Brian Frank

I'm gonna have to agree with Andy on this one. The fan noises and sluggish performance sound like a heat issue.

I just hate HP because of their designs inside the PC. Shouldn't have to tear apart the system just to get to 1 freakin' stick of RAM---something that shouldn't even take 5 minutes shouldn't be a 3hr job ;( It may be "designed for Windows ME", but the tech has their head elsewhere if they say it cannot use any other OS. HP obviously goes with the lowest bidder in tech support. ;(

That's a load of crap. I use NAV on my machines, one of which uses an HPT372 on-board IDE RAID controller, and both are working fine. If there is some issue between HighPoint controllers and an their AV, the guys over at Symantec need to stop smoking crack and fix it. "We do not recommend using Norton software - much of it is listed as not compatible with RAID controllers" My ass

Depends on the filesystem WinXP is using. I recall Home using FAT32 by default, but I could be wrong here (yeah, that happens). If it's NTFS, that's your problem.

WinXP=Win2k for home

That was good, like Tom used to be. Some of his articles have been biased and/or full of BS, but that laid it out like it is. He explained how SATA is still limited by the drives themselves and how the PCI bus comes into play here.

OMG! I hate that board too. It sucks with AGP cards (thanks to ALi). The only way I've seen to fix the AGP problem is to: A.)Not use an AGP card; or B.) upgrade the motherboard. Your friend will get a bit more umph out of that card if he gets himself updated to something a bit newer.

That's very cool. I've seen something like that before that looked a little nicer, but I can't remember where. I just know it wasn't the one clutch linked. If I did that, I'd put in a cappucino machine

I too can vouch for JEH over at 2CPU. That guy knows his stuff very well---which I suppose you need to in driver development.

Overclocking anything can cause problems, most notably instability. Overheating and possibly frying the CPU and other components are also possible. It also causes problems with the warranty;) When you say, "...optimize my memory", what are you doing to optimize it? A program or some BIOS settings?

Abit, Epox, Iwill, and Soyo are in the HighPoint camp. If there is anything I dislike about Asus, it's the use of the Promise controllers, as I just want the extra IDE controllers. You're probably wise to hold off for a new board, as the newest HighPoint cards get pretty pricey, and they cost more than many motherboards 8) . Maxtor was using Promise chips (the card is just a relabled Promise Ultra ATA100 card) last I checked. Not sure if this means anything. Oh, and if you want my opinion on what chipsets to look at in a motherboard here they are: nForce/nForce 2 for AMD, Intel 845E/G for P4 stuff.

I had that restarting problem with one of my systems and fixed it about a month ago. Turned out to be the power supply. I replaced it with the same thing and the restarting went away. Don't know if that helps, but it's something to toy with.

fire=left mouse 2nd fire=right mouse forward=W back=S strafe left=A strafe right=D jump=space crouch=C everything else, I pretty much leave as is. and yeah, that's pretty much the half-life/quake defaults, save the crouch/jump which is from Unreal. Works great.

I couldn't finish the thread...too...much...stupidity

You could try a HighPoint controller card too.

I ran a VP6 with a SoundBlaster Live Card and no issues. The only PC issues I had were related to piss-poor IBM drives that crap out. But anyway...I've used plenty of Via based boards and not had a problem. If you're still a bit nervous about using a Via board, you can try The ALi Magik 333 DDR chipset or an nForce board. I love the nForce, and I've heard mixed results with the ALi chipsets. I may have to try them out in the future, but for right now, I'm a little wary of them as they had some pretty bad chipsets in the old socket 7 days.

For best upgradability, yes. Also, the on-board C-Media 6 channel sound isn't bad, and unless you're an audio freak, that will save you a sound card. I haven't used it, but people like it, and Asus hasn't become as big as they are by producing crap. Celerons should work w/o a hitch as they use the old P4 core (Willamette) which is accepted on P4 boards. If you can swing it, I'd go for the P4, but that's not completely necessary.

*hugs nForce*

Haven't seen you around these parts for awhile, man. Yeah, I like the board too. Philipp put it up last week. He also launched Linux Compatible recently. It's the same format as NTC.

They are pretty much the same OS, and it's very hard to say what one is better. Both are good, no question. I think your decision should be based on what is better for what you are doing. Know that and it can make your job easier. I really have not seen any comparisions between the two OS's that really mean much for day-to day use. IMO, XP is simply a home version of Win2k. Neither is bad and it really boils down to personal preference, which is why you really need to know what you want.

I personally like the cold cathodes myself, but I would suggest making sure it has a switch to turn it off if you leave the system on 24/7.

You got all the latest patches for those programs? Have you tried a different set of Via chipset drivers?

Hehe. Good ol Philipp to the rescue Good job

No, but if you need them, you could always try FIC's website ;(