have been update

Has anyone noticed my lack of being on this newsgroup lately? Here's the story. On Monday, I brought my computer out of standby and my master hard drive (80GB with Windows) began to make funny grindy noises and kept acting like it was turning off and turning on. I shut off the computer and turned it back on. I quickly began backing up my data. (At this point, the noise was gone.) Well, I got done backing up my files, and I walked away from the computer for a while. When I came back, it was starting to do it again. I was playing music in Media Player 10 and all of a sudden, everything stopped. The hard drive died from there. It would turn on but not be detected by the motherboard. Fortunately, I have another hard drive as you know. (My 120GB hard drive was the survivor.) The story has only begun however... Remember how I was talking about doing a partial rebuild of my computer? Well, I ended up doing it, but sooner than expected and not by choice! I got a new heatsink and CPU fan for my processor, and when I went to remove my hold heatsink, the screwdriver slipped and stabbed my motherboard. (I did this to it once before also.) My stupidity of using a larger screw driver than I should. Well, you can only guess what happened. My motherboard did not survive two stabbings in the same exact spot. The thin film transistor was destroyed and just caused the internal speaker to beep as if there were a memory error. So, here I am now with a new socket 754 board and a new AMD Sempron 64 2800+. I wanted to get an Athlon 64, but I couldn't afford it. At least now I won't have to worry about AGP 4x/8x issues because now it's AGP 8x. As for the hard drive, I installed XP on the partition that I was going to use for Vista, and I'm going to pull the 80GB hard drive from my mom's computer when she gets her new computer that I built in two weeks. The Sempron 64 2800+ seems considerably faster than my Athlon XP 2400+ (at stock speeds by the way) did at least in Windows Media Player where I can run the same visualization at a much larger size without slow-downs. By the way, my new Sempron is running in the upper 20's to lower 30's celcius with that $40 Zalman heatsink/CPU fan that I was going to use for my old processor. (It's compatible with socket A CPUs or newer sockets like 754 or 939 and compatible with equivalent Intels.) That heatsink is huge. It's slightly larger than an 80mm case fan and spins between 1500-2500RPM depending on where I set the fan speed since you can adjust it. I guess my computer's a little bit more prepared for Vista now, but it's sure not what I had in mind and what I had planned.

heatsink is huge. It's slightly larger than an 80mm case fan and spins between 1500-2500RPM depending on where I set the fan speed since you can adjust it. I guess my computer's a little bit more prepared for Vista now, but it's sure not what I had in mind and what I had planned.

There is no hurry to join the 64-bit race in my opinion. It's mainly a calendar issue (year 2038 bug).
-- .~. Might, Courage, Vision. SINCERITY. http://www.linux-sxs.org / v \ Simplicity is Beauty! May the Force and Farce be with you! /( _ )\ (Ubuntu 5.10) Linux 2.6.16.8 ^ ^ 15:01:04 up 2 days 18:44 load average: 2.26 1.41 1.19 news://news.3home.net news://news.hkpcug.org news://news.newsgroup.com.hk

I wanted the Athlon 64 more because of its better performance, slightly better clock speeds, and more cache, not really because it's 64-bit because I'm also in no hurry to switch to 64-bit. "Man-wai Chang" wrote in message

heatsink is huge. It's slightly larger than an 80mm case fan and spins between 1500-2500RPM depending on where I set the fan speed since you can adjust it. I guess my computer's a little bit more prepared for Vista now, but it's sure not what I had in mind and what I had planned.
There is no hurry to join the 64-bit race in my opinion. It's mainly a calendar issue (year 2038 bug).
-- .~. Might, Courage, Vision. SINCERITY. http://www.linux-sxs.org / v \ Simplicity is Beauty! May the Force and Farce be with you! /( _ )\ (Ubuntu 5.10) Linux 2.6.16.8 ^ ^ 15:01:04 up 2 days 18:44 load average: 2.26 1.41 1.19 news://news.3home.net news://news.hkpcug.org news://news.newsgroup.com.hk

Well I have a Athlon 64 which I got last year when they came out. If I had to do it again I would, so far between my P4 3200 x64 extream and my AMD Athlon 64 3200 I would take the AMD hands down. It may only run at 2.21gigs but it is faster. Tony
"Travis King" wrote in message

I wanted the Athlon 64 more because of its better performance, slightly better clock speeds, and more cache, not really because it's 64-bit because I'm also in no hurry to switch to 64-bit. "Man-wai Chang" wrote in message heatsink is huge. It's slightly larger than an 80mm case fan and spins between 1500-2500RPM depending on where I set the fan speed since you can adjust it. I guess my computer's a little bit more prepared for Vista now, but it's sure not what I had in mind and what I had planned.
There is no hurry to join the 64-bit race in my opinion. It's mainly a calendar issue (year 2038 bug).
-- .~. Might, Courage, Vision. SINCERITY. http://www.linux-sxs.org / v \ Simplicity is Beauty! May the Force and Farce be with you! /( _ )\ (Ubuntu 5.10) Linux 2.6.16.8 ^ ^ 15:01:04 up 2 days 18:44 load average: 2.26 1.41 1.19 news://news.3home.net news://news.hkpcug.org news://news.newsgroup.com.hk

