The forum · September 2003 – July 2004 › OFF TOPIC
computer problems
posted by lazyboyzob12
Started by Alle · 34 posts · 206 views · this thread in the Internet Archive
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lazyboyzob1210 Oct 2003, 06:16 AHHHHHHHH!!! I can barely hear t[]c's music nor anyone elses using any MP3 player! Because it keeps skipping like a scratched CD! Every 10 seconds it will skip for 3 seconds. It skips UNBEARABLY during the first minute! Also my loading times for ANY program have tripled!?! I think my processor is fryin' out! Has anyone had this problem before? Or any help? :madgo: :angry:BALLISTIC SOLUTION10 Oct 2003, 09:06 might be your hard drive, try defrag. if it's your processor power, or even memory, try to keep from running too many programs in the background. if your system tray (i assume you're running windows) is as full as mine, ryou're running too many programs in the background. maybe this will help, but i'd actually have to take a look at your system to find hardware faults. wait, just thought of it...check your cpu fan & heatsink for dust buildup...especially if you smoke. i have to clean mine every other month. if they're dirty, they dissipate heat less efficiently. hope this helps.
cheers,
macDavid McGowan10 Oct 2003, 18:02 Balistic's points out some good things. M guess is you have a program thats not running right and its using up all your CPU cycles. try pressing control alt delete once, and looking at the process's running , and see which ones are taking up all the CPU time. kill it and see if things improve. if it does improve reinstall or just uninstall the program thats not functioning properly.
DavidOneLoneMan10 Oct 2003, 19:14 Were you ever at any time in the past able to hear the music OK? If so had you installed anything new into your system, software or hardware, just before the problem occurred? Both hardware and software can cause conflicts with other programs on a PC, software especially. If you have installed any hardware remove it and any accompanying software then see if you can hear music any better. If you have installed software remove it and see if the problem goes away.
If the problem persists try reinstalling your mp3 player software or installing a new player and see if that doesn’t clear things up.lazyboyzob1210 Oct 2003, 20:38 I got 9 icons in the System Tray! I defragged last night with no luck! Cleaned up my CPU Fan. But it always stops then I smack the comp and it spins again? But it has been this way for 2 years. Yes music worked until 3 days ago when I kicked it. THE CAUSE OF ALL MY PROBLEMS! So I think I cracked the CPU on that dumbass maneuver. THANKS FOR ALL YOUR HELP. If anyone has any other ideas drop a line here! It is DEFINITELY a performance prob that started when I STUPIDLY kicked the computer, not hard tho! :devil: Update: I am gonna take off my CPU fan and clean ALL the dustoff of it. My CPU processes are normal also.Alle13 Oct 2003, 21:27 testDjDaed13 Oct 2003, 23:04 Looks like its working a bit better now Alle.MiGhTy-MaX14 Oct 2003, 00:56 I'd replace the fan... It sounds like you really knocked the bearings out of alignment. Remember, thunk the box, don't kick it...lazyboyzob1216 Oct 2003, 00:34 Ya know what I am just gonna buy a new computer! Screw this shitbox! Now how do I put the contents of my hard drive onto a new comp? Sorry for buggin' you guys to death! ^_^ You all are SO incredibly helpful. Looks like a trip to Best Buy is necessary in a few months!David McGowan16 Oct 2003, 02:43 Well the easiest is prolly just to take out your old hard drive and plug it into the new computer, and copy off the files you need. You wont be able to copy over everything but you should be able to get all your music and mail and favorites, crap like that , but all your software is going to have to be reloaded from disk, you cant copyover the programs, because they are installed into the registry and what not.
David :lol:
oh yeah when you plug in your new drive, pin one (red stripe) on the ribbon cable faces the power plug on the hard drive, make sure its jumpered corectly too master/slave.ephex16 Oct 2003, 02:46 i remember there being more posts here, and one of them was a pretty long one by me, but they aren't here anymore! :o hehe
if you can afford it a new pc couldn't hurt. just PLEASE don't get a dell and PLEASE don't go to best buy :P
as far as transfering your files, you have a few options. if your current computer has a network card, you can get a crossover ethernet cable and connect the two computers directly without a hub/switch and have a mini-network between the two. then you can set up file sharing and things will be pretty simple from there.
otherwise, you can physically take the hard drive out of your old computer and shove it in your new one [providing you have a free power connector, i've seen some computers [esp. dell, but i haven't been unfortunate enough to have to open up one of the newer ones] that ship with the BARE minimum and you might not have a spare one... to fix this you can always plug both computers in and hijack a connecter from the old computer :P [just make sure they are both turned on, even tho the old one will [hopefully :P] not be doing anything].
i know i was more than a little vague, if you ever need any help my ICQ # is ▓ ICQ number hidden
and my AIM s/n is echoSky303.OneLoneMan16 Oct 2003, 04:16 lazyboyzob12 wrote:Ya know what I am just gonna buy a new computer! Screw this shitbox! Now how do I put the contents of my hard drive onto a new comp? Sorry for buggin' you guys to death! ^_^ You all are SO incredibly helpful. Looks like a trip to Best Buy is necessary in a few months!
