Mike Rochip

A great program and it's freeware. Here's a link if anyone wants to try it: Sysinternals Process Explorer

Sorry you couldn't get it working. I went through sort of the same thing with modem cards a while back. One time it was because the card was defective and the other time it was because the modem came with the wrong installation CD. Took forever to figure what was wrong both times. If you ever decide to try again I'd be happy to help in any way I can.

Hello sparkyspark and welcome to the forum . You can install the latest version without removing the previous one.

So it sounds like you got both cards working since you said you can extend the desktop across both monitors and the TV. But then the card for the 17" monitor stops working causing the monitor to go off. Is that right? Have you looked in Event Viewer to see if it has any info? It probably won't but it's worth a look just in case. Event Viewer: Start>Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Event Viewer Click on System in the pane on the left. Look for yellow or red symbols in the list of events in the right hand pane Also did you look in Device Manager to see if there are conflicts? Device Manager: Start>Control Panel>System>Hardware Tab>Device Manager Button Look for yellow exclamation points or red Xs If the 9800 card is getting hot you should get a fan. Better safe than sorry. I'm no expert in computer hardware but I wonder if that could be related to the 17" monitor shutting down. Everest Home Edition will report on the temperature reading of devices that have temperature sensors. Click on Computer in the pane on the left and then click on Sensor. Power Supply Calculator Looks like it only calculates for 1 video card so you might have to add in the second card after it calculates the power required for the rest of the PC's hardware.

@Krit It is a really remarkable program. I was going to post a detailed review but I'm trying to cut down on my long, rambling posts. @Humpty Thanks for the tips! I had a lot of trouble at first because during installation I didn't understand how to set the default configuration [i think that's what it said]. After running the installation again I set a default browser during that step and now it's working great. The only drawbacks to Sandboxie IMHO are the very sparse installation instructions and lack of info posted on the website. I didn't know about the forum. I'll check that out. When you said that you were confident enough that you dropped ZoneAlarm I knew I had to try it! ZA seems to make too many decisions on its own even though I have everything but the essentials set to Ask. It grants access to a lot of stuff I never would had I been asked to allow or block the program. Kind of defeats the purpose of a firewall if you can't control it. Hopefully people will give Sandboxie a try and not get too frustrated. It's a little confusing at first but it's well worth the effort to figure it out. Thanks again . Edit> Where is the sanboxie forum located? I can't seem to find it.

Sandboxie should make every other form of antimalware protection obsolete. Sandboxie THANK YOU! Humpty for mentioning it enough times that I finally tried it! The best way to see how effectively it isolates your web surfing from impacting your PC is to run CCleaner after browsing for an hour or two. I guarantee the results will surprise you.

I think Hazelnut has saved all of us from madness at one time or another .

Glad to hear everything went well !

You could copy the one on your on your PC. Unfortunatetly, I don't know exactly how to do it. It's usually a small 'dll' file or files if I remember right. It's easy to copy but I don't know how to figure out which one it is on your PC. Someone like DjLizard or Tarun would probably know the best way to do it. You could put a post in the Hardware or the Software thread and I'm sure somebody can tell you how to check it out. You could also try looking at the Packard Bell site by putting in the Model and\or the Serial Number of your PC and it should give you the name. If their driver is a newer one or has revisions I don't know if it would have the same name as yours. If I figure it out I'll let you know.

Hey that's great that you got it going again! Maybe SP2 had the drivers it needed or just fixed whatever caused the problem. I have an older PC and had lots of problems with it locking up, not booting, and stuff like that. Once SP2 came it out it's been like a whole different computer. One thing you might want to do is make a copy of the driver for SoundMax and keep it on a CD or on the hard drive in case it ever happens again. From what I read that seems to be a common issue with SoundMax. Besides, if your PC is anything like mine, if you make a backup copy you will never need it but if you don't it will happen again, lol. Well take it easy and and come around the forums once in a while, this is a good one.

I forgot to ask if you had Windows XP or not and if the card is built into the motherboard. Looks like it's a built in one from what I read. It looks like a whole bunch of people have had this happen and some of them said they are getting desperate too, lol. Apparently what happened is the drivers for the SoundMax card got corrupted or disabled somehow. It looks like this is the best thing to do. If you know the serial and/or the model number of your PC you can go to the Packard Bell website and enter them into their Support Request information box. Then it will bring up all the available help and support information that is available for your model including any software that they can provide. If you don't have either the model or the serial number they have a guide that will try to identify it for you. I went through it [i just put in random answers since I don't have a Packard Bell] and the good news is they do have audio drivers that can be downloaded. If for some reason PB doesn't have one for your specific PC there's a website called DriverGuide that might have one that will work. Many are for specific SoundMax models but it looks like they also have a few that should work on more than one model by detecting the driver you need and then installing it. Sometimes that works but sometimes the audio ends up sounding crappy or some of the features don't work as well as they did before. Their drivers are free if you register on their site. So here's what I would try in this order: Analog Devices makes SoundMax cards and they have a good FAQ on their website you might want to read. It explains how to fix different issues including bad or missing drivers but they do not supply drivers to anyone except manufacturers. They explain why in the FAQ. Packard Bell has an excellent Customer Support website and they will probably have the driver you need. DriverGuide may have it if PB doesn't. Check for drivers under both Analog Devices and SoundMax. When you put in the info you may have to scroll down a ways and then look for the Select or Selected button with the arrows > > in the lower right side of the info box. Took me a little while to find them. Hope that gets you fixed up. Don't hesitate to ask if you have any questions .

