The Official Computer Tech Support Thread

[sidewinder]

Originally Posted by Freebase Dali

Yea, any time you do a clean install you'll need to put your specific hardware drivers in yourself as Windows has no way of knowing what hardware you'll be using, therefore the drivers won't be included in the OS installation CD.
You should only need the following drivers:

CHIPSET driver (important, if you value any kind of performance at all)
Video card driver
Audio card driver
Ethernet controller driver

Anything else, such as third-party software stuff will be installed when you install the software.

Cool thanks. After a bit more work on it this weekend it's finally home and able to get online, so I can at least resolve any further problems from there. I still need to investigate audio as I'm able to plug in headphones and get sound in the front, but nothing comes out of speakers plugged in the back. Shouldn't be too hard. I'll look into the Chipset driver, I may have grabbed this already but can't be sure. Haven't noticed any performance worse than before, and I even installed the beast that is Adobe CS4 last night. Anyway the major thing was getting the net hooked up so I could use it at home.

On an unrelated issue, does anyone know if it's possible to import a Favorites folder into a browser, without having exported an HTML file? Every instruction I've seen says to import the HTML file exported from another browser. Well, I don't have that...I just have the folder with all the sub-folder and links. If I drag this folder into a browser window, it does display the directory...so I could click on each link and manually re-bookmark everything and recreate all my subfolders, but that would be quite time-consuming.

[Cadrian]

Alright... Need help please.

My Aunt just gave me a Computer that she tried to build years ago.... She said she put in a new MOBO and then when she turned it she smelled smoke. So she turned it off and the computer has been sitting there for 3 years because she didnt want to fix it.

So she gave it to me... told me to see if I can fix it, I brought it home, and powered it up and the Power supply blew out a puff of smoke like a atom bomb out of the back of it. Turned it off and now am guessing I just need to replace the Power Supply... Did I damage anything by turning it on besides the Power Supply?

The MOBO is a k7upgrade-600
The Powersupply is Skyhawk CTX-300WCE

What do y'all think I should do get this thing working again? Its a free computer for me if I get working, be nice to have another computer around the house for web surfing or maybe giving to a friend.

Thanks for any replies.

[noise]

impossible to say without looking at it. can you look inside and see what shorted? chances are you fried a lot more than just the power supply...

[Cadrian]

Originally Posted by noise

impossible to say without looking at it. can you look inside and see what shorted? chances are you fried a lot more than just the power supply...

Ya... I looked around in there for a while already... I didn't see any discoloring, burn marks or broken solder joints. So I don't know... Soon as it started smoking I was already looking inside of the case, and didn't see any happen anywhere else.

[noise]

well it's possible that it's just the power supply, but i wouldn't advise opening that up to check.

buying a new one and testing it out is certainly an option, but it's not exactly a cheap way to test the system. you may be better off taking it in someplace, if you know someone you can trust. unfortunately computer repair places are a lot like auto shops - they tend to charge a lot for nothing...

[Freebase Dali]

^ True that.

But if you ever want to get the computer running you're going to need a new power supply anyway. Don't worry about trying to fix the power supply as those are generally field-replaceable-units and most computer repair shops won't dig into them and will advise you to get a new one anyway.

First find out how much wattage you're going to need and then select an ATX power supply (with the 20 pin ATX power connector, or 4 pin +12V ATX power connector) as that's what your mobo is compatible with.
When you get it installed, make sure it's switched to 110v (not 220v, unless you're somehow running 220v at your house...) and ensure everything else is plugged into the correct places on the mobo and everything is secured.
Test your power strip or wall plug by plugging in a lamp or something that takes 110v AC current to ensure something isn't screwy and if that goes well, plug in your computer and let her rip.

If nothing explodes/smokes/etc but you don't boot up then you've fried something else.
If you go through your post routine and you hear a series of beeps and you don't boot up, let me know how many beeps and how fast/close together they were.

Otherwise, if you boot fine, congrats.

[Cadrian]

Guess Am just going to order a 20pin ATX for 25 bucks off Newegg or something, and see what happens. Ill let yall know when I get it in and plug it up..

Ya'll mind looking at my MOBO specs and giving me a decent suggestion for a PSU?