If you buy a good computer with an open architecture it should have at least 2 HDD controllers. The main boards that use the new Serial ATA HDD controllers also have standard IDE controllers for a total of 4 HDD controllers. This means you have room for 4 IDE devices and 4 SATA devices. The SATA HDD's are fast, as fast or faster than the best SCSI HDD's but they are also as expensive. Top of the line systems are now shipping with SATA HDD's but you pay for them.
Either way you should have enough room for at least 4 IDE devices (HDD's and CD drives) on 2 IDE controllers. Depending just how your new system is configured you should have room on either the primary or secondary IDE controller for a second HDD. On the primary this will be the SLAVE. On the secondary it could either be the SLAVE or the MASTER. My system is set up with 2 HDD's on the primary controller and 2 CD drives on the secondary controller. I prefer it this way though some say having CD drives and HDD’s on the same controller do not cause problems. I disagree.
As a slave drive your old drive will not be the bootable drive. Your new system will undoubtedly come with an OS, probably Win XP. Depending on your current OS this may mean that some of your programs will not run on the new OS. Some of the programs may have to be reinstalled as the new registry will not have the entries loaded for them (programs that do not make use of the registry should run as long as they will run on the new OS).
If you have a Windows based system and go to a Mac, or vice versa, then your old programs will not run unless they are compatible with both.
;)Trancefuzion16 Oct 2003, 05:44 ephex wrote: if you can afford it a new pc couldn't hurt. just PLEASE don't get a dell and PLEASE don't go to best buy :P
I have nothing against Best Buy. I would not recommend going there to choose a computer because the people who sell them to you aren't that great but Circuit City's worse. They pay commission.
Anyway, I would say research a new computer on www.eopinions.com and then go to wherever you can find it cheapest. I reasearched mine first and bought it off bestbuy.comDjDaed17 Oct 2003, 15:40 if you can afford it a new pc couldn't hurt. just PLEASE don't get a dell and PLEASE don't go to best buy
Dells are the worst computers in my opinion. I am currently running two Compaq's and they haven't given me any problems. I have always been a Compaq guy, but that is me. If you don't want to spend a bunch of money, they are a good buy. If you buy a computer that doesn't have room for a second hard drive in the case, then you can always get a USB one, those work quite well and you can swap them from computer to computer. Programs installed on the USB hard drive might not be able to run outside of the system the original programs were installed in, but I have never had any need to switch between computers.
As for Best Buy, they are a good store, just not for computers or electronics. I have bought a few items from them that I was highly disapointed in. They did not work for that long, and I had to return them. Anyway, there is my two cents. There is a fifty dollar fee for any more thoughts. Heh.ephex17 Oct 2003, 19:00 if you ask me, the one and only way to get a good computer is to build one yourself, and not with cheapo parts either. a top-quality asus motherboard, corsair xms memory, a nice cpu [amd/intel makes no difference], and a seagate or western digital hard drive are what i go with.
that's just me, if compaq works fine for you then great. if it aint broke, dont fix it. :P
as for best buy, they lost me for a customer when i heard about that msn/bust buy scam :shakehead: [the one where they stuck what looked like a free msn trial disc onto your order and it turned out that they actually signed you up for msn internet access]. and the computer parts that they carry are usually not the best.DjDaed17 Oct 2003, 19:39 With the Compaq desktop, I built it myself, I took an old Compaq computer, bought a new motherboard and more memory, a bigger hard drive, killer sound card and video card. I agree that the best and cheapest way is to build it yourself. If it happens to do something that you don't want, then you don't have to worry about sending the whole computer back to get it fixed, or take it to someone to fix it, you can either buy new parts for it, or fix it yourself.lazyboyzob1219 Oct 2003, 06:00 Here is THE comp I want! A Compaq!
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?j=...37&type=product
Thanks!
