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OK, trying the Ti4200 I think has isolated the problem. The Ti4200 draws power from the AGP slot alone (I should have read your original post more closely, apologies). If the 6600GT and 6800GS are failing, it sounds distinctly possible that your PSU is not delivering enough current (or is...

Let me know how you get on :)

Having a business account at a bank is a prerequisite of becoming VAT registered. I can't think of many small firms that are VAT registered, the benefits are far outweighed by the costs of maintaining accounts to the specification required of VAT registration. The amount of paperwork (or SAGE...

From what I can gather, touchpads generally attach via a PS2 interface. I may be wrong on this though. Either way, attaching to a normal PC would be a trivial solder job. Drivers are readily available (the laptops need them!). Might be a bit ugly having wires exiting the rear of the case only...

The only use for a suspected faulty HD is for using as nonessential backups or to be the only drive in a cheap little personal (mp3, web, whatever) server. A neighbour of mine has got one of my old 60GB Maxtors which died (the clicky-clicky-gronk noise) whilst working as part of a RAID0 set...

I thought SATA optical drives were still rare and expensive? It's about time Pioneer got on board with SATA though. 16X DVD writing does somewhat cry out for SATA support.

It's not so much of an issue, but it does matter. If you've got an ATA66 optical drive and an ATA100 or 133 HD on the same cable, your HD is going to drop down to ATA66. This is obviously still plenty fast enough for most tasks, but those interested in max performance are not going to appreciate...

Hang on, you want to use RAM as a solid-state disk to use for Windows page file? This would be the ame page file that Windows uses (more or less) when it runs out of free ... RAM? I think it would be cheaper for you to upgrade to 2GB of system memory. If you still find that your day-to-day...

If I'm building a computer for someone, I add at least 30% to the cost of the individual components and use that as a *guide* selling price. To be perfect honest, most of the people who approach me these days because they want a PC, I hand them a local newspaper and show them the adverts...

I'm looking for a supplier (to trade) of console related gear, be it games or hardware. Googling is pointless, any number of scams and semi-scams designed to entice normal folk into thinking they are getting trade deals. I'm fairly set to go with an online shop and I've been trading through...

Have a muck-about with the parallel port settings in your BIOS. If you find a setting similar to "ECP+EPP" or mention of "DMA" then you want to use them (as opposed to all other options). You may find Windows re-detects your parallel port on rebooting, this is normal.

As per guys above re: use of TIM remover. My method of applying thermal grease is to apply tiny blob to center of CPU (or GPU or whatever), spread it around with something with a very flat edge (piece of paper, flimsy bit of plastic etc) and then use another straight-edge thingy to take off...

I don't think I'd be so quick to try resurrecting what sounds like a faulty PSU (even if it is a minor fault). If it isn't under warranty any more, I would seriously consider buying a replacement. If it's so old that things are going wrong with it, it won't be long before something major fails -...

It does sound like a power problem, or possibly a failed component on the motherboard affecting your PCI express slot. My bet is faulty PSU.

It might not necessarily be a virus. Choose 'Start -> Run' and load 'taskmgr' to see what's using all your CPU. There are a bunch of online virus scanners, Google is your friend ;)

Raid 5 with a hot spare, done in software if possible (I forget what Windows supports in that respect). CPU use would be negligable. Unless the load on the server becomes very large, you shouldn't even notice it. Doing RAID in software rather than hardware does solve the problem where when the...

Stick a quid's worth of postage on. It'll go 2nd class. A quid will get you 300 grams worth of postage.

EAC is the daddy of all things for getting a really good backup of your audio CD's. I eschew mp3 in favour of ogg at around 128k. Ogg really does sound stunning. I trialled AAC and AAC+ and ogg captured more of the original sound than anything else at the same bitrate (to my ears and a pair of...

You've got the Western Digital RE (RAID editions) or the Maxtor MaxLine III / Pro range which are directly targeted as being reliable drives. I'm happy with my MaxLine III 300GB. If I was running a very busy 24x7 server I would probably go with the WD because they are listed as good for 'high...

I can heartily recommend Maxtor MaxLine III 300GB drives. Been more than happy with mine since I've had it. It's currently the only drive in my main PC and it does perform very well. I've never benchmarked it but PAR2 checking seems to chew through a 50MB per second. Random accessing is...