HP needs bigger fan?

[Nik Habicht]

Reasons for a new MB:

1.) To obtain the ability to boot from a SATA drive.

2.) to be able to access images faster while editing. Keep in mind that I'm usually working with a folder containing 600-700 images or most of a gig of data. I noticed a significant speed boost when editing off the Raptor --- I want to ideally install a second Raptor as the boot drive. I'm usually up against tight production deadlines too --- and a faster computer means I can spend more time shooting images.....

3. There's two memory slots --- filled with a pair of 512 PC2700 modules. Buying a pair of gig chips will approach $500; I could buy 4 512s and a mobo that'll support more SATA drives.

Video card performance bogging down: It's got occasional problems redrawing the desktop icons, when I'm closing Explorer windows or applications and hangsup there for thirty to forty seconds; if you're advancing through a dvd, you'll often hear dialog going on while the movie is frozen on screen for 40-60 seconds or more.....

On RAM: Are you telling me that I can buy a pair of 512 PC3200 modules, and then install them

in one pair of slots while installing the old pair of 512 PC2700 chips in the other set of slots, following the mobo instruction manual --- and have all that work together? Or am I better off installing 4 PC2700 or 4 PC3200 chips. (I think I get the speed difference here --- though I think I need a processor with 800mhz FSB to take advantage of PC3200.)

On the CPU/Heatsink --- I picked up a tube of Arctic Silver when I picked up a new heatsink/fan for the processor. You were right --- without ducting CPU temperatures climbed rapidly with the HP heatsink.

On Video Cards: What should I be looking for? Is 256 vs. 128 MB more important than "Newest Generation card vs. Older Generation Card?" Or will the newest chipset bring me more performance with lower memory than an older card with more memory? This is probably the least understood area of my knowledge.....

As you may be able to tell, I'm reading stacks of computer magazines and how to books at the moment, but I just want to double check that I'm absorbing the concepts correctly......

Old Bridge ---- yeah, that's me. Who are you? Feel free to PM if you'd rather remain anonymous here.....

Thank You!

[raz-0]

On the motherboard front, there are cheaper options with SATA and firewire that are still good quality. Personally, I have been quite happy with gigabyte boards lately. This sucker ( http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetai...ductCode=240798 ) comes with 2 firewire headers, and port. If you case has a firewire port, you can hook up the other header to it. Also it has active cooling for the chipset, which is good, and dual-bios so that if you can flash your bios without worrying about screwing it up. Whatever you do, I suggest sticking with the intel chipsets for the intel processors, they are pretty mature and stable at this point.

One thing to consider is that you may need a new copy of winXP/win2k depending on which you have and if the disk included with the HP is tied to the hardware. you need to know this before you buy the mobo as you will want to order them togerther to get OEM pricing on the OS if you can't just reuse what you have. If XP you will have to reauth, but it shouldn't be a problem.

As for the memory mixing, it can work, but I wouldn't rely on it. The only reason I mentioned it was because you can buy one pair of 512 sticks mix them and test, and if it doesn't work, buy the other pair you were going to buy anyway and only be out the time. But if downtime means you aren't earning money, skip that as burning in and testing for stability can eat up hours fast. It really comes down to the quality of the chips and pcb of the ram, and since you are shopping ona budget, and HP was likely even more thrifty.

For ram, I've found it pretty hard to beat zipzoom's deal on corsair cas 2.5 value select pairs at a gig for $142. Even though people generally recommend high end matched sticks for dual channel, I used the value select pairs in my girlfriends machine, and she has been beating on it with photoshop, illustrator, indesign, quark, and too many hours of world of warcraft without stability issues. I recommend pc3200 because you stand a better chance of being able to reuse it in your next upgrade and because you will have more memory bandwidth. Motherboards these days don't really run anything synchronous with the system clock (FSB, PCI bus, AGP Bus, and memory usually all have different multipliers now). So you will get some reduced latency form the frequency boost. You'll mostly see it in gaming or any activity that swaps to system ram from the video card's onboard ram. Increasing the ammount of memory helps with swapping out to a point.

