Jacked Up PC

[Capthemfoos]

Hey guys. Well, It runs and Vista Ultimate works(surprisingly since it was a torrent). The experience was very good and I hope to do it again somewhere down the line. Thats all the good things I have to say.

Now the Bad. Even though the Bios and PC detect the 2 HDDs, only one shows up in My Computer.
Then, the wireless card I got was a dud, apparently.
Also, although the USB interface works fine, when I go to safely remove Hardware, it shows nothing but my HDDs and Cd drives. No USB mass storage device. I will look into these problems.

Thank you for all the help guys and hopefully we can get on some PC games soon.

[Kamui]

You should get SWBF2 on the PC, we could play the mod maps together perhaps if you'd like, also good job on the PC. I didn't keep up with the thread, but I can see you did a good job.

Edit: take some pictures of the PC too! If you want.

[Capthemfoos]

Yea, thanks Mui. I did take some pics, but since my sister had a field trip today, they took it with them. So I can't upload them until I have the camera. I'll look into the SWBF II stuff.

[Capthemfoos]

Here are the pics.

http://s359.photobucket.com/albums/oo36/Capthefoos/PC/

[Brocman]

With the three PCI slots for the video cards, see if you can leave the middle one empty. Try to put the video cards in the top one and the bottom one.

That should let the video cards breathe a little. As for the ripped copy of vista, try to reinstall it. And make sure you reinstall all the stuff for your hardware too.

If you don't want to do that, just try to make sure that you have the latest update for everything. I am not sure what software you have for that motherboard but maybe there is a program that came with it that will let you upgrade the bios without flashing it using a floppy drive.

The bad thing is though, that since you have a ripped version of vista you will not have access to all the updates for the OS itslef.

Also, Many hardware makers packaged out of date drivers with vista and you will need to go online to find and download them.

I would suggest if possible to just go out and buy vista so that you can get all the stuff that comes with it. Because there are some options on it that allows it to fix your computer if it having stop errors (blue screen of death errors.

[Capthemfoos]

Yea, I'm buying it tommorrow. Also, I put the CPU cooler on the wrong way and now air blows onto the RAM. Could that be the source of the freezing?

[norm]

lol

I didn't even notice you had to cooler installed backwards. That may have had something to do with it

The ripped copy of Vista sounds like it really could be the fault here.



Try downloading this and see what your temps are. You just have to make sure your motherboard can report the temps

http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/

The only other thing to do if it still happens with a legit copy of Vista is to trouble shoot the parts. Try it with one video card, test the RAM with MemTest or something like it and make sure you're getting clean power to your board, processor and so forth. It could just be something simple like a BIOS update will fix it all if Vista doesn't work for you.

Good luck!

[Capthemfoos]

Lol.

Yea, the cooler fan-side is supposed to be pointing to one of my case fans. Unfortunately it is pointing to the RM and it is going to be a pain in the ass to put on again after spreading that god damn thermal paste that has unbelievable friction w/ the CPU.

I ran Memtest and it passed, so the RAM is put of the way. Here are the temps for my stuff.

CPU: 30-31 C

System: 27-38 C

GPU 1: 48 C

GPU 2: 42-47 C

[norm]

The vid card temps look a little high. I'm not sure what they should run so you might want to check that out. The processor temp looks all right. It's a good idea to keep an eye out on the temps at different points for the first couple of months. After playing some games or burning some dvd's. You'll get an idea of when the temp spikes and see if anything major is going on during the break-in time.

I'm guessing it is the software so let us know how a good copy of Vista works for you.

[Brocman]

try spacing the video cards apart. Looks like there are three slots for video cards on that motherboard. See if you can leave the middle one empty or just have a thin card in that one.

[Capthemfoos]

Yea, I had to space them out for SLI to work. I think that the Vista is causing the probs. I don't know. When I install the real Vista, do I have to reinstall everything(drivers and such)?

[RaTix]

I was going to say that usually SLI requires the two cards to be in the two adjacent SLI slots to work, but if you have three SLI'd slots, then perhaps not.

The temps don't look bad, usually a CPU is in the red above 58-60C. Not to knock Norms advice at all, but you might want to get Speedfan instead.

http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php

It displays a fire symbol if the sensor is above the desired range. Will also show a red arrow when temp is increasing so you can better monitor where the heat trouble areas are and when they spike.

One problem I had, which is a small but stupid error. Is check your Bios and make sure that the video card is set for PCI-e and not just PCI (assuming the cards are PCIe of course). That caused me a few weeks of freezes and crashes.

Also make sure you haven't overclocked the RAM or CPU in the Bios. Get the system working on stock values as they should be, then you can worry about overclocking them.

As Brocman has suggested, make sure the Bios firmware, IDE/SATA controllers, Video card drivers, etc.. are all up to date with the latest drivers from the manufacturers website. Not sure which type of "borrowed" Vista you have, but some DO allow you to update as if it's a fully legit copy.

Overall, never under estimate the craptasticness that is Windows Vista. They had many freezing and shut down errors in the beginning (they say the problems are fixed, but don't believe that either). Unless you have some great desire to use some vista feature, I would try to locate a copy of XP and go with that. Even if you have the Product key on the case of your old system still, I can help you get the installation CDs for XP on any version.

Don't believe the MoJave bullshit experience. There's a reason why people say it sucks. Just because they got a few idiots that never used it and only parroted the info they heard from their tech savory friends. Any competent PC user can tell it sucks and would have been able to tell it was Vista and not some "New Windows OS" .

[keyser28146]

Exactly.

And vista does suck. I am keeping it, but it's a resource fiend. I wish I could find a version of vista with ZERO security, ZERO bells and whistles that could run as lean as win95 while supporting devices and software for my editing and post production necessities.

If Adobe made a CS for Linux I'd be all over that bastard.

[Brocman]

Honestly Keyser, I am thinking about going with Ubuntu. It can suck some resources as well, but not nearly as much as vista. Plus it's pretty damn secure since all the viruses are pretty much made for Windows and not Linux.

And getting your favorite programs to run on it aren't that hard, you just have to install a program called Wine, which is a windows emulator.

[Capthemfoos]

Wow. Thanks for the help. Well, I was wondering if anybody knew ho to dual boot a PC. I may want to put Vista on one HD and XP on the other. Then when Windows 7 comes out, I'll replace Vista.