Tag Archives: Computers

SSD Optimization Guide

If you have bought and installed an SSD (Which are roughly 10 times faster) than standard SATA hard drives, there are a few things you should do to make things run better in windows.

1) Sean’s Windows 7 Install & Optimization Guide for SSDs & HDDs:

This Guide is superb tells you everything you need to do with tutorial videos as well, also a windows 8 Guide.

http://www.overclock.net/t/1156654/seans-windows-7-install-optimization-guide-for-ssds-hdds

2) Solid State Drive (SSD) Tweaks for Windows 7

http://www.computing.net/howtos/show/solid-state-drive-ssd-tweaks-for-windows-7/552.html

Website Hacked

I noticed yesterday that Eset Security was picking up a virus coming from a few of the websites i have.

When i went to try and figure out how this happened, i noticed that on a few of the php pages i have the filesize was bigger than it should be. When i opened the php file i found that code had been added to the top of the php file which seems to redirect the page to another dodgy site.

Basically malcious code is added to php files and html files;

I havnt found out how this happened or how to fix it, more info to come.

Update: 28 Dec
It seems my entire website has been infected, i had thought it was just php pages that got infected but its ordinary html files as well. A college assingment i did a year a go has been infected, well the index.html page has been infected. Again i have no idea how, its the same virus.

Scanning:
Ive scanned my sites with a online scanner which does a good job of telling if your site is infected;
http://sitecheck.sucuri.net/scanner/#
however how to fix it is proving to be difficult. My hosting company havnt replied back to me yet so im searching for a solution.

Windows 7 – is it worth it?

500x_win-7-guide-headLifehacker’s Complete Guide to Windows 7:
This is a dam awesome guide on just about everything you wanted to know about Windows 7 its a must read.

Src: lifehacker.com

windows 7 vs Vista and CP – Gaming Benchmarks:
Heres another article that shows benchmarks between the 2 Windows Os’s and basically says that windows 7 is better than Vista. The benchmarks show a tiny difference but i using Windows 7 myself it sure does seem a little faster;

src: gamespot.com

Windows 7 on multicore: How much faster?
Is Windows 7 better with multicore Processors well not quite but a little seems to be the answer.

src: infoworld.com

Firefox 3 – Not so good

Im using Firefox 3 at the moment and 2 things really annoy me about it.

1) Realplayer Recorder Plugin
Not Compatable with Firefox 3 yet. Not being able to say youtube vidoes anymore really really sucks.

2) Videos dont play somes times
Dont know why this keeps happening maybe its a Flash Player problem with again its annoying. Only Fix is to restart the browser.

Im trying to find an old up-to-date version of Firefox 2 cant seem to find one. Im going back to firefox 2 i cant do with those 2 features really.

Im back to firefox 2.0.17 at the moment by only because of the “Realplayer Video Recorder Plugin”. I hope they make it compatable with Firefox 3 ASAP.

GIGABYTE GA-MA790FX-DS5-Worst Motherboard ive encountered in 10 years of PC Upgrades

Well after 3 weeks of complete head scratching and endless frustration this motherboard is on the way back to the suppliers. It seems that even when you pay more for a product it doesnt always guaranteee quality. A motherboard twice the price of a entry level mobo.

Having tried everything i could possably think of to get the Mobo to work, posted on many forums around the net it seems its the Mobo thats at fault and not the PSU,Ram or CPU.

Having tried the Motherboard with my “old” AMD 6000 CPU the motherboard failed to power up in the exact same behaviour as before. Gigabyte Tech support have told me this now which while isnt news to me its some kinda of closure of the whole nightmare;

Dear Gerry,

Thank you for your kindly mail and inquiry. About the issue you mentioned, If the problem still occurs with supported CPU and with different hardware combination, then we suggest you to contact your motherboard supplier or nearest distributor and see if they help you to check your system directly to see if there’s a motherboard problem. For their contact information, please click HERE.

We are really sorry for the inconvenience you have with our product.

At last, if you still have any further question or suggestion about our products/service, please do not hesitate to contact with us. We will try our best to help you resolve the problem ASAP.

Regards,
GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY

I found a rather mixed result of reviews on this motherboard which i never researched when purchasing i just assumed well it supports AM2+ (AMD New CPU sockets) and it will work fine. Lesson learned there let me tell you.

