Computer Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread II

[Turner]

Well, if you're trying to upgrade from XP to 7, you have to do a clean install. For most people that means reformatting your hard drive to do it. Once you reformat, technically XP is no longer on there, and putting an upgrade version of 7 on it is a technical violation of the ToS for 7.

Personally, I don't agree with it. But I didn't make the rules, nor do I enforce them. In this case, I'm simply commenting.

 

[Zelig]

Yeah, what I'm saying is that I don't think that's against the EULA, if you have the license for XP, regardless of XP being installed or not.

Of course, this could be solved pretty easily by googling the upgrade edition EULA and reading through it, but I don't really care either way, so am not going to bother... but anyone else, feel free.

 

[civ_king]

This is playing out like Snow Leopard, so people are using gutted Power Macs and Mac Pros for their hackintoshes

 

[J-man]

Software4students do an awesome deal on Windows 7, but they only seem to do an upgrade version. Can I still install this on a computer that isn't running Windows? It says it requires a licenced edition of Windows to install, but is that only if I wish to upgrade? Help would be v much appreciated, thanks.

I also bought windows 7 (64 bit ultimate edition) with the student license. Apparently microsoft only hands out upgrade version to students. That was a problem for me because I wanted 64 bit windows 7 and I had 32 bit windows vista, meaning I couldn't upgrade. There is a work around that 100% legal but you need windows 7 RC. Basically you install windows 7 RC and than upgrade. It only upgrades to ultimate edition I think.

Windosw 7 RC no longer works but it might just work if you unplug the computer from the internet and set the bios clock backward. (I'm not sure if this is legal though, I didn't try this because when I upgraded Windows 7 RC still worked)

Perhaps you can buy a second hand version of windows xp or perhaps vista.

 

[Tarkhan]

I cant say i'm much of a fan of Microsofts marketing strategy with OSes, or their lame activation that is arguably not even permanent. It is not the activation of a new copy, it's the part where it unactivates itself when I install new hardware that really burns me about it.

Given what they charge for even the home premium version, I would honestly buy a new computer before buying a copy of Windows off the shelf.

 

[MeteorPunch]

Just wondering if my 6-year old PC will meet the minimum requirements to play Civ 5. Civ 5 requires a dual core processor to run, which I don't have, but it seems like a cpu with hyper threading is very similar.

picture of properties and dxdiag:

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Just wait until the demo comes out, try that, and then you will see. Until then, all any of us can do is speculate.

 

[Tarkhan]

Yeah, as it is, we can only assume CPU will be very important (it was for Civ4) but they've said that Civ5 will be able to use a lot more GPU power in place of it.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

CPU and GPU will be used for different things though. GPU wont help if your CPU cant keep up with the AI calculations.

 

[Tarkhan]

From what I can tell, GPU improves the game during your turn, CPU improves the time between your turns.

So an MP game with no AIs will actually require a drastically lower CPU than a single player game.

 

[Disgustipated]

quick question about a Windows 7 error:

Last night windows took an unusual time to shut down. this morning it comes up and says I am not running a genuine copy of windows (which I am). I click later. But then I decide to reboot thinking maybe the last shutdown wasn't complete or something. It didn't come up on a reboot. I ran a scan on my system using Spybot but didn't find anything.

Should I be worried about a virus or something?

 

[Turner]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Genuine_Advantage#False_positive_rate

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

All the blurred out numbers except mine are the same IP, just different ends. Note that person cannot get in without login but it'll show them trying to look anyways. What would cause the IP to change on a page load? first thing I think is dynamic IPs but then I thought those only changed every time you connected.

Spoiler :

 

[nc-1701]

I ended up getting a PC through Newegg from Cyberpower PC, i5-750, 4 gigs rAM, came with Windows 7, etc. So today it arrived and is having an odd problem, when I turn it on I can start loading windows or go into he BIOS etc. But whatever I do the screen cuts off after about a minute, the computer keeps running but the screen doesn't register any input. I've tried everything can think of, any ideas on what's wrong or what I can do to fix it?

 

[tokala]

I ended up getting a PC through Newegg from Cyberpower PC, i5-750, 4 gigs rAM, came with Windows 7, etc. So today it arrived and is having an odd problem, when I turn it on I can start loading windows or go into he BIOS etc. But whatever I do the screen cuts off after about a minute, the computer keeps running but the screen doesn't register any input. I've tried everything can think of, any ideas on what's wrong or what I can do to fix it?

Return that thing and let them fix it
Could be a disconnected CPU fan.

 

[Tarkhan]

Return that thing and let them fix it
Could be a disconnected CPU fan.

Yeah, you can probably open it up and see if its something obvious, like a disconnected wire (it'd save more waiting for it) but you'd be able to make them fix it for you if you send it back.

 

[tokala]

Cables getting loose during shipping seems to be a standard feature of those cyberpower PCs
Look at the feedback tab.

 

[Tarkhan]

A loose HD would kill it right after it does the POST, if theres no bootable disc in the drive. If this is the case, BIOS will load up fine, and you will see that there's no hard disks detected.

If it's a CPU fan not connected, most motherboards have a safety in place where if the CPU hits a certain temperature, it will immediately be shut down to avoid damage.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I was looking at some old Tripod sites and a lot of the pages have randomly 404'd when they used to work. I cant find any info on this. does anybody know if it crashed or something? I looked at their blog and didnt see anything but minor updates.

EDIT: Other parts of the same site do work.

 

[Mathalamus]

tripod sites are unreliable, at best.