I have one more thing to say I to lost an 80gig drive just last week that I had Vista 5308 running on. This drive was only 8 months old and was running XP pro on it from day one. I did not see it thrasing with XP as I did with Vista. With vista the hard drive light was on all the time. Dont tell me it is because of lack of ram 1.5gigs is not low, and an AMD Athlon 64 3200 is not a slow cpu. Tony
"Travis King" wrote in message

Has anyone noticed my lack of being on this newsgroup lately? Here's the story. On Monday, I brought my computer out of standby and my master hard drive (80GB with Windows) began to make funny grindy noises and kept acting like it was turning off and turning on. I shut off the computer and turned it back on. I quickly began backing up my data. (At this point, the noise was gone.) Well, I got done backing up my files, and I walked away from the computer for a while. When I came back, it was starting to do it again. I was playing music in Media Player 10 and all of a sudden, everything stopped. The hard drive died from there. It would turn on but not be detected by the motherboard. Fortunately, I have another hard drive as you know. (My 120GB hard drive was the survivor.) The story has only begun however... Remember how I was talking about doing a partial rebuild of my computer? Well, I ended up doing it, but sooner than expected and not by choice! I got a new heatsink and CPU fan for my processor, and when I went to remove my hold heatsink, the screwdriver slipped and stabbed my motherboard. (I did this to it once before also.) My stupidity of using a larger screw driver than I should. Well, you can only guess what happened. My motherboard did not survive two stabbings in the same exact spot. The thin film transistor was destroyed and just caused the internal speaker to beep as if there were a memory error. So, here I am now with a new socket 754 board and a new AMD Sempron 64 2800+. I wanted to get an Athlon 64, but I couldn't afford it. At least now I won't have to worry about AGP 4x/8x issues because now it's AGP 8x. As for the hard drive, I installed XP on the partition that I was going to use for Vista, and I'm going to pull the 80GB hard drive from my mom's computer when she gets her new computer that I built in two weeks. The Sempron 64 2800+ seems considerably faster than my Athlon XP 2400+ (at stock speeds by the way) did at least in Windows Media Player where I can run the same visualization at a much larger size without slow-downs. By the way, my new Sempron is running in the upper 20's to lower 30's celcius with that $40 Zalman heatsink/CPU fan that I was going to use for my old processor. (It's compatible with socket A CPUs or newer sockets like 754 or 939 and compatible with equivalent Intels.) That heatsink is huge. It's slightly larger than an 80mm case fan and spins between 1500-2500RPM depending on where I set the fan speed since you can adjust it. I guess my computer's a little bit more prepared for Vista now, but it's sure not what I had in mind and what I had planned.

My hard drive that died was a Western Digital. I've had quite a few Western Digitals die on me lately. I'm beginning to wonder if they're going downhill. I am starting to use more Seagates than I have in the past except I think the HD access noise from Seagates is louder. Seagate's five-year warranty on their hard drives is also tempting... Now for the processor, I use AMD exclusively for all my builds even though there are a few things that Intel could out-do AMD on. I have not been let down by them yet. I still think AMD is a gamer's dream come true. In fact, I just got done building two computers which both used an Athlon 64 x2 3800+. You literally can't bog that thing down. One of the computers that I built has an NVIDIA 6600 PCI-E x16 and the other has an NVIDIA 7600GT PCI-E x16. The one with the better card also has 2GB of RAM (dual channel) and a 250GB Seagate hard drive. The computer with the 6600 has a 200GB WD and 1GB of RAM (dual channel). The computer with the 6600 also has a 16x DVD burner and a video capture card while the computer with the 7600GT has a 16x DVD burner with lightscribe and can burn DVD RAM. I guess that's why one of them cost $800 to build and the other one costs $1200. I used an Athlon 64 3000+ in a build a year and a half ago and it was considerably faster than this Sempron, but like I said, I couldn't afford it right now even though it's only $40 more. "t" wrote in message