The newegg.com has such a mix of reviews from folks that bought this board some with the exact same problem i have i.e a D.O.A Mobo.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16813128074

Graphics Cards, Crysis and The Evolution of 3d Cards

About a week ago i decided to get a new graphics card for the sake of the game “Crysis” which is visually stunning but needs some serious computer Power to look its best. Its only a year ago since i got my Last graphics card which was a “Nvidia Geforce 8800 GTS 640”. While perfectly fine it was struggling with the Game “Crysis” and “Age of Conan”.

Previous to that Card i had an ATI 1950 XT, ATi x800,Geforce 6600, Nvidia Geforce “something”.

I can remember is the very first 3D Card i bought was a 3DFX Voodoo2 12mb card way back in 1998. It cost me £200 which was a fortune at that time. It took 3 weeks of my summer job to save up for it.  That card was the best there was at the time and was well worth the money 3D graphics card were only taking off around that time. I remember loving the game “G-Police” and “Actua Soccer 2” which came free with it. Many a good time was had with tha graphics card and games.

Nowadays its so different the graphics cards are way more powerful but go out of date so fast due to newer cards being made and huge advances in technology which of course is a good thing but its very hard to keep up. One the things about having a console is the fact that you dont need to upgrade like the PC but of course you dont get the best “looking graphics”. When i play any game on the Xbox360 i cant help but wonder “This would look so much better on the PC”.

I did buy a console for one game and that was Grand Theft Auto 4 and it was well worth it. Rockstar games are making a A PC version for november release which im looking forward to, so i can see how utterly fantastic GTA4 will look on the PC.

Liverpool sign Robbie Keane

Being a liverpool fan i was delighted to see Liverpool sign robbie keane. Hes a great player for ireland and now that he signed for Liverpool its even greater.
He had a great season at Totenham last season. My Two sisters recently bought me a Liverpool jersey and i cant decide if i want Keane on the back or Gerrard its a tough choice.
Hes the only real hope the Republic of ireland has goal scoring but hes a proven goal scorer.

Im so proud to know that An irish footballer has joined Liverpool.

Windows Vista-Is just more trouble than its worth!

windows_vista_logo.pngI have been running Vista now for about one month and although there was problems from the start, for example All USB devices wouldnt work on PC while of course on Windows Xp they worked no problem i was beginning to like it.

About 95% of the programs i use regularly run fine on Vista but any piece of hardware you have thats old may not work at all on vista as i found out. Vista lacks alot of support for certain drivers and devices and probably will for a long time.

It looks nice and seems to run a little bet better than Xp and of course it has DirectX 10. Now it was the Directx 10 part that got me interested being a huge PC Gamer and owning a few Dx 10 Games like; Crysis,Flight Simulator 10, Assasins Creed and Halo2. With the exception of Halo 2 which looks so dated for a game thats Dx10 only and came out in 2007. While DX 10 is the next big thing unfortunately its just not really worth the hassle of Vista at the moment.

Windows Vista is fine if all you want to do with it is play Dx10 games anything else and your asking for trouble. Apart from the inital USB problem after a few Windows Updates everything was running fine and USB was working again. The real problem with Vista as i painfully found out is that any software that uses drivers to run will probably have problems.

Sony Ericsson PC Suite
For example i recently was given a Sony Ericsson k800 phone and the software to transfer files to it works perfectly under windows Xp but with Vista it was a nightmare to get it to work. I managed to track down the lastest version of the “Sony Ericsson PC Suite 3.2” and even though it claims to support vista i had many problems getting it to work. In the end i did and it just doest work as well as it does under XP but thats to be expected.

Peerguardian 2
A popular Bit-torrent tool to stop certain IP addresses being able to see what your downloading does not work on Vista yet and again there is a Vista version but after many restarts and fiddling around it still wont work.

Now while both arnt critical applications they really show how bad Vista support is. Sure Vista SP1 is about and it may or may not fix the problems i had but i cant help but wonder if its worth the bother and it really isnt. Even a program im still developing in visual basic 6 which works fine on Windows 98-Xp has problems in vista at the moment im trying to track them all down and fix them even though they are little problems its still the same old story.

Windows Vista Stability is quite good, i havnt had any major crashes or “Blue Screens” i had at the start when i installed vista but everything is fine now. But using Vista seems to be like the using Windows Xp x64 (the 64 bit version) not many do and the support and compatabilty is bad.