The Official PC building thread -3rd Edition

Whenever I run into a serious virus that is hard to eradicate I always go to the Sophos website to see if they fixed it yet and more often than not they have. Sophos is probably the best virus scan in existence but unfortunately they sell only to corporations. The plus is that they have a 30 trial period and a free Conficker removal tool.


http://www.sophos.com/products/free-tools/conficker-removal-tool.html

http://www.sophos.com/

 

I should've posted this a few days ago. I've got more time in this than getting rid of the ex wife!Thank you Sophocles for the wisdom.Be running this tonight after work. Thanks again.Chris

 

Shaffaaf,
Welcome back, and thanks for the apology, but I need to apologize to you, as well. Things sort of got a bit carried away, on both sides ! LOL!! It's good to hear from you again. Don't be a stranger.

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Well...Linux just left a bad taste in my mouth! Dont worry...I dont give up on anything that easily. Besides, more often than not, its human error, Right LOL! For what ever reason, Debian(Grub) altered the MBR of my Windows 7 drive to the point it couldn't be recovered. No biggie, I hadn't installed much. Though GTA IV gave me pains once again! And also thankfully, while navigating windows 7 recovery options, I found a way to transfer Critical data from one drive to another VERY awesome!!! I had 3 ISO files I needed to save, among a few other things. In the future, when I install an OS, there will ONLY be one HDD in the system!!! Certainly when I am installing something I've never tried before LOL! I haven't done any partitioning at all either. Just haven't seen the need for it yet. So more than likely, I AM to blame LOL! I suppose its just as well, I cant find Linux support for my board anyway. Similar boards, but not the exact model. Perhaps my MSI...

 

You should be able to load windows 7 through the grub boot loader unless you messed it up somehow. Do you have a entry for windows in grub?

 

Why would Linux/Grub need more than one drive? Why would it store data on a separate HDD? Very irritating. Im afraid its too late for that now. I have Windows 7 almost fully restored(the long and tedious way)! As I said, I haven't done any partitioning, or I would probably have been 100X more careful, or just plain Known what needed done.

See...I dont even know what you mean by that. (Do you have an entry for windows in Grub)? To late now though darn it. Im gonna install Linux on a separate System, to insure NO fowl-ups! Probably my MSI system(MS-7309), Athlon 5200, 500GB aakb(WD) HDD, 2GB Gskill 6400. Should be ample for a linux system

 

usually when you install linux it installs grub to that master boot record on the hard drive you selected. Then when you restart the system grub loads up and gives you an option to boot or go into other operating systems. That is the menu were you would also have windows so you select between them. For future reference it is not very difficult to add an os to the grub menu.

that will open the config for grub. Then you would just have to add windows.

The only thing in that code you would have to change would be the (hd0,0). You change that to the drive number and that partition number. If you want more help with this you can go down to the linux forum.

 

Thanks for the info bud I installed it to the appropriate drive. It told me before it began, that the MBR would be recoverable later if necessary. However, I could not find the way. I ran multiple googles, forums, etc. to no avail. I gave up when I realized that I wouldn't be saving much by trying to save the MBR, except maybe knowledge. Thankfully, I stumbled on a way to backup the drive in question LOL!

In the future, I will visit Linux forums if I wish to employ dual boot. But given the amount of HDD's I have, towers I have, I just dont see the need for that Thanks a ton though.

 

I think you have to get into Grub. Type Bootexec.exe /FixMbr or something very similar. You can also try Bootexec.exe /FixBoot. I remember I had a similar problem installing Vista X64 after an install of Ubuntu and this fixed it permanently.

 

Tried that too. Thanks though. Trust me when I say, I'm an avid googler LOL! I must of done something wrong during install, and im just uncertain what.

On another note, running a stress test with Prime 95 and breezing the web, like its nothing. Guess prime 95 doesn't know how to stress a phenom LOL! The gadget says 100% Im going for a slightly higher overclock this time. With it underclocked, I am noticing a SLIGHT lag in GTA IV. Im gonna surf a bit, and see what kinda voltage people are TRUSTING with these babies. Since ive heard 1.5 could be detrimental to CPU's, im kindof afraid to push that.

 

Well as long as you keep it cool, anything up to 1.55 is generally safe. I don't feel comfortable above 1.5v personally. With a good cooler I've even seen people running them constant with 1.6v. Depends on what your chip needs to hit the clock. Take your time and OC it properly. I was surprised to find mine 100% stable at 3.7GHz with 1.45v which means happy temps

 

Oman7,
The engineers at AMD say 1.522v is max for the Phenom II. I personally like to leave a little cushion, so it's maximum for me will be 1.50v. As Sophocles says, you do reach a point of diminishing returns. I personally will be thrilled if I can run an everyday 3.8GHz!

Here's a link for you for downloading Orthos. It also runs Prime, but it's multi threaded. Don't exactly know how it runs with Quad Cores, but it runs 2 instances of Prime 95 with a dual core, so I'm guessing 4 for a quad!

http://sp2004.fre3.com/beta/beta2.htm

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Right I generally use Orthos. Prime 95 is single threaded and I think you need to open 4 instances of it and set each one to an individual core to stress quads. Orthos is just a mod of Prime 95 to work with multi core chips.

 

Omegaman: NEVER cross any Windows install beyond XP with another OS with the other drive even plugged in during the install. When I install Vista I always unplug every HDD but the one I'm installing to, primarily to make sure I don't overwrite the old drive by accident (Windows installers rename the drive letters completely differently to how your old Windows saw the drives)

The problem with Linux is it creates several partitions on a drive to install (At least 3 I believe) whereas Windows only uses one. I remember finding this to be a problem when I installed SuSe on my old Maxtor drive in my Athlon XP. I never got the hang of the OS though. Without my online manual running simultaneously on another PC (My online manual being google since it was so unintuitive I had to google every single command) I'm stumped. That's why I love having two PCs up at once

Estuansis: Aren't the Phenom IIs 45nm? 1.6V on a 45nm chip is a death sentence, and a very short one.
Also, yes, Prime95 is single-threaded, you need four of them to stress the system. Or just open OCCT and watch the PC shut down as the PSU fails... haha

 

LOL I found that out the hard way. 320GB of data GONE. Not fun.

Well I don't plan on using 1.6 that's for sure! lol. Some have done it and supposedly AMD chips can take higher voltages. I'm not willing to find out XD

Haha still no power issues with all this stuff in my case. Quad Core CPU, 2 sticks of 2GB DDR2 @ 2.1v, 2 high end video cards, 2 SATA HDDs, a sound card, A DVD-RW and even a floppy, lol. Never had an issue and never gets loud even when stressing. Folding is still the only way to make my system noisy XD

 

But a 600W PSU!
Doesn't quite beat my heavily overclocked and overvolted Quad core, 4870X2 (as much power as two 4870s), THREE S-ATA HDDs, FOUR sticks of DDR2, two fan controllers and a DVD drive off a 520W PSU

 

ok guys im back up on the big red machine.
windows installed fine took me some time but its up and running.. i did by accident wipe my 500gb WD drive. had everything on it. movies pics,music all my programs for burning and such

those will be easily obtained again but will take time.

here is the issue im haveing now. windows is only seeing my hdd's as 127gb instead of 500gb.. i know there is something i have to do to correct this i just dont remember

 

Are you installing a version of XP pre-Service Pack 1?

 

yes but since i have installed sp2

and now i cant get my HD audio to install.

 

Doesn't matter, SP2 has to be on the system BEFORE the drive is formatted, so if you've no disc with SP1 or SP2 already on the CD, you need to format the drive in another PC, THEN install Windows.