kalimeeri

I'm the same way. It's usually a full day going out and buying the parts, reading the motherboard configuration manual, and getting the OS installed. Still, it's a bit like riding a bike. It takes awhile for me to shake the techno cobwebs out, but after awhile, all the pins start to line up right. I bought a store bought model once, and it was a disaster. It got too hot when I put a new video card in it, and it lasted only about 2 years as a decent machine, whereas my custom models usually go for about 5 with some tweaking. Usually getting 'up to speed' happens while I'm doing the homework--deciding which video card or whatever is the best quality for the $. I'm pretty picky about hardware, to the point of obsession on some components (I'll never cheap out on a motherboard, for instance). But what I find sadly funny is that a lot of folks think a home-built rig is 'not good enough' or a POS, when what's inside is usually 20 times better--for those people I just smile and recommend Dell, LOL. They're happy, and so am I, because then I don't have to listen to them whinge about how it's the machine's fault when they screw it up.

I originally started building my own when the crappy 286 I bought new blew out its parallel port and couldn't be upgraded--nonstandard parts and a small desktop case that relied on a backplane board for add-on cards. Couldn't afford a whole new rig, and my ex wouldn't approve anyway (hated computers), so I bought it in pieces over time and smuggled them home. My kids got their first computer via 'rotation'--good word, by the way--I couldn't let all those spare parts lie around now, could I? First rig I built was a 386. And I don't know how I ended up with that closet-full of parts, honest.

Not saying that it isn't a good idea to scan the system ... but it might not necessarily mean you have a virus. After AVG forced an upgrade to a newer version, the e-mail scanner went nuts on my computer like that. No other changes, no virus, not anywhere. But every minute or so it would go into a frenzy, and tie up the whole internet connection. AVG itself found no virus on a full scan, nor did various online scanners. I never did find out why. The previous versions had always worked very well, but the newer one would never work for long before acting up. After a number of uninstall/reinstalls failed to solve the problem, I blew it away for good and got another anti-virus product. It too found nothing. I presume AVG's updated method of e-mail scanning conflicted with another running software process--but whatever it was, well, there are a lot of anti-virus packages out there to choose from.

My answers to the first one were kind of artificial, because I was forced to pick an answer that wasn't 'none of the above'. But it thought I was a horse. The totem one gave me a bear, and said I should like roaches and snakes. LOL, I can't stop laughing long enough to read their descriptions--think I married two too many of those IRL.

It occurred to me when you said 'grounding'... but is it possible that the mobo is grounding out against the case? That will stop a PC from powering on in a new build. I guess it's possible that if the board is just a fraction loose, vibration/heat could do the rest; the clearances are very small in some cases. Well, it's something to check, anyway.

Interesting, yes. But it ain't necessarily so--I checked my ini file, and SI hadn't changed the 1024 setting at all. Not sure why, unless it has something to do with my installing the regular 1.2 patch before the expansion. Regardless, I still do see this stutter when entering the gate to Crucible, when the hard drive light is on steady loading the textures. But looping sound does make sense if the computer's working that hard (and it really shouldn't have to). Here's hoping Beth will throw a little fine-tuning in with their next official patch.

About halfway through Shivering Isles in Oblivion, and enjoying it--although it is nice to be able to escape back to Cyrodiil for a little normalcy once in a while. The 'madness' is done with a fine touch, and some of the traps inside the ruins are absolutely fiendish ... but good fun. The new monsters are giving my level 31 marksman a run for his money. On the downside, SI seems to have annoyed my game installation, giving me occasional 'stutters' as if there's a huge memory leak. I don't think that's the expansion's fault; other people are running it just fine. I almost think it's a conflict somewhere in my sound drivers, which I've noticed are getting peevish in their old age (M-Audio hasn't updated them since 2004). Not quite sure what to do about that; and no, Creative is NOT an option. Their drivers are a curse, make mud pies of my music. That aside, people who install the SI expansion should be aware that there is a potentially serious bug that can corrupt save games; nothing like losing three level 30+ characters, lol. Apparently the expansion did not introduce a new bug, just accentuated one that was already there. Bethesda has released a beta patch, but it can't be applied if your game version is up to date (must do a full reinstall to make it work). Running an unofficial mod will correct it, for the time being. If you're into Oblivion, play SI for sure, but beware.

Metallica, S&M. I'd originally given this one a pass, but I listened to it once and it gave me an earbug (you know, where a song keeps running through your head over and over and you can't get rid of it...)

Whenever I hear the name 'Nicolas Cage' anymore, I get the same feeling as when I hear Kevin Costner is directing/producing another movie--that something awful is about to happen.

Without merit, for sure. But what occurs to me is that maybe he had nowhere left to run? He had a raft of wolves on his tail; and it seems entirely in character for him to cheat earthly justice one last time.

Mind you, I don't do video work--that's my daughter's realm, and she's welcome to it. I once got myself into such deep crapola with installing/uninstalling codecs (when I couldn't play a file she made) that I had to reformat and reinstall. They argued with each other, no matter what priority I set; they bothered some game FMV's; and the system was a slug. I now run WinXP Pro SP1 straight out of the box--no SP2, no WMP10, Xvid, Divx or (Nine Divines save me) FFDshow, not no more--and everything works. I've never even brought up Media Player, or not willingly or on purpose. But for the record, I do routinely disable the Indexing service. Explorer's default action when you open a window that contains them is to scan the files in an attempt to build a thumbnail 'preview'. Multiple or large files can consume 100% processor and hang the system, not even talking about the possibility of a corrupt file or file name it doesn't like. Since it 'locks' the file during this process, if it crashes the file stays locked--and you find yourself with a file you can't rename or delete without going to command prompt. Supposedly MS fixed this bug, but it is something to think about; the problem you're having does sound more like a Windows problem than anything else. Or a third-party program dll is interfering (I've found versions of Nero's Showtime problematic). I'd also pay particular attention to whether it's a specific type of encoding that's giving it fits, but that's kinda hard to do if it's crashing all the time. (Certain releases of add-on codecs have conflicts and may need updating). But like I said, not going there with the codecs--lots of advice out there championing one over another, if you want to listen. I don't do encoding, and don't need them.