( http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetai...ctCode=80098-21 )

Actually, video card comes down to an issue of features and what you need. Newest and most memory may very well be irrelevant to you if you are not using 3D apps, or playing 3d video games. For 2d and video, good hardware video overlays and nice RAMDACs are what you care about. depending on what you need, and what you are willing to compromise on price, the video card thing can vary wildly. Without knowing what you want to do with it exactly, it'd be way to easy to reocmmend something pricier than you need, so I'll leave that until you answer some more questions.

As for your video performance issue, the icons sound like either your pagefile settings, lack of ram, or active desktop issues. The DVD stuff can be related, but is more likely your video card lack of DVD acceleration, partial/missing hardware overlay implimentations, and/or the DVD software that came with it.

There are actually a number of things you can do to optimise your current system before dropping cash. Before I go into detail, I'll ask some questions.

1)what OS

2)list your most commonly used pieces of software that give you performance issues, or you would like to be faster. preferably include version number.

3)are you using windows explorer as your image management software. (there is specialized software for this ranging from free to several thousands of dollars, pretty much all of them beat out using the OS for it in many ways).

4)do you care about gaming in any way shape or form?

5)are you using a CRT or LCD for a monitor, and do you use more than one?

That should about cover it for now.

[Nik Habicht]

Current OS is XP Media Center. I've got a copy of XP Pro laying around that I bought to fix another computer a couple of years ago. That computer is long dead.

Things I'd like to be faster: Photoshop CS and PhotoMechanic 4.3. PM is my image browser, it ingests images off my cards (via firewire card reader), adding IPTC, or caption info, during the importation. It's capable of renaming during ingest --- but since I chimp in camera and wanty the images to be sorted by time shot, I don't rename until they're in system. PM lets me preview and tag and even color code while looking at a large version of the image, I can then send the image to Photoshop for color correction, or if it's good to go just use the FTP functionality in Photo Mechanic to ship the photo to the paper's server. Basically any and all speed gains are good here.

The biggest lag times are starting up Photo Mechanic and Photo Shop --- but that's probably due to the crappy 5400 rpm HP hard drive. They each take a minute or so to load. Transferring an image from PM to PS also takes 15-20 seconds. PM is a breeze to use, PS only bogs down on complicated plugins like NoiseNinja.

Extensis Portfolio Six locks up occasionally/more frequently recently when trying to add a DVD full of images to my archive. Catalogs are created on an annual basis --- I might burn six or seven DVDs annually, after I get rid of images that I don't want to keep.

Video card needs to be able to handle my imaging needs most of all; while I like my office, I can always go watch a DVD in the living room. Gaming? I thought that's what Nintendo or PS2 was for? I still believe the old (and probably false saw of "If you want to keep a computer running, keep games off of it.....") My other half has three game systems, so games on the computer is not a consideration.

I'm currently on a CRT --- but after having used Dell's big LCD at work recently, I might be willing to switch; most probably in 12-24 months when the CRT dies. It's three years old, but still allowing me to deliver acceptable color in the images I submit.....

[raz-0]

OK, I played with photomechanic, and kudos to you for not torturing yourself using inappropriate tools to manage your piles of digital photos. However, it is a memory hog, I can imagine PS and it might not play well in the same sandbox if you are making heavy use of both of them at once.

As for 15-20 second lags doing an edit photo in PS from PM, I'm not seeing it, which makes me think you are swapping chunks of application to disk when you do it, which I am not. I imagine you have pretty large files sizes, and I top out at 2048x1536 and I'm throwing 1.5GB at it and two real CPUs and 2 virtual CPUs. I also use PS 6.0 at the moment, really haven't had the need to upgrade. opening in PS with PS open already from PM takes about 1.5 seconds. Other possibility is if your images and contact sheet are on your USB or firewire drive. That would slow things down considerably. PM burns most of it's time on reading form the hard drive.

