Dirty Harry

Quote: I notice that nobody seem to use Kaspersky AVP Pro. I wonder why ? Ignorance, pure ignorance, AVP rocks !!! BTW, I don't see the big problem with viruses, in fact I don't even have the scanner running (eats resources), I mostly just scan manually. The only precautions you have to take are: 1. scan all doubtful downloads 2. Scan e-mail attatchements & follow the scene a bit 3. have a reasonably recent backup if sh1t happens (you should anyhow...) With this I've spotted 5 or 6 incoming viruses this year alone, none made it through. H.

Cools well... the main question is how many Cubic Feets per Minute (CFM) the fan moves, and to some extent when it sits on a CPU cooler how much of that airstream hits the sink. Some sinks are better, some worse, but the more efficient the fan the better each sink performs. Generally speaking more CFM = more noice as long as the diameter and type of fan stays the same. Different fan brands are different what comes to noise, Pabst remains one of the best. Still, their efficient models are quite loud, but quieter than most. Most fan manufacturers spec the CFM and noice (db) values. If you cool with fans (as opposed to water cooling) you have two options: 1) more fans as 2 fans are **not** twice as loud as one or 2) larger fans which move more air at a slower RPM. In most cases its easy to fit a few extra blowholes and perhaps change the fans to slower ones. The major rule is front fans to blow in, back and top fans to blow out, and test your options with the side fans. H. 8 fans running and counting....

Google Astalavista uuup Altavista are there any others ? H.

A 7000 rpm fan is noisy by nature. Switch it to a slower fan, and look for quiet, ball-bearing fans. Pabst makes the best ones, IMO. H.

Noise control is all over the net, do a few searches and you'll find hundreds of sites dealing with it. All quiet solutions have their drawbacks though, here a few off the top of my head: - If you insulate your case you also insulate the heat, and need more and faster fans. Sound doesn't add up, two fans aren't twice as noisy as one. - Water cooling is totally quiet, if you want to mess with the pots and pans. - You can also pay more and get more, there are a lot of "quiet" heatsink fan combos, but generally a fan gets louder the more it cools. - Cut up your case, and put in bigger slower fans that move more air at a lower rpm. - You get used to the humming after a while. Crank up the speakers, maybe your neighbours like your mp3's. - If you really want to overclock, liquid nitrogen is the way to go ! H.

So is xiven.com. By somebody browsing this forum, apparently. Who could that be ? H.

Red Star- What precisely is it that you are hoping SP3 will fix ? Or will you just have a richer life when SP3 is there ? H.

Just do your ****** with the speaker, an Abit mobo beeps, always, especially if something is wrong with it. I'd guess you just have a few cables connected upside down. Don't mess around with too many things at once, just get that beep, and you'll know if its an error code or not (one familiar beep= everyhing is OK) H.

An Abit mobo should definately beep when you turn it on, either once (everything is OK) or several times (various error codes). If you don't have the speaker connected correctly you wont hear the beeps though. Does it beep if you power it up without memory ? As you say "everything comes on" it appears that your fans, lights etc do receive power. Do you have fans that are connected to the mobo - do they turn on ? Remove the ATX-power connector from the mobo, short the cmos jumper and try again (just another way of doing what clutch already suggested). H.

NO, NO NO, don't touch the VIA 4 in 1, they are not for you !! You say you're using a Asus pc32000 (i820 chipset) motherboard & Pentium III 800 eb, VIA has nothing to do with this! H

Windows indiactes that your display driver is causing the problem. Try this; download a new version of the Nvidia drivers and install them. You might also want to go over to Google, and do a search for "uninstall nvidia drivers completely" or something similar to make sure you get out all old files. Another thing you might want to try is to run the PC with the case open, just to check that the problem is not caused by overheating. H

-You have scanned for viruses, haven't you ? -No new programs get loaded at startup ? -Shareware that expired ? -If the drives are on the same cable, check (one of a million...) One safe bet; the odds are that this is caused by something you or another user has done and not by voddoo. So question that "I haven't done anything" or choose to believe in voddoo. H.

Yep, I vote for full reinstall too. To the question what CHKDSK/F is; it is the check disk command with the option /fix (errors). It scans your hard drive for file system errors and fixes what it can. To run it (on windows 2000), open a command prompt ("dos window"), type in CHKDSK/F and on next reboot a check disk is performed. Not likelt to solve your problem though. H

Quote: Have u installed VIA4in1 drivers? If not do so and see if that helps at all. Yes do that, but ONLY if you have a motherboard using the VIA chipset. Does W2K find the devices - do they show up in the device manager ? Have you tinkered with the DMA setting (disabled /enabled). What is it set at ? Played around in the bios ? Are the CD drives recognized there ? Sounds weird as you have one SCSI and one IDE drive and both malfunction the same way. H.

Quote: I installed Windows 2000 and the system could not log me on because I forgot the password. If you just about installed W2K and forgot yoyur password already, why don't you just do a reinstall ? Takes you about half an hour. If you want advice on how to bypass the W2K password protection, this is kinda the wrong place, no matter how legitimate your particular motive might be. H.

