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Ranting about Microsoft and Tech Support in India

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Re: Ranting about Microsoft and Tech Support in India
Post by Tenshinai   » Fri Oct 11, 2013 7:23 am

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smr wrote:My cursed PC just killed my dvd burner. This computer has had a motherboard replaced & chip replaced, new hard drive, the OP was upgraded to Win 7. Nothing but problems, so I replaced the power supply. Also, I think I am going to replace the surge protector. If that does not fix the problem, it is time to call an electrician to check the wiring for the electric plugs in the wall. I am stumped why I keep having all these problems.

Now, I do think I have solved the problem by replacing the power supply. Just too many weird things have been happening. Anybody else have ideas why this one windows 7 computer system seems to be the bane of my existence. My only consolation is that I have had to back up my hard drive and make system image of it. I at least don't have to call Microsoft about these problems. I don't have to deal with India because of the implementation of regular backup of computers in the house. I have enough spare hard drives and external cases to do the job. Now, if any of the readers have some knowledge & expericance that can recommend some good but fairly inexpensive backup or system imaging software.


Have you made sure your cables/cards/modules are both ok and firmly connected?
After software, bad cables or not firm enough inserted/connected cables or hardware is THE most common problem.

And when replacing the PSU, i hope you didn´t do it based on the wattage stated on the box, but on getting a reliable brand and/or model?

A 750W PSU from a poor or no name maker can burn out before it even goes above 600W. While my 450W(Corsair VX) have been found by multiple hardware test sites to run fine at 600W.
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Re: Ranting about Microsoft and Tech Support in India
Post by Fireflair   » Fri Oct 11, 2013 9:32 am

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This has been a problem on my wife's PC several times. It's a unit I built about seven years ago, and I've upgraded it several times. Each upgrade adds more stress to an aging PSU. It was rated at 600W when I bought it. For giggles I took it to work and ran it on the bench. After about 450W it started heating up excessively. At 500W it began to show bad fluxations in the output voltage and currents.

At first, my answer was to replace the higher end (and high power demanding) parts in her PC with older (and lower power demanding) cards that I had on hand. But in the end it was to put a new PSU in to the machine, 800W rating, and it routinely runs at about 550-600W. No heating issues and no ripples in output.

Something else to remember when buying equipment, like in the Honorverse, the more you run things at or near their design operational limits, the more it shortens their lifespan. Buying a PSU that exceeds your needs right now by 50%, and your projected needs by 25% could save you having to ever replace it due to aging.

I've got 6 PCs in the house (we operate on the trickle down theory. Daddy builds himself a new PC, so mommy gets his old one, her's goes to the oldest child, and so on down the line. The oldest PC either gets scrapped, donated or used for some non-essential purpose, like being a feeder for a TV.) and I have replaced the PSU on only 2 of them. The oldest PC is almost 12 years old now. Still running fine. Plays ITunes real well on the TV, letting us watch shows on the large screen and surf the web. That machine is running on Win XP.
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Re: Ranting about Microsoft and Tech Support in India
Post by Spacekiwi   » Fri Oct 11, 2013 3:23 pm

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Fireflair wrote: That machine is running on Win XP.



Viva la XP!

We have the pc running with our tv running xp as well. :) Added VLC, and attached a 1tb hard drive, and we have 3 to 400 movies just waiting to be watched at any time. the poor little pentium 4 had to be upgraded though. that little thing got so hot the fans could barely keep up.
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Re: Ranting about Microsoft and Tech Support in India
Post by Fireflair   » Sun Oct 13, 2013 3:28 pm

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Spacekiwi wrote:
Fireflair wrote: That machine is running on Win XP.



Viva la XP!

We have the pc running with our tv running xp as well. :) Added VLC, and attached a 1tb hard drive, and we have 3 to 400 movies just waiting to be watched at any time. the poor little pentium 4 had to be upgraded though. that little thing got so hot the fans could barely keep up.


I run a home network with 10 TB NAS. Both flat screen TVs are connected to it, and all the computers. I burn all DVDs and Blu-Rays I buy to the network. That way the kids can watch whatever they want on any TV or computer in the house. And the little P4 running XP manages to keep up. :)
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Re: Ranting about Microsoft and Tech Support in India
Post by Lord Skimper   » Sun Oct 13, 2013 8:44 pm

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The secret to happy PC computing. Minor tune up every 6 month, major upgrade every 18 months and new os every 3 years. And not the new os.