Looks like I have to wait 2 weeks for money tho! :PDjDaed19 Oct 2003, 06:18 Heh, best buy.OOBE19 Oct 2003, 22:00 Man, I hate Compaq. I bought my first Compaq 6 or 7 years ago...it worked fine for a while and then it started crashing. Everybody I know that has Compaq hates them. We have Compaqs at work and they truly blow. My advice to you is what the guys said...Asus motherboard (P4P800 or P4C800), a 2.4C Pentium 4 (800Mhz FSB), dual channel DDR Corsair memory (PC3200 or better), a fast hardrive, preferaby SATA... You can find these things on eBay for great prices. For little bit more than $1000 you'll have a BAD ASS system that's stable, fast, upgradable and overclockable.TranceSynthVania19 Oct 2003, 22:55 Dell PC's are great! Most of them are stable with music, games and whatever you want to put into one PC.OldDude20 Oct 2003, 01:55 I'm sitting here reading all the advice and opinions on computers and it all sounded good until a read a couple not so good about Dells. So I guess I'll add my couple of pennies and agree with TranceSynthVania when he said "Dell PC's are great!".
We've got five computers, three are Dells (2 PCs, 1 notebook), one a Gateway and one built-from-scratch machine and of the four, the Gateway is truly the dog. Unfortunately, it's the one I'm on now. It's about a year or so old and I'm giving it to my daughter when she moves into her own place at the end of the month. Beats using it for a boat anchor, especially when I don't have a boat. Then I'll hook the Dell to the net in it's place and keep on keepin' on.
We networked the Gateway and the new Dell to transfer all my stuff and it went smooth as silk. Did the same with the notebook for my wife's stuff with no problems. Years ago in one of the first computers we had we installed a new hard drive and did the master-slave routine which also worked fine. I guess it all depends on what you want to accomplish.
lazyboyzob12, I guess there's no real help for you in this post, but just wanted to let you know not to count Dell out altogether. We haven't had any problems with them. I maybe shouldn't have made that statement. Tomorrow all three will probably explode or something.
:devil2: Rick :devil:Lithius20 Oct 2003, 10:39 www.winamp.com ... B)ephex20 Oct 2003, 20:55 lazyboyzob12: the link didn't work :blink:
tsv: if you push your computer as hard as me, no consumer system is a good choice :P. well, there is one exception: alienware [which is actually pretty close to a computer i would build myself, only with a cooler case ;)]. my least favorite company is dell, however, as my worst experiences have been with them [not to mention my school has dell laptop's and a dell servers, both of which are constantly not working... it's actually kind of sad because we do have macintosh computers/laptops but because the servers suck it doesn't make a difference].DjDaed20 Oct 2003, 23:11 Alienware is tight. I want one. LolDavid McGowan21 Oct 2003, 00:51 Everyone has there own experiences and tastes. My are, Gateways , HP's Compaq's, Which are now the same company, all suck. almost always use low cost hardware shitty motherboards, underpowered CPU's and overload them with crap software so tehy are slow out of the box. dell's i havent had too much trouble with , but even they are bundled with lots of software now. pursonaly buy an ASUS motherboard, buy a genuine intell, p4 , not a celeron! buy seagate hard drives, NVIDIA video cards, plextor cd burner , sound is up to you. Those are all the indutrsy leaders, in realibe computer parts. thats just my suggestion coming from a former computer tech , and the only reason why not anymore is because im a sys admin.
our servers at work have got to be up 24/7. downtime is not an option, and ASUS.INTEL,SEAGATE are the most reliable companys.
DavidOneLoneMan21 Oct 2003, 01:12 lazyboyzob1221 Oct 2003, 18:25 lazyboyzob1221 Oct 2003, 18:34 Anyways it is a Compaq Preario 2200+ Athlon processor. Also my current comp is telling me under the System folder of Control Panel that my processor is a x86 or some shit like that! My computer is going to hell in a handbasket! I hate that stupid thing!
The Best Buy link probably doesnt work for some of you.
Compaq Presario Desktop with AMD Athlon™ XP Processor 2200+
Model: 6420NX
AMD Athlon™ XP processor 2200+ with QuantiSpeed™ architecture*
*QuantiSpeed™ architecture operates at 1.8GHz
256MB PC2100 DDR SDRAM for multitasking power, expandable to 1.0GB
16x maximum speed DVD-ROM drive; 40x10x40 CD-RW drive
128KB L1 + 256KB L2 cache memory for efficient processing
80.0GB Ultra DMA hard drive
Integrated ProSavageDDR KM266 graphics with up to 32MB shared video memory
Integrated 10/100Base-T Fast Ethernet network card; V.90 high-speed modem
6 high-speed USB 2.0 ports (2 front, 4 back); 1 AGP and 2 PCI slots open for expansion; 2 open drive bays
Scroll mouse; Compaq Internet keyboard with 1-touch access to e-mail and Internet destinations
Generous software package, including RecordNow for CDs and InterVideo WinDVD SE
Windows XP Home Edition operating system preinstalled
AMD, the AMD Arrow logo, AMD Athlon, QuantiSpeed and combinations thereof are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
Product Details
Warranty Terms - Parts 1-year limited
Warranty Terms - Labour 1-year limited
Product Height 16.55"
Product Width 6.88"
Product Weight 23.8 lbs.