Have you checked Device Manager to make sure it's enabled and that there are no conflicts or other issues? You can open Device Manager by double clicking on the System Icon in the Control Panel and then clicking the Hardware Tab and then on the Device Manager button. Make sure the SoundMax card is listed in the Sound, video and game controllers section. If it is listed but there's a problem you will see a yellow exclamation mark. You can right click on it for more info about the problem. A red X means it either disabled or it's not working. If it's disabled you can right click on it and then click Enable. If you see any exclamation marks or red Xs anywhere else check out those ones also.

Someone else had the same problem a while ago. Andavari posted this on how he got Ccleaner to clean out the LocalSettings\Temp folder:

Do you remember the other day when I misread the thread title in another part of the forum and you thought that was pretty funny? As I seem to recall it went something like this: Me You I would like to point out the following if I may: I believe the score in our humorous sarcasm contest is now tied. Oh and welcome to the forum armagedon, btw !

Sounds kind of high but then there's a lot of people like my Mom who don't even really know they have it or understand what to do about it. I know a lot of people who post here are often trying to help a friend or relative clean up their PCs. I like this part: How exactly are they going to enforce that? The Honor System I suppose. Edit> I forgot to say I think we're pretty lucky to have forums like this one where people are willing to spend their time helping each other out as much as the people do here .

I just meant it figuratively [i think I spelled that right] in that I always expected them to be there, and not to seemingly vanish in the space of a couple hours. And you're right about the size of the planes. The towers were designed for an impact of a 707 travelling about 350MPH. They estimated the 767s were going well over 500MPH at full throttle with a lot more weight including a full fuel load. Their wingspans were as wide as the buildings were. I remember there were people who said the buildings may not have been up to code or should have stayed up longer. I read a study about what happened and like you said the steel softened over time and finally buckled and gave way. The investigators talked about the 'not up to code rumors' and they emphasised that they found that not only were they built well beyond the codes at the time but even taking that into account they were still amazed at how long they managed to stand since the outer framework was a major support structure and so much of that had been cut through and otherwise destroyed by the airplanes. They said it was a real tribute to the architect because he would not have had any real financial or other incentive to design them to surpass the codes like he did. The most shocking pictures I saw were some of the very first ones that came up in a search I did on the web. It was just a basic image search for "9/11" or "WTC" or something along those lines. They were gruesome but what really bothered me was that anyone, including schoolkids, would see those just by searching for basic terms and not something like "victims" where you would probably have to expect to see things like that. Thanks for the link to your website. I looked through all the pictures from 9/11 and there were many I hadn't seen before. I also checked out some of the NASA links and thought they were cool. I guess some people think NASA's not a good place to spend our taxes, but IMHO I think we get a lot of good return on the money. I know NASA provides all kinds of materials to educators that want to develop a curriculum about space science or similar studies. Then I somehow wandered into an area having to do with computer science or something like that and I had to run away because I started having cranial seizures. Too advanced for me to understand . Nice site though. You've obviously put a lot of work into it and it shows. Well I gotta go [people reading this are like "Thank God! I thought he'd never shut up! ]. The Path to 9/11 movie on ABC is starting. I keep reading it's a real piece of cr*p but I guess I'll give it a go...

According to this article, 2 companies and three individuals payed a combined fine of $2,000,000 because they were suspected of infecting 18,000,000 computers with malware. That works out to less than 12 cents per computer. [if I figured it out right] The Feds were nice enough to suspend a separate fine of $8,500,000. PC manufacturers say that 50% or more of their support calls are malware related. Webroot estimates that 89% of people's PCs are infected with an average of 30 pieces of spyware each. Webroot has identified more than 527,000 malicious web sites, over 100,000 more than there were less than a year ago.

Me too. But I haven't been able to log onto Deviantart at all and I've had a lot of trouble logging onto this site and a few others for a couple hours now. I attached a saved html file of that web page in case you still haven't been able to get to it. t_56710.html t_56710.html

This method won't fix them and could create new ones. Story

After the CD caught fire in my CD-RW I did buy this DVD-RW on eBay but I think it's defective and the vendor I bought it from doesn't seem to want to take it back. He just keeps emailing me back saying "non garantie" whatever that means. I do have a second hard drive in my PC but it has Windows 3.1 on it in case Windows XP and Windows 98 happen to fail at the same time. So for now I've just been backing everything up on floppy disks. I know they only hold 1.44MB so what I've been doing is making a backup of every file on the PC that's 1.44MB or smaller. If there's a crash I'm hoping it only affects the files I've backed up already. I did luck out in one way though. When the CD caught fire [or exploded, I can't really tell what actually happened because the door on the CD burner melted shut] I panicked and I threw the Bloody Mary I was drinking on it to put out the flames. If I had been drinking a Long Island Ice Tea or a Kamikazee like I usually do that would have made the fire a lot worse .