I have one more thing to say I to lost an 80gig drive just last week that I had Vista 5308 running on. This drive was only 8 months old and was running XP pro on it from day one. I did not see it thrasing with XP as I did with Vista. With vista the hard drive light was on all the time. Dont tell me it is because of lack of ram 1.5gigs is not low, and an AMD Athlon 64 3200 is not a slow cpu. Tony
"Travis King" wrote in message Has anyone noticed my lack of being on this newsgroup lately? Here's the story. On Monday, I brought my computer out of standby and my master hard drive (80GB with Windows) began to make funny grindy noises and kept acting like it was turning off and turning on. I shut off the computer and turned it back on. I quickly began backing up my data. (At this point, the noise was gone.) Well, I got done backing up my files, and I walked away from the computer for a while. When I came back, it was starting to do it again. I was playing music in Media Player 10 and all of a sudden, everything stopped. The hard drive died from there. It would turn on but not be detected by the motherboard. Fortunately, I have another hard drive as you know. (My 120GB hard drive was the survivor.) The story has only begun however... Remember how I was talking about doing a partial rebuild of my computer? Well, I ended up doing it, but sooner than expected and not by choice! I got a new heatsink and CPU fan for my processor, and when I went to remove my hold heatsink, the screwdriver slipped and stabbed my motherboard. (I did this to it once before also.) My stupidity of using a larger screw driver than I should. Well, you can only guess what happened. My motherboard did not survive two stabbings in the same exact spot. The thin film transistor was destroyed and just caused the internal speaker to beep as if there were a memory error. So, here I am now with a new socket 754 board and a new AMD Sempron 64 2800+. I wanted to get an Athlon 64, but I couldn't afford it. At least now I won't have to worry about AGP 4x/8x issues because now it's AGP 8x. As for the hard drive, I installed XP on the partition that I was going to use for Vista, and I'm going to pull the 80GB hard drive from my mom's computer when she gets her new computer that I built in two weeks. The Sempron 64 2800+ seems considerably faster than my Athlon XP 2400+ (at stock speeds by the way) did at least in Windows Media Player where I can run the same visualization at a much larger size without slow-downs. By the way, my new Sempron is running in the upper 20's to lower 30's celcius with that $40 Zalman heatsink/CPU fan that I was going to use for my old processor. (It's compatible with socket A CPUs or newer sockets like 754 or 939 and compatible with equivalent Intels.) That heatsink is huge. It's slightly larger than an 80mm case fan and spins between 1500-2500RPM depending on where I set the fan speed since you can adjust it. I guess my computer's a little bit more prepared for Vista now, but it's sure not what I had in mind and what I had planned.

It's funny also because the last time I had a hard drive die on me, I was playing music with WMP10 also. It must really like to kill hard drives lol. (That one was also a Western Digital that I had in my spare eMachines T1090.) It died similar to how mine died. The music stopped, it froze up, it made grindy and clicking noises (no warnings until that moment) and then the hard drive kept turning off and on. That was about six months ago. "John" wrote in message

Has anyone noticed my lack of being on this newsgroup lately? Here's the story. On Monday, I brought my computer out of standby and my master hard drive (80GB with Windows) began to make funny grindy noises and kept acting like it was turning off and turning on. I shut off the computer and turned it back on. I quickly began backing up my data. (At this point, the noise was gone.) Well, I got done backing up my files, and I walked away from the computer for a while. When I came back, it was starting to do it again. I was playing music in Media Player 10 and all of a sudden, everything stopped.
No wonder. Thats why you should use winamp.

Has anyone noticed my lack of being on this newsgroup lately? Here's the story. On Monday, I brought my computer out of standby and my master hard drive (80GB with Windows) began to make funny grindy noises and kept acting like it was turning off and turning on. I shut off the computer and turned it back on. I quickly began backing up my data. (At this point, the noise was gone.) Well, I got done backing up my files, and I walked away from the computer for a while. When I came back, it was starting to do it again. I was playing music in Media Player 10 and all of a sudden, everything stopped.

No wonder. Thats why you should use winamp.

It will be interesting once you install Vista on the new computer, how it will rate your new hardware compared to your other set up. Mine is measly 3. It had been a 2, but since reinstalling Vista and using the default nvida driver,Vista reports as a 3 now.
Regards

I would not have been surprised that it would have rated a 2 with the Athlon XP 2400+ I had because I think you have to have an Athlon XP 2800+ to get a 3. They say that the Sempron 64 2800+ Palermo slightly outdoes an Athlon XP 3200+ Barton. (The highest Athlon XP) The factors potentially holding my computer down below a 3 now would be the NVIDIA FX5600 or the 768MB of RAM. (Which I will soon have 1.5GB.) The FX5600 does have 256MB of video RAM though. Another good thing about having this motherboard is I can now get a SATA drive if I ever want to. I believe you have to have a pretty hefty computer to get a 5. "Tim S." wrote in message

It will be interesting once you install Vista on the new computer, how it will rate your new hardware compared to your other set up. Mine is measly 3. It had been a 2, but since reinstalling Vista and using the default nvida driver,Vista reports as a 3 now.
Regards

Mine on one machine is a 1 and the other is a 2 The 2 is a P4 3200 x64 and the 1 is a emachines laptop with a AMD Athlon 64 3400 it has 1.5 gig ram and the P4 had 2gigs
"Tim S." wrote in message

