faulty.lee

Jimmy89:Bigger screen usually require bigger lighting element (florescent tube), thus more power consumption. You need to look at the native resolution of the screen also. Some 15" and 14" will have the same native resolution, say 1024 or 1280, then it serve no purpose to get the 15" other than for bigger font display, normally for shortsighted or for those who're not used to small font. If the 15" comes with higher resolution, then by all means, it's a better choice.xboxrulz:"Its performance/watt is not really different than AMD's either." Direct calculation is not very accurate. As i've read some article mentioning about idle power consumption. If your CPU is operating at 100% full throttle all the time, then the performance/watt is applicable. But as normal computing is consuming the cpu at non consistent pattern, and most of the time it's idle, that calculation is not very representative in this sense. The performance/watt is measured at maximum power consumption. It's actually more of a marketing gimmick then an actually technical information.

Looks like your hard disk has had some bad sector on it. You can try running your computer in safe mode, by pressing F5 when the computer boot up. If that still doesn't work, you might need to reinstall your windows. You only need the Windows XP installation disk. You should have one when you first got your pc. If you computer is still under warranty, you can go ahead and get the hard disk replace for free. The technician should be able to help you backup your existing data and replace the windows when you get your hard disk back. He might charge for the service of backing up your data and reinstalling windows.PS: Next time don't type in Camel Case, it's kinda hard to read.

Core 2 Duo yes, but not core duo. Core duo is basically 2 slow P4 slap together on the same die. Maybe you can look at some performance benchmark between core 2 duo and AMD sempron, turion and 64. Tomshardware http://www.tomshardware.com/ should give you enough info on this.

I'm a supporter of AMD too. But there's no doubt that Core 2 Duo is great performer when it comes to laptops. Further more the battery life is significantly longer than AMD's. The power management of built in GMA950 is definitely more efficient compare to external graphic chip. Being on the same die as the northbridge, means they can save energy from the interface glue logic and memory management logic. Being less powerful in terms of graphic capability also means lower power consumption. As i've mentioned before, if it's not for gaming, then being a lesser performer at 3D will not show any difference for normal 2D application. Unless of cause you're willing to give away some CPU resources for Vista and it's Aero effect. For desktop I'll definitely recommend AMD. I hope they can survive the recent attack from Intel.

Have you try look for DOS or Linux one?

Well, if you get those with Vista, you're paying for it's license, which i think it's more than AUS$100.That's the external version of PCIe, which electrically same with the desktop counterpart. It's suppose to replace PCMCIA, for faster speed and lower power consumption. But availability of hardware choices is still limited. Anyway, most laptop already has everything you need built right in, so that will usually be left unplugged.

For non vista model, here they offer DOS or linux, which has no charge for the OS, . But you might have problem getting the drivers for XP. You might need to manually download individual driver from their original manufacturer. Some vista driver do works on XP.Graphic accelerator will consume less power. If you need to work with 3D or if you want to play 3D games on your laptop, then you'll need the independent graphic chip, preferably with independent video ram as well. But i won't recommend playing games on laptop. For the same price, i can get a much better rig(desktop) for gaming purposes. If you use XP, and with 1GB or ram, 5400rpm is good enough. 7200rpm one will also consume more power. If you can find out the amount of cache on the harddrive, that's more representative. Normally it's 2MB, if you can get one with 4 to 8MB will be a lot better.

Maybe you can try reformat again. Also you might wanna try using XP SP2. SP1 still lags behind in hardware support. Before you last reformatted you windows, how did you install the video card? Like normal? Is this hardware configuration comes as it was, or you have upgraded the video card? If you have another video card, then it's good that you can try it out. Either that if your motherboard has 2 PCIe 16X slot, you can also try swapping the slot. Sometime this help to trigger something in windows, so it redetect your hardware. Another method is Clearing the NVRAM in your bios. There should be such option or something similar, just enable it and restart. Windows will redetect some of the basic hardware.