I grew up in NJ and had gone to NYC quite a few times while I lived there. I never visited the WTC but I did go to the top of the Empire State Building which ironically was accidentally hit by an airplane years ago. I could have never imagined that a skyscraper made of steel and concrete anchored to solid bedrock designed to stand for a century or more could actually be so fragile. The thing that gets to me is that for a long time after 9/11 I looked at every website I could find, I bought and read many different books about it, read entire technical documents from the NTSB and various other agencies, the written accounts from the people that were there or watched it happen from a distance, dozens of videos, thousands of photographs, transcripts from the rescue workers' communications, the written summaries from the first responders that were published by the New York Times and every other thing about that day I could find. And yet after all of that, and I'm sure after anything and everything that will ever be said and written about that day, when it comes right down to it in a very real way I still can't comprehend that it really happened. That those two gigantic buildings and so many of the ones around them were turned to dust, that so many people who were doing nothing more than going about their ordinary lives on a beautiful cloudless Autumn day in NYC and Washington DC or taking a plane trip to who knows where aren't with us any more. That the first responders gave their lives not because they wanted to be heroes, but because by their very nature they could do nothing other than rescue as many people as possible from a scenario they had never trained for because no one had ever imagined it could happen. My sister still lives in NJ and she saw the second tower fall from where she was. Her family had been to NYC the week before and my two little nieces had seen the WTC while they were there. After the second building fell my sister called me in tears and asked how she could possibly explain to them what had happened to the 'Two Towers.' I had no idea what to tell her that day. I still don't know. I'm sure I never will. I guess one thing I'm hoping for is that the feelings of anger, revenge, retribution, and the blame we sometimes seem to be trying to put on others and even ourselves for either creating the tragedy of that day or failing to prevent it can be allowed to fade away. Those feelings aren't wrong or undeserved but they don't have the ability to ever make the sadness and sense of loss any less real or painful. But as they diminish perhaps what will remain are the prayers we will always have in our hearts for all the people everywhere that perished on that day and those that live with the loss of their friends and loved ones still. The best way to honor their sacrifice might be to work towards a future where the unthinkable will never happen again. >If this post is too long or inappropriate for this forum please ask one of the moderators to delete it.<

. Yes but I figured it would be the last time I would ever have to since I brilliantly came up with "TFITS." Why the name change? neighboraaron sounds friendly [and neighborly] but TheFiresInTheSky** sounds kind of scary and a little bit evil in a Darth Vader sort of way . **Now I'm hoping that was the last time I have to type the whole thing ! And yes I know how lame "Mike Rochip" is especially since I did a search once and there's thousands of us on the web .

That doesn't really seem that old but if the fan is squealing it's probably going to get worse instead of better. Another thing to consider is it may be turning more slowly than it should so it might not be cooling the laptop as much as it was meant to. Like New Age and TFITS* said it may be a good idea to take it in. I say that because I figure if I had a laptop and I removed the screws there would probably be a spring loaded mechanism inside that would launch the thousands of parts inside the laptop all over the room and on to the neighbor's roof. *TFITS = TheFiresInTheSky which is way too hard to type especially with all those capital letters .

Tonight on PBS there is a show called The Center the World which was the last episode of Ric Burns' documentary about New York City. It covers the entire history of the World Trade Center from it's conception in the 1940's through 9/11 and beyond. It looks at the Twin Towers through the eyes and memories of people who designed, built, worked in, admired, and even some people who never really appreciated them. The first hour is about the towers and what they were and what they were meant to be before 9/11 and the last hour is about their tragic demise. One of the more interesting people I thought was Philippe Petit who [illegally] strung a tightrope between the two towers and performed stunts and acrobatics a quarter mile in the air above the streets of New York City. His memories of the towers and what they meant to him are unique and very touching in their own way. I imagine a lot of people don't want to be reminded of 9/11 any more or have seen all they really want to see about The World Trade Center but in my opinion this show combines the good and the bad, the mundane and the etherial, and the inspiring and the tragic aspects of The World Trade Center and September 11th, 2001 better than anything else I've watched or read. It will be repeated late night on Sept. 18th [here in Colorado anyway].

Actually now that I think about it I did have an IDE cable go bad once. It was an extra one I had lying around and when I got a second hard drive I used it because it had 2 hard drive connections. It looked OK but I guess one of the wires broke inside the cable itself.