For portfolio, I can only guess as I can't reasonably attempt to reproduce the situation. I'd suggest two problems. First is that if the archives come off your external drives, DON'T DO THAT. Copy what you want to archive to a IDE or SATA drive and burn form there. From the USB drives, you run a much greater risk of buffer problems when burning. With piggish programs combined with burn-proof style technology on the drive, this will look like things freezing up. If your mobo's USB drivers are sub optimal, this can cause some real system hassles. If the above isn't the case, check to see that your DVD drive is a mster on the second cahnnel, they demand more resources than CD burners would let you get away with. Mainly because the technology doesn't allow as aggressive caching as CDs.

Since you have reasons for wanting to escape physical limitations of your motherboard, I'd upgrade. Like I said, I'd go with that gigabyte board above based on features and cost. I'd throw in 4 sticks of 512mb each of pc3200 ram that is sold in pairs. If cost is an issue, I'd see if you can scrounge up the specs of the memory in your system and match it with two more 512 sticks to shave off about $145. Your investement won't be as useful going forward, but given your uses, you probably won't notice the difference unless playing video games or editing video in an application that has some form of real time scrubbing or preview. Upgrading the video card will give you a better 2d image, and possibly higher refresh rates if your monitor isn't the limiting factor there. However, there's nothing I'd recommend under about $125 at the moment. Since you have color spaces worked out for you at the moment, I'd leave it alone until upgrading to an LCD unless you don't mind adapting to the on monitor color change. The DVI signal quality on the card you have varies from attrocious to sub-par depending on who made it and on what day of the week they did it, and DVI is THE way to go with an LCD. IF you read lots of text, a good LCD on a DVI connection with cleartype pays back major dividends in reduced eyestrain. Once upgrading the motherboard and ram, the next upgrade I'd consider is getting a faster 800Mhz FSB socket 478 CPU that supports hyperthreading. the speed will boost everything, HT will boost parts of photoshop and Photomechanic.

Before you do that, if you have all your HDs hooked up at the moment, try running quick bench on all your drives. ( http://www.majorgeeks.com/download1612.html ) This will let you know which ones are fastest for planning your new arrangement.

A word of warning for installing OS. Since your XP is old, it is not XP with SP2. That means no matter what SATA capable motherboard you have, you won't be able to boot from SATA unless you provide the drivers at install. you will need them on a floppy and you will have to press F6 during install to provide manufacturers scsi drivers. (yeah it's SATA, but that is the process you need to initiate anyway). this may actually be why you can't boot from it on your system. (no drivers at install time)

General performance tuning tips (can even apply these now).

1) turn off active desktop

2)turn of the XP theme and go back to classic, it has less overhead.

3)turn off system restore. You can turn it on and make manual rollback points when it makes sense rather than beat the crap out of your system all the time.

4)settings->control panel->system. choose advanced tab, pick perfomance visual effect should be adjust for best performance. advanced should have processor scheduling and memory useagre both set to programs.

for a more in depth description of cutting back the bloat on XP, see this link. ( http://www.3dluvr.com/content/article/123/1 ) greg's a nice guy and knows his stuff, but his list of services to shut down has a few too many on there for some people and can cause problems. Don't follow that part to the letter on which services are ok to shut down.

5)optimize your page file.

Rules of thumb. Page files are faster, less haslle, and less fragmented if you used fixed size page files. Page files must not be put on removeable drives unless you never intend to remove them (you will make things very unhappy). Unless you are making heavy use of your page file, it really doesn't matter if it is on fast disk, especially if you keep it as contiguous as possible. Under 1GB of system ram, use 150% ram size. 1GB to 1.5GB use 100% 2GB+ set it to 1.5GB max. For photoshop, don't put page file and the PS scratch disk on the same physical piece of hardware regardless of partitioning. Put the PS scratch disk on the fastest hard drive. Put the page file on the seocnd fastest. Ideally, put them on different drive chains so there is no contention for the controller.

