WeaponX

Was confused here as well ;)I'm with nightfox. If you mean imaging the drive instead, you will need to get programs like Norton Ghost or Acronis TrueImage. Both of these programs should be able to accomplish what you wanted originally there. Image files are meant for speedier "installs". It will be a one to one copy from this 3.2 GB hard drive to another hard drive you want to install the operating system on.

My company has a contract with Dell and I deal with them frequently. It's a popular brand but when it comes to reliability, I would have to say they are not so strong in that category. I know some users may be running these for years without any problems, but I fix these machines a lot all over the schools here. Two main problems I see that go bad are motherboards and power supplies. I don't know what Dell model you have there, but the ones I deal with are the Optiplex GX models. These are basically in a very similar situation where you are going to have now, so it's probably best if you stay away from them.I took a look at the first two options you mentioned there and I would have to say option 2 is better in the long run. It can support the Core 2 Dual processor, which is a big plus. Not to mention supporting 4 SATA hard drives (2 more than option 1), up to 4GB of RAM (will need it if more memory intensive programs come out) and a PCI Express slot. I'm not sure how far you guys will be going in terms of video, but using a PCI Express video card will be better than using the commonly known AGP ports. They will perform much faster than AGP.I say spend the extra $100 for a better system. This one will be best since it's more upgradeable.

No problem faulty.lee. Thanks for the followup :)I read up on some site that mentions replacing the transformer wires. I saw their pictures and the whole transformer piece is filled completely with all those wires in 4-8 sections. That's what led me to believe that the piece is going bad.I don't recall seeing any big capacitors on the inverter board itself. Just curious, when you say solder another cap parallel to the current one, do you mean basically making them join together at the joint area? Just want to know what you mean since I'm new to soldering.Anyway, the whole LCD and inverter board was already ordered and I'm still waiting for it to come in.

Learning something like this can be a great experience to the computer illiterate. The thing is that most people don't have the slightest idea what the insides of their computer look like, let alone how to remove the parts. I have seen people damage parts inside their computers because they don't know how to remove them properly. I have seen on the Dells where the AGP card is not only mounted to the slot with a screw, but also has a green latch locking it down a little. So if a user doesn't know in advance to push the latch a little before tugging the card out, they can end up damaging the contacts.True that some people pay technicians big money for doing something as simple as this, but at the risk of not breaking anything, probably worth it. Then again, most users will call technicians to help because they don't know what's wrong...that's where the tech's knowledge comes into play

I tried everything already and the warranty has expired already. The tech support for the laptop will not provide much help...as usual. They want me to send it in for repairs at $85 per hour for labor plus parts...no thanks.At this point, I'm pretty sure it's the inverter board because the laptop actually still has the backlight on at times when I turn it on. I would assume that if the backlight is bad, it won't ever turn on again unless it was replaced.Anyway, I ordered the whole LCD assembly yesterday since it was for a good price. Will use what I need and resell the other good parts online.Thanks for all the help. I will post some kind of followup to this once I receive the parts for it.

unimatrix, this is a PC laptop. Will this still apply then?I'm trying to hunt this piece down with whatever information I jotted down from that inverter board, but can't find much so far. Might have to end up paying around $90 for that whole board

Welcome back Logan

OK, I found something that doesn't look so good on the inverter board. I'm attaching it to this post here (sorry about the image, don't have a digital camera at hand so had to use my camera phone). Is that the capacity you were referring to or are these capacitors suppose to look exactly similar to the ones found on motherboards? That black piece shown in the picture seems to be missing two HUGE chunks of wiring inside. It has two gaps there and the only thing remaining in those gaps are one wire on each section. This is definitely not normal right? I guess that rules out the backlight...I need to find this part as soon as possible but can't find any place that sells them for under $90 or so. I didn't know that this piece cost so much. The part number for the inverter is 71-4200R-D02 and I tried searching high and low on eBay and Google to no avail.I'm still new to soldering but do they sell that burnt out piece separately so I don't need to shell out a lot of cash for the inverter board? I might as well try replacing that part if it doesn't cost me an arm and leg for that piece also.EDIT: I guess they call that piece the transformer from what I just found out online. Anyone know of a place to get this specific transformer and replace it?

@04dsmith86: You can always put a link to the graphic images (or attach it to your post) instead of embedding them directly on the post itself. That should make it 56k friendly also.

Usually most routers will have two encryption algorithms you can use. WEP or WPA. WPA is more secure than WEP so if you have that feature, use it over WEP. The more characters (and more random...not words in the dictionary) it is, the better the security. Changing your WPA/WEP password periodically is also very helpful. Even if someone wants to use your wireless connection, it will be almost impossible since you will be changing the password from time to time (this won't give them enough time to crack it in most cases if using WPA with a strong password). Regarding whether it will slow things down or not, it probably will a little. I too have asked this question before in the past. See this topic.

I don't think there is any way around this. Xisto will be seen by search engines and spiderbots only with text data. So in order to contribute your tutorials to the Xisto community, your tutorial must include text related material. If you want, what I recommend doing is describing the steps in your tutorial and then mention that there is a video for those who want to see this in action. Always good to have the instructions handy while watching the video

Just want to add that it's definitely the backlight that Buffalo was referring to. I was reading up on this earlier since my laptop is also having a backlight issue. Instead of having a different color though, my entire screen is blank or flickering even though I see the information in the background if I look at the LCD at an angle.Love to fix things....so you betcha I'm going to replace that backlight for my laptop

Grafitti, I don't know if you did this already, but did you try to use the fixboot command from the XP recovery CD? It "should" be a simple procedure to remove the vista boot loader, but since it's Microsoft....I guess nothing is always straight-forward Take a look at: http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/1040/vista_how_to_uninstall_vista_dual_boot_machine/ Try those steps and see if it helps out. Some steps won't apply to you (like the boot.ini) since that part is already missing the Vista entry.

