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The P4 with SDR will be a no go. The peformance is awful and AMD will slaughter Intel if they try to get people to buy it. As for the Pally, you may be right, but the fact the CPU will physically fit the board is a huge bonus. Upgrades can be done a step at a time. CPU this month, RAM next month, mobo the month after. As things stand at the moment with the Intel stuff, you'll need to replace the whole lot in one go.

First up, don't bother with the Slot A AMD stuff unless it's very very cheap (or free). You'll end up having to replace it all next time you do an upgrade. A similar thing could be said for the P4 as Intel will be changing the socket layout. The P3 is a fairly decent bet, but the new P3s (Tualatin) might also require a new mobo. So the best thing to do really is go for an Athlon socket CPU. If you get a decent mobo, you should be able to upgrade to a Pally when they're released. I've just bought the Epox EP8K7A+ board and an Athlon AXIA 1GHz CPU. The CPU should easily clock to 1.4GHz, maybe higher, but it was cheap as I'm planning on a Pally. It really depends how much you want to spend, and what you want to use the machine for.

I don't see that it should cause a problem provided the monitor is unplugged whilst your doing it. If you're doing it through the casing, it should be fairly straight forward. If you're going to remove the casing, be careful as there are very high voltages inside that cause you serious amounts of pain if you touch the wrong part. You probably want to keep the spray away from the tube and anythign else delicate.

ZoneAlarm is actually one of the most secure firewalls (for it's price point). It generates a unique code everytime an application trys to access the net. If the code doesn't match up, the app is denied. If you have a little torjan program, the easiest way to fool the firewall into letting it out it to have the torjan file called something like 'ftp.com' If the firewall has already allowed access to that app, a number of firewalls will let this pretender out to do its thing. ZoneAlarm won't. It knows that this program is only pretending to be the ftp.com app and will block it. For a quick test of how vulnerable (or otherwise) your PC is, visit http://grc.com and run the Shields Up and Port Probe tests.

The shim will help prevent you crushing the CPU core when fitting the heatsink, but isn't likely to make that much difference to your temps. If your thermistor is under the CPU socket, make sure you bend it up a bit before fitting the CPU. That way it will touch the bottom of the CPU when fitted and give you slightly more accurate temp readings.

Can you not right the CD drive in My Computer and choose Sharing from the menu? You then just need to click the 'Share this folder' radio button.

You're using modified drivers and you have a problem with the game. You change the drivers and the game works. How can you then say thet fault lies with the game and not the drivers? If changing the drivers fixes the problems, then the modified drivers are obviously the cause of the problem. The game must be making various Direct X calls that the modifed drivers cannot handle. If the game was making illegeal Direct X calls, then the game would show these problems on a large number of computer systems. I think you are either going to have to change driver revisions or get a different video card to solve this.

Quote: I just bought a 1.2Ghz Athlon and I decided to go with the Tai Sol CGK742092B HS/Fan. Here's a pic, what do you all think? Personally I'd have picked the Taisol 760 (which, stangely enough, I did ). The 760 has a lump of copper in the bottom which improves its performance no end. The 742 is a reasonable HSF though, I just hope you're not planning on clocking your CPU too much as it probably cope with all the extra heat.

The demo is only really a work in progress. The final game has changed significantly over what you see in the demo. Can you buy the game from somewhere that will let you return it for no real reason? EB run this kind of scheme, so you could at least try the real game.

I bought a Taisol 760 cooler for my P3 1GHz. It has a copper block to absorb heat from the CPU core, and the rest is aluminium to disipate that heat faster. It knocked 10°C off of my loadv temps compared to the OEM HSF. I'm running it using the stock 60mm fan which is a rebadged Delta. It's farily quiet though. I have an 80mm fan adapter, and tried a range of 80mm fans on the heatsink, but they really didn't make much difference. For it to be effective, it needs to be able to draw more cool air over the heatsink. Without moding your case with ducting or additional blow holes, it's a bit tricky to do. I have a review of the 760 and a fan adapter on my site at www.philspcmods.com if you're interested.

But if you're doing an upgrade, why on earth are you installing it over the top of your existing setup? No wonder it's flaky. Have the setup program format your disks and start from scratch. You'll have a much quicker and stable machine.

