Vista Thread

[Sanchez]

Yes, it's determined by the speed, not the amount.

[Wesley]

My Ram speed is 1066 but the motherboard's highest is 800. :/

[DCK]

My Ram speed is 1066 but the motherboard's highest is 800. :/

But you bought a new Core 2 motherboard, didn't you? How can that be? What's the chipset?

 

Anyway, more RAM will make a difference because of Dual Channel.

[Jimbob]

I really need to sort out my graphics card/motherboard. Keeps crashing the display about once a week. May need to buy both a board and a card as i think mine is built into the board.

[Wesley]

But you bought a new Core 2 motherboard, didn't you? How can that be? What's the chipset?

 

Anyway, more RAM will make a difference because of Dual Channel.

 

It's a ASUS P5N32-E SLI Plus. NVIDIA 650i based chipset? I think.

[DCK]

It's a ASUS P5N32-E SLI Plus. NVIDIA 650i based chipset? I think.

You might want to flash your BIOS, it might enable the memory to go faster. It's a pretty high-end motherboard (albeit a bit old), so it should be able to do it.

[Wesley]

I tried using the overclocking BIOS feature and chaning it to 1066 but it simply crashes on startup.

 

When trying to change it back on the BIOS you can only enter the BIOS 1 out of 10 times and when you do get on it, it crashes 1 out of 10 times when trying to save.

[Deathjam]

I have had my laptop for less than a year, and recently, Vista has been telling me that I have xx days (currently about 13) to back up everything and then install another copy of vista. I have just been left thinking: WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?! Why would my licence expire less than a year after buying my machine, and from PC WORLD of all places (a den of evil I know but I needed a laptop badly at the time). Pisses me off thinking about this as I simply dont have enough space on my external hard drive to back up everything I want

Is this normal with Vista. Will I have to magic another copy out of the air and install Vista?

[Wesley]

I found a good internet usage monitor.

 

http://lifehacker.com/software/bandwidth/download-of-the-day-freemeter-bandwidth-monitor--windows-244649.php

[Blue_Ninja0]

I was not paying any attention to the RAM score. I thought it was based on it's size and almost everyone would get 5.9 for 2GB or something. But it seems it's speed related.

 

My ram is a 2 DIMM of 2GB DDR2 working at 800mhz dual channel.

But the timings have been reduced so it's working at 4-4-4-12 which might explain the boost in the speed and in the score. I had to tweak the voltage to 2.0 Volts or something though.

[McPhee]

I tried using the overclocking BIOS feature and chaning it to 1066 but it simply crashes on startup.

 

When trying to change it back on the BIOS you can only enter the BIOS 1 out of 10 times and when you do get on it, it crashes 1 out of 10 times when trying to save.

 

Update, not overclock.

 

Go on to the manufacturer's website and see if there's a newer version of the bios available because it might let you run 1066 RAM. If not then you'll have to underclock the RAM to 800, not the end of the world tbh because it'll let you tighten the timings up nicely

[Konfucius]

Pretty random but I was wondering if anyone else gets sick of the transparency in Vista. I turned it off because I couldn't stand looking at the blurry background of the button I actually wanted to click, anymore.

[Blue_Ninja0]

You mean you changed from the Aero to another scheme or just removed the check on the transparency option?

[Raining_again]

Pretty random but I was wondering if anyone else gets sick of the transparency in Vista. I turned it off because I couldn't stand looking at the blurry background of the button I actually wanted to click, anymore.

 

It looks hideous without transparency!

 

Right click desktop > personalize > window colour and appearance > enable transparency (untick)

 

or just change it to a darker colour on the scheme then it doesn't look as transparent without being ugly.

[Marshmellow]

Soo I just got a new laptop with 4GB of RAM. I know the whole only approximately 3.5GB is recognized on a 86x OS.

 

But I wondering if it's normal for computers running Vista to be using about 30-40 of that amount of RAM at any given moment...That seems a bit high to me.

 

I don't run many programs, I could just have Opera and MSN open and it'll be around 40%.

[McPhee]

Yup, it's normal. If you have free RAM then Vista will use it. When the RAM starts to fill up (like more than 70%) the OS starts shrinking out of the RAM again to free up more for programs.

 

It's a good thing, makes the computer run faster.

[Marshmellow]

Oh alright, cool. Thanks =]

[Wesley]

What's a good program to check for computer's temp.?

 

Normally when on desktop, with everything idle, my CPU cores are running very low, 0% for most and 5% for one. Right now one is at 50% constant and another keeps spiking at 30-40%.

 

I was just playing CS:S and I kept getting lag, but my ping is fine and I play it all the time fine...

[Sanchez]

Everest is what I use although that might be a bit overkill for you want. It gives the temperature of every single part of your computer.

[Wesley]

My PC seems to be okay now... hum.

 

Anyway, what's everyone's solution for backing up DVDs?

[Shino]

My PC seems to be okay now... hum.

 

Anyway, what's everyone's solution for backing up DVDs?

 

I use Nero or CloneCD.

[Sanchez]

Use DVD Decrypter or DVD Shrink.

[Shino]

Oh, wait, DVD Shrink too. I don't usually back up movies.

[Wesley]

I have been using Handbrake but it's come across a few that it won't encode due to copy protection..

[Mr_Odwin]

RipIt4Me or DVDFab Decrypter. Everything else is out of date.

Rip it to your HDD then use Handbrake on those files (if you can - never used it). I would go in and rough it with an avisynth script.