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Thanks for the Digital Storm feedback! I do usually build my own systems. In the last 15 years, I've probably had 5-6 PCs. I built all but one of them. The one I bought was an Alienware (post Dell). It didn't have any major issues, but lots of little stuff bugged me about it, lol. So I do...

I've now looked at most of the places mentioned. Ibuypower and Cyberpower both rub me the wrong way for some reason, so they were excluded from my consideration set. I also excluded Alienware, as I had a bad personal experience with them. I put together roughly the same PC at Digital Storm...

I usually build my own. But I've been out of the loop for about 5 years, and just don't have the time to get up to speed on the latest components, and build it myself. Cyberpower systems seem so gaudy, lol. The Dreadnought is kind of gaudy too, but something about Cyberpower turns me off...

I'm looking to purchase a new PC, and right now have settled upon a configuration at Digital Storm. I searched the forums, and didn't see much in the way of recent information regarding Digital Storm. Are they considered to be reputable? I'm looking at a Dreadnought system. Any feedback...

I have been using a single 1gb file. I just confirmed that Jumbo frames are enabled on my laptop, and I am still getting roughly 12MBPS to the Synology, which is the exact same speed I got with the Drobo. I have tried different ports on the switch, and I also bypassed the switch entirely. No...

ashman, thanks for the questions. I'll answer them the best I can. To measure the speed, I'm simply clicking more details on the screen that pops up when I start the file transfer. I'm not using link aggregation right now, just the single ethernet cable. The switch is just a D-Link...

Thanks everybody for the Drobo advice and comments. I returned that original Drobo unit, and had Amazon send me another one. I was getting the exact same speeds. I spent a couple of hours on the phone with Drobo support, and they weren't able to figure it out. So I returned that Drobo and...

I did spend some time looking at Synology. I ultimately went with the Drobo because of price and ease of use. I may have to revisit Synology after all. Beyond looking to replace the Drobo, are these speeds what I should have expected? In all of the reviews it seems they are achieving much...

Not the responses I was hoping for, but I appreciate them nonetheless. The reviews I read of this latest Drobo were all pretty positive, saying they were quite a bit faster than previous versions. I wasn't expecting a speed demon, but thought I'd at least be able to stream DVD rips. I...

Hey guys, I just purchased a Drobo 5N. I put in 5 Seagate 3TB drives, and added a 128gb SSD in the mSATA slot to enable the Hot Caching feature. It is painfully slow. My PC and the Drobo are both wired into a Gigabit router. Copying a 780mb file from my PC to the Drobo takes 68 seconds...

Hey guys, I purchased this monitor from Amazon 2 weeks ago, largely based on what I had read in this thread. I was content with the overall image quality of the monitor. However, the unit I received had two problems. First, the backlight bleeding was terrible. There was bleeding along the...

Hey guys, I just bought a Sony Vaio FW. It has a Blu-Ray drive, and comes preloaded with WinDVD software. I have hundreds (if not thousands) of DVD Shrink rips that I stick on portable hard drives for playback on my laptop. When I try to play these back on my new FW, it tells me that the...

I read that if XP is installed first, you don't need to repair the boot loader. I found an ISO download on the internet that contains the entire Windows Vista 64 Recovery Console. So I downloaded that, and just made an attempt. I made a 10gb partition, and booted to an XP Pro disc to...

I just realized that I might know somebody that has a Vista Home Premium 32 bit disc. Could I use that to repair the boot loader, even though I am running Vista Home Premium 64 bit? Or is their an alternative that doesn't require a Vista disc at all?

I just got a Sony Vaio FW290CTO laptop, with Vista 64 installed. I want to dual boot Windows XP Pro as well. I already have the XP disc, but Sony does not ship Vista discs with the system. Every tutorial I have read says I need my Vista disc to repair the boot loader. Can I still dual boot...

I'm starting to wonder if the Mediasmart would be overkill for me. The ONLY thing that will be stored on this device is movies. I would like some form of duplication/redundancy, preferably of the RAID5 variety so I don't lose so much space.

Does anybody know what the ratio of redundancy is with WHS? If I choose to have ALL data made redundant, will I lose half of my "storage pool", like Raid0? Or would I only lose 1/4 (if I had 4 drives) of my "storage pool", like Raid5?

Thanks for the response Adidas4275. I read some reviews of the HP Mediasmart and I have a couple of questions. Does the drive that comes with the machine count as one of the four hard drive bays, or are there four additional bays. Can I replace the one that comes with the machine? How does...

Hey guys, I'm finally going to bite the bullet and build/purchase a media server. I want something that can accomodate at least 4 hard drives, with data redundancy. If a hard drive dies, I want to be able to swap in a new one and have it automatically rebuild itself. It will be storing...