I'm with Tailson....I usually just call it gunk also. But I like ginginca's word better

saneax, not sure if you read this already, but try the tutorial mentioned at: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ If that doesn't or you tried it already, take a look at these other how-tos found by Google.

Don't have a Windows 2000 machine in front of me now, but I don't think the sc command was in there. From what I found here, you might have to use the delsrv.exe command in the Windows 2000 Developer Kit. When it all comes down to which method to use, try the one that avoids the registry (mastercomputers' method ). You want to avoid doing anything in the registry if you don't have to. So use the sc command if you have XP and try using delsrv.exe instead if you have Windows 2000.

Hercco, both the MacBook and MacBook Pro will support the dual display feature. I think Apple refers to this as Extended Desktop in their descriptions of this feature. But if you want to have TWO external monitors attached, then it might not be possible. This does not seem to be possible (at least not now) because the MacBook's only have one DVI port on it. You will have to use one external monitor and the one on your MacBook to make it dual display.

Support for Xisto (free package) is only supported through ICQ as far as I can see there. I suggest checking your credit like TavoxPeru mentioned earlier. To do this, login to Xisto Forums as usual and then scroll down a little until you see a yellow box. Your credits should be mentioned right there on the first line. If it's below 0, then you have a problem. You will need to contribute more to this forum to gain more credits. Read this topic on how everything works. All your questions should be answered there.

OK, thought I would give Norton Ghost a shot, but that failed. I connected my bad hard drive as master and a blank hard drive as slave. I tried to choose the option to do a disk to disk copy but got this error message: Error. there is no valid Source Drive to choose (11032) I tried switching it so the master is the good hard drive and the bad one is set to slave, but still a no-go. I just had something that came to mind. Does it matter if I set the jumpers on cable select for both? It should auto-detect what they are connected as with more recent computers right? This computer was built by me about a year ago using a AMD chipset. Will try giving Paragon a try if no one else has any other suggestions...

I don't recall seeing any big capacitors inside before. The ones that I could see all look good though...none are swollen that I can see. How do I know which one is the capacitor to replace? I'm new to soldering but don't mind trying it out since I have the tools around.I'm still looking for a place to buy the LCD inverter board since I read on many sites that it should be the first thing to try.

Hi Gin, you might want to give your text boxes a different name or use the textarea html tag instead. I never used it myself before but this site shows you how to use it: http://www.codeave.com/javascript/code.asp?u_log=7004 It will basically be using a specific name that you can reference it to so the selection only applies to the text you want.

In most likeliness it's not completely turned off. I remember seeing a dim background (just the light is off and hard to see unless it's tilted at an angle). Is this an actual capacitor on the logic board or are you referring to the LCD inverter board?Not using battery. My battery died out on me after a little over a year and I have been using just the AC adapter for the laptop all these years (been a good 3+ years). If it's nothing too complicated, I should be able to repair it if I know what's wrong.The problem has returned after a little while. The thing is flickering now as I am typing this. Really starting to get on my nerves. I want to fix this problem instead of buying another laptop. If anything, I will be going for a desktop this time since I don't really need a laptop anymore. Mainly needed it for college back then...

OK, I played around with it further today. I tested it with my regular CRT monitor and tried to turn off the LCD with the monitor toggle button on my keyboard...that didn't work. So I was working on two screens. The LCD turned itself off at times and flickered here and there, then turned back on. I just ignored it and worked using the CRT monitor. After a few hours I noticed that the LCD on my laptop is not flickering for the longest time. I unplugged the CRT monitor cable and have been working on the LCD itself for the past hour or so. Any ideas why this might be happening?I was just about to go buy the LCD inverter first to see if that board might be bad.I made sure it's not the hinge or anything so I adjusted the LCD in different angles when it was flickering, but that didn't seem to help.

@Grafitti: So Paragon won't wipe out the second hard drive that I want to save the image to right? I still didn't get to do the cloning yet since I don't have a blank hard drive. But if Paragon can do this without deleting all my data from one of my current hard drives, then I can use one of those instead.

Was hoping it was just an intermittent problem, but I tried again this morning. After a few minutes the screen started to go crazy again. I took the LCD apart (boy was that a nightmare) and did find a cable or two that ran into the middle of the hinge into the logic board (most likely). I wanted to open up the entire laptop and see how it was connected, but after I got the LCD part off, I was too frustrated to continue any further.Is it worth the time to see if the LCD connector is ok? I will take the whole thing apart again if necessary. Otherwise, I was thinking of getting a replacement part (if it's not the entire LCD that's bad). I read up online about this and see people mentioning about some kind of bulb and LCD inverter. Would there be any chance that it could be the same thing here?I have wanted to get a new laptop for a while now but kept saying I won't do so until this ancient beast dies out on me. Unfortunately, it went out on me at a bad time. Need to start saving up for a new laptop now :)I can't believe this, but I resorted to using an old iMac G3 that I had in the closet to go online here. I will try using a monitor from my sister's desktop computer and see how that works out. I'm pretty sure it's some kind of screen issue at this point.