There are a number of reasons this could happen (shell extensions, a codec fight, even icon handling). If you haven't already, check Event Viewer to see if Windows will give you any hints as to what its glitch is. (If you're in thumbnail view for your explorer window, changing to a standard/detail view might stop the crashing when you open the window. The avi files themselves still might not play, though.)

I've had my arguments with Media Player not playing video files as it should, and got fed up with trying to second-guess which codec may/may not make it work. Since then I've used VLC player (freeware) which plays everything I throw at it. Perfectly. I'd recommend that as the simplest solution to not being able to play files--it doesn't need much space or processor, and it doesn't take four years to start up. I doubt that will solve your explorer problem, though.

Easier just to change the drive letter back to what it was. All your games will then work again, without having to edit each game's registry setting. Disk Management console makes this relatively easy--locate the drive that stole the drive letter, change it to Z: or something, then put your original hard drive on its desired letter. (Administrative Tools->Computer management->Disk Management)

Some companies (Dell and Gateway come to mind) also offer off-lease equipment at discount prices ... some even still have warranties. The price does tend to be higher than eBay, but they're easier to find if you need to beat somebody up.

Sold it to me, too. I just like the game a lot. Although no horses=no Shadomere, who has provided many laughs. Soundtrack doesn't really matter, I've long since replaced it with my own selection of mp3's, which improves everything, IMO.

1 - 8 2 - 7 3 - 2 4 - 13 5 - 14

Age of Empires III. I still do have Jade Empire to finish, but multiplayer LAN on Sundays with my kids is fun. (Haven't been able to get AOE2 to connect through my router even with the proper ports enabled, though I'm not really sure why.) Pathfinding AI for the armies is a bit wonky, but the physics are neat to watch, and the little campaign stories in III were interesting enough. My daughter keeps telling me to try Mythology, but I'm not so very interested in it.

Can't really say which I liked best, almost all had their moments--with the exception of two. So I'll go instead with the most DISliked: Qara and Casivir. I could not relate to Qara, and dislike her character type. I think she would have been more interesting had she been capable of learning something good or bad from her experiences, or if there was some reason for her to behave the way she did. But there was little or no backstory or character development. Perhaps she was as Ignus had started out (in PST) but she wasn't scary crazy, just annoyingly spoiled. Casivir had no love either. I wanted to understand his whining, and expected to find some deep dark secret, but he refused to share his past with a male PC. His comments were limited to agree/disagree based on his Paladin class, and nothing more. I began to actively dislike him when he came off the wall at me for no reason near the end of one game (well, I didn't curry influence with him since there seemed to be little point). He wasn't even that good a fighter (Bishop was better/more versatile--and at least I knew where he was coming from), and his AI was just rotten.

I wasn't aware of this. It's a bit early in the a.m. to think about what effect, if any, programs like this will have on the college/university community or on grade-point averages for those students who are or will be attending. But it does dispel any doubt that might be left as to why a person would attend uni in the first place. (Hint: not to learn--but then we knew that).

Formatting has always been the issue, as far as word processors are concerned. If documents are shared between programs, there has to be a standard--there's nothing like seeing your carefully prepared document hashed up so badly it's unreadable. In a competitive market, sometimes you don't get the chance for a do-over, or you just don't have time to mess with it. At one time, the standard was to use NO formatting at all, which was where XyWrite came in; most major newspapers used it because the documents could be easily (and accurately) imported into typesetting software. I think if anything shows Microsoft's dominance, it's the fact that they managed to sell Word's .doc format to other software developers--pure ASCII text is pretty much a thing of the past. But there are other considerations, like spell-checker, dictionary, thesaurus, which come into play ... as well as nerdifying the keyboard file (somewhat, anyway) and being able to auto-expand to the max. I wouldn't say Word is perfect by any stretch, but it's at least competent--although it does fail to recognize perfectly legitimate words sometimes, and its grammar checker leaves a lot to be desired.

I remember reading that OO's memory usage could use some streamlining; it's heavier/slower than it needs to be. Whether that's changed any since I looked at it, I don't know, because I wasn't impressed enough to keep it on my hard drive. A word processor is my main app, though--I'm one of those people who would rather fight than switch. I'd still be with XyWrite if they had managed to stay in business long enough to make a stable Windows release. Word was the closest thing I was able to find, and as said, it is the industry standard ... although I'm not seeing the point in going past the 2K version.

As far as Kreia goes, I think she did sense the Jedi's presence (on all but Nar Shaddaa, possibly, because of all the people there like she says). But helping Exile find them was too easy--sort of like giving money to the guy asking for a handout, she felt unless Exile worked for it, he/she would not get stronger. So instead of pointing directly in the right direction, she would always just say, 'let us see where our path takes us.'

IIRC when AMD originally announced this after acquiring ATI, they said their main focus would be toward smaller hand-held devices and corporate workstations. In that context integration would make sense (but that's not the impression I get from the link). If this goes mainstream, I would expect the graphics portion would suffer the same fate as onboard sound does, at least in any machine I own. Unused, disabled, waste of real estate.

He was, until they pulled out the same old angsty hackneyed crap about his family that they used for every other character in the game. It wasn't even funny any more. Amen.