Yes, but normally windows should at least prompt for it, or will show that it's installing driver for the new hardware if there's a compatible one available from windows.

It seems weird. You can actually boot into windows with that video card, and display properly. But Windows didn't detect any new hardware. Did you check that under device manager, what's under Display adapters? The driver you tried, is it in the CD or you download yourself manually? Either way, it might have been a wrong driver.One more way is to boot into safe mode and see what's under Display adapters in device manager. If there's a few being displayed, you can try uninstall them, then reboot into normal windows, now it should prompt you for the driver.Good Luck

I didn't notice you're from australia. So you might want to recalculate the price I mentioned earlier. I was referring to USD.Dell seems good. I have a few friends using it, so far so good. But I would still prefer HP.

Those are decent specs as those offered here. I just came back from our PC fair here. The cheapest around here is RM1999, about $571, which is celeron processor. The one with similar spec, but 160GB hdd and ATI X300 VGA, it's RM2699, about $771. Since most laptops nowadays are quite similar in specs, only 2 things you need to really look into. 1, processor. Core Duo is basically the mobile version of P4 Duo Core. Where as Core 2 Duo is the new Conroe series, which is the successor of Centrino's Pentium Mobile. It's diff from P4, and it's much much more efficient and faster. If you're looking into long term usage and performance, i would recommend getting a Core 2 Duo. Which is of cause slightly more expensive. You can trade that off with a slightly slower graphic chipset. Having a Geforce will shorten your battery life as well. The second thing is battery. Some laptop only comes with 3 cells battery, which will last you 2 to 3 hours. Estimated Battery Life is not always right, as it calculated upon perfect condition and minimal usage. Ask for the number of cells, recommended one are 4 to 6 cells. Extended one are 8 to 9 cells. With 6 cells and Core 2 Duo, you can achieve 4 hours of battery life. Core Duo will be shorter. Looks like your system is from Toshiba. Toshiba built good laptop, but they're also pricier. They're targeting medium to high end market. If you go for HP, Dell, Lenovo(IBM) and Acer they would be cheaper for the same specs, due to the better market penetration, which in turn give them a bigger production quantity, and so lower the cost of each unit. They're also the top few laptop manufacturer, and the coverage of their service center is also wider. If you can get one with XP is also better, since Vista is still quite new, getting your existing application over to Vista, will also cost you some upgrade fees, as some older version software are not compatible with Vista. Further more, Vista is still quite slow for the current specs of laptop. Unless of cause you've been using Vista for your everyday works. Another thing you might want to look into is the weight. 15" seems to be a bit heavier to lug around. 14" is more common, so the price is also cheaper. 12" is light to carry around. Also, if you can afford the 3 years extended warranty, get it. It's worth it. I've seen a lot of laptop die after 1 or 2 years. I have a 12" twinhead, centrino, have been serving me for more than 4 years. Since i'm an electronic engineer, so I used to open it up and service it once in a while, that's what have been keeping it alive for so long.

You can look into those cookbook series by Oreilly. They cover quite a wide range of topics and programming languages, including but not limited to MySQL, PHP, VB, .Net, Java ......One tips to be a good programmer, concentrate on the concept of programming, not the language itself. Once you can understand and apply the concept properly, the language is merely a tools for you to accomplish the job. Google helps a lot in the language section, hehe

I think you must have set the printer to print to file. 2 Places where it might have been set, so as to revert it. Assuming you're using WinXP. Other windows OS is quite similar. 1. If it happen to all the applications, then it's set under the printer's properties. Goto control panel -> Printers and Faxes. Look for the F370, then right click, select Properties. Under the Ports tab, you should see a list of port, like LPT1, COM1, FILE, USB001. FILE must have been selected. You need to select either USB or LPT, depending on which one is your printer connected to. 2. If it only happen to a particular application, then under the print dialog of that application, which appear either before you print, or by calling print setup. Look for "Print to File", make sure it's not checked. Sometime is hidden under another dialog, like Advance Setting. As for the mdi format, i'm not quite sure why it save to that format. Normally it should save as .PRN file. With the prn file, if your printer is connected under LPT1, you can still print via dos prompt, "type filename.prn >> lpt1". That will print out what ever you have try to print(even graphic). A useful trick, if you happen to plug the printer on the pc without the driver, and you need to print from another pc maybe without lpt port, you can print as file and transfer over to the other pc to do the printing. The pc which do the print to file will need a compatible driver though. I did that once and save the day, cause i don't have the driver disc, and my notebook don't have lpt port.

