Computer Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread II

[aimeeandbeatles]

Nobody know?

Well I found this so nevermind
http://www.addictivetips.com/window...ehavior-in-windows-explorer-dragndrop-editor/

 

[shadowplay]

You could try putting Linux on a USB stick and booting from that (or a CD). Use a friend's PC to put linux on the USB. If you can run for ~1hr with Linux on the USB then at least you know it's not your power supply. You can also do things like memtest to test the RAM, and other tests that will test the hard drive. And of course, you can get any important files off the hard drive, in case it's a hard drive failure...

To me it sounds like a HDD failure.

You're right, it is the hard drive. Thanks a lot for your help, and to everyone else who gave assistance.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Can someone explain to me the difference between NTFS junction points and NTFS symbolic links? I read this but I don't understand it

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

Is there a decent laptop under $1,000 that can comfortably give decent performance in sims 3 (especially seasons) with the game's highest graphical settings?

 

[cardgame]

I'm sure, but having no experience with the Sims, I can't provide meaningful assistance in your search.

 

[J-man]

The sims 3 is almost 4 years old so it should be easy to find such a laptop (even if you use modern expansions). Although I recoomend you buy one with a dedicated graphics card and not an integrated chip.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I sort of borked my Firefox profile and decided to install clean. I changed many about:config entries. Where are the about:config entries stored? Is there any way just to export the modified ones?

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Why are some programs really finicky about what file extensions they'll load (even if the file is perfectly valid but just the wrong extension), while others will try to parse anything dumped into it? Which one is the more "correct" behavior?

 

[dutchfire]

It is not a question of correctness but of philosophy. I expect the former behaviour from Windows programs and the latter from unix.

 

[Michkov]

I sort of borked my Firefox profile and decided to install clean. I changed many about:config entries. Where are the about:config entries stored? Is there any way just to export the modified ones?

http://kb.mozillazine.org/About:config

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

http://kb.mozillazine.org/About:config

"The requested page title was invalid, empty, or an incorrectly linked inter-language or inter-wiki title. It may contain one more characters which cannot be used in titles."

 

[GoodGame]

So shopping for videocards----What is a CUDA core and is the number of them per video card more important than the video card's RAM amount?

E.g. comparing to non-professional video cards----will I get more bang for buck with larger RAM, or more CUDA cores?

 

[Quintillus]

So shopping for videocards----What is a CUDA core and is the number of them per video card more important than the video card's RAM amount?

E.g. comparing to non-professional video cards----will I get more bang for buck with larger RAM, or more CUDA cores?

Short summary: Neither is going to have a definite relationship with card performance. What I'd do is set a baseline target of how much memory to get (a year ago, I'd have said 1 GB, with one monitor). Then, ignore CUDA cores, and compare cards based on benchmark results at sites such as Tom's Hardware. Find one that's a sweet spot of price and performance for your budget, and there you are.

In broad strokes, they could be useful - a card with 1344 of them is probably a lot more powerful than one with 32. But a card with 960 of them might be weaker than one with 640. Benchmarks do a better job of showing the general performance picture for a card.

I actually had no idea how many stream processors (the AMD/ATI rough equivalent of CUDA cores) my card had before looking it up just now... it's only one aspect of performance.

Spoiler Long Summary :

CUDA is NVIDIA's technology to allow you to do general-purpose tasks on the graphics card, as opposed to the CPU. For certain tasks, this can be a lot quicker. However, having CUDA doesn't affect graphics performance. For 98% of people, there's no need to care about whether a card has CUDA or not.

But looking at Newegg, it appears that these days NVIDIA is using the term "CUDA core" to mean "processing cores", similar to how AMD/ATI uses the more graphics-centered term "stream processors" for their rough equivalent. So if you're buying an NVIDIA card, the number of "CUDA cores" does have an effect on graphics performance.

But it's still not a reliable comparison. NVIDIA's "CUDA cores" are a different technology than ATI's "stream processors", so you can't compare one directly to the other - it's like comparing apples to oranges. And there are other factors that can heavily impact the graphics card's performance, such as memory bandwidth, and memory capacity as well. So a card with more cores/stream processors might not have higher performance.

Hence why I'd go with benchmarks, as recommended in the short summary.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

This is something I always forget -- when typing monitor resolution like 1:1, does the width or height come first?

 

[Michkov]

"The requested page title was invalid, empty, or an incorrectly linked inter-language or inter-wiki title. It may contain one more characters which cannot be used in titles."

Copy pasta the url straight from the forum, something went wrong with the link

This is something I always forget -- when typing monitor resolution like 1:1, does the width or height come first?

width:height

 

[civvver]

Don't worry about gpu specs, just look at benchmarks because they all use different tech. It's like saying a hex core cpu out performs a quad which is untrue in many, many cases. Or like saying a cpu at 4 ghz is always better than one at 3. There's so many more factors like cache and architecture. That's why I just used benchmarks from software similar to mine like the latest games.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

The author of Paint.NET says that the 4.0 version of the program will only work on Windows 7 and above (http://blog.getpaint.net/2011/05/16/paint-net-4-0-will-not-support-windows-vista/). I thought, in general, most 7 programs are backwards-compatible with Vista except I think UI tweaks. What else would keep this from happening?

 

[strijder20]

I'm texting someone who has a Belgian mobile phone and who's in Italy at the moment (I'm still in Belgium). Do I have to change the phone number by adding a zone number in front?

 

[Samson]

I'm texting someone who has a Belgian mobile phone and who's in Italy at the moment (I'm still in Belgium). Do I have to change the phone number by adding a zone number in front?

No. It should be exactly the same as if they were in Belgium.

 

[dutchfire]

Nowadays, you should always just put the number with the +countrycode in your phone book, this should not charge extra and will also work if you are abroad.