I like the interface change, I always had problems with the old ones where I had to babysit them or they would pause if they found any problem.

errr.. since I am such a big newb when it comes to technical stuff, I really like to ask these questions that most people regard as basic knowledge in hardware. Well I dunno if its basic knowledge but it is better to ask questions.

What is a "system memory"? What does it do?

What does a large harddrive do? Does it mean more memory?

What is a computer core and what does it do? I mean whats the difference of a dual core to quad cores etc.

Well... those are my question for now.

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"So beautiful! My chest is swelling with love, pain, pleasure, jealousy, hate... everything is here! This is so human! This is so demonic!"

System memory in most contexts refers to random access memory (RAM) and is a set of chips directly connected to the motherboard. The computer puts information onto the RAM chips so that it can access that information quickly. The computer also uses a disk cache on the hard drive for a similar purpose, but hard drives are significantly slower at accessing information than ram is, but it can hold more information. There is also another type of memory known as a CPU cache which allows the cpu to access common instruction sets faster.

In terms of Hard Drives large usually means holds more data since the drives in the average persons desktop have almost the same physical dimensions. Todays standards I would put a large hard drive at 2 Terabytes. Of course there are bigger but that is about as big as the average person might get.

A core is a processor in the sense that each core performs the functions of a processor by itself. This means that the processor can do more things at the same time. So take my processor for example I have a phenom II 955 which is a quad core. Each core performs independent instruction sets, with a duel core you have 2 independent processors on a single processor, it's not a good explination but that's in essence what they are doing, but because of the way data works it doesn't mean that the processor is 4 times as fast and if a program isn't designed for multicore processors it is not going to give that much of a boost, but from what I have seen the real advantage of a multicore processor is if enough ram is available I can run programs that would normally require too much power (IE Virus scan) and run a game without much ill effect.

_________________
Zeph do you ever tire of being perfect? ~Dave
Zeph is still awesome though. ~Rival
I love you so much right now Zeph. ~Yoshi
I love you Zeph. You and your simple yet humorous topic-breakers. ~Coos
Zeph has left me inspired. ~Mathias
Zeph is so awesome even soulless bits of binary worship him. ~Wizard
Curse YOU ZEPH! CURSE YOU! ~JesusChrist
WE ARE SORRY THAT WE ARE NOT AS PERFECT AS YOU, ZEPH! ~Stufflikehearts
Zepherin for forum queen and writer of the best seller "how to screw your brethen up for dummies". ~ The Mirak

I like analogies.

Hard drives are like a big cupboard. It's where all your shit gets stored. Same for computers. Install stuff and save stuff and it goes to the hard drive. Bigger hard drive = more space for crap.

Memory (Or RAM) is like a desk. You know when you try to figure shit out and you end up writing a bajillion things on notes that get scattered around your desk? Same thing with RAM. It's right there so it's quick to grab, but there isn't much space on the desk and whenever you're finished (Or, more importantly, you think you are!) shit ends up getting chucked in the bin. Or saved. To the cupboard/hard drive!

CPUs (And cores) are like you. You figure that shit out yourself. That's what a CPU does. Think of more CPUs = more people to help. Cores are the heart of CPUs. If a CPU has one core it's like only you working. Two cores means there's two of you! And so on, so you work better and faster! But, like if there really was two of you then both of you wouldn't necessarily draw on the same picture! Likewise, just because there's more than one core doesn't mean it'll actually be doing stuff (But it should).

A motherboard is like the room everything is in. By itself, it's just a room. But better ones may have nooks and crannies for neat things! Everything sits in the room and is thus connected. That's a motherboard.

Finally, a GPU (Or, video card) is like a dedicated artist. You (The CPU!) write down what you want drawn. You then give it to the artist who draws it much quicker (But not better!) than you could.


Beep, beep. That's a computer!

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"Worst case scenario I'll get arrested for public nudity.
Best case scenerio I'll get arrested for public nudity with a boner. It's win win." ~ Dave
"Also Yoshi is the most important person in all of Australia." ~ Zepherin

Sounds like a whole lotta complicated. I did my first successful format last night. Windows 7 looks puuurty.

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999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999

I really like that description. Very apt.

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Twitter | Transistor Glamor | Tumblr | MAL

Hey Yoshi, your room has some bad ram.

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CAUTION: Would anyone tell me if I was getting stupider?

Thats what you get for buying the cheapest desk that ikea has.

_________________
Zeph do you ever tire of being perfect? ~Dave
Zeph is still awesome though. ~Rival
I love you so much right now Zeph. ~Yoshi
I love you Zeph. You and your simple yet humorous topic-breakers. ~Coos
Zeph has left me inspired. ~Mathias
Zeph is so awesome even soulless bits of binary worship him. ~Wizard
Curse YOU ZEPH! CURSE YOU! ~JesusChrist
WE ARE SORRY THAT WE ARE NOT AS PERFECT AS YOU, ZEPH! ~Stufflikehearts
Zepherin for forum queen and writer of the best seller "how to screw your brethen up for dummies". ~ The Mirak

Lulz, so a computer is me, running around in a room, putting things on a desk, doing all sorts of tasks, possibly having some friends over to help. Though on my laptop, the desk somehow draws for me? Considering I spend some 60% of my time in a little dorm room, a lot of it just doing stuff at my desk, the analogy is almost creepy XD

I'm trying to cook up what sockets and such would be, but the analogy seem to fall apart there.