On an existing install, you can get the closest to optimal this way. A) boot machine, run something like crap cleaner ( http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=4191 ) to get rid of most temp files and other normally acruing cruft. goto settings->control panel->system. choose advanced tab, pick perfomance, pick advanced, select change under virtual memory. select no paging file, then set. You will have to reboot at this point. C) after rebooting, run disk defragmenter on your paging file drive and reboot. D)after this reboot, go back and set your page file to a fixed size that is appropriate.

On a new install, before anything else, just set the page file to an appropriate fixed size.

6)optimize photoshop.

A)put your scratch disk on the fastest drive you have. with enough ram, page files will not get used, but PS ALWAYS winds up using the scratch disk regardless of ram available.

B)choose an appropriate image cahce setting. The image cache is the number of photoshop screen redraws it keeps in memory. These are big, and 8 is the maximum. Dropping the number means things like undo and history changes may take longer, but they no longer compete with your filters and tool actions for memory. 2 or 4 is usually appropriate unless using phtoshop for digital painting.

c) memory usage should never really be set to a setting that would equal less than 125MB of leftover ram. There is NEVER any point in letting it have over 2gb unless you are in a 64bit OS. I generally am happy with setting it to 50% witha gig or more of ram. For working with larger images, try both 50 and 75 and see which feels smoother.

7)keep parasites at bay.

Don't use IE (firefox + opera will cover you for 99.9% of web pages) , get good spyware cleaners installed, consider installing startup monitor and startup control panel (no links provided, because they do not have any way to unistall them. If you are feeling adventeruous, PM me).

8) norton anything is not your friend anymore. At one point norton used to be good, it has become so intrusive and heavy handed it negatively affects a large number of apps, and can lead to some severe instability. If you don't have it installed already, avoid it.

That about covers the general advice. For your specific situation, there's also the following based on my best guess at which drives will perform best.

SATA - 74GB raptor as master. You will boot form this, install your apps here, and have you PS scratch disks here because it is the fastest.

IDE1 - WD 160GB 7200 as master. Old 80gb 7200 as slave. Assuming the 160GB gets installed blank, before anything else is on it, move your page file here and make it fixed size. This will give you best page file performance while still taking backseat to the PS scratch file.

IDE2 - DVD burner as master, other optical as slave. DVD burners are more picky about not being master when burning as a general rule.

That's about it. (and probably more than enough to digest in one sitting).

[shred]

Good info.. I would suggest putting the page file on a fast disk if he can (while still avoiding the PS scratch file). Sounds like Nik is hitting it a lot (how to check: when things are being sluggish, is the boot hard-drive working?).

Used to be you could even have two page files on separate disks if you had two drive channels. That rocked. I haven't looked for that feature lately however.

[SiG Lady]

God, ya' gotta love the Computers forum.......!

Oh, and there's some easy, definitive (and lengthy) explanation(s) about Page Files on http://www.theeldergeek.com.

[Putty]

I think there are alot of schools of thought on page files and virtual memory. Benchmarks show a negligable gain from altering your swap file. First you need an understanding of the definitions being bandied about before you undertake messing with your pagefiles.

Physical RAM ~ The amount of Memory installed on a system. Physical RAM is "way" faster than a "swap file" or "swap space."

Swap File ~ The file that is located on your hard drive that "acts" like Physical RAM but is alot slower.

Virtual Memory ~ The name used for the sum of Physical RAM and the Swap File. In other words: Physical RAM + Swap File = Virtual Memory. You cannot "disable" Virtual Memory even if you disable the Swap File. Meaning, 2 GB RAM + 0 MB Swap File = 2 GB Virtual Memory.

Now here are some settings from fastest to slowest, with NO RECOMMENDATIONS for any alterations. Personally, I would leave it alone and max your Physical RAM.

-No swap file at all. Some software may fail. You also need "much" memory to do this. Greater than 512 MB, but I recommend 2 GB. (Sometimes games need a certain amount of "swappage" in order to run as well as sound cards.)

