HellFire121

whoa thanks for the replies, anyway it definatly wasn't the hard drive (which is at the front, the noise was comming from the far back).so the next time i hear this noise i'll just get all the dust out with a compressed air can.thanks -HellFire

Lately my pc has been making a strange grinding noise, it usually happens once then doesn't come back for another few weeks. Usually bumping the case hard from the side then rebooting fixed it but it kept comming back. It was like a grinding noise, it got louder as the pc booted into windows, so i figured it was a fan issue and i checked to see if anything was blocking it.I tried undoing my case (after a bit of trouble finding that the case actually slides out ) and looking at the fans to see if they can spin freely and that nothing is blocking them. All 4 of them were clear and could spin freely.I left the pc for an hour and an hour later i turned it on, same problem. I took the case off again and turned it on to locate the problem. It was a fan alright, the case fan. There was a build up of dust around it but the strange thing is that it was still spinning normally. When i cleaned it then it was fine.This is a bit strange though, can dust make a moving fan produce weird noises? I don't think it was the dust. What do you think it is?-HellFire

yeah i use godaddy and i agree that they are the best, they have a real good range of names to choose from and they also offer webhosting and dedicated servers etc, i think last time i checked it was about $9 a year for a domain but you can rest assured that you are getting very high quality service. From what i've heard they are the most reliable too so you should have the name up and running 24/7i would rate it 10/10-HellFire

That could be the problem.. i don't see how you can even login to steam to play your games.. otherwise you might want to try a full reinstall of steam. Uninstall it first (including all the steam games) then search around in the registry for the steam keys/values and remove them. Now install the games but if it happens again i'd say it's definately because of no internet connectivity. Try the game on one of your friends computers and see if it runs, try it with the internet and let it update etc.. -HellFire

yeah.. just keep your software upto date and don't be the idiot that has to download every single thing he sees on the net. sure way to get yourself infected. you might also want to get yourself a router because depending on which one you get it has an inbuit firewall and it can block the ports, stopping the connection.-HellFire

I think icq would be the best. I've tried trillian but i don't think it's that good. I use msn too but i think it's just got too much stuff in it. The only reason why i use msn though is because nearly everyone i know uses it which is a shame.. icq has a much better and smaller interface and there are things you can do in icq that you'd need to pay for in msn (seriously.. who will pay money for chatting?)also icq has a profile searching tool and alot of games (again, all games a free unlike msn).the only downside is that only a couple of people i know use icq..-HellFire

Hmm i think it could be a firmware problem.Did it recently happen or has it always happened?You might want to check the modems log (if it has one) to try and find the problem. It might be related to your operating system something related to service pack 4. You could check the microsoft website/knowledge base to try and find something.Other than that just check if your firmware is up to date.-HellFire

Nah i havn't played it but i've heard people mention the game and from their point of view it sounds good.I think it's an rpg game i'm not too sure because i havn't bothered to look it up. Anyway i'm not a fan of rpg games it more fps for me because i just find rpgs too boring and most of the time.. less social-HellFire

Use winamp. It's just so much better and easier to use plus it has so many useful features and because it is from the company of shoutcast it has an inbuilt shoutcast broswer as well as tv browsers too. You really need to try it out to see just how good it is -HellFire

I've had this a few times but i just need to unplug the power cable and plug it back in again. It sounds like a power supply issue, you might want to check if there is any visible problems with your power supply. When this was happening to my old computer it might have been because around the internal vents there was a burn (looks kind of like rust). I doubt it is a software problem. If you can try another PSU and it still doesn't work it might be a motherboard or overheating problem.Other than that i'm not sure-HellFire

I have flight sim 2002 but i can honestly say it does get boring. I only used it to learn how to use my joystick. After when i was pretty good at flying planes i got combat flight sim which in my opinion is sooo much better and way more entertaining. don't bother with normal flight sims unless you have a real need for it.-HellFire

I don't think it is a problem with limewire getting sued, i mean yeah sure it's an ok program but i have found better open source ones. Limewire only connects to the old and limited network gnutella1 but other clients i have seen connect to this and gnutella2 which is much faster. If limewire does get sued well people will need to find other ways of getting their files, i agree that limewire did nothing wrong, it's the people who use it. Is it really their fault if they release some great sharing program and then a bunch of users come along and start hosting illegal stuff?-HellFire