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sockets are the windows and doors

So I ran BurnIn Test and it came back fail, but only because I didn't have a cd in the drive and it was blocked from accessing my RAW network (whatever that is). There were no errors anywhere else.

Welp, next step is grab Hiren's and run GoldMem and Spinrite.

That'll do some thorough checks on your RAM and HDD.

Tick 'em off, one by one. It's called shotgun debugging!

_________________
"Worst case scenario I'll get arrested for public nudity.
Best case scenerio I'll get arrested for public nudity with a boner. It's win win." ~ Dave
"Also Yoshi is the most important person in all of Australia." ~ Zepherin

I'm plugging my earphones into the port on my laptop and the sound isn't switching over.

okay i have a computer with vista home edition and no discs and shit and i want to reformat but i dont have discs what do i to

_________________

I'm NORML and I VOTE
Soul Silver Friend Code: 0260-2900-0828

Assuming you have the cd key. You can burn a disc with the same version of vista on it. I'm sure there is a torrent out there for that.

_________________
Zeph do you ever tire of being perfect? ~Dave
Zeph is still awesome though. ~Rival
I love you so much right now Zeph. ~Yoshi
I love you Zeph. You and your simple yet humorous topic-breakers. ~Coos
Zeph has left me inspired. ~Mathias
Zeph is so awesome even soulless bits of binary worship him. ~Wizard
Curse YOU ZEPH! CURSE YOU! ~JesusChrist
WE ARE SORRY THAT WE ARE NOT AS PERFECT AS YOU, ZEPH! ~Stufflikehearts
Zepherin for forum queen and writer of the best seller "how to screw your brethen up for dummies". ~ The Mirak

If you have a legit version I think you can also download one from microsoft for a couple of bucks... pounds.

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Motherfucker, I used to be somebody.

Missed this.

If you have any of those shitty Audio Control Panels sitting in your tray, go into it and toggle anything that looks like "Jack Detection". If on, switch off and vice versa.



Like has been said, if you have a key then just grab the ISO from wherever. Just make sure it's clean.

_________________
"Worst case scenario I'll get arrested for public nudity.
Best case scenerio I'll get arrested for public nudity with a boner. It's win win." ~ Dave
"Also Yoshi is the most important person in all of Australia." ~ Zepherin

okay what if i dont have a cd key and i cant find what dexy is talking about

_________________

I'm NORML and I VOTE
Soul Silver Friend Code: 0260-2900-0828

See if there is a sticker with the cd key on the back or bottum. On laptops it will be on the bottum of the laptop on towers they hide it all over. If you don't have a cd key at all, then creatively acquire a corporate edition which can generally be installed on multiple machines.

_________________
Zeph do you ever tire of being perfect? ~Dave
Zeph is still awesome though. ~Rival
I love you so much right now Zeph. ~Yoshi
I love you Zeph. You and your simple yet humorous topic-breakers. ~Coos
Zeph has left me inspired. ~Mathias
Zeph is so awesome even soulless bits of binary worship him. ~Wizard
Curse YOU ZEPH! CURSE YOU! ~JesusChrist
WE ARE SORRY THAT WE ARE NOT AS PERFECT AS YOU, ZEPH! ~Stufflikehearts
Zepherin for forum queen and writer of the best seller "how to screw your brethen up for dummies". ~ The Mirak

It's like the serial number of your computer and you enter it into microsoft support or whatever and it makes it go

_________________
Motherfucker, I used to be somebody.

Check if your computer has a recovery partition.

You might be able to reformat by just spamming F-something or another.

_________________
Twitter | Transistor Glamor | Tumblr | MAL

Also this is a way to find your cdkey in vista too.
http://pcsupport.about.com/od/tipstrick ... stakey.htm

_________________
Zeph do you ever tire of being perfect? ~Dave
Zeph is still awesome though. ~Rival
I love you so much right now Zeph. ~Yoshi
I love you Zeph. You and your simple yet humorous topic-breakers. ~Coos
Zeph has left me inspired. ~Mathias
Zeph is so awesome even soulless bits of binary worship him. ~Wizard
Curse YOU ZEPH! CURSE YOU! ~JesusChrist
WE ARE SORRY THAT WE ARE NOT AS PERFECT AS YOU, ZEPH! ~Stufflikehearts
Zepherin for forum queen and writer of the best seller "how to screw your brethen up for dummies". ~ The Mirak

Okay, my fan is making a lot of loud noise constantly. I've been told that I may have an overabundance of trojans and rootkits. How do I handle this?

And my audio control panel shows nothing that says "jack detection."

Hit your fan with some compressed air. If you have a bunch of trojans and rootkits, download malwarebytes, avast! and adaware and that should take care of those.
If all else fails buy a new fan, they are pretty cheap.

http://malwarebytes.org/
http://www.avast.com/index
http://www.lavasoft.com/index.php

_________________
Zeph do you ever tire of being perfect? ~Dave
Zeph is still awesome though. ~Rival
I love you so much right now Zeph. ~Yoshi
I love you Zeph. You and your simple yet humorous topic-breakers. ~Coos
Zeph has left me inspired. ~Mathias
Zeph is so awesome even soulless bits of binary worship him. ~Wizard
Curse YOU ZEPH! CURSE YOU! ~JesusChrist
WE ARE SORRY THAT WE ARE NOT AS PERFECT AS YOU, ZEPH! ~Stufflikehearts
Zepherin for forum queen and writer of the best seller "how to screw your brethen up for dummies". ~ The Mirak

Malwarebytes is blocked from opening.