-A static swap file on a separate hard drive (and preferably, controller) from Windows and frequently accessed data.

-A dynamic swap file on a separate hard drive (and preferably, controller) from Windows and frequently accessed data.

-A static swap file on a separate partition, but on the same physical hard drive as Windows.

-A dynamic swap file on a separate partition, but on the same physical hard drive as Windows.

-The Default: A dynamic swap file on the same partition and physical hard drive (usually C:) as Windows.

[from ViperB]

Before you decide on a motherboard brand, do the work yourself and visit the manufacturers technical forums, especially for the mobo model you are going to purchase. Here you may see a plethora of problems posted .....or not. Also make sure you dont get the first revision. NewEgg.com is pretty good about avoiding first revision mobos for resale. I used to use Abit, but now dont. I recommend Asus as well as a 64 bit AMD for a current system. My .02

[raz-0]

working with masses of images, you want a static swap file unless you NEVER add and remove images from the drive with the swap file. You also want to do it before it gets fragmented. Moving tons of images on and off the drive with a dynamic page file will cause it to seek a lot.

Run quickbench against a drive. A contiguous static page file is likely to come closer to the sequential read/write speed than the random read write speeds you will see.

It isn't that a non pathological static page file is faster than a non pathological dynamic page file, it's that the static page file set up right doesn't tend to become pathological. (you won't get rue sequential reads, because management of space within the fixed page file area may still result in random seeks)

The page file recommendation isn't for speed it's for set it and forget it maintenance mostly.

As for windows on a fast disk, that's not terribly useful other than boot time unless you turn off DLL caching. system DLLs tend to get written sequentially since they are some of the first things installed on a system, and performance reading them into the cache is decent. Where they WILL get flushed to is the page file.

I generally don't recommend running without a page file, too many things are picky about it, and it does not fail gracefully IMHO. For a situation like nik's where he's likely eating up vast ammounts of RAM with large format digital image files, no page file is just a recipie for disaster. HAving a fixed page file can be bad too, but with the settings reocommended, he shouldn't have too many issues cropping up from it running out.

When I said my recommendations were general, I meant apply in general to nik's usage as described regardless of upgrade choices. Adding physical ram is best because even fast disk is slow. Which is why I gave PS scratch files priority since they get used ALL the time regardless of ammount of ram. Nik's planned upgrade to ram makes the page file something that should be getting only occasionally used, so I gave him decent fire and forget type settings that should prevent any nasty surprizes.

for motherboards, I'd probably give supermicro the thumbs up for reliable stability, but they tend to not be terribly tweakable or price competitive. ASUS generally makes a solid product, but I'd avoid their workstation boards until you can find feedback from early adopters. Abit is currently not to be trusted. MSI is currently headed in the abit direction, as their power circuit design is getting sub-optimal. Intel is generally ok, but are overpriced and under featured for the most part. For first gen intel chipsets with newer intel chips, they are likely to be the most reliable, but that doesn't necessarily mean the first gen product is good to go. Currently gigabyte, at least their higher end offerings, are very attractive, and solid performers. They are definitely making coices that contribute to not having to RMA their product, like redundnat BIOS and active cooling of the chipset.

The Athlon64 chips, especially the 939 pin ones that have dual channel memory controllers are VERY nice, and I'm pretty impressed with them. However, nik said price was a consideration.

Personally, I find the gigabyte K8ns-ultra to be a really great board. has the dual bios and active cooling, as well as some nifty extras like IEEE1394b (800mb/s firewire) and a firewall built into the network adapter as well as two network adapters. It's what I built my girlfriend's machine off of, and I have to say it was one of the most painless builds I have ever done. With a 3000+ AMD 64 with socket 939 at $156, it's not a bad setup. But it's definitely more expensive, but would have more upgrade room in it. (would be able to plunk a 4000+ ini it when it drops form it's stratospheric pricing at the moment). Another reason for not mentioning it, is that it would appear that some DVD burners' firmware have issue with some combinations of burner+athlon64+chipset. And it's unclear what the magic recipie for success is. Not a situation I'd recommend for someone looking to keep the budget down at the moment. But I guess it should be pointed out. Especially since socket 478 is essentially end of life. Still well supported, but socket T is out for intel so it is only a matter of time.