Err, it is confusing. Maybe you can lay out your reply in 1,2,3. What you did was resetting the bios. Flashing the bios is updating it with the latest firmware. You'll need to download the updater and the latest bios image. Then boot into DOS to do it. Some newer system allows flashing from windows, and require restart after that. Flashing is quite a dangerous thing to do, cause if it's not done properly, it will render your montherboard useless. But of cause the manufacturer can help you fix that.I'm guessing that you meant, after resetting the bios, you get to see go into the bios setup. But your hard disk is not deteched properly. If so, you can try set it to auto. Or mostly likely it's already in auto mode. Most newer montherboard doesn't let you manually detect the hard disk.If this problem persist, i think it's very likely the motherboard issue. And since it's new, why take all the hassle, just return and ask for a replacement. Here, they allow 1-to-1 swap within 7 days of the purchase date.

The 2 pc you built before this, are there of the same spec?Instead of try out those parts on the non working machine, why not try those part which you suspect on the working machine. Say graphic from the 3rd pc(non working), put into the working one. If it still work, that rule out the prob of the graphic card. So after you try all the possibility, including the cpu and ram, you're left with the motherboard. Needless to say, you should find out which is the culprit along the way.If it's motherboard, you can try putting in other cpu()preferably older type), might be a compatibility issue. If so, you'll need to flash your bios, running on the old cpu. If still can't work out, try remove the board, and try it on a non conducting surface, like a thick book, or wooden plank. Always plug in minimal peripherals when you do the testing, to avoid unexpected external condition to effect the out come. For example, a shorted IDE cable, or a flipped one, will prevent the pc from booting up as well. On some system, you might even see anything displayed, no beep or what so ever, cause, once flipped, it's consider shorted. So, for testing, you only need the board, cpu, ram and graphic card. The rest, take them out.EDIT: Try run on 1 stick of ram as well, if possible. Also check that all the power connectors are connected on the motherboard. Newer system require more power connection, like 24pin power connector, 2x2(4)pin 12V and another one 1x4 or more flat type of power connection. Check your manual on that. Missing any one of it will prevent it from booting up. Also remember the extra power connection to your graphic cardGood luck

I've done something quite similar few years back. My company need to develop an IE toolbar to translate international domain name. We have 2 choice of programming language, .net or C++. We ended up with C++, cause it's harder to convince users to download a huge 28MB framework just to enable a toolbar. With C++ it's a bit tough to start off. Lucky we found a good tutorial and sample to start with http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/. It's by Erik Thompson, posted on CodeProject. Along in the same article, there's a few more related tutorial linked. It serve as a good start for us to write that toolbar. We even have a Chinese Input (pinyin) written into the toolbar. C++ is good for this as it's not dependent on bulky library, and we only use ATL, which comes with Win2K and above. We were using VC6 at that time. Later migrated to VC7 for better code compatibility and stability. It was a pain to migrate as well, but it's worth it. After you get hold of the basic toolbar, the rest is just a matter of programming. The toughest part is only to get the toolbar display in the IE. This is mostly due to CSID and COM involvement, which we're not that expert in. A small mistake in the coding, be it the loading sequence or specific GUID, the toolbar just disappear, with no clue on what's wrong. It takes a lot of troubleshooting skill to get it right. If you toolbar is for in house use, or own use, you can consider .net, it's a lot easier. Good Luck

It's good to hear that. Another point added to Ontrack. Hehe. PS: Make sure you check all your file before you wipe the other hard disk. What's done cannot be undone. There's no "Undo" button for this action.