The MOBO is a k7upgrade-600

[Freebase Dali]

Originally Posted by Cadrian

Guess Am just going to order a 20pin ATX for 25 bucks off Newegg or something, and see what happens. Ill let yall know when I get it in and plug it up..

Ya'll mind looking at my MOBO specs and giving me a decent suggestion for a PSU?

The MOBO is a k7upgrade-600

I looked at it, but as far as how much wattage your power supply will need to be will depend on more than just the mobo.
Here's a power supply calculator:
The Original - Power Supply Calculator Offered by Journey Systems. LLC. Providing Custom PCs, Servers, Laptops, Workstations, Gaming PCs, Quality Custom Computers with 3 Year Warranty

Just try to fill in what you can and it will recommend the wattage at the bottom. If you can't be specific, use the recommended wattage as a guideline and buy something with more wattage than it recommends. As far as brand is concerned, go with what you can afford but the more expensive the better. Cheap power supplies tend to do what yours did.

[Cadrian]

Thanks for the link and the information.... Ill let ya know how it turns out.

[VEGANGELICA]

Freebase! Arrgh! I have a new problem with my sound recording program.

In the past when I rendered a song (created 3 months ago with Sony Acid Music Studio 7.0) as an MP3, the MP3 sounded just like what I heard within the audio program: all the tracks were in sync.

But NOW when I render the same song (with minor changes) as an MP3, the new MP3 seems to sound okay for around 1 minute, and then, wtf? I start to hear that the tracks are playing out of sync with each other, some sounding faster than the others!

I first noticed this problem because I have duplicate vocal tracks (one of which has several sections removed to alter the dynamics)...and they *used* to sound like one vocal track in the old MP3 I created several months ago, but now the two identical vocal tracks sound like a duet in an MP3 I rendered today!

I went back to the audio program, thinking perhaps I hadn't deleted an old vocals track, and realized there was no such track. Instead, the playback of the tracks is all messed up even within the audio recording program (although it is hard to hear), but very obviously once the song is rendered as an MP3! (Whimper! Whimper!) This didn't use to happen (around 3 months ago) when I last listened to the song using Music Studio 7.0.

As a test today, I opened the audio recording file and duplicated a vocal track (to make an identical track), then played both back within the program and they sounded slightly out of sync. I think all the settings (for latency compensation, etc.) are the same as when I created the song 3 months ago, when the tracks all seemed to be in sync, but something must have gotten changed (by me). I just don't know what to do to get all the tracks in sync again! What would cause identical tracks within the same song to play out of sync? The problem may relate to this:

Separate but probably related issue: thinking I'd step up a little in my recording software, I ordered the next-up Sony Acid recording software, Acid Pro 7.0, around 2 months ago. Well, when I first tried playing a song using Acid Pro 7.0, (having converted the song from the older Acid Music Studio 7.0 into Acid Pro 7.0), the song played along fine for around 2 minutes, and then the sound cut out. So, I assumed I was taxing the memory of my computer, so I fiddled with some levels...buffer size or something...and managed to get the whole song to play in Acid Pro 7.0.

But now when I open and listen to the song using the old Acid Music Studio 7.0 (in which it was created), I get this problem with tracks being out of phase (described in the first half of this message). I tried setting buffer sizes and audio interface latency settings back to what I thought they were before, but no luck. The other thing I noticed today is that the Acid Music Studio 7.0 program seems touchy...click on a track to mute it, then unmute, and the program freezes, becoming "nonresponsive"...whereas several months ago the program *never* froze up.

I obviously don't know enough to know what I'm doing wrong...or not doing. I've temporarily given up on using Sony Acid Pro 7.0, because I thought I'd just try to finish the song in Music Studio 7.0, since that was where it was created, and the program is less complicated. Could opening an Acid Music Studio 7.0 file as an Acid Pro 7.0 file, changing buffer size there, and then later opening this new Acid Pro 7.0 file as an Acid Music Studio 7.0 file have resulted in the tracks not lining up like they did in the original Acid Music Studio 7.0 file?

Say, where did your old music recording thread go up in the Artists Corner? I searched the threads you created and it appears to be GONE! (Sob!)