Product Length 14.5"
USB Ports 6 USB 2.0 (2 front, 4 back)
Video Memory 32MB shared
Manuals Included User's guide, Microsoft Windows XP manual
Maximum CD-ROM Drive Speed 40x
Maximum DVD-ROM Drive Speed 16x
Keyboard Description Presario Internet keyboard
Modem 56 Kbps* ITU V.90 *Capable of receiving 56 Kbps downloads. However, current regulations limit download speed to 53 Kbps.
MPEG Yes
Network Card 10/100Base-T Fast Ethernet
Operating System Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
Other Control Devices (mouse, etc.) Presario scroller mouse
Parallel Ports 1
Processor Brand AMD Athlon™ XP 2200+
Processor Speed 1.8GHz
Removable Storage None
Serial Ports 1
Speakers Not included (I got some already!)
Software Included Microsoft Works 7.0, Microsoft Money 2002, Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia Deluxe Online, Intuit Quicken Financial Center/Quicken New User's Ed. 2003, RealOne Player, Veritas RecordNow, InterVideo WinDVD SE, Adobe Acrobat Reader, Norton AntiVirus and more
System Bus 266MHz (Pretty good?)
System Memory (RAM) 256MB
System Memory (RAM) Expandable To 1.0GB
Total Expansion Bays External: 2 (5.25"); Internal: 3 (3.5")
Total Expansion Slots 3 PCI, 1 AGP
Type of Memory (RAM) PC2100 DDR SDRAM
Available Expansion Bays External: 1 (5.25"); Internal: 1 (3.5")
Available Expansion Slots 2 PCI, "1 AGP" (I NEED THIS FOR MY RADEON 9000 AGP CARD!)
Audio Integrated AC '97 audio
Cache Memory 128KB L1 cache + 256KB L2 on-chip cache
CD-ROM Drive Shared
CD-RW Drive Yes
CD-RW Drive Speeds 40x10x40
Diskette Drive Yes
Diskette Drive Type 3.5" 1.44MB
DVD-RW Drive No
DVD-RW Drive Speeds No DVD-RW drive
DVD-ROM Drive Yes
DVD-ROM/CD-RW Combo Drive No
DVD-ROM/CD-RW Combo Drive Speeds No DVD-ROM/CD-RW combo drive
Game Ports 1
Graphics Integrated ProSavageDDR KM266 graphics
Hard Drive Type Ultra DMA
Hard Drive Size 80.0GB
IEEE 1394 Ports 0ephex21 Oct 2003, 20:44 Sounds good, just up the memory to at least 512MB.
Anyway, about the CPU showing up as x86... that's because it IS an x86, or at least based on x86 architecture :P. Maybe you confused that with 386?
Have fun with your new computer, whenever you get it ;)lazyboyzob1222 Oct 2003, 01:24 Finally my computer is saying it is a Celeron 367 Mhz again not x86 or that shit. But now my aunt;s comp is freezing everytime she plugs in the printer cable into her notebook. Weird huh?lazyboyzob1222 Oct 2003, 01:29 Alright fixed her printer! Woohoo!lazyboyzob1223 Oct 2003, 06:17 HA! Now my POS just restarted and then XP told me my login profile is corrupted and misplaced My Documents until I found them again! I HATE THIS COMP! For a second there I swear I thought I lost my t[]c music! I almost chopped my comp in half with my katana and a baseball bat! :lol: :devil:ephex23 Oct 2003, 21:10 I don't think computers like you very much :P
I know how you feel though, if I had a gun I would have had some real fun with my old computer. :devil:
BTW you have a katana?? ;)lazyboyzob1226 Oct 2003, 20:13 Yeah I got a cheap 30 buck blade. One of my workers decided iot was a friggin' good idea to stick it in a blade sharpener and grinded off some of the side! :madgo: Oh well! Anyways the sound is still buggy on my PC besides that all is well but I am waiting on $ for a Hp or Compaq.