Ultimate Boot CD can just boot off itselft right? Why need to boot the second drive along with it?

OOps, I didn't notice the "resize" word you mentioned in your first post. So, hexwiz and wutske was right. You indeed have a corrupted partition. I've never tried pc inspector, but i've tried Ontrack Easy Recovery and GetDataBack. Ontrack seems to be better. If you know what file you want to recover, and don't care about the directory structure, raw recovery will do. Else, you'll have to partition the drive as it was before (the original state), then do a format recovery. But this is a bit too risky. Btw, the rules of thumb is avoid touching (edit/write) the content of the hard disk as much as possible, until you have no other choice. If pc inspector can't work out, PM me, i can send you a copy of Ontrack to try out.

SATA drive will have more problem. If you don't see the drive from another windows, then can you check the hardware property if it's there. Or under Disk Management of Administrative Tools\Computer Management. Maybe the partition is corrupted, so no "drive" will appear under explorer. Also check if your bios did indeed detected the hard disk. If it's a corrupted partition, you'll need some recovery software to recover your file

Do you have another working PC around? I guess so, since you can still post your problem here, right?There's 4 ways to do it.1.If it was due to missing or corrupted boot file, you can just run the recovery from Window's Installation disk. Btw, I'm assuming you're running at least Win2K or WinXP.2. Take that harddisk out and plug into another pc to read it. Make sure to make it a slave drive, so you can still boot into windows with the existing one. What to do next, i don't think i need to spell it out.3. If you have a recent copy of LiveCD linux, say Knoppix or Slax, you can boot from it and be access the hard disk from there. You need a recent one, how recent i'm not that sure. The one i downloaded last month already has NTFS support built in. 4. If your other smaller hard disk has some space left, around 2GB, and it has a primary partition, then you can temporarily disconnect the other hard disk, install a fresh copy of window, WITHOUT formatting. Then plug the other hard disk back, so you can access it.That's about it. Hopefully it was due to missing or corrupted boot file. If not, that hard disk will be as good as a junk. Btw, did you notice some knocking sound coming from that hard disk lately? That might indicate a start of failure.

I rule out the possibility of RAM and also "wrong electric socket, giving it too much electricity". RAM problem could have just cause the system to restart. As ratchetclan4 has mentioned, "the turn on button won't work until i switch it off from the back and then back on". That means the motherboard turn itself off, mostly due to power dip, it's call brownout in electronic, and to prevent further problem, you need to power off everything to reset the state. This is a safety implementation. The system might have a corrupted RAM data during the brownout, so it's safer to just halt everything. The suggestion of AVR might be a right move. But before buying anything, it's safer to just do a confirmation check, on whether it's the power supply. Unless you have no other way to swap the power supply for a test run, then whatever closer is the next good move.

It's very likely the power supply. I face that problem before, just few weeks ago. If you have another pc around, you can try swap the power supply. It usually turn off at peak load, say when doing encoding or saving a big file. For my case, sometime even when booting up. For me, since i know electronic, i open up the power supply and found out that a few capacitors is not in good shape. After replacing them, voila, it's be on until now, for more than 2 weeks. I left my pc on 24x7. EDIT: The main cause of the problem above is that, there's a voltage dip during the heavy load. If the dip is way of the tolerance of the board, which is usually +/- 5%, then the motherboard will switch off, but holding the power supply on. In my case, the power led is blinking. You can't do anything until you turn off the main power switch to reset the faulty state. After confirming that it's the power supply problem, you can either send to a known friend or change the capacitor yourself, or just get a new one, it won't be expensive. It's around RM60/= here, equal to less than $20 US dollar. Nowadays as things is getting cheaper, so is the parts they use. Capacitor has the shortest life span. If you checkout the datasheet, you'll bee surprise that the quoted life span is only a mere few thousand hours. If say it's 3000 hours, If i on 24 hours a day, that's only 125 days. Good Luck

Sorry, i made a mistake. it should be result += 5