Tech-related problems

[Mugen]

thanks lol i feel like such a big noob 

[Asmodai]

Always a good idea before company uses your computer.

[Mugen]

yea 

[redux]

It's a must have tool for the porn user on a shared computer eh?

[Mugen]

nah my comp isnt shared. its in my room. but sometimes friends are over and like to go thru my porno when im outside gaming

[frblckstr1]

^ external HD's for the win

BTW, in advanced settings you can also have you cache/history cleared when you close it.

[sayumi_fan]

I have JUST (finally!) got on broadband, and so I'm starting to try to use torrents...  I've got the BitTorrent client, and currently downloading my first d/l from H!O...  a couple of queries:

- I'm using Tiny Personal Firewall - I'm getting a lot of requests for outside pple to link to a component called DNA (which is part of BitTorrent, I think?)...  Are all of these going to be legitimate requests that I should approve?

- Windows Firewall asked if I wanted to continue blocking DNA.  I said 'ask me later'.  When it does, should I tell it not to block DNA any more?

- How do I make sure that pple from H!O can leech from me so that I get a good ratio?  Just leave stuff where it downloads?  Do I need to leave my BitTorrent client open all the time so they can leech from me?

Sorry if all this sounds dumb and basic - I know nuthin' really about this yet...

And...  now that I have broadband, I'm gonna be lookin' for ways I can help out and stuff I can share here more easily.  Yay!  I got a few ideas, work is kinda busy right now, but I'm gonna get to it soon...

[RatBastich]

Depends on which BT client you're using.
There a number of clients which allow you set it so your upload, after your download is done, will continue either for a set time or to a specified ratio, and one example for that would be uTorrent.
Also, make sure to set your upload speed to about 70% of your max upstream, at least thats how I remember it.

Not sure about that DNA bit, since I don't believe I've ever seen it before, the bt client I use is uTorrent.

[StreakInTheSky]

I know some clients have this feature that can forward your router ports automatically so you don't have to go through the hassel of doing it yourself. And don't forget to allow access through any software firewalls. This should solve your problem of getting decent uploads(other than getting faster speed from your isp)

I've never heard of the DNA thing so I can't comment about that either.

I'm not sure about othe clients but I know utorrent helps you check your up speed and has recommended upload limits according to your speed. Also it has a thing that checks if you forwarded your ports correctly.

[BigDnm01]

i'm thinking about getting a new internal hard drive for my laptop and just wanna know is there different type of hard drive like there is for desktop?  

[ebc]

Depends on the model of your laptop, there is SATA 2.5" drives but you'll probably want normal ATA (PATA, whatever)

After that there can be different speed drives, although most now are 5400rpm now I think.

[frblckstr1]

Depends on the model of your laptop, there is SATA 2.5" drives but you'll probably want normal ATA (PATA, whatever)

After that there can be different speed drives, although most now are 5400rpm now I think.

It depends on the laptop also if you can use the higher speeds, they at times draw more power which some laptop motherboards do not like so the system might get unstable.

[shadowstar]

Where do I go again to find the folder where the PC stores pictures I've viewed with my browser?

[frblckstr1]

^ for IE: use the dropdown Tools/Internet options/Browser History bress the 'Settings' button. The next dialog has a 'View Files' button.

It also tells you the 'current location' of the files.

[chera]

Here's a bunch of really dumb questions from a guy who has used laptops for his entire computing life, but is now thinking of getting his first desktop PC:

 - In a PC with multiple internal HDDs, is there a way to shut down the power to individual drives using software or the OS?  I want to keep a bunch of hard drives plugged in the internal bays, but don't want them spinning up until I actually need some files off of them.

 - To decode x264 and high-resolution HDTV video files, what matters more: CPU or video card?

 - For gaming, what's better: getting two cheap video cards and running them SLI, or getting a good video card that's twice as expensive?

 - If a motherboard says it supports RAID, does that mean I can configure a pair of drives to do RAID 0 and another pair of drives to do RAID 1 - at the same time?  Or will I need a seperate RAID controller to do both RAID 0 and RAID 1?

 - When the specs of a motherboard says PATA 1 x ATA133 2 Dev. Max, does that mean that just 1 PATA drive can be plugged in?

 - I'm going to be using a lot of USB devices.  Is there any reason for me to choose a motherboard with a lot of USB ports, or is it OK if I just use hubs?

 - I'm thinking of getting a 1080p 50" DLP TV and using it as both a TV and as a general computer monitor.  Assuming I can good seating distance for both uses, does this idea make sense?  The TV has HDMI, DVI, VGA, and a bunch of other inputs.

[frblckstr1]

- In a PC with multiple internal HDDs, is there a way to shut down the power to individual drives using software or the OS?  I want to keep a bunch of hard drives plugged in the internal bays, but don't want them spinning up until I actually need some files off of them.

Yes modern OS's can shutdown not used drives (some do it by default now even on desktops)

- To decode x264 and high-resolution HDTV video files, what matters more: CPU or video card?

Video card if it has H264 support, CPU otherwise

- For gaming, what's better: getting two cheap video cards and running them SLI, or getting a good video card that's twice as expensive?

