Building a PC

[Stan Pope]

I recall a similar problem here, but don't recall whether I repaired by reinstalling NIC driver or diddling parameters. I do recall looking in the system logs to see what happened during boot to cause the problem! That seems to be an excellent place to look when "stuff happens" in windows.

[gpraceman]

Man, I should have waited just a bit longer to get Vista.

http://www.computerworld.com/action/art ... nomyId=125

I could have ended up with a free copy of Win7. I was going to install the Win7 RC on my laptop, so I can test out my software against it, but the RC will only work until June 2010. At that point I will have to either upgrade or reload Vista onto it. Having that free copy of Win7 would have helped. Oh, well. Maybe that's enough of a reason to get a new laptop when the RC expires.

On my Internet connection issue, I believe that it is a sporadic issue with my wireless router. My new system is wired to one of the 4 ports that it has. I gave the router a static IP address to see if that will help. If not, I'll be getting a new router here soon.

My system is fully up and running now. It took me two days to get all of my apps installed and configured and data migrated over. I didn't have any driver issues (still need to try out my video capture device) and only one app gave me an issue. That was QuickBooks 2005. I had to find and download an older version of the Flash Player to get it to work. Intuit gave me a bit of grief trying to get the activation code. They wanted to sell me the upgrade (not very good reviews from many users) and swore that 2005 would not work on Vista. With the right version of Flash, it works just fine.

I did have one system stability issue, periodic system freezes. It seems DDR3 RAM is still a bit bleeding edge for PC's. I had to tweak the frequency in BIOS downward a bit to get the freezes to go away. That was even with memory on the Asus compatibility list. Maybe a future BIOS update will resolve that problem.

Overall, I am very happy with this new system. It is way faster than my 6 yr old system. I don't waste so much time waiting for the computer to complete a task (rather aggravating when trying to write software or process orders). Also nice is backing up to an eSATA external drive. It took a fraction of the time do a full system backup compared to my old USB external drive. Burning CDs and DVDs is also much faster with the SATA connection instead of IDE.

[Stan Pope]

I had one system stability issue, periodic system freezes. Seems DDR3 RAM is still a bit bleeding edge for PC's. I had to tweak the frequency in BIOS downward a bit to get the freezes to go away. Maybe a future BIOS update will resolve that problem.

I didn't try DDR3 with my Q9550 / ASUS P5Q boards ... they didn't show as being spec'ed for that. Instead went with DDR2 - 1066. Still plenty fast ... about 25% faster and 30+% more throughput than my Q6600's!

I've been a lot happier with the ethernet portion of my LAN than with the WIFI-G portion. Some of the machines would lose sync every few days and I'd have to manually reconnect them to the LAN. Not good when trying to keep 11 of 'em (scattered around the house mainly in bunches of 4) up and running nicely! So, the WIFI mainly runs my Bride's roll-about and my Laptop. Besides, with more than half the machines sporting gigabit NIC's, it seemed wasteful to throttle 'em back to less than 100 megabits/sec! Printing on the one laser printer that I could justify is especially nice!

[gpraceman]

I didn't try DDR3 with my Q9550 / ASUS P5Q boards ... they didn't show as being spec'ed for that. Instead went with DDR2 - 1066. Still plenty fast ... about 25% faster and 30+% more throughput than my Q6600's!

Mine has the P5Q3 motherboard, which is DDR3 only. I've got 8GB (4x2) of 1333MHz RAM in it, but had to throttle it down to 1111MHz. From reading reviews and forum posts on DDR3 motherboards from a variety of manufacturers, they all have similar complaints. I don't know how I overlooked that when trying to piece together a system. Anyways, it is running well now.

I've been a lot happier with the ethernet portion of my LAN than with the WIFI-G portion. Some of the machines would lose sync every few days and I'd have to manually reconnect them to the LAN. Not good when trying to keep 11 of 'em (scattered around the house mainly in bunches of 4) up and running nicely! So, the WIFI mainly runs my Bride's roll-about and my Laptop. Besides, with more than half the machines sporting gigabit NIC's, it seemed wasteful to throttle 'em back to less than 100 megabits/sec! Printing on the one laser printer that I could justify is especially nice!

That is quite a collection of PC's. What router are you using?

[sporty]

My netgear wireless router, seems to need me to refresh the ip. gets bothersome at times.


But with four kids on laptops all the time anymore. Wireless was the way to go. Never understood, why I can walk into the kids room, find all four on the floor with all four laptops.

heres my collection/kids/-

1 E-machines $500 cheapie for the other half 1.7ghz
2- my gigabyte I built, a few year now, but sill doing okay. 1.6ghz
3- a duo core dell, 530, 2ghz
4, comqpaq N600c 1.3 ghz
5, Compaq N610c, 2ghz
6, Dell D600, 1.6ghz
7, dell D600 (pink) 1.6ghz


printers-

Hp laserjet 2600
brother 4040cn laserjet
dell all in one inkjet

[Stan Pope]

That is quite a collection of PC's. What router are you using?

The router is a Belkin F5D7231-4. The router includes an internet connection, a firewall, WIFI-G access point, and four 100BaseT drops for my LAN. I have several 1-to-4 (i.e. 5-hole) LinkSys 2Gb/s switches scattered.
The machines with Gb NIC's are concentrated on the LinkSys switches to facilitate intermachine sharing without getting stuck in a path shared with slower machines. Also have some older switches that run 100BaseT to drop machines with slower NIC's.

Sorry for the delay in responding. I was out of town tending to family affairs ... Bride's family, actually. Her 93 y.o. mother is now "the last kitten from the litter." My job was to get mother to Marion, IL where services for her 88 y.o. younger brother were held this morning.

[gpraceman]

Sporty - I also found a video capture device that will work with Vista (32 and 64 bit). I haven't tried it yet, but it comes recommended by someone who has.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6815100112" target="_blank

I took a glance at the video transfer device.
...
If you get one, keep me in the loop.

I finally got around to testing the KWorld capture device on Vista x64. Vista automatically found the drivers online and I had it up and running no problem. I didn't bother with the CD that it came with, since I don't need the video capture/editing software that it would try to install. Usually the biggest complaint on these devices is the included software.

As far as quality goes, the KWorld unit is on par with my AdsTech capture device. That isn't saying a lot, since this is analog video that is being processed. I did plug in the AdsTech unit, to see if Vista would find the drivers. As expected, it didn't.

I did a quick test on Win7 RC and the KWorld unit installed and worked just as easily.

For giggles, I plugged in the AdsTech unit into my laptop and Win7 RC was able to automatically find the driver online and install it. That was quite a surprise. A quick video test showed that it worked just fine. This laptop is just a 32 bit system, so I'm not sure how well it would work on Win7 x64. Maybe you won't have to replace your AdsTech unit after all.

[sporty]

Thanks for the added info. This new o/s is starting to sound way better than vista.

Sporty

[gpraceman]

Well, hopefully my LAN issues are behind me. I got a new gigabit wireless-n router on sale and got it all setup yesterday.

Only my new desktop can take advantage of the gigabit ports for now, but I have a feeling before long I will need to replace my printer (making funny noises) and my aging laptop (probably before the Win7 RC expires in Jun 2010). Then, of course, my boys want me to build them a cool new computer because theirs is "slow and boring". After all the $ that I have plunked out on computer hardware recently, that will have to wait. Their bigger issue is lack of hard drive space. I might be able to pull the hard drive out of my old external drive and use that in their computer. It has twice the capacity.