Random Question Thread: Tech

[Kenshiin]

Usually, they give you a recovery disk with Drivers and Utilities. You need this disk activate the Wireless card and other components. That's what I had to do when using a non-OEM Windows 7 disk on someone's laptop.

They included a little sheet stating that they no longer include a System Recovery DVD. There was a Recovery Partition that I deleted because it never occured to me that I couldn't upgrade from Premium to Ultimate. Is it the chipset driver that would be causing me the trouble?

[Buffy]

Where did you read this? Anyway the manufactures site says 3 way SLI is fine (x16/x16/x8 though)

/sigh. what do you mean x16/x16/x8?

There are 3 PCI-E x 16 slots, so I'm confused again.

[Buffy]

SLI in Nvidia.

CrossfireX is ATI, and the technical term for current gen crossfire (2007 on).

Up to 4 cards for each.

I read the bit about Crossfire now being called CrossfireX between posts. Anything with the older version, where it sometimes used a 'master' card, was called crossfire, anything recent, last couple years, now called crossfireX.

So does any motherboard that is CrossfireX/SLI compatible and has 3 (or 4 I guess) PCI-E x 16 slots capable of running 3 or 4 cards in tandem (although that might not be the best option depending on the power of the cards, heat generation, etc). Or does it need a specific designation to distinguish between boards that can run two cards and boards that can run 3 and/or 4?

I'm just trying to make sure I understand the basics.

[hey]

Is it the chipset driver that would be causing me the trouble?

Yes. You should be able to find all the drivers you need online.

[Ratatapa]

Looking for a good canadian site for a Laptop Battery

Battery Model AS10D75 for an Acer Aspire 5742

[Vendog]

What are the best emulators for NES, SNES, and N64?
Nevermind found some.

[hey]

Best?

For nes, there was a bunch of testing done on some of them here. Based on that, i'd say nintedulator or nestopia. Bizhawk is good, but very new (initial release being 3 months ago), and is extremely slow compared to any other emulator.

For snes, bsnes is more or less perfectly accurate, and the only emulator that can actually play every game from start to finish. It requires a reasonably strong pc, but if you can run it full speed (and don't need 10x turbo for whatever reason), it's the only one worth using.

All n64 emulators are garbage, but project 64 1.6 seems to be the best.

[Purrrfect]

I read the bit about Crossfire now being called CrossfireX between posts. Anything with the older version, where it sometimes used a 'master' card, was called crossfire, anything recent, last couple years, now called crossfireX.

So does any motherboard that is CrossfireX/SLI compatible and has 3 (or 4 I guess) PCI-E x 16 slots capable of running 3 or 4 cards in tandem (although that might not be the best option depending on the power of the cards, heat generation, etc). Or does it need a specific designation to distinguish between boards that can run two cards and boards that can run 3 and/or 4?

I'm just trying to make sure I understand the basics.

Your best bet on verifying what a board can handle is to go to the manufacturer's site and see how many it lists. Just because the board may have 3 pcie slots doesn't mean it can use 3 gpus together. The x16/x8/x4 designate bandwidth on that slot, and those can change depending on how many cards are used. (ex. A system may have a x16 and a x8 slot but if 2 gpus are used the x16 slot will only run at x8. This is not always the case.) From tests I saw a while back the difference between x8 and x16 was minimal, just avoid x4.

[Strawhat]

how do i turn off "user account control" ?
this morning i wake up, turn on my computer, try to start up game, and this window pops up... "User Account Control" -- an unidentified program wants access to your computer --pol.exe
if i press allow then viewer starts in normal SE game window... i'm trying to boot it in usual windower
so how do i fix this?

[hey]

control panel > user accounts > change user account control settings

[Strawhat]

that's what i thought too, but i go to the last part and i'm lost
i'm on vista so it goes like
Control Panel > User Account and Family Safety > then under User account i got 3 categories --- Change your account picture, add or remove user account, change your user password

[Niya]

/sigh. what do you mean x16/x16/x8?

There are 3 PCI-E x 16 slots, so I'm confused again.

The board has 3 x16 slots, but not all of the 16 lanes on those ports are actually wired. This is quite common for boards with more than one PEG slot, the first has 16 lanes wired and the 2nd onward either have only 8 (or even less) lanes wired or they are fully wired but when you put more than 1 GPU in not all lanes are used.
So 16/16/8 means that on 3-way slot 1 and 2 get the full 16 lanes, but the third GPU only gets 8 lanes. The lanes are used to communicate with CPU and RAM, but x8 is still enough and shouldn't slow the 3rd GPU down.

They included a little sheet stating that they no longer include a System Recovery DVD. There was a Recovery Partition that I deleted because it never occured to me that I couldn't upgrade from Premium to Ultimate. Is it the chipset driver that would be causing me the trouble?

Look on the Asus website whether they offer driver downloads for your laptop (they should). Download the whole batch (can be several 100MB) and install them in your W7 Ultimate. That should let windows recognize the WLAN chip and get it to work.
Some manufacturers do "funny" stuff like that you need a program for getting certain hardware parts to work correctly, function keys, special buttons, cameras and WLAN/Bluetooth (on laptops without hardware switch for that) are often affected. See what works only with the drivers, and if something still doesn't work, try through the special apps that also come with it.
The worst thing i ever saw concerning such stuff was a Fujitsu laptop where the integrated camera didn't work. Driver was missing, but the Fujitsu website listed none for download. We asked the support and they replied that there's an installer on the recovery disc (at least they still had CDs bundled with the laptop...) that installs a program for the camera, and that this installer also includes the driver. Because of right stuff they weren't allowed to distribute the installer outside of the recovery discs, and the driver alone didn't exist...

[Strawhat]

i wonder what happened, my Quick Launch is all messed up, is it possible that Computer "resetted" or something when i chose "shut down" last night O.o

[hey]

It should be there. In vista it's called change security settings.

If not, 3 other ways to do it at http://www.petri.co.il/disable_uac_in_windows_vista.htm

[Strawhat]

k found it in "windows security center" o.o thx

[Cleverness]

Ok so my computer since last night has been playing some random squeaking sound at random through the speakers or headphones(headphones connected directly into the jack). It was only a few times last night but it's picked up since this morning, driving me a little crazy. Don't notice any different processes open, cleaned out the fan and inside the case with compressed air incase the computer was overheating or something but it's still occurred after that. Only notice it when I have Firefox open so I'm not sure if there was some update to some site that is making this happen.

Edit: K scratch that, found it. New Noscript for some reason comes with an audio notification enabled when it blocks something.

[Zimman]

Having an issue with what I think is my video card driver. Most of the time my PC will just restart, sometimes failing to boot. I have gotten one BSOD with a STOP 0x03b in it. I have a buddy who works at Geek Squad and offered to take it in for free. With me confused, I let him, they came back and said it was a graphics card driver issue. 5 days later of no issues, having them again. Two things. How do I read a large Memory.dmp file, and (inc nub) if I uninstall my graphics card driver is it really as simple as rebooting the pc and installing the driver again?

[Kais]

so one of my dad's bosses spilled red wine on his fairly new toshiba satellite
keyboard doesn't work so he just gave the whole thing to my dad
i've never dealt with laptops; is there a way to fix the keyboard? it seems to be a pretty good laptop after i clean installed windows

[Chun Liroy]

How do I get these dambed stripped screws out of my laptopn

[Senji]

EZ-out or dremel a slot for a regular screwdriver.