Recent content by Wxguesser

Open your volume control window. Most of the time there is a little speaker icon in your task bar. Double click on it and see if the Mic input is muted or if the slider is all the way down. If the icon is not in the task bar, open Control Panel, then Sound and Audio Devices, then click on...

I would check to see if your CPU cooling is working correctly. It sounds like a possible overheat problem. If there isn't sufficient cooling, some mobo's will shut the sytem down to protect it. If this isn't it, try a memory test. www.memtest.org has a free memory diagnostic that does some...

Drive overlays are not complicated. All they are is a way of tricking your BIOS into thinking the drive is smaller than it is. If you bought you drive new, the install software came with the drive and it is just a simple matter to install the drive overlay. In fact, it's much simpler that...

One other thing you may want to look at. Is your CPU fan still spinning? I had a 'puter do the same things as Sans is describing and upon closer inspection, the CPU was overheating due to a dead CPU fan. You mentioned new RAM. Did you replace all your RAM or just supplement what you already...

If it was a ground problem, you would hear a steady 60Hz hum. Also, if power related, wiggling the power cord to your speakers would make it come and go causing the crackle and pop but that should be fairly easy to isolate. Another suspect would be the brick power supply (if you have one) to...

Final update. Called Zuke, the company that made the computer and they suggested an IDE controller card. Now why didn't I think of that? Got one and tried it with no joy. Every time I put a blank disk in the drive, the whole system locked up. No keyboard response, no mouse, nothing. I even...

I think I am going to go ahead and replace the mobo. I have quite a few irreplaceable files on the primary drive and I don't want to slick it and start over. As an alternative, I may just use the secondary drive to reinstall Windows and just use it for the OS. It's a small 10GB HD and it should...

Latest in the ongoing saga, Tried putting a hard drive on the secondary IDE channel. At first, all indications were that all was normal. I was able to open, read, and write to the drive. However, when I reinstalled it onto the primary IDE channel, all the data on it was corrupted. The extended...

Old Optowrite burner works just fine in the other PC. New Maddog works just fine on same IDE channel as hard drive. Now what?? I'll try a google search or something while I wait for an answer. TIA Jim W.

Latest update, Tried new IDE cable, again, no joy. Tried the old burner in other PC. Seems to be working just fine. I am formatting a CD-RW and it seems to be working as it hasn't ejected the disk with some kind of error and it's been going now for over 19 minutes. Before it would spit it out...

As memory can also cause this problem, try reseating the memory modules as well. If still no joy, I would guess the mobo is toast. Jim W.

Here's an update. I took the burner apart and the lens looks clean. I blew it off anyway (no touchee) and put it all back together, no joy. I then scrounged an old Memorex 2x burner and tried that. It seemed to work but when I went to play back the burned cd, no data was on it but the tracks...

I was thinking along those same lines. The media worked before. I have used Verbatim for years with no problems. Could be the dirty lens thing although the drive seems to read everything just fine. Maybe the write head (if there is such a thing in a burner) is dirty or it is clean enough to...

An update. I uninstalled Roxio Easy CD creator 5 and installed Nero Burning ROM 5 and still the CD burner won't burn correctly. It destroys the CD. Cakewalk's Pyro 2003 does the same thing. I also obtained Roxio's Easy Media Creator 7 and it does the same thing version 5 did. The CD goes into...

I like the Giant product a lot. It picks up things that Adaware and Spy Bot just plain miss. I just hope MS doesn't do their usual when they buy out a company. They will destroy it if they do. If they keep the Giant team together, they will actually have something good that will stay good. If...