurt to check for the latest graphics card drivers and DX9.0b as well

Use notepad and open the filename BOOT.INI You should then be able to edit out the XP entry altogether

The first thing I would do is to reseat the graphics card but I would remove it and clean out any dirt/dust in the case too then check the contacts on the graphics card for any currosion/dirt and clean this with a pink perl eraser, be sure to check both sides of the card edge connector. After reseating I would test out the machine once again with the same games and see what happens. Also since you've mentioned that you have the latest graphics card drivers, how about the motherboard chipset drivers, especially the AGP drivers ?!?

Just in case, are these IP addresses on the same subnet ?!? The reason I ask is that if they are not then this will cause sharing issues. Ideally you'd want two concurrent IP addresses like the following: 192.168.1.2 & 192.168.1.3 as an example. So what you want to look at is the last two octet's, but of course the entire thing is used but if you setup your subnet mask properly then this will be ok. Using the above example if you have say 192.168.1.2 = machine one and 192.168.0.2 = machine two then this is most likely the cause of this issue. Also double check the subnet mask so if you do indeed have concurrent IP addresses then make sure that both subnets are the same. Sometimes you have to use something like the following for proper network sharing to occur, 255.255.255.0 instead of what you may have, 255.255.255.248 or something similar Also make sure that you have shared some object, either on one or both machines and that you've set the permissions for guest account access.

Well the problem here appears to be the combination of CAS Latency timings, your 256MB sticks are CL2.5 and the 512MB stick is CL3. If you change the BIOS settings from by SPD to Manual and force it to all CL3 then this may help out. I would also change the speed of the memory to PC2100/DDR266 instead of the faster PC2700/DDR333. The reason is that most memory can underclock no problem but overclocking can and does cause problems, especially with a mixed bag like your config

Speaking of MAC's has anyone seen this spoof yet

This is the issue, be sure to set the jumper on the motherboard to FSB(Front Side Bus) to 166MHz instead of 133MHz and that should take care of the speed of the CPU. Some motherboards are totally jumperless like the Asus model I have, I just need to set the BIOS FSB settings and memory speed and away it goes Others like yours still require a manual FSB settings jumper.

What I use my two NIC's for is one has a static IP dedicated to my FTP server connections and the other is grabbing an IP via DHCP on my firewall. The only reason I do this is so I can more easily monitor packets on the dedicated NIC for the FTP traffic, nothing more. It really isnt making any difference in my overall speed

I agree, I always back up data then flatline the HD and do a clean install regardless of the OS The reason is the upgrade can leave remnants of the old OS and this can cause stability problems and other issues.

So I just received from my place of employment a gift for Christmas, an Intel STL2 motherboard. However I find I'm not really in need of a dual-cpu motherboard. I really don't know what these should go for however so if some kind people out there can let me know then I'd be willing to sell it for pretty cheap Remember these are P3 motherboards and according to Intels website they can support dual P3 Coppermines but not Tualitin core CPU's...

iomonkey could be some kind of spyware or something however a google search found another forum with some of the same issues as you but nothing about what this file is or does

It's possible that some system file(s) are bad/corrupted now, however this usually gives you other problems then just the random corrupted graphics on your screen. One thing to look at on the GeForce 4 card is the cooling fan, is this working or not. If the fan is not spinning this could cause the GPU on the card to overheat and cause problems like this too.

It's possible there is a graphics card issue, do you have another one to test this out with ?!? Basically you just want to see if this graphics problem stays or goes away. If it stays then it's not the graphics card because you've tested out another one. If it goes away then it's most likely an issue with the GeForce card.

I would agree that most likely it's the HD as well, the tell-tale was the fact the HD busy light stayed on constantly when it locked up last time Hopefully you backed up any important data

A little clarification is in order here: Dual-Channel memory just happens to be a matched pair, pre-tested DIMM modules for many new/high end motherboards. The memory is no different then DDR266/333(PC2100/2700) except that it has a faster clock and usually a lower latency, look for the CL or CAS Latency number to tell. Most general purpose modules run at CL3, the mid-range memory runs at CL2.5 and the high-end, more expensive modules run at CL2. Now then, you should be able to run this faster memory in an older chipset board in that these motherboards will clock down, or underclock if you will the memory speed to run at what the max is for that motherboard, usually PC2100 or PC2700 speeds. This should be fine, however you can check the motherboard manufacturers website to see if there are any known issues with DDR400/PC3200 memory however this is usually not an issue unless you want to overclock the CPU/Memory to something faster then what it's rated for As for the graphics card, this is the same thing, an AGP 8x card will clock down to AGP4x speed. However you wouldn't want to run it on any motherboard that's rated for only AGP2x !!!!

Are you looking just to share the broadband connection with all the machines ?!? Are you looking to setup one or more servers with or without a domain controller or what ?!? Since I know most users just want to share the connection, you should be able to connect the cable modem/router to the Dlink Gateway device then all the LAN machines would connect to the gateway device. Also since you have a couple of laptops I'm going to assume this particular gateway device has wireless for them I would imagine that the gateway device should be pretty much pre-configured, my Linksys was. I only had to port forward/trigger a couple of ports for my game and ftp servers. As for setting up servers I'm going to defer to others with more experience here. I've not setup any servers since my old NT4 days.

It sounds like the hardware acceleration slider is turned off or all the way down. Check the Advanced Display Properties and see if this is the case or not. DXdiag should show this as well Also, check your system BIOS settings and make sure the AGP selection, if available, is set to at least 4x AGP speed, it could also have an AGP 8x option but not always as most/many of the newest boards will auto-detect the AGP speed of the graphics card... As for the latest drivers, make sure that DirectX v9.0b is installed and then re-install the latest Intel Chipset/INF drivers are installed.

Quote: I think you're forgetting about graphic designers Perhaps, but there is a plethera of graphics out there that can be had, both on the net and items that can be scanned into your PC I would however suggest talking to both Adobe about Photoshop and and JASC as well about this. My guess is that they've done this on purpose. Some sort of face recognition algorythm. Also check out the US Treasury site for more info. Perhaps they have some images of older bills you can view, I wouldn't bet on it though.

Adobe has some tips to try out. Not sure if it's the reader causing this or some system file that has gotten corrupted. Can you launch the reader by itself ?!?