Troubleshoot this....

I've got one for all you IT nerd troubleshooters out there:

My brothers PC just randomly started up. True story. The two of us had previously been trying to get a Radeon 9800 Pro to run in it, with limited success. The card runs, but is horribly unstable and we have no idea why. His PC is running Vista with the latest Radeon drivers installed. So it should be running well. But anyway, after messing around with that for a while, he'd given up on it and gone to bed. Ten minutes later he calls out to me, I walk into his room, and it is pitch black apart from the Windows loading screen on his monitor. For you skeptics, there's no remote control rig setup on this PC, & the box isn't within arms reach of the bed.

His PC just booted itself up of it's own accord. True story. I wouldn't have believed it myself, unless I saw it with my own eyes. I've heard of & experienced PC's shutting themselves down before on their own, but never booting up.

Any ideas as to the solution of either of these two problems?

The WOW has started with a bargain

I was lucky enough to pick up a bargain today, another guy on Res was selling:

• A Radeon 9800 Pro AGP 8X graphics card
• 512 MB DDR400 RAM

For $50!!

I put them both into my Vista PC and the WOW has now started! The Windows Aero interface is just so pretty. I really like it, the Flip 3D interface is really cool as well. As for stability, I would say it’s on par or slightly better than XP, but system recovery is much improved.

Unfortunately, Colin is getting the graphics card and so the prettiness is going to disappear tomorrow. But it has given me a nice taste of what’s possible. Thus endeth hands free blog number two.

Hands Free

This is a blogging first for me. Everything about this blog has been completed without me touching the keyboard. Everything from opening Firefox, to opening Windows Media Player so I can listen to dc Talk. Voice recognition is one of the most ingenious yet frustrating features of Windows Vista. My initial observations are that it is good for simple program navigation but very frustrating to dictate text into. But I'm sure it will improve over time, both as I improve at using it and as the software slowly improves.

Yes ladies and gentlemen that's right, except now when I talk to my computer…. it listens.

My Two Systems

Since it's inception this blog has carried the title: 'The Blogs on an IT Nerd in the Country.' Yet up until now, I have not listed the specs of my 'system'. Surely it's not truly a Nerds blog until I list the details of my 'Rig'. Today I fix this anomaly.

Currently my main system specs are:

• AMD Athlon 64 bit 3400+ CPU socket 754, 2.41Ghz
  
• 1Gb (2 x 512Mb) PC3200 DDR400 RAM
• Abit KV8 Pro Socket 754 Chipset
• XpertVision ATi Radeon X800GTO 256Mb AGP 256-bit DDR, DVI, TV-Out, AGP 8X
• Seagate 300Gb 7200 SATA 8Mb Cache
• Western Digital 120Gb 7200RPM 2Mb Cache IDE
• Videomate DVB-T 300 Digital/Analog TV Tuner Card
• Windows XP Home SP2

I've also just built another PC from old parts that I've upgraded on the above PC & bits I've got off mates & eBay.

It is:

• AMD Sempron 3000+ 64-bit CPU, 1.8GHz, SOCKET 754
• 512Mb PC3200 DDR400 RAM
• ATI Radeon 9250 128Mb AGP 8X
• Western Digital WD800JD 80GB 7200RPM SATA II 8MB Cache

When I get it up and running it'll be the perfect games server. Only problem is, the Hard-drive above is SATA II. The motherboard is only SATA I compliant. So I need a HDD jumper to jump the Hard-Drive back to SATA I speed. I don't have any HDD jumpers. So if you have a spare one lying around, let me know.

So I now have the combined power of a Dual-Core machine.....

Good Day

Today has been a really good day. A number of really good things have happened. Allow me to list them in chronological order.

1. I was able to purchase the final parts I needed to complete my 2nd PC project.
2. I defeated Aaron at squash for the first time this year. This broke a drought lasting 6 months from November last year. To play as well as I did today was satisfying.
   
3. I saw this same Aaron spend well over 30 minutes messing around on a computer running a LINUX distro. The reason? He couldn't get a program to install. I wasn't amused by the fact he was frustrated, I was amused that even Linux will crash and not work sometimes for no reason. Thus showing that different to Windows isn't necessarily better.
4. Was able to make some progress on 1 of the 3 assignments I have due this coming week.
   
5. I watched the Bombers kick 3 goals in 5 minutes to come back and beat Richmond in a thriller at the MCG. I was worried at 3 quarter time, as Richmond are on the bottom of the ladder, so to lose to them would've been somewhat of a shock, it also would've greatly harmed Essendon's chances of seeing action in September.
   

I'm off to build a PC.