[Nik Habicht]

Thank you one and all, but especially raz-0 for writing what could be the beginnings of a book. For me this makes up for the OB match cancellation in a pretty big way. I've got a bunch of reading to do. I never imagined when I joined this board almost four years ago, that I'd be getting this kind of assistance from fellow shooters --- but I don't know why I'm surprised. I've yet to meet a finer group of helpful people. Thank you for sharing your expertise and letting me learn how to build/maintain/service and repair some more of my stuff......

Money is important here primarily because I don't like spending money on computers --- they're primarily work tools for me, and after six years or so of having my own digital darkroom the appeal of spending cash on it wears off --- unlike the necessity. (Spending cash on shooting --- way more fun.) That said, I'm willing to spend the needed amount of cash to do this. I realize that some see this upgrade as an imperfect proposal, requiring another future upgrade, but it lets be back gently into the reality of building my own computer. I'll have to buy another MOBO with a different socket, ram, etc. down the line. My drives (at least the SATA ones) will hopefully still be useable as will case, power supply, and some peripherals.

norton anything is not your friend anymore. At one point norton used to be good, it has become so intrusive and heavy handed it negatively affects a large number of apps, and can lead to some severe instability. If you don't have it installed already, avoid it.

What do I use instead of Norton? Currently I'm running Internet Security and AntiVirus. The computer is connected to the net via a Linksys Router/Wireless-G network thing and Cable Modem. XP Firewall is disabled.....

[Putty]

The Servers at work run E-trust. I use F-Secure (FProt) from datafellows.com for home use.

Ive been railing against Norton for years, good to see Razo railing as well. Stay away from zonealarm for the same reason.

[George]

Norton sucks on any platform, especially on HFS+ (journalled) volumes

--

Regards,

[raz-0]

I've seen people complain about zone alarm, but with the exception of it becoming corrupt once, I've only had issues with it you would ahve with any firewall. When it did fail, it let me uninstall it gracefully and everything went back to working.

I have a write-up I did for another OB person on what to use for security on the cheap. I'll post it when I get home later. Frankly, if you don't use IE and you don't use outlook, your odds of avoiding problems shoot through the roof.

Ideally, get yourself behind a cable/dsl router and use the NAT included with it to keep the outside out. The only reason I used software firewalls was because it would alert me to what was inside trying to phone home. Since I was able to drop using IE for all but a few very specialized sites that I consider trustable, that hasn't been much of a need.

What do other folks like if they don't like zone alarm? ZA tends to work more than it doesn't from my perspective. The windows firewall has some inherant problems that make it less than ideal (basically it keeps the outside out mostly ok, but it isn't so hot at keeping the inside in).

[Putty]

Although i have no familiarity with this program, I hear it is good. BlackIce.

[OpnBlstr]

You can also try the Computer Associates e-Trust and EZ Firewall combo free for one year through Microsoft. I have used their virus scanners for years on Windows servers. Check out

http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/d...ds/default.mspx

When your year runs out look for the next free trial offer! I haven't paid for antivirus software for five years!! The firewall is actually pretty good after you have run all your software at least once and told it to go ahead and let that program through. It's kind of a PITA at first though.

The AV software doesn't have much of an impact on system performance. I do NLE editing on Premiere Pro, DVD authoring, page layout, Photoshop, and UT2004 (gotta play sometime right?). I never notice it slowing things down.

BTW, the MS AntiSpyware (formerly by Giant Software) is a great product. IMO, it kills everything else out there. I use it on all my home PCs and was using it on the workplace PCs until I discovered it interferes with a proprietary printing app we use. They will start charging for it in July but for now it also is free.

