PC Problem...

[Killa-Eyez]

A bit off, but baught me an Acer Aspire 5920 703G32Mi (only available in Spain?) laptop for € 580,-. Downside I had to reinstall Vista in English and crack it afterwards since the original was Spanish. The Vista Home Premium key underneath on the sticker didn't work. Anyone know why?

[itadakimasu]

if you have the sticker you shouldn't need to crack it ... do the activate by phone option and call microsoft. The last 2-3 times i've done this it has been minimal to no wait, and the process of saying the sequences of numbers to the computer is painless.

as long as you have the COA you're alright and they will either get you activiated or issue a new key or something to get you fixed up.

[Killa-Eyez]

Actually I've discovered the method I used to crack it is pretty much the same as a lot of Laptops being sold and self-activated. There's a command prompt telling you it's activating windows the first time you boot the thing. But like I said, the version of Vista was Spanish.

[Buffalobiian]

The last time I dealt with Gigabyte boards was when I was still a Tech back in early to mid '06. They tended to have issues like the socket for the possessor not responding, or the PCI's not working out of no where, or the memory slots burning out.

Original post

Well, I sure hope one of those ain't happening now. Starting yesterday, my comp doesn't successfully boot first try after having it off for a while. It happened this morning, and again after I got back from work. It happened at one or two places in the BIOS, one of them when it was checking for IDE devices, and another time before the press-any-key-to-boot-from-CD prompt. It boots every time after that. I haven't reproduced the problem enough times, so this is all I know. Even though it had nothing to do with it, I just ran defrag and chkdsk /f for general health. Even though the system's still under warranty, going through the process is very much a bitch, so I just hope this prob clears itself up somehow. Maybe I should mention it had had cases like this in the past, but rare, like 3 times in the last half a year or so, but nothing consistent.

[Killa-Eyez]

A friend-o-mine had something similar. The pc wouldn't boot only if you had a bootable windows cd inserted. The cd will prompt you to press any key to boot from it and if you press nothing the pc will boot. But without it, it just reboots. Didn't want to look into it cause I just had the thing installed and all. I figured to just leave the cd in.

[Buffalobiian]

I tried it again this morning, and it booted up. I'm just gonna hope it stays that way. I'll just keep an eye out for it for a week or something I guess.

[Phoenix20578]

Original post

Well, I sure hope one of those ain't happening now. Starting yesterday, my comp doesn't successfully boot first try after having it off for a while. It happened this morning, and again after I got back from work. It happened at one or two places in the BIOS, one of them when it was checking for IDE devices, and another time before the press-any-key-to-boot-from-CD prompt. It boots every time after that. I haven't reproduced the problem enough times, so this is all I know. Even though it had nothing to do with it, I just ran defrag and chkdsk /f for general health. Even though the system's still under warranty, going through the process is very much a bitch, so I just hope this prob clears itself up somehow. Maybe I should mention it had had cases like this in the past, but rare, like 3 times in the last half a year or so, but nothing consistent.

Well, that doesnt sound like a board issue to me. That sounds more like a hardrive or OS issue. I'd say if it happens again, and for your sake i hope it doesnt, try a system repair from the Windows CD. Ether the harddrive is starting to fail, the cables for the HD are starting to fail, or the OS has been damaged a little.

[Buffalobiian]

Well, it's been almost a week now, and there's good news and bad news. Bad news, I can't find where the problem was/is. Good news, it's booting fine. I guess I'll just let it go for now, and be happy that my comp works.

Thanks to Phoenix20578 and Killa-Eyez for the input.

[Buffalobiian]

My brother and I recently bought two graphics cards for ourselves. When we decided to install them, we found out the 2-slot 9800GTX+ doesn't fit into his computer. So I told him I'll swap him his 9800GTX+ for my 4850, and we'll sort out the price difference.

When I installed the 9800GTX+ and put in the drivers+reboot, a message comes up saying:

"Your NVIDIA graphics card is not reveiving sufficient power. As a result, the graphics card has lowered its performance to a level that allows continued safe operation

To remedy the problem, ensure that your NVIDIA graphics card has the supplamental power connector attached."

Both the 4850 and 9800GTX+ were installed (on separate computers) with a 6pin/2*4pin adapter. The 4850 works fine (damn bastard). However, I've noticed that the 4850 has 1x6pin socket, while the 9800GTX+ 2*6pin sockets side by side.

Each of the 4pins are connected to a different rail to 500W PSUs.

I'm lost for what to do. Right now, the safe-mode clock speeds are lower than my 8500GT .

Does this problem mean:

a) the PSU is failing.
b) the 9800GTX+ needs to be connected to TWO 6pin/PCI-E cable/adapters.

The PSU that's with the 4850 is very noise, so I'll have to get a new PSU anyway. But:

if (A) was the case, I'd have to get 2 PSUs.
if (B) was the case, I can get one, and swap the other.

Note: min requ. of 4850 is 450W. min requ. of 9800GTX+ is 400W?!

