What's Under the Hood? (What kind of Computer do you have?)

Post by **hierachy** » Tue Dec 23, 2003 9:02 pm

Yes, I am currently using on board.

Post by **aTOMiC** » Tue Dec 23, 2003 9:04 pm

That may be your problem. You may have to get into your bios and adjust your settings to switch to the new card. Most boards auto detect the presence of a new card in the agp slot but yours may not. I'd look over the bios settings and see if there is an option for that.

Post by **hierachy** » Tue Dec 23, 2003 9:12 pm

I already checked bios, there's no option for that. Which means I have to disable it on the motherboard right?

Post by **aTOMiC** » Tue Dec 23, 2003 9:14 pm

Hierachy wrote:I already checked bios, there's no option for that. Which means I have to disable it on the motherboard right?

If you have your motherboard documents, there is probably a jumper setting for that function. You'll either move or remove a jumper to set the vid properly to take an add on card.

Post by **hierachy** » Tue Dec 23, 2003 9:18 pm

Yes, this is the part where my knowledge fails me and I become lost.

Post by **aTOMiC** » Tue Dec 23, 2003 9:24 pm

Hierachy wrote:Yes, this is the part where my knowledge fails me and I become lost.

Typically what you'd have is a single or cluster of jumpers. The jumpers are tiny square plugs that fit onto 2 tiny metal prongs sticking out of the motherboard. Each set of prongs represent an open or closed circuit. Depending on the way the instructions say, you would find the proper jumper "the on board video is disabled by setting JP10 to off by removing the jp10 jumper." so all you would do is look at the motherboard until you find jp10 (which is marked ususally by tiny white letters on the board next to the jumper and are usually in a diagram in the document) then follow what the instructions are telling you.

Post by **Worm of Despite** » Thu Dec 25, 2003 8:12 pm

Here's mine:

19" flat-screen monitor
2.8 GHz (Intel Pentium 4)
512MB
ATI Radeon 9200 AGP 8X w/ 128MB DDR video memory
160 GB HDD
Microsoft Windows XP

Post by **aTOMiC** » Thu Dec 25, 2003 8:22 pm

Looks like a pretty nice system, Foul. Gaming on what you've described must be pretty great.

Post by **Worm of Despite** » Thu Dec 25, 2003 10:02 pm

Yes sir! Morrowind runs smooth as silk on it, and my god, the water ripples . . . May not sound like much, but you have to see it in-game!

Post by **Nav** » Mon Jan 12, 2004 7:47 pm

AMD XP 2400
512 MB DDR RAM
80GB Hard dRIVE
128 MB GeForce 4 graphics card
Windows XP Pro (cracked, naturally)
Nice 16" Dell Monitor
The biggest keyboard in all of Christendom (or the Microsoft Natural Multimedia Keyboard, as Bill Gates would probably prefer it to be known)

All for less than £400. eBay is a wonderous thing.

Post by **aTOMiC** » Mon Jan 12, 2004 8:54 pm

You are doing pretty well, NAV. Your machine is similar to the one I'm building in the next month or so. I have a few things from my old machine that I continue to use in the new one. That should save a few bucks.

Post by **Nav** » Tue Jan 13, 2004 3:36 pm

Yeah, the actual machine was already made up when I bought it. I'm thinking about putting my next one together myself, I think I know enough to do that now.

Funny thing is, my computer as a whole cost less than the components would have seperately.

Post by **aTOMiC** » Tue Jan 13, 2004 3:41 pm

Nav,
I encourage you to try assembling your next pc. Its very cool if you can get through it. These days the tough part is mostly installing your software. Most components only plug in one way so thats pretty simple. I suppose things like making sure you are grounded when installing the memory and such is important. As to the single component price, if you have a re sellers license you can purchase parts wholesale. Failing that there are "Computer Warehouses" that have reduced rates even to the public. Good Luck.

Post by **Nav** » Tue Jan 13, 2004 9:20 pm

Well it'll be a whil before I need a whole new system, I've had this one less than six months. You're right about the software issue though, that was the single biggest headache. I didn't realise that you couldn't install Win 95 on a big HD, and my cracked copy of XP was an update disk. I got hold of a HP recovery CD with XP and service pack 1 on which worked initially, but the program which was supposed to activate windows didn't work. After 30 days I had to install my, older, XP update over the top of it. Talk about time consuming.

Post by **aTOMiC** » Wed Jan 14, 2004 4:47 pm

Nav, the good news is that you figured out a solution. Lots of people give up after the first couple of problems pop up. Nice going!

Post by **Nav** » Tue Jan 20, 2004 2:34 pm

Yeah, it's working really well. Now my only problem is the seemingly ineffective NortonAntiVirus 2004. It's happy to tell you that you have a threat, but it can't do anything about it and suggests that you ignore it.

It reminds me of my sister screaming about a spider in the bathroom:
"There's a spider in the bathroom!"

"Put it out the window then."

"No, I can't do that! You do it!"

"Gah! Why did I install you in the first place?"

Mixed metaphors there, but I'm sure you get the idea.

Post by **aTOMiC** » Tue Jan 20, 2004 3:36 pm

I share your frustration, NAV. Wait a second! NAV. N A V? Norton Anti Virus! What the heck is going on here? HAH!

Post by **Nav** » Tue Jan 27, 2004 7:43 pm

Just coincidence, now that I've shortened my username. You can't prove anything.

I went through every recommendation on the Symantec site and it didn't help, so I decided to reinstall. I was worried that I'd lose my registration, but it seems the people at Symantec had thought of that, thankfully.

Looks like its done the job anyway. At least I hope it has, if I have to reinstall every time I need my virus definitions updating, McAfee will start looking very sweet.

Post by **aTOMiC** » Wed Jan 28, 2004 9:06 pm

It is very uncommon for an NAV user to have to reinstall in order to obtain definitions. With any luck you won't have that hassle in the future. McAfee is good but NAV pretty much is the standard. I'm happy to hear your username and norton have nothing to do with each other.

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What's Under the Hood? (What kind of Computer do you have?)

What kind of pc do you have?