I haven't experimented with the Autorun.exe yet, I'll do that next. I did create the Autorun.inf per mcravenufo's post, and it worked! pxc, what kind of cool things are you talking about? Here is what my page looks like: When you click one of the images, it launches PowerDVD and...

In general, other autoruns seem to load fine. I think I just don't know the right syntax and whatnot.

I just looked at a couple of autorun files, and tried making my own with no luck. It would just be a couple of lines of text, right? And the file would be called autorun.inf? If I wanted to set up an autorun file to load firefox portable, which is installed on this portable drive and has my...

Hello all! I have a 500gb portable hard drive with lots of movies stored on it. I have made a html file (which is stored on the portable hard drive) that shows all of the posters of the movies, and when you click the poster PowerDVD loads and plays the movie. Is there any way to have that...

Outstanding, thanks a lot guys!

Thanks, I just installed that on my thumb drive! Does this VLC software have it's own DVD decoder, or is it using the one already installed on the PC? I don't have a PC handy that doesn't have a decoder installed to test it out. Ultimately, I want to use this on a PC that does not have a...

Hey all! Does anybody know of any DVD playback software that can be installed on and run from a flash drive? I'd like to be able to use DVD Shrink to rip a movie to the flash drive, and then play it directly from the drive, without accessing any programs on the computer itself. Is there any...

She'd be using her PC speakers most of the time, so it probably wouldn't be a big deal to change the output device when she wants to output to the TV. I've added a Blu-Ray drive to her PC, so about the only time she'd use the TV would be to watch Blu-Ray movies. Thanks for the help!

Thanks Andrmgic! I think the 4850 is just the right card for my wife's PC. Is it possible to have dual audio outputs? Right now my wife has her PC hooked up to her 20" LCD monitor and 2.1 speaker system. I just bought her a new 32" Plasma TV (Vizio) for her computer room, and I'd like to...

Hey guys, I am looking to upgrade the video card in my wife's PC. She has a Dell Dimension 9150. It is currently running an Nvidia 6800 card (PCI Express), Intel Pentium D 820 CPU, and a 375 watt PSU. With that processor/cpu combo, would I be able to put in an ATI 4850 video card? I am...

When you mention sticking to ATI for HDMI, are you referring to HDMI for audio or video? I know most video cards these days can pass video thru HDMI with a DVI to HDMI adapter. I am looking for one that can pass both Audio and Video thru HDMI. I don't mind using the DVI to HDMI adapter if...

Hello all. I read somewhere that there are video cards that can pass audio through HDMI. I also read that some do this with some oddball adapter, while others simply pass it thru the motherboard. Which cards can have audio output via HDMI, preferably without use of any internal adapters? I...

The wireless performance seems lackluster as well. My wife's laptop does not have a gigabit port, but it does have Wireless N capability. When I connect her laptop wirelessely, it has a Very strong signal (it is about 7 feet from the router, hehe) and connects at 130mbps. But performance is...

Wow, I'm running 1.02, so I'm several firmware revisions behind. I'll update that right now. Is it ok to go straight from 1.02 to 1.10, or should I update incrementally? *Edit - I went ahead and updated incrementally. I am in the process of doing a full virus scan on all computers. I will...

Thanks for the tips guys. I will try the suggestions later today. When I said I rip movies to the network hard drive, I am ripping them from DVD directly to the external hard drive. So theoretically, my ISP should have nothing to do with it. However, I tried connecting one of the PC's...

Hey all, Just wondering if anybody has any ideas here. I installed the D-Link DIR-655 Extreme N router on my home network approximately 2 months ago. I have 3 computers connected to it most of the time. Two desktop PC's hardwired to the gigabit ethernet ports, and one laptop (Dell 1520 with...

Yeah, I do typically build my own systems, as well as the systems for all of my friends and family. It seems like there is always some little quirk with the systems I build. They all perform very well, and I love building them. However, I HATE trying to fix non-obvious computer issues, and...

350 watts... I assume that won't cut it? The 8800 GT requires much less power than the GS, GTX, or Ultra... but probably more than the 350 watt would provide? Thanks for the help!

I think I'm going to give it a try. I just had a chat session with an HP rep, and they said it would work. I had the chat transcript emailed to me. If it doesn't work, this would hopefully give me the ammo I need to get a full refund. I am likely getting this card (MSI 8800 GT)...

Hey all, I was just wondering how difficult it is to replace a video card without reinstalling the OS. I am very interested in purchasing an HP Pavilion Elite 9000T, but I would like a better video card than the options they provide (8600 is the highest). Would it be reasonable to purchase...

Hey guys, I have cable internet (Roadrunner). I have been using a D-Link DI-774 (Dual band, Tri mode A/B/G, up to 54mps) for several years now. I have 3 PC's connected thru it, 2 wired and 1 wireless. Well, that router died this past weekend. I had a brand new D-Link DI-624 (B/G...