Good Practices

[DeusExMachina]

Use air filters on the intake fans of your computer case. The Antec P180B has that.

[Geschpooklichkeit]

Originally Posted by Phuzion

kimcicle: Here's an idea: Set up your HDD the way you like it one day. Make an image of the hard drive, and keep it on a separate hard drive. When you decide that you're too fed up with your install of Windows, just re-image the drive.

What program do you suggest doing this with?

[dieKatze88]

Originally Posted by Excel-2007

What program do you suggest doing this with?

Norton ImageCenter Not Ghost, Image Center.

[Geschpooklichkeit]

Are you sure that's what it's called? I can't seem to find it even on Symantec's site.

[K.AuthoR]

Along the lines of virus protection, someone reccomended Nod32 to me. I have it and I've been virus-free for almost a year now since I put it in.

just throwing that out there for anyone who wants another good virus scanner.

[eureka1]

Originally Posted by K.AuthoR

Along the lines of virus protection, someone reccomended Nod32 to me. I have it and I've been virus-free for almost a year now since I put it in.

just throwing that out there for anyone who wants another good virus scanner.

i use avg and ive never had a virus

although im behind 2 firewalls :x

[Empathy]

firewalls dont protect you from viruses except from the occasional network worm, although they indirectly do so by protecting you from hackers.

as for Nod32 i've used it for 2 years now on all my machines and have never had to worry about a virus. Its detected things even Kaspersky AV has not and Kaspersky is damn good too. AV-Comparatives does a good job of objectively testing Anti-Virus apps. Even though NOD32 detects technically slightly less than Norton and some others, it False-Positives far less and has better heuristics and is quicker overall than most scanners. I like it

[Mangojoyride]

I use Acronis TrueImage Workstation 8.0 corporate edition to back up my entire computer as an image. the programs a bit dated by todays standards.. ive only ever had to use it once when an my old comp shat on itself. ive never had to use it on my new laptop, time will tell though.

[Geschpooklichkeit]

I find the Acronis programs to be more capable than PartitionMagic in terms of partitioning operations, but ImageCenter is still more reliable than anything else when it comes to disk backups, even if it is dated.

[SilentSuzumiya]

what's a S.M.A.R.T Monitor, and how can you check the temperature of your comp. and what is a bad/good temp? i'm not sure what to check or do .__.

[DeusExMachina]

Originally Posted by SilentSuzumiya

what's a S.M.A.R.T Monitor, and how can you check the temperature of your comp. and what is a bad/good temp? i'm not sure what to check or do .__.

Good temperature, for your CPU, video card and any chip basically is about 30C, although that does require some pretty extensive cooling to get it down to that temperature. If you just use the stock fans that comes with the processor and don't overclock, you will typically get about 47 to 53 C. The manufacturer claims are 90C to 0C but having worked in the semiconductor industry, AMD, Intel all test their chips to fully function between -40C and 120C.

Typically extensive cooling is only for people who tweak their systems. If you use the manufacturer's default settings, then you really don't need any particularly powerful cooling.

[Empathy]

Depending on your GPU (especially true at higher end) the idle temperature could be more like 50C. Nothing to be alarmed of, though, this is perfectly normal.

As for SMART monitors, I found one once by searching google. Always a good start place, I should think? Don't remember waht it was called but i'm sure you can find it by searching google for SMART Monitor.

[TTRlovesMittens]

Ever since SP2, my Syncro broke. Well, I figured out how to fix it. Opening port 123 on your firewall or SP2 Firewall will clear up the connection to time.windows.com and it will start syncing again. Thought I'd post this if anyone else was having the same problem.

[dieKatze88]

Note for those of us who used to use older technologies.

Remember to update your backups if you plan on keeping any older data.

This weekend I spent 10 hours trying to get an old MFM hard disk (30 megs!) to work so I could get some important shit off of them. Dont let this happen to you. if you move up to a new system, recreate your backups if you have to jump through a big hoop to get to your old ones. Next up: My floppy disks and my 120 meg tapes.

[Geschpooklichkeit]

Originally Posted by TTR_loves_Mittens

Ever since SP2, my Syncro broke. Well, I figured out how to fix it. Opening port 123 on your firewall or SP2 Firewall will clear up the connection to time.windows.com and it will start syncing again. Thought I'd post this if anyone else was having the same problem.

Better yet, use a real time server. I use north-america.pool.ntp.org.