Mine's pretty good.. my first one at least:CPU: dual core pentium D 320 (3ghz)RAM: 1gbHD: 120gbGraphics: 256mb geforce 6600 (PCI-e)motherboard: gigabyte 8i945pl-g1 dvd rom drive1 cd-rw driverealtek 882 HD audioand other things like the digital audio and usb 2. i'm thinking of getting a 7800 gtx card later onMy old pc isn't really that good but it still runs ok..1ghz celeron400mb ramcd driveintegrated graphics (nvidia tnt 2 aladdin)it runs fine but it's slow at 3d stuff-HellFire

I agree, it is so much more crappier than internet explorer 6, it just looks ugly and you don't know where everything is. Also it doesn't even include some of the new features in these other browsers. I have also found that the pages look 'mirrored' what i mean is that it looks like there is another copy of the page that is slightly aligned to the left or right and it makes it so much harder to read which is a pain. I'm sticking with opera 9 it has everything i need and i only use ie for the sites that opera doesn't support. ie 6 - good enough for the less than average user ie 7 - out of all the new features it looks ugly and you can't find your way around opera/ff - get it. much more features, easy to use, downloadable themes. -HellFire

Yeah that is probably why, some laptop cards are pretty slow to keep up the portability and stuff. Maybe if you get a small external wireless connecter or something it could bring up the speeds. If it doesn't work i'm sure you can always return it and maybe you can start looking for some software tweaks.I doubt the tweaks will help but you never know.-HellFire

I'm not really a fan of grand theft auto i don't know why but it just seems boring to me. I prefer games like counter strike and battlefield. i think battlefield 2 is similar to the grand theft auto games with the exception that you are actually on a battlefield and your mission is to conquer the other team.I've played-GTA1GTA2GTA3GTAVCGTASAand another one i think but i can't rememer it. Out of all of them the first 2 are the most boring.-HellFire

Go with Gimp. It's the only one that even comes close and i think you can use it on linux too i'm not sure. It has most of the very basic features and some advanced ones that you'll find in photoshop so it's a good alternative. The interface looks somewhat similar too so you won't need to relearn where everything is.-HellFire

Heh i don't think it will change much. In my experience i havn't come across nearly half of what is stated above but it would be effective against children looking at that stuff, which of course 99.9% of families won't allow.-HellFire

I've played it only for a few seconds because it seems boring. The thought of a 2d game doesn't really bother me but i think player vs player is necissary in a good rpg game. There are better rpgs out there but for a person with a low end computer it's some cheap entertainment.-HellFire

It's nice to see google expanding to more operating systems especially if their making a linux based one. It looks just as good as it does in windows and i think we will be able to see more of google's products on different operating systems-HellFire

You will probably only see a little bit if not any difference. There is only so much tweaking you can do to get your speed upto your line speed but if you really want speed you should just upgrade your internet connection to a faster line speed. It's just not worth mucking around for the few extra bits a second.-HellFire

I don't use web based email simply because it's slow and unreliable. I prefer setting up my own emails in my Xisto hosting account and using them.Much more simpler and way more secure. Plus with onboard email spam checkers you can configure how you want, overall it's just easier for me.-HellFire

You can always usually find converters on the site of the software and most of the time they do a pretty good job, until the new version of phpbb comes out i would stick with smf unless you have a payed for IPB or vbulletin (which by the way is worth it!)-HellFire

Something strange like this happened to me but i didn't have itunes installed, everything was back to the default windows settings and even some desktop icons and start menu shortcuts were missing, after i rebooted it fixed most things except the desktop icons which was a pain to manually copy/fix all of them. Probably has something to do with the hard drive because on the same pc only once i had an error saying that the pc can't boot because there was 'no hard drive attatched' I turned it off and left it for a few hours then it was back to normal. strange -HellFire

I remember making a batch file to start a service and a few programs when windows started because one program would only run when the other was started and it made it easier, it's also a great way to learn windows shell commands and practise windows scripting. In my experiences the dos prompt will actually hold more power than the simple explorer.exe which makes it a very handy tool if you know how to use it-HellFire