It will be interesting once you install Vista on the new computer, how it will rate your new hardware compared to your other set up. Mine is measly 3. It had been a 2, but since reinstalling Vista and using the default nvida driver,Vista reports as a 3 now.
Regards

On Sun, 23 Apr 2006 00:31:35 -0400, t wrote:

Mine on one machine is a 1 and the other is a 2 The 2 is a P4 3200 x64 and the 1 is a emachines laptop with a AMD Athlon 64 3400 it has 1.5 gig ram and the P4 had 2gigs

What kind of video card do you have?
--
-Jeff B. zoomie at fastmail dot fm

I believe the rating goes by your weakest point. Whatever component has the weakest score is the score it gives your computer I believe. I know for sure both of those CPU's I would guess should rate at least a 3 if not a 4. (Probably a 4) Something else has to be holding them down. Knowing that eMachines, it probably has a bad video adapter or video card. (Most eMachines computers come with lackluster graphics abilities out of the box anyway) I'm not ranting eMachines though because I think they're pretty decent computers for a cheap price, but for users who need something even somewhat demanding, (especially graphics) then I would doubt an eMachines would be for them or at least not without an upgrade right off the bat. "t" wrote in message

Mine on one machine is a 1 and the other is a 2 The 2 is a P4 3200 x64 and the 1 is a emachines laptop with a AMD Athlon 64 3400 it has 1.5 gig ram and the P4 had 2gigs
"Tim S." wrote in message It will be interesting once you install Vista on the new computer, how it will rate your new hardware compared to your other set up. Mine is measly 3. It had been a 2, but since reinstalling Vista and using the default nvida driver,Vista reports as a 3 now.
Regards

"Travis King" wrote in message

Has anyone noticed my lack of being on this newsgroup lately?

Oh, were you gone? ;-)
Sorry, it's not often I get a straight line that good, I couldn't resist!

"Travis King" wrote in message

My hard drive that died was a Western Digital. I've had quite a few Western Digitals die on me lately.

I've got a stack of dead WD hard drives. It seems that every manufacturer goes through quality control or some kind of problem from time to time, years back it was Maxtor, now Maxtor's are fine and WD's are having problems. Sooner or later (it seems about a 3-5 year cycle?) WD will fix their problems, until then get some other brand.

Welcome back Travis! Yeah I do remmeber your name ;)
Well, maybe you should have different paragraphs in the future so to ease reading.
-- Jabez Gan [MVP] Microsoft MVP: Windows Server http://www.blizhosting.com MSBLOG: http://msblog.resdev.net
"Travis King" wrote in message

Has anyone noticed my lack of being on this newsgroup lately? Here's the story. On Monday, I brought my computer out of standby and my master hard drive (80GB with Windows) began to make funny grindy noises and kept acting like it was turning off and turning on. I shut off the computer and turned it back on. I quickly began backing up my data. (At this point, the noise was gone.) Well, I got done backing up my files, and I walked away from the computer for a while. When I came back, it was starting to do it again. I was playing music in Media Player 10 and all of a sudden, everything stopped. The hard drive died from there. It would turn on but not be detected by the motherboard. Fortunately, I have another hard drive as you know. (My 120GB hard drive was the survivor.) The story has only begun however... Remember how I was talking about doing a partial rebuild of my computer? Well, I ended up doing it, but sooner than expected and not by choice! I got a new heatsink and CPU fan for my processor, and when I went to remove my hold heatsink, the screwdriver slipped and stabbed my motherboard. (I did this to it once before also.) My stupidity of using a larger screw driver than I should. Well, you can only guess what happened. My motherboard did not survive two stabbings in the same exact spot. The thin film transistor was destroyed and just caused the internal speaker to beep as if there were a memory error. So, here I am now with a new socket 754 board and a new AMD Sempron 64 2800+. I wanted to get an Athlon 64, but I couldn't afford it. At least now I won't have to worry about AGP 4x/8x issues because now it's AGP 8x. As for the hard drive, I installed XP on the partition that I was going to use for Vista, and I'm going to pull the 80GB hard drive from my mom's computer when she gets her new computer that I built in two weeks. The Sempron 64 2800+ seems considerably faster than my Athlon XP 2400+ (at stock speeds by the way) did at least in Windows Media Player where I can run the same visualization at a much larger size without slow-downs. By the way, my new Sempron is running in the upper 20's to lower 30's celcius with that $40 Zalman heatsink/CPU fan that I was going to use for my old processor. (It's compatible with socket A CPUs or newer sockets like 754 or 939 and compatible with equivalent Intels.) That heatsink is huge. It's slightly larger than an 80mm case fan and spins between 1500-2500RPM depending on where I set the fan speed since you can adjust it. I guess my computer's a little bit more prepared for Vista now, but it's sure not what I had in mind and what I had planned.