[OpnBlstr]

Oh, almost forgot. Have a look at the Silverstone Temjin TJ06 case. It's a BTX wannabe that mounts the mobo upside down so the processor and mem sticks are at the bottom of the case. It then has 120s at the front and rear of the case connected by what they term a 'Wind Tunnel' which is a fancy name for an acrylic tube. The processor and RAM reside in this tunnel and any heat they generate are immediately expelled from the case.

Using this case (or one of the other cases on the market based on it) you can run a good processor sink like the Zalman 7000 and turn the fan to minimum or sometimes even off completely to keep things nearly silent. It's a really great case that looks classy - or should I say business like.

http://www.silverstonetek.com/products-tj06.htm

[raz-0]

the above promised security/online living notes edited slightly to make sense on a forum to a general audience.

First thing you should get if not running your own cable/DSL router with NAT,

is a firewall. If your version of XP has service pack 2 in it, you

have microsoft's firewall. To check if you have it, goto

START->control Panel->security center.

If you don't have it, or don't like it, a decent free alternative is

zone alarm.

http://www.zonelabs.com/store/content/cata...sku_list_za.jsp

it comes with a fairly decent tutorial on how to use it (last time I

checked).

To test the efficacy of your firewall, you can have your ports checked

at this site. Choose all ports unless looking for something specific.

The guy who wrote it is pretty paranoid, so pretty much everything

fails. but unless you get red blocks back, you are mostly ok. ona

windows box, port 113 will be hard to stealth completely.

http://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?rh1dkyd2

Basically, as far as security goes, the two most targeted applications

are Internet Explorer and the various flavors of outlook.

As far as alternate browsers, the overall best alternative as far as

equivalent compatibility with IE is firefox. Firefox has some nifty

extensions for it like bugmenot, which basically accesses a communal

pool of logins for pretty much every news site requiring you to

register to see content. It also has a pretty useful ad blocker

extension as well.

you can get firefox here.

http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/

if you add opera to it, you can deal with nearly 100% of all web pages without cranking up IE.

http://www.opera.com/

A good alternative for e-mail is thuderbird.

http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/

If you are forced to use outlook for business reasons, you want to

turn off html mail and make sure you get all the patches for it from

windows update. HTML mail uses the same engine as in IE, and is

subject to ALL the same exploits, except the nasty pages show up in

your inbox.

Those all prevent most bad stuff from getting into your system

passively, but since people download things, and exploits pop up

faster than fixes, you need stuff to clean out the problem stuff.

First off, the biggest source of issues is ad-ware, spy-ware, and

mal-ware. basically crap that piggybacks on stuff that is quasi-free

and tracks your web usage, what you buy, adds their own ads to web

pages and other unethical stuff.

No one thing takes care of all of it. but a combo of ad-aware and

spy-bot search & destroy covers about 95%

both come in free flavors.

ad-aware

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=506

spybot

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=2471

Then there are virus scanners. Since you bought a laptop, you probably

have one bundled with it. If not, AVG is free. But you have to

register to get your key (registration is free).

http://free.grisoft.com/doc/2/lng/us/tpl/v5

If you want to get more advanced, and especially if ad banners bother

the heck out of you or you just don't want anyone pushing malware on

your system via a rogue ad banner, you can put a bunch of local

redirects in your hosts file. I've attached my hosts file, and the

file in general lives in C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\

(benos folks can PM me for my hosts file if you want.)

Make a backup of your old hosts file before replacing it.

[Nik Habicht]

The never ending saga of cries of "Help" continues:

Components arrived Wednesday --- and I start building at 8 p.m. By 11 p.m. the box is built. By 12:30 a.m. I still can't get XP in and take a break for dinner and some TV. I resume around 3 a.m., and finally find the instructions on Giga-Byte's website telling me to dump a folder of files from the enclosed CD to floppy so the system can make a SATA drive the boot drive. After 15 minutes of frantic searching for the laptop's modular floppy drive, I find it and things go smoothly from there. The machine rocks! Thanks for all the tips, suggestions and detailed instructions.