Just a couple of checks of the obvious: Now I don't know your mobo but you should have the bios file as a plain binary file, uncompressed etc and you propably do have to type in the whole name in the flash utility, watching out for zeros and the letter o. It could (?) be that the file must be named xxxxx.bin for example to be recognized. You should boot from a clean dos disk, no drivers loaded etc. A W2K dos window is no good, also flash utilities that supposedly work from within windows are notorious for causing trouble. The error you get means that some little transistor thinks that you are trying to feed it the wrong bios. With this error meassage I'd bet that this is the case, and really, really carefully read all the instructions on SOYOs site etc. I'd also suggest you only try to flash it with the original (your backup) bios from now on and make double sure you only use the correct specific flashing utility SOYO recommeds. Some flash utilities come with a batch file that does the whole thing from boot automatically, and use various switches to perform magic. If there is something like this for your mobo, try it. If you can't get a flash working on the chip your options are AFAIK: -Replace the chip A. Contact a shop or the manufacturer/importer etc and see if they sell you a bios chip, many do carry & sell them or have them replace it. Been there, done that, took a few days but is ironclad. B. Search the net, I believe there are several companies specializing in selling preprogrammed bios chips for various mobos. Cost perhaps 15 to 50 $, FedEx and all. -Reprogram the chip As already suggested; take the bios chip and the correct binary to someone with an EEPROM flasher, most PC repair shops have one. Almost as good as the previous one. -Fix the chip yourself Ask yourself "do I feel lucky" ? Find another identical mobo, boot it, and hot swap the bios chips with the power on, and try to program the old chip again. Risky, yes, but it can be done, plenty of sites decribe how to do it, but before you know that you have the correct award flash program and the correct binary file it wont get you any further. And if your original chip is defect you'll get nowhere, but might ruin the functioning mobo as you play around. H.

Your primary problem is very likely that your board doesn't autodetect (or have correct) settings for the CPU and/or the RAM. As you say you have 256 MB of 2100 DDR ram I would suspect the CPU settings are the culprit. If you have two sticks, take out one and continue with only one. You will find a jumper that CLEARS the CMOS table, believe me, there is one (could also be called CMOS discharge etc). Read the manual or go to the manufacturers site and download a copy if you don't have one. Use the jumper (ie switch off the computer, UNplug the power cord, clear the CMOS by shortcutting the jumper and revert) and see if your CPU is now detected correctly. ALso, if your BIOS has something like "Load fail safe defaults", use that option, that could also clear things up a bit. Do this after you have cleared the CMOS. There is no software (I know of) that tells you the manufacturers rating of the components FSB speed, at least not in a easily interpreteable way. Waste of time to go down that path, with other words. The best (only sensible) way to find out is to READ whats printed on the CPU. The best possible software that you could use is Oda's WCPUID, but I'm not sure that it always identifies every CPU's values correctly if its running on false settings to start with and you don't have half of the data already. Anyhow, if you try this you have to find out how to read the different family & steppings values it gives you, and wether there is only one possibility for your particular CPU, assuming that you are really really sure which CPU you have. Then you still have to clear the CMOS, so just start with doing that right now ! Let us know how you progress, somebody is likely to come up with another possible solution once the settings are ruled out ! H.

It sounds you have updated your bios recently. Try to reset CMOS over the jumper switch on the mobo. I don't know your hardware but with a recent bios you should **not** have to set the fsb (what you call CPU bus) manually, your cpu should be autodetected. Something is wrong right there, I'd guess. BTW, are you sure you have a Tbird and memory for the 133 Mhz fsb ? (as opposed to 100Mhz). Did you have this Mobo / cpU / mem combination working before ? H.

Maybe I misunderstand you but sysedit is not good enough, run regedit and search for references to the executable that is trying to start. If you alaready checked the registry it could be that another (started) program is trying to start the deleted one. What program was it you deleted ? Some progs are components of others. A excellent freeware called jv16 PowerTools gives you complete control over startup, just don't toy around with the other options if you are unsure what they do. Find it at http://www.jv16.org/ H.

Transistors ? Clutch already gave the definitive answer. H.

I wish I cold make it go away... H.

Five of you go out to macho in front of kids. Come on... H.

Personally I'm content with ipconfig or using the console, but a freeware util that shows you IP is IP Address (surprining name isn't it) Find it at http://www.castlesoft.co.nz/ipAddress.htm. Haven't tried it though. H.

Try to boot from the W2K CD and use the repair option and see if that fixes the problem. If you can't, then try the following: Create a new user account (name it whatever) with admin rights and ignore the old one. It might even be that you could delete the OLD admin account once successful but I doubt that you'll be able to without editing the registry. Still, if it was my machine I'd do a fresh install. These kind of quick fixes have a tendency to come back for revenge when you expect it the least. H.

When you right click the window and select View-Lage Icons or details, does it work ? Dunno what is going on, but it looks you're in for a reinstall. H.