Of course when things fail jump to year 3 upgrade. And replace everything.

3 years let's you upgrade with a 50% speed increase, in everything.

I'm in the next step from that, I just moved and am upgrading everything. New business pc , 12 x 19" inch monitors, 4 5450 radeon video cards.
Raid 5 HDD. Not sure if I should go solid state or just use 4 of my 2 TB drives. Windows 7 pro 64bit. 8 core 4Ghz CPU, 16 GB DDR3 corsair ram, Asus Motherboard, 750 watt antec earth something... PSU.

The hard part is putting up the monitors, I'm renting so I don't want to mount them in the walls, thinking of a lexan mounting plate and some kind of frame.

Picking out my chair right now. Leaning towards a human touch ht-136.

As for those of you with buggy systems it is almost always software issues Microsoft software always sucks. Which is why we MCP/ MCSE's are always working.
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Re: Ranting about Microsoft and Tech Support in India
Post by Daryl   » Mon Oct 14, 2013 7:05 am

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With PC hardware another secret is to find the "sweet spot". Buy newish kit but not cutting edge. A CPU that was released a year ago may for example be 3Ghz and cost $200, while the latest is 3.5Ghz and cost $400. Twice the price for a marginal improvement even if your other components can make use of the speed.
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Re: Ranting about Microsoft and Tech Support in India
Post by Lord Skimper   » Mon Oct 14, 2013 1:37 pm

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Always buy as fast as you can afford and if you want to sli a video card buy them both at the same time or all three, four...
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Re: Ranting about Microsoft and Tech Support in India
Post by Spacekiwi   » Mon Oct 14, 2013 4:02 pm

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Daryl wrote:With PC hardware another secret is to find the "sweet spot". Buy newish kit but not cutting edge. A CPU that was released a year ago may for example be 3Ghz and cost $200, while the latest is 3.5Ghz and cost $400. Twice the price for a marginal improvement even if your other components can make use of the speed.



Dont forget IPC improvements though, and the fact that core counts are slowly going up. Our first computer in 2001 was a single core, and now my laptop is a dual core with hyperthreading, giving it up to 4 effective cores at times, and it beats a lot of top end cpu's from just over 4 years ago. But yeah, it is an I5, as the I7 versions do fall past my price/performance spot.

For me, middle to top of the midrange is probably the best spot to buy at, as you arent paying lots more for slightly more performance. an Intel I5 or an AMD A8, and a nvidia gtx760 or a AMD Radeon 7870 to 7950 are probably about where I would want to buy at.
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Re: Ranting about Microsoft and Tech Support in India
Post by Fireflair   » Mon Oct 14, 2013 5:57 pm

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Absolutely the best bang for the buck is something 6 months to a year old. Not best stuff out there, but not so old it's going to be the bottom thing sold by Dell, either. If you can find the current best chip's predecessor, you're probably pretty good.

Something else to remember, you're limited by your slowest component. And that is rarely your CPU. So having the 4GhZ with 12 cores and over clocked by 30% will be faster, yes. But a 3 GhZ with 10 cores will still get the job done just fine. Save the money and get a faster front bus, more RAM, a better video card and a SSD.

The reason I am still using the same system now that I was 4 years ago (Minus a RAM increase), was that I bought an I7 chip machine. They'd been out for a little while. Long enough for the low end I7 chip prices to drop significantly.

@ Lord Skimper:
I'd highly recommend your boot drive be a solid state drive. Not your data drives. Just the drive you start your system from and keep your main programs on. You'll see much faster boot and load times. SSD are expensive and relatively small for the cost. Get a pair of small SSD's in raid, for security of the software. Then run a pair of 4TB 7200RPM drives for data storage.
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Re: Ranting about Microsoft and Tech Support in India
Post by Spacekiwi   » Mon Oct 14, 2013 7:42 pm

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Definitely. Grabbing an SSD is one of the best things you can do for a pc. so much faster than a hard drive. SSD's are quite cheap now too, so a 60Gb or 120Gb drive will fit all your programs, and you can have a bigger hard drive for backups and non speed critical files, like word docs, photos and movies. 2ssds in raid will have you flying, and wondering why you stuck with hard drives for so long... :D


8 core AMD or Intel?
For that much ram and screens, I'm guessing you are using them for work?

also, a quick google shows that 4 5450's are weaker than 1 650ti or a 7750. But 4 cards driving 12 screens is a pretty impressive view. :D
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its not paranoia if its justified... :D
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