Any help appreciated



EDIT: Okay, I nicked my brother's adapter and tried it, and it works. Guess it really does need e PCI-E sockets filled for some reason. One new PSU it is then. Thanks for those who took the time to read it.

[Animeniax]

The nvidia card needs both 6-pin supplemental power plugs connected or it will give you that error, I think. As you said, new PSU will solve your dilemma (get a modular one so you can add the video card plugs when they start needing 4).

[Board of Command]

Yeah, you need both 6-pin connectors in there even though the card doesn't actually draw 225 watts, or anything close to that. They just design it this way so that the card doesn't draw the maximum theoretical current from any one connector.

[Buffalobiian]

Hmm...that said...does that mean there's no real danger in putting the settings back onto stock speed while I wait for my PSU to be shipped? Or is it simply configured to not allow that much power through 1 PCI-E socket?

It's funny because when I connected the extra adapter during testing, it was just running off a single 5/12v rail that the other adapter was sharing anyway:

6pin adapter1: rail-X / unplugged
6pin adapter2: rail-X / rail-Y

[Board of Command]

If you can manually set the clocks with only one connector plugged in, then I assume it'll work. As far as "danger" goes, it's not recommended.

[Buffalobiian]

*sigh*.....I'm hating this as much as you guys hate reading my problems, but here goes:

I've been trying to get a wireless PCI card to work, since it keeps coming up with "memory could not be read" errors.

I've been stuffing around so much that I think Windows settings have gone haywire. Now, when I plug the wireless card, the computer doesn't detect it anymore, and it's not showing up under the device manager. I've tried system restore to the day I installed the driver, and that hasn't worked out for me.

I'm going to try the following:

1) system restore to a really REALLY early date and see if that does anything.
2) reflash a backup I made a year ago and start from there again. (not 100% sure it would work, since I haven't had to use/try that software/backup before, fingers crossed).

Thing is now, all that trouble would be for nothing if it was actually the PCI slots (all 3 of them!!?) that are broken. So is there a way I can test out if it's the slot or not?

I've swapped cards with my brother, and his works while mine doesn't, so it's my comp's problem. I've dug out an different and old wireless PCI card and tried that, but it doesn't work neither (no detection). I don't have any other PCI cards other than wireless ones, and from the same Brand, so that doesn't help.

Anyway, I'm backing up all my data now onto HDD, and after that I'm going to start from step 1 above.

I would like to know what you guys think, or any tips I should be aware of before I go ahead. File copy finishes in an hour or so, so I'll recheck here for I do it.

Thanks guys. (I'm as tired of this shit as you guys are of reading my posts )

Edit: System Restore to 2 weeks back fixes the problem up, so it's good that I don't have to do a year's worth of updates. I sure hope Vista's backup utility is better than this though. Sys Restore stuffs up my computer in its own ways too though. Reg entries and files on HDD don't mach, and it's not infrequent )

[Xelbair]

I have got an advice for you - next time format system partition to FAT32(or NTFS if you want little risk) install windows, do a img backup with clonezilla(free soft) instal drivers and make another backup image. just keep doing those backups after major uptades(its a good idea to restore fresh system and keep programs on other drive) and in 5 min you cant get your settings back - it saves me hours of work.

[itadakimasu]

NTFS stopped being risky pre-1999.... have you been living in a cave?

[Board of Command]

NTFS has been the standard Windows filesystem for years.

[Buffalobiian]

Okay, It doesn't look like Netgear Support understand English. They don't know what I'm asking, so I'm just going to post what I wrote here:

On my PC, I have entered the relevant information as follows:

http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/4842/windowsue5.jpg

Please note the Encryption type is WPA-PSK AES.

The router settings are as follows:

http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/3...cryptiots2.jpg

It does not give the option of WPA AES, only WPA-TKIP or WPA2-AES.

However, I can connect fine using these settings, and the wireless network viewer reports a WPA encryption:

http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/8151/wirelessgn1.jpg


So I want to ask, exactly what form of encryption is PC currently performing?

Has this ever happened to anybody?

[itadakimasu]

WPA uses TKIP - Temporal key 'interchange protocol' not sure about the last 2... anyhow. WPA was just an interim protocol because WEP was found to be too insecure.

WPA2 is a finalized standard and is supposed to be very secure. But WPA is going to be more then secure enough for the average civilian.

If you live in a suburban area ( not apartments or dense population ) i would not talk you out of using WEP even... i don't think there is a huge mass of people wardriving anymore... i could be wrong though.


And lastly - SSID isn't really important, you could make it anything just saying that because you blacked out the ssid in all of the screen shots. I made mine "no free internet here!" after i found 2 people ''borrowing'' my wireless connection.

[Buffalobiian]

So my router is configured with WPA-TKIP OR WPA2-AES. It'll try WPA2 first, then back down to WPA-TKIP if that fails.

Windows says WPA-AES!!

So....which encryption is it using anyway