I'm sure that's what I said. "Your modem is capable of doing it, but your ISP only gives you address"

Deus Ex is a great game, but as it's based on the Unreal engine, it requires a fairly high spec machine to get the best out of it. Nolf is also tops, but it doesn't have a high replay value once you've beaten it. Giants is great (but buggy). Operation Flashpoint is out tomorrow, but you US guys are going to have to wait until September for it. If you can order it from the UK, then it might be worth doing so if the genre interests you.

Your cable modem will not act as a DHCP server for other machines on your network. The modem is capable of doing it, but your ISP only gives you one address, not a range of addresses. Set your main PC (with the modem) to have an IP of 192.168.0.1 and a subnet of 255.255.255.0 Set the other machine to 192.168.0.2 with the same subnet, and give it a default gateway of 192.168.0.1 That's about it. Makes sure ICS is enabled for the modem NIC and Robert is your mothers brother. If you have a firewall you may need to tweak the settings a bit to let the second machine out on the Internet.

Blue Shift is a bit disappointing. The HD pack is alright though, and the models do look a lot better for it. The game play in BS is fairly plain. There are a few puzzles that took me a few minutes to figure out, but I finished it on Medium dificulty in about 5 hours. We can only hope that some modders take the new entites in BS and create some good add-ons for it, otherwise there are likely to be a lot of hacked off customers.

The PC70 will actually take 6 fans in total. It's fitted with two intake and two exhaust fans already, but another 2 x 80mm fans will fit in the PSU bay.

The great thing about Gaunltet is that you played at the same time and could see what was going on. With the inevitable lag that would crop up in net games, the Death character would just zap you straight away. It'd be a blast for LAN games, but you really need to cram everyone around the same PC for it to have the same 'feel' as the arcade game. Oh, and BGII for the poll!

I've got a GlobalWin 802 mid tower case, and it's great. However, I've just bought a Lian Li PC70 aluminium full tower case. It's fantastic. I've got a review of the case on my site if you're interested: www.philspcmods.com/reviews/llpc70

Just out of curiosity, why are you thinking of mounting them upside down? I know heat rises, but if it's for cooling, you're probably better off getting proper drive cooling bays or a couple of fans blowing air in the general direction of the drives.

This is perfectly normal. Windows 2000 only detects hardware that is present at boot time. If your modem isn't switched on when you boot, then Windows can't see it. The only solution is to either switch your modem on before the PC, or re-detect it each time as you are currently doing.

Is there some small print that says 'US only'? I note you're in Canada, so maybe they class you as Johnny Foreigner and don't want you getting your hands on their software.

I found the Dets can be at the route of this problem. I had a similar problem briefly when messing about with different versions. However, I have the 6.50, 7.59 and 10.80 drivers be perfectly stable under Win2k. I am running an Intel system though, so YMMV.

There were a few on the Microsoft training site, but I haven't checked to see if they're still there. You're not likely to find very many free pactise exams. You can buy the Transcenders which are generally regarded as the best. They're not cheap though.

If Vsync is on, then you will get slightly lower frame rates (they are limited by the refresh rate of your monitor), but you will not get any tearning. By turning Vsync off, the PC renders frames as fast as it can, but sometimes the frames are rendered part way through a screen refresh, and you and you get tearing.

Would you care to explain how companies are "being bullied into upgrading"? If they are running 9x/NT/2K, they can continue to do so. In mny cases companies are running their chosen operating systems because all the software they use works on it. Upgrading to a new OS may well break some mission critical software, so they'll stick with what they've got. It won't be possible to buy any more licenses for the 'old' operating systems, but if they are buying a new PC as a replacement, they can move the OS to the new machine if the old one is being junked. If they are buying new machines for new staff or to run as new servers, then maybe they should plan ahead a bit and buy a few extra licenses now whilst they still can. I know this isn't an overally practical way of doing things, but it is possible. Companies have always had to endure situations like this, be it with computer hardware and software or more 'mundane' items which are replaced with upgraded models. I think the real issue here is that the consumer is no longer going to be able to buy (or otherwise acquire) a copy of MS software and install it onto several machines. Or give it to their friends. Or install it for their mum who doesn't really know what she's doing. If you don't like it, then don't buy it. You have the right to use whichever OS you prefer, if you prefer Win2k, that's fine. If not, buy a Mac, get Linux, get BeOS, get whatever you like, as long as it's a legally licensed bit of software, it doesn't matter.