No idea, I do not do high-end gaming.

- If a motherboard says it supports RAID, does that mean I can configure a pair of drives to do RAID 0 and another pair of drives to do RAID 1 - at the same time?  Or will I need a seperate RAID controller to do both RAID 0 and RAID 1?

That depends on the type of raid it says, but most motherboards will do stripe ('RAID'-0) or mirror (RAID-1) and do not have enough connections to do both.

- When the specs of a motherboard says PATA 1 x ATA133 2 Dev. Max, does that mean that just 1 PATA drive can be plugged in?

PATA can handle two drives on one cable.

- I'm going to be using a lot of USB devices.  Is there any reason for me to choose a motherboard with a lot of USB ports, or is it OK if I just use hubs?

IF by 'a lot' you mean like 6 (and not 30 like I have) take a motherboard with a lot of USB connectors, hubs slow everything down

- I'm thinking of getting a 1080p 50" DLP TV and using it as both a TV and as a general computer monitor.  Assuming I can good seating distance for both uses, does this idea make sense?  The TV has HDMI, DVI, VGA, and a bunch of other inputs.

I would do that only if you can get hdmi output from the computer, DVI cables are to short I found out (I am still looking for something longer then 1.8m)
Btw I am using a HP tx1020 laptop to play video's on my TV (with a VGA->DVI-D cable)

[shadowstar]

^ for IE: use the dropdown Tools/Internet options/Browser History bress the 'Settings' button. The next dialog has a 'View Files' button.

It also tells you the 'current location' of the files.

Thanks!

Does anyone know how to do it for FF too?

[ebc]

In reply to chera's post

- I've never really looked into the harddrive power up/down thing. But I'm sure there is possibly some power management software around that can do this kinda thing.

- With h264 videos. If you get any current Core 2 Duo/Quad cpu then playing these won't be a problem at all. Although any recent model videocard does help with decoding, I've played video's back on just onboard Intel graphics and the cpu usage was only 15%.

- For games, get an 8800gts 320mb, this will beat any sli setup of the same price. If you are thinking of running all your games with full everything at 1920x1200 then you would probably wanna go the 640mb card or even a GTX but otherwise if you're only doing 1280x1024 or similar resolution you won't notice a difference in the speed between 320mb and 640mb version of the GTS. There is the option of Radeon 2900xt but I'm not really a fan of the ATI drivers. The cards do perform pretty good for the price though.

- Don't do RAID, there's no speed benefit at all unless you're like a fileserver on a large network. And if you need redundancy, just copy doubles of your files to seperate hdd's.

- Most motherboards nowadays only come with 1 PATA port but it's a normal 2 channel port and you can plug 2 drives into it as master and slave.

- New boards out atm I've seen have up to 12 USB ports (6 on the back, 6 for front of case if needed). As long as the devices you plug into them aren't all bus powered then I doubt there'd be any problem with using all 12 at once.

- All videocards now have DVI ports, you can get DVI to HDMI converters so it shouldn't be a problem. You can also get videocards with HDCP compliant DVI ports. (so you can watch bluray etc. if you ever get a drive) Or even videocards with an HDMI port on them.

[chera]

Thanks a bunch for the tips, frblckstr1 and ebc! 
 

- Don't do RAID, there's no speed benefit at all unless you're like a fileserver on a large network. And if you need redundancy, just copy doubles of your files to seperate hdd's.

I'm thinking of RAID 0'ing the drive I'll use for keeping in-progress bittorrents.  At any point in time, I'm seeding and leaching two dozen torrents, and the drive is constantly being read and written too.  In addition, I often (try to) watch movies while I'm seeding them.  It's very difficult to do this with my current setup (a single drive laptop).  If I upgrade to a desktop system, with a standalone drive devoted to BTs, do you think RAID 0 on that drive help with performance?  I'd be using a pair of SATA 500GB 7200RPM drives.

[ebc]

I'm thinking of RAID 0'ing the drive I'll use for keeping in-progress bittorrents.  At any point in time, I'm seeding and leaching two dozen torrents, and the drive is constantly being read and written too.  In addition, I often (try to) watch movies while I'm seeding them.  It's very difficult to do this with my current setup (a single drive laptop).  If I upgrade to a desktop system, with a standalone drive devoted to BTs, do you think RAID 0 on that drive help with performance?  I'd be using a pair of SATA 500GB 7200RPM drives.

A single 7200rpm harddrive with like 16mb of cache can handle it no problem.
From my fun with RAID 0 setups I've found that the only real benefit of it was for copying large files from one RAID volume to another. Otherwise there was no noticable difference, programs and games still loaded and ran at about the same speed maybe a second or two faster but it wasn't that much.

The ideal setup for you I think would be simply to put your OS on one of the 500gig hdd's. Then have your bittorrent shared files etc stored on the second drive. This would be much faster than a RAID 0 setup and will keep your OS nice and fast because it's on it's own harddrive.

You will benefit the most from having a lot of RAM though, so just go all out with the RAM, if you're going with Vista then be sure to get 4gig or something.