Christianb

Hi Gang, I have a client with an old Inspiron 6400 Laptop (maxed at 2GB of RAM) that is now running Windows 7. He will get out of memory errors if I don't enable a swapfile, but that swapfile will also wear out his internal 2.5" SATA SSD. What I'd like to do is one of these solutions to host the swapfile get a SD card reader that fits entirely inside the ExpressCard slot (so it can be left in all the time without anything protuding) use a fast SD card in the card reader slot (it won't support CompactFlash), but that will stick out a little use an external flash drive use an mSATA card (but not sure if his old Inspiron 6400 will support that, it doesn't have to boot off of it just needs to work in Windows) expresscard SSD Drive (these seem very expensive and therefore are the least appealing) I'm interested in an ExpressCard SD card reader, but I'm concerned some will mount as USB vs. PCIe. His laptop is only USB 2.0, which means that the speed of the SD Card would be limited to 40MBps. Does anyone know of an ExpressCard SD card reader that mounts as PCIe so that it can go faster than USB 2.0? Does anyone know of an expresscard reader that doesn't stick out? I'd like to solve this secondary flash storage solution for under $65 if possible. Is there ExpressCard RAM he can use instead, I know that the older PCMCIA spec allowed you to plug in more RAM, but I don't think that's possible today? Thanks, Christian

Hi DosFreak, It's my opinion, that the way the forum has been nested within the main website, makes it more difficult to use. It seems like it's better now, but I too have more or less quit using it. Cheers, Christian Blackburn

Hi Packman, I have burned 4.7GB DVD-Rs using Ghost 2003 on an ND-3520, so chances are your's will work too! Cheers, Christian

Hi Gang, I'm trying to automate a number of different versions of Microsoft Excel. The good part is I'm more or less only working with the find and replace dialog. Can someone tell me the title of the Find and Replace dialog in Excel XP? If possible I'd be exstatic if someone posted a screenshot of the dialog itself. Thanks in Advance, Chritian Blackburn

Hi Jay, A boot disk isn't going to help you one bit on re-installing Windows 2000 Pro. I don't think the I386 folder is going to contain everything necessary for re-install either. My first suggestion is to just go into safe mode and then delete the enum key from your registry and restart normally. Also you can take your HD over to a friend's house and scan for malware. Another thing you should ask yourself (and probably did) is what did I do last to screw things up? If you just installed something try removing it from safe mode. On Windows XP it's HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG\System\CurrentControlSet\Enum. Re-installing is rarely necessary if you know what your doing, and even if you don't it's still rarely necessary if you maintain good backups, I recommend buying an OEm copy of Acronis TrueImage for 30 bucks at NewEgg.com if you don't have one already. Good Luck, Christian Blackburn

Hi Gang, I don't even have a modem in my desktop, but need to send out a 16-page fax. I know that's huge, but I'm contesting some charges and had to include a lot of different receipts, statements, and such. I have a good old 3Com/USR PC Card modem and Windows 98SE on that laptop. Is there a free hardware-based fax program for windows? If not is there a live linux CD that comes with a fax program, I can just print out a PDF I created in windows. Thanks, Christian Blackburn

Hi Felix, Thanks for your suggestion, but I didn't think of that trick unitl I'd already gotten a bid, and then eBay wouldn't let me change any of the shipping settings. Thanks for your terrific advice though . Thanks, Christian Blackburn

Hi Gang, I'm about to lose my shirt yet again, by not setting a reserve price (lesson learned). My ASUS GeForce 2MX video card with an integrated TV Tuner (swheet!) is about to go for 1 dollar because I only got one bid. I can't believe that, but frankly it scares me. Please go check it out and place a bid. How can you go wrong? Thanks, Christian Blackburn

Hi Gang, I'm about to lose my shirt yet again, by not setting a reserve price (lesson learned). My ASUS GeForce 2MX video card with an integrated TV Tuner (swheet!) is about to go for 1 dollar because I only got one bid. I can't believe that, but frankly it scares me. Please go check it out and place a bid. How can you go wrong? Thanks, Christian Blackburn

