Search results

That's great. Thank you very much for the reply.

I have two licenses to Office Home and Business 2021. Both are tied to one main MS Account. I would like computer A to use license 1, and computer B to use license 2. If I have office on both computers logged into the same main MS Account, will that cause any problems?

Jorona - I can't disable the iGPU in the BIOS. Notes ... This is a UEFI bios in legacy mode. I put a new 450 watt PSU in the system. It doesn't seem to affect anything. The system will only boot with a stick of memory in slot one. I still don't think this is a memory issue. I've used two...

3DMark11 sometimes errors out the ‘first’ time I run a test. Something about a “DirectX 11 call”. DXDiag shows no problems. Everything is enabled. Though, there are no tests to run to verify this. It then errors out a second time. Something about “exclusive access” to the monitor. The...

Thanks for the comment. I would agree with your point. However, for this situation ... I did swap out with a known good stick of system memory. Also, the bootable .iso detects bad video memory within seconds of starting up. If it detects the bad memory that quickly, then memtest "should"...

Not sure whether to put this in CPU, memory, or video category. I bought a new dell optiplex tower. It has a core i5-3470 3.2 Ghz processor, with an integrated intel HD graphics 2500 GPU. The dell diagnostic utility reported bad video memory. I also tested with this software...

I have a dead hard drive that I’d like to recover some data from it. It’s a western digital Caviar SE16 WD5000AAKS, 500 GB 3.5” SATA drive. It keeps spinning up, spinning up, spinning up. The bios recognizes it, but it will not finish the post sequence. I don’t think there is a clicking...

My Dell is an old Vostro 1000. I don't think they ever offered any form of touch with this model. I couldn't find any mention of touch in the owners or service manuals. Looks like I'll just scrap this idea. Maybe when win 8 is closer to release they'll have cheaper touch computers.

Thanks for the post. I'm wanting a touch laptop, not necessarily a tablet. I do have a computer background. General desktop repair is much easier, and I'm sort of new to laptop repair. I've replaced a few normal laptop screens before, and some other miscellaneous parts. Can you spell out...

I have a Dell laptop that I'd like to upgrade to a touchscreen for Windows 8. Is it possible to just swap out screens for a new touchscreen? If so, what general parts do I need? If not, is there any other way to upgrade to a touchscreen?

I’m having problems with a brother inkjet printer, printing yellow. The sample “Print Quality Check” page prints a grid for each color. The yellow grid prints the first and a partial second line, but the rest of the yellow lines do not print. When I print a line of yellow text, the entire...

Our color printer is dead and we need a new, more permanent printer to replace it. We'll rarely be using color, but I would like the option of printing color if needed. We'll probably end up just going with a mono printer though. Thanks for the reply.

We had a color laser printer. After a few months, the color toner cartridges were almost empty, even though we print in B&W almost exclusively. My understanding is that most printers will use some small color to prevent the cartridges from drying up. I’m not sure this is true, or if it’s...

I just picked up a couple of bargain bin flight games. I was thinking about getting a flight stick and rudder pedals. I was wondering what I need to know about compatibility. Do I need to know anything besides basic drivers? Do I need to research each and every game if it’s compatible with...

Are you talking about a standard, external USB hard drive, or are you talking about a custom enclosure? Thanks

I have a desktop computer. I'd like to attach a USB hard drive to the desktop for backup purposes. My question is, are there any problems with having a USB hard drive attached pretty much 24/7. For example, are there any problems during reboots and normal day to day activities?

Thanks for the registry hive comment. I've loaded the C:\windows\config\system hive and my registry options are persisting now. I have a couple of new problems. 1) The BSODing laptop will still not create a minidump. It does create C:\ DumpXXXX.tmp. I’m not sure if that’s a full dump...

I have a Vista laptop that is BSODing on me. The only way I can access the laptop is through the repair menu, or from UBCD4win boot cd. I’d like to debug the minidump file. However, I can’t get it to create a minidump file. I’ve found the registry branch “crashcontrol”, which I can...

As a last resort, you might try using something like process monitor from sysinternals. You can view individual threads. If it looks like there's a particular misbehaving thread, it might give some direction as to where to start looking for help. MS bought sysinternals so process monitor...

Thanks for the replies everyone.

