Dirk

From what you said it simply did not respond to your inputs and went to a dead end screen. It may not have POSTed but it may have. The problems I described prevented me from accessing the BIOS at all. However, the fact that it did not boot off the flash drive means the first option is mostly rules out. But, yes, the game disk in the drive did keep the BIOS from responding, I assume you have ruled that out though.

Just to be safe, you did make sure there are no discs in the optical drive right? Had someone think a PC was bricked recently when a game disc left in the drive was being picked up by the bios. Yeah that will cause this problem every time.

Yeah, try resetting the CMOS but it sounds to me like attempting to boot with a different OS or the windows disc is worth a shot. I have had similar things happen when the system hung on an update (it should never take 12 hours to update). Running it off the disc worked fine to undo the damage. You could also try installing something like Ubuntu on a flash drive and trying to boot to that. If it boots with any other OS its most likely not hardware failure.

Just got a pair of Grado Labs SR80i headphones. Im still breaking them in (and will be for the next 100 hours of use) but I can tell you right now they sound amazing. Now I would not recommend them for purely gaming or movies because there are better headphones for producing a sense of space but for music (no not that all-bass techno from hell) especially rock or even classical, its hard to go wrong. The only problem is that you will have a hard time finding them in retail stores for the most part. You may have to seek out your local audio-store or Amazon where they are under $100. On one last note you will most defiantly not want to use these on an airplane as the person next to you will not take kindly to it seeing as they are entirely open and could almost be used as speakers.

You need a new card.

good OS though

yeah I would run a Ubuntu install but right now its only on a 9.5 GB 10k Cheetah scsi hard drive and Im afraid its gona burn down my house. (already melted an ide belt and burnt my hand)

Post your audio systems and, if you like, recommend something you think really makes the music sound better.

Metroid Prime and Metroid 3.

Motherboard: XFX nForce 780i tri-sli CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad q9450 2.7ghz 12mb cache GPU: 2x 9800GTX 512mb OCed to 750mhz core clock HDD: Wester Digital Caviar Black 1Tb Memory: 8Gb OCZ DDR2 sli-ready edition 5-4-4 PSU: Ultra X-Pro 750watt Monitor: an enormous Viewsonic E90 crt OS: Vista Ultimate 64bit Mouse: Razer Lachesis r1 4000dpi Headphones: Sennheiser HD 565

the cable could be busted or not the correct type

I have since discovered that proxifier works quite well. In addition they have a portable version so you can easily put it in a flash drive.

the latency is gona be through the roof on that. Im more interested in tech that reduces response times not tech that increases them.

go for the cheaper card providing it has all the same features. Then get an after-market heat sink.

you know if you get that ram and gpu and it still wont run well you could always buy a big cooling fan and OC the the hell out of your cpu.

BTW, Potshot is nearly always right. I would get 4GB of ram if I were you. Just dont do what I did and get 8gb. Turns out I dont actually need 8... who knew?

Go for the GTX 460 and go sli later if you want. The reality is that unless you are running at super high res with 8+ AA enabled, a GTX 460 will run anything you throw at it. As far as I can tell, until consoles move on to the next generation, no developers are going to me making a game that requires more than a 460 to max. Though if you are planning on that 3d on 3 screens at once thing, higher end cards may be what you need.

Its no big deal, I mean this thing was free and I have an extra but the background of my secondary PC has burned into the crt. I have decided to try to combat this by taking a screenshot of my desktop, inverting the colors and then having this negative image run as my screensaver for a week or two. Does anyone know if it will work or have any reason why I should not do this. (if It will screw it over more please tell me)

that psu may be small if you plan on crossfire/SLI with high end cards.

for the speakers go for Boston Acoustics

thanks for the help. i just used the normal one only though.

Ok i know you will say this should not be in the general thread but... steam has once again corrupted the default windows font "Arial". unfortunately i restored it from an XP PC and it does not seem to be quite the same as the Vista 64 version of the font. some things are italicized for no apparent reason. If anyone can provide me with a copy of the vista version of this font i would be grateful for the help! (its just a file found in "Fonts" in the control pannel)

he wont regret it and if he does he should just get a Lachesis

the answer is... dont bother. by the time you get the thing to stop being a miserable pain in the ass you could have already bought a used one on ebay. like a used arcade and put in the hard drive from that one.

PB is by far the best SG server. no one playes reg now so... it the only SG server i play now. oh and i think the biggest reason for its decline is the recent Call of Duty: Black Ops release. loads of people have started playing that (well thats why im not in css atm)