Bogbas

Hmm to get one's heart beat faster while playing a game, one should just put some hard trance or heavy metal playing in the background. Works with every console/pc Pc wins on online gaming. But microsoft is trying to mess that up also.

Yes it needs to be connected to the PSU. I think that it should display a warning when you boot up that says it isn't connected to the psu when you boot. At least my 9700 did that. As for the garbled stuff, was the card perhaps overclocked? It might be damaged. But the 9700s (neither one were overclocked) I had occasionally booted with a lot of artefacts on the screen, so it might be something else. What kind of psu have you got?

Just throwing this in: maybe you need to install drivers for the device in winxp? As even internal sata drives aren't recognised by windowsxp without drivers or setting them in "standard ide" mode in bios.

The last pci graphics card that I can remember was some geforce 4. And that was several years ago. Check the motherboard manual to see what slots you have. I don't think that there's a radeon 9600 that isn't AGP. The fastest agp cards that exists are geforce 7800(something..) and radeon x1950(something..) But those are pretty expensive and might be bottlenecked by the rest of the system. What are the other specs on the pc? (Processor, memory, power supply)

http://news.teamxbox.com/xbox/13134/And-Grand-Theft-Auto-IV-Takes-Place-In-UPDATE-/ so it's running real-time on 360 or ps3. Daft posted that link a while ago.

If you somehow can reinstall itunes it probably will go away. Then again I don't know if itunes can be uninstalled. Or at least every time I have tried to uninstall quicktime/itunes the add/remove programs method didn't work. Sounds like the dll is corrupted. Jordan's suggestion works if you don't want itunes to start when you plug in your ipod.

If you can find some radeon 9800 or later used and with a reasonable price, that would run the game just fine. It doesn't look that graphically intensive to me. Someone who has the game should say something though as I can't be 100% sure... There are only a couple of reasonably fast AGP cards out I think. Nvidia has 7800 (something) and ati has x1950(something) but those are probably a bit too expensive. And pc gaming isn't that bad, you just have to build nearly top spec pc every three years

Yeah but the fx cards are ones that shouldn't have got released. They were too little too late from nvidia if I remember correctly.

Cable > wireless And I think that some USB dongles would not work very well on that distance. And then there's the security issue. And the cost and effort are smaller with cable. You just buy the cable, plug it into the router and you're connected. For wireless you would have to worry about SSID's, WEP/WPA etc.

Check the settings of the router for DHCP and make sure it's enabled. Or you could try to set a static ip for the pc. Use the same first three numbers that you use when connecting to the router's configuration page. Change the last one to something other than what the router has (between 1 and 254 though) example: if the router setup page is at 192.168.1.1 put the pc on 192.168.1.2

You have 533Mhz ram and no dual channel. You'd need an even number of sticks to get it working in dual channel. And the memory might be working at 400Mhz depending on the bios settings. But those probably don't have much effect on performance. You could try removing one of the RAM sticks and see if that changes. Check the motherboards manual on how to install the memory to get dual channel.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_1_cable There's a list of the cable categories. Higher number means better cable.

You could try this: http://www.bootdisk.com/usb.htm

Getting them to turn on is pretty easy. You just need to short one of the ATX power plug's pins to ground if I remember correctly. You might be able to use the three PSUs if you setup one PSU for the mainboard, one for the graphics card and the third to the drives. But it's easier & safer to buy a new one.

The pc list seems ok for the most part. But where's quake? And the first baldur's gate is better than the second one.

I think it's pretty hard to find a generic guide because there are so many different graphics cards out there. But There's one on the zalman website, just click on the "how to install" and select vf900-Cu LED. And it was pretty easy to do with the instructions that came with the cooler. http://www.zalman.co.kr

Those zalmans should be easy to install. The one I got for my radeon9700 was pretty nice. Actually I'd like to have that card on this pc but I can't because this motherboard doesn't have agp support. The 9700 I had performed better than this 7600GS.

"Perkele" - no translation as it's a Finnish swear word. For those interested in the word's history: Perkele

Why do you even need a virus scanner for linux? And firestarter is a nice free firewall for linux. I agree with you on the mac thing. There's little or no reason to stick to windows if you don't play games.

Yes on dry tarmac that's a good idea. But the experience from games can help when you drive on a slippery surface. Or at least help so that you won't panic when the car starts to slide. Good luck on your test Jordan, but I recommend that you rely more on your driving skills than luck

Try Ubuntu, nowadays linux is easier to install than windows xp/2000. But you can choose to do it the hard way if you like.

Oh ffs... Only gaming pc's last maximum of 3 years. Browsing the web, email, etc can still be done with a 6-7 years old pc. And I think that's the case with macs also. And as for stability, uptime for this pc (win xp pro): 10days, 1h, 18min, 45 seconds And during that time I have browsed the web, played games, listened music, watched movies etc. And it doesn't feel sluggish. On mac you'll get everything you would basically need from a pc, except games. But you can't upgrade it as freely as you could a pc. And generally the same hardware on mac is more expensive.

I accidentally used a dead term there. It was originally used for IBM- compatible pc's. But I meant like what the pc-specialist are selling. Pc's that haven't got a brand like dell, fujitsu-siemens, hp etc.

Well intel is trying to kill ide as much as it can. The core 2 duo chipsets (from intel, nvidia chipset(s?) have ide) don't have support for ide so motherboard manufacturers have to add chipsets for those. But it might be that dell doesn't have those (for example I think that new dell's don't have ps/2 ports for mouse/keyboard). And from what I've heard they alter the hardware a bit so the only viable upgrade solution will be dell or a new computer. I'd get a clone computer. That way you'd know exactly what you're getting and it's more flexible. And you wouldn't have to build it yourself. (And then there's that brands=evil in computers so I'm a bit biased...) Jordan can probably answer the vista questions, but I can't see how it would prevent that. But first I would try format and reinstall on the old computer. It might work wonders

Macs are nice and all that but they wouldn't be helpful in this situation. 1. It would be a waste of money (note: "preferably freeware" in first post) 2. If there's a need to get new footage, you just can't fire up taxi/fraps and css on a mac. You'd still need a windows pc to do that. And then you'd have to transfer them from one machine to the other. 3. (relates to 1.) Getting a mac to do this job would be as sensible as shooting a fly with a bazooka.