Hi Gang, I'm selling new and extra power supply tester I had on eBay and made the mistake of not setting a reserve price. If nobody else places a bid it'll go for $1, in 53 minutes. Please take a look at it and see if you're interested, you might find that it's something you want and that it's worth as much as $15 dollars to you, but you'll probably wind up getting it for some triffling amount like $2. Good Luck, Christian Blackburn

hi Char27, If your system is really behaving that strangely why don't you have a friend help you with this. Take your HD to their house or to work if your sysadmin is cool, plug in your HD as an additional (non-boot) drive. Run several up to date malware scanners on it. In the free category I recommend: 1. Trend Micro 2. Ad-Aware 3. SpyBot: Search & Destroy >no button works..not even caps or num lock It sounds like your definition of crashing is correct. Cheers, Christian Blackburn

1. Put up your shields: Install Service Pack 2 of windows XP. That's foolish to be running around on the internet without your system being protect from known exploits. You undoubtedly already have malware on your system, even though you just re-installed. They have found malware on unpatched windows 98 systems attached to the internet in as little as 5 minutes! Once you've installed service pack 2, enable the auto-up[censored] service and even let it auto-install. Then download Microsoft update so it'll keep your copy of MS office secure if you have one. Install all the updates. 2. Now that you're protected get the junk off your system: Try a free virus and spyware scan: www.TrendMicro.com RAM, shouldn't prevent crashing unless you have faulty RAM. This can be tested using the ultimateboot cd: http://ultimatebootcd.com/ However 256 totally sucks on XP. You should have at least 768, but preferably 1GB or more. Having insufficient RAM won't make your system crash it'll just go more slowly. Whoever mentioned upgrading the ram and that it prevent crashing that is probably for one of two reasons the old ram was faulty and was removed in order to put in the new stuff. The other reason it would crash less is you still had a memory leak it just took longer to become a problem, in which case you didn't really fix the problem, just made it more bearable. www.Crucial.com is the easiest place to order from, however they're expensive. It's a great place to determine how much ram your system can take, how many slots you have, and what kind of ram is supported. Then if you want you can either order from them or use froogle.com or pricewatch.com and find something cheaper. Disable Kaspersky and see what happens. If that doesn't fix it uninstall Kasperky and see what happens. Do the same for your antivirus solution. Do you have one? If not that's really irresponsible. You can get a good free one at grisoft.com/free. Repeat the process for your download managers. Does your ISP employ some kind of software? Like AOL or Yahoo DSL for example? Most of that stuff is absolute bullshit and is totally unnecessary. I use Yahoo DSL and I don't have one bit of their software installed. It just creates an additional layer of unstable software. Power Supplies: Nothing future proofs a system. However, yes if he ever uses SLI video then that wouldn't be a bad option. However, I suggest buying something more practical and if and when you decide you must have SLI then you could get something like that. For that kind of change you could buy a fanless power supply, which I think is a more reasonable desire for the average person, since everyone hates noise. CPU Usage: 100% CPU usage will not make your system crash. It will however make your system difficult to use. If that 100% or close to it process isn't the one you're trying or want to use you can terminate it from task manager. I think we should define crashing. According to Microsoft their OS has crashed when the numlock and or capslock keys can't be turned on and off on your keyboard. Using that as the rule, has your system truly hardlocked? If not then it could be as Yankee describes a particular process might be hogging your system resources.

Hi mjwebb007, Do you already have Windows XP x64? Have you already tried your games and ran into compatibility issues? To run Linux yes, you'll either need an emulator or to multi-boot (faster, but less convenient if you're like most people and are only truly efficient in Windows). Also before you waste a bunch of time on Linux, how much do you know about ReactOS, 0and that fact that the windows Open Source movement is growing rapidly? A lot of games require specific resolutions and color depths. Having no experience with 64-bit processors yet I can't comment on potential issues in that regards. If you have glide games then you might have more difficulty, because glide was made before 64-bit processors were a consumer phenomenon. Cheers, Christian Blackburn

Hi Gang, I have decided to remove PS/2 from my requirement list. If a system needs that I'll use an adapter or plug-in directly. This IOGear KVM looks terrific. I'd much rather have integrated ethernet than PS/2 support. Cheers, Christian Blackburn

Hi Felix, While I'm sure they have nice stuff, I definetly won't be going with anything from Blackbox. I don't need a rackmount capable device and I'm certainly not going to pay for a wholely unecesssary luxury. Cheers, Christian Blackburn