This is a really dumb question. I have a dell laptop & genuine key, plus a vista dvd. I'm basically wanting to re-install windows vista. If I pop in the vista cd, click "install", it mentions it will move the existing windows folder to windows.old. My question is, will the pre-existing...

I was trying to fix an all-in-one inkjet printer. It always seemed to error out with these errors Scanner Failure Bad Print Head When it occasionally did print, it always printed only black, very poor quality. ----------------------------------------------- I tried swapping out...

My understanding is that if I need to replace a DVD drive on a laptop, I need to buy a drive that's designed specifically for my laptop. However, I've been seeing some generic slimline IDE DVD writers, and I was wondering if I could get one of those, maybe if I used the original caddy or...

I knew they printed some things on the cable, but didn't think to look for this. There's a 7 digit number that increments up by 2 every 2 feet. I'll have to wait until I run a longer cable to decipher the whole number though. If there is a gadget that would attach to the box and measure the...

Well, that would be the logical thing to do. It's accurate enough, but a real hassle if you're running a longer cable. A gadget would be so much easier, and even more accurate. Some gadget like this must exist somewhere.

Lets say I have a 1,000 foot box of Cat5e cable. Is there a gadget I can attach to the box that will measure the length of cable I'm pulling out of the box? I know there are those wheels that you can walk with to measure distance, but I need something that will attach to the box and...

I too have had .net version issues in the past. I'm thinking that 3.5 is not cumulative. It may contain service packs for older versions, but I've read the following ... http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc160717.aspx XP is the same as above. Also...

This is a dumb question, but can I just install the latest .net framework 3.5, or do I need to install version 1, then version 2, then version 3. The system requirements page does not mention previous versions of .net framework as a prerequisite. In other words, is .net framework v3.5...

To bad ebay prices are for some reason higher than provantage for the stuff that's on my to buy list. I would save only $6. Bummer. I'm not sure if this has been mentioned, but ink and toner might be a wise purchase for people holding back on this deal, if it qualifies.

Awesome! I've never had a upper end video card. I can't wait to see what Assassin's Creed looks like. I'm looking up my motherboard to see if I can bump up my processor a little. Thanks for the comment. There's actually two different cards. The RADEON HD 3870 is PCIe v2, where the RADEON...

That's great that there would be little or no difference. Thanks for everyone's response!

I have the following machine AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800 4 GB Ram I’m looking at buying a Radeon HD 3870. It uses a PCIe v2.0 interface, but my motherboard has a PCIe v1.0 slot. My understanding is that the newer card will be backward compatible, and will work in the older slot. My...

I've never bought anything from preplogic, but this seemed like a good deal. If you buy a preplogic practice exam, they will send a coupon for a free exam voucher (worth up to $155). The downside is it takes forever to get the exam voucher. Most practice exams cost around $109 to $119...

You might try booting from an Ultimate Boot CD Win www.ubcd4win.com It's basically booting from a windows boot disk (similar to a DOS boot disk). You can install all of your antivirus/antispyware on the UBCDWin and clean the hard disk while it's offline. Also, the UBCDWin is based on BartPE...

A+, Vista MCTS, Dell or HP OEM Certifications.

Ditto. I watched the hot deals sites for a month or two and probably saved about the same cost. I was able to get a DVD burner free after rebate, free shipping on a case and some other discounts that added up quickly.

I haven't had any laptops that I could risk breaking. I'll either buy and skim through Scott Mueller's Upgrading and Repairing Laptop book, or just pick up an old dell off ebay and go through dell's laptop certification program to see what they can teach.

I agree. Desktops are no problem, but I was wondering about laptops. Could you elaborate on this. Do most people know how to do repairs beyond the bay / compartment level. Can most people tear a laptop down to replace a cpu fan, fix a non-booting system, a fried motherboard, or similar...

I can fix any laptop issue that has a bay, like memory, hard drives, optical drives, mini pci cards, cardbus cards, etc. My question is if I wanted to do some computer repair on the side, should I know how to tear down a laptop to the motherboard level, to maybe replace a bad motherboard or...

That's one of those things I'm worried about. I bought a stud finder and was testing it out a few weeks ago. It detects electrical wires, metal pipes, and wood studs. I'm sure it doesn't detect PVC, but I think it will help in finding power cables before I end up zapping myself. At least if...