Now for the disaster part: On Thursday, I burned out my last firewire card reader on my laptop --- this is Lexar's original purple one from early 2002, and they don't usually last this long. I order replacements. In the meantime I pick up a USB 2.0 card reader locally. When I plug it in the newly built desktop the computer freezes up. CTRL-ALT-DEL doesn't do anything, the mouse doesn't move, CTRL-Q doesn't do anything. I hit the power switch and after four seconds the system shuts off. Hit it again, and everything in the case appears to power up --- fans are all running --- but there's no start-up beep and the monitor isn't getting a signal. I need someone to confirm my diagnosis --- or to point out the gaps in my logic.

I'm guessing by the lack of a signal that I either blew the mobo or the graphics card --- but the lack of beep makes me think MoBo. Would I have blown anything else with the MoBo? Processor? Ram? When I get my hands on an identical replacement MoBo, can I just plug everything into the same connectors I used on the original and expect the system to boot normally --- or am I going to have to start over on loading the OS and Applications?

Thinking back to the build, the only thing I didn't examine thoroughly were the case's front firewire and USB connectors and their respective pins on the mother board. The connectors looked to be keyed properly for the pin array --- so I plugged 'em in rather than comparing the MoBo wiring diagram to the case's tech description. I'm guessing that my problem originated here --- and I can easily live without the front connections and simply add a FireWire Expansion card or a hub.

This is eerily reminiscent of getting a driver's license and surviving my first accident with a flat tire and a busted wheel.....

[shred]

Hmm.. usually the PS will shut itself down for a while if it detects a flat short.

Given as how it seems to be working, the board may be hosed. But, unplug it from the PS pop the batteries and let it sit for a bit and plug everything back in to see if maybe you popped a resetting fuse on it.

Did your system used to beep? Lots of BIOS don't beep on boot anymore. If you have a PS/2 keyboard, the lights should flash early in BIOS POST-- if the NumLock key does anything, that's a sign that things are working too.

If you need to swap the MB, swapping in an identical one should work fine.. XP does try and authenticate that you haven't changed too much, but if it whines, you can call MS and they'll let you in.

[raz-0]

I haven't ever seen a USB port adapter that was set up with the wrong pin outs, most complicated I have seen is the adapter split into two halves, and you ahve to get pin0/1 at the right end of things.

As for firewire, I've seen all sorts of hairy things including every pin individually separated into it's own wire and mis-color-coded and mislabeled in engrish on the case side, and the standard connector layout abandoned in favor of linearly arrayed bare pins on the adapter side (which I guess is why you see the messed up stuff from the case people).

As for warnings, the most warnings I have seen say you'll burn out the controller, not the motherboard. However, I can't say I have tested the warnings.

It sounds like you are not even POSTing, Classic diagnostic step is to unplug everything but the CPU, RAM, video card, and PSU, and see if you can get it to POST. If you can get it to post, turn off any option to boot off of usb, or if you can't turn it off, have it last in boot order. (if you have to go this route, try hooking up a CD rom or floppy as well so there is something to seek first rather than the USB controller). However, you didn't say if you unplugged the card reader after it didn't work. There can easily be problems with enabling boot from USB and hooking up USB periferals. If you haven't unhooked the USB reader, unhook it, try rebooting, if it reboots, follow the same advice above for disabling or moving down USB booting things and it should work plugged in.

shred's advice for seeign how dead things are and swapping stuff is correct.

[1hotrod]

I have to agree on the Lian Li cases, are really nice.

But for a motherboard, I prefer the Abit because of the ease of overclocking it.

I overclocked my Abit BD7II with P4 1.6 to about 2.4 for about 2 years without any problems. But it really depends on the cpu, board, and memory combo.

You will see a big difference in the bus speed of 800, and using a P4 2.8+ with H/T, but will cost you about $300 for a new board and cpu