disko33

In my opinion, I don't think it worth $70 for an additional 40GB upgrade, unless you really need the space. You can buy a brand new, additional 160GB internal laptop drive for $100 on newegg. Granted, there is not space for a 2nd hard drive in a laptop, but I am just making the point that for $70, it seems like a rip off. I'd recommend just buying a portable 120GB Western Digital Passport external USB drive to attach to your laptop for about $90. Just my $.02.

I bought one of the HDHomeRun's last week, and it is easily the best purchase I have made in years. I have it sitting behind a desk in the office, and we can access the tuners from all the computers in the house through the gigabit router. I have the absolute cheapest analog cable package (which comes out to $3/month after the $10 discount for having cable internet) and get all the local channels in HD with the QAM tuner. The best part is you can use it through Windows Media Center interface now too. I highly recommend this thing!

From what I've seen, the e6420 is supposed to be about $185 at launch, and the e6400 is now about $220 - so less than a $40 difference. I think I'll just hold off, save the money, and pray that they do in fact come out later this month. I also don't know how the e6420 will overclock, so that is a risk with waiting - however I don't see them significantly worse than a standard e6400.

Not sure if this is really the right forum to be asking this in - but does anyone here know if the C2D E6420 will actually be available from online stores such as Newegg/Zipzoomfly/etc right on 4/22, or is that date only for OEM's such as Dell, Gateway and the like, and then retail outlets get them later? I've just been waiting for months already to upgrade one of my Opteron setups and finally try out the C2D's, and don't know how much longer I can hold off! They say patience is a virtue, but I'm not so sure its one of my mine. If its going to be until the end of May or something until online stores have the new chips, I may just bite the bullet and get a e6300 or e6400 now - the reviews I have seen seem to suggest the extra 2mb of cache doesn't make a huge difference. However, if they are available to buy retail chips right on 4/22, then I mind as well just wait, get the extra cache, plus save some money. I guess if I've waited this long, a few extra weeks won't hurt. Any thoughts?

Ok, this computer is killing me. I finally had it running fine for the past week or so at 255x9 on a 180 divider, which is still far less than it should be at - but at least it was stable. Then this morning I woke up to a frozen screen, so I reset the computer. It wouldn't boot, so I powered down completely for about 10-15 seconds and tried to turn it back on - only to have it completely shut off after about 3 seconds. It is continuing to do this same thing, several hours after the fact. I thought it might be the UPS that it is connected to, so I just plugged it in to the wall - same thing, shuts down right away. Any expert opinions here, does this sound like a power supply issue or a faulty motherboard (or something else entirely)? One more weird fact is that one time it stayed on for about a minute or so, but the monitor never came on and the CD/DVD drives were just making some odd noises and the lights on the drives were blinking/flashing even though there are no discs in there. I just manually shut down after a minute or two of this since it didn't seem to be doing anything productive. I'm really stumped here fellas!

So it is fairly safe to say if there are no bad blocks or sectors, then the data and operating system should be ok then, correct? As far as not removing the cmos battery for a DR-Expert, at some point you have to remove it to put in a new one right? I can't remember why they said not to remove it, I thought it had something to do with voltages getting screwed up - but obviously at some point you have to remove and reinstall a new battery when it dies. When it does come time for that, what is the correct method to follow for that procedure as to not hose everything again? Sorry for asking so many questions!

Thanks for the tips Tasr. I've now actually managed to get into Windows XP. It started off with the screen stating that the last time Windows started that there was a problem, and asked if I wanted to choose safe mode, last known good config, or normal startup. I chose last good config, and for the last half hour or so it has been running fine *keeping fingers crossed*. I am transferring all of my music and video files onto the good computer, and then I am going to do a True Image drive image backup of what is remaining just in case things get hairy. I'm actually heading out of town for the weekend, but when I get back I am will give Tmod's Bios flash CD and Utility CD's a try. That is actually how I flashed the BIOS last time, and it worked great - however I didn't use any of the utilities. If I run a hard drive diagnostic, will that tell me if the OS is actually corrupt? And as far as flashing to a different BIOS, does that replace the long CMOS clear? I left the CMOS jumper in the reset position overnight, but did not remove the battery or do those other steps listed in that guide. I thought I remember reading somewhere that you are not supposed to take out the battery on the DR-Expert, but I could be wrong.

Alright, here is where I am at now with the problem. I basically took everything out of the case, kept it to just mobo, ram, cpu, video card, main hard drive and the power supply from other computer. Had cleared BIOS overnight, so loaded the optimized defaults, and enabled Memtest. Turned on computer, let it run 2 passes of Memtest, and passed with no errors. Good sign, much better than before when it failed Memtest with tons of errors. Excited, I then restart, go into BIOS, disable Memtest, restart again, and go into Windows. I have the drive partitioned as 2 drives, one for XP, one for Vista. I select XP from boot menu, kicks me out almost instantly with some message about the memory, hardware change, turning off shadowing in the BIOS, etc - I don't remember the exact message, probably should have wrote it down, but of course I didn't. Anyhow, restarted and tried Vista instead, thinking maybe I had jacked up my Windows XP install. Actually got to the Vista desktop, before it froze on me. So, after all this, does it sound like my hard drive is now corrupted and will have to reinstall Windows, or something likely wrong with the board? I'm pulling my hair out over this crap! As far as the BIOS, I don't know how it could have got messed up just going from one Opty 165 to a different one - but I guess I could try that. If I do end up having to RMA the board, how quick is DFI's RMA touraround usually? Also, I installed an Evercool chipset fan a while back, would I have to take that off and put the original back on, or would they just repair the board and send it back as is? By the way, I appreciate everyones help and suggestions - this board rules!

That's the thing, I have been running Memtest and getting all kinds of errors, and it is happening with both sets of sticks. When I switch the sticks to my other computer and run Memtest - no errors - so I don't think the actual memory is bad. The crazy part about it is that I am even getting errors running DDR500 RAM at DDR400 speeds at 3-4-4-8. As far as the power supply, I can definitely try switching it out I guess, but again I have a really hard time believing that all of the sudden - at the exact same time I switched the CPU - it started failing out of the blue. Its less than a year old, and Seasonics are supposedly pretty good power supplies. But I will try that just to rule it out. If that isn't it, I'm going to have to RMA the board I guess because if the CPU, RAM and power supplies are all known to be good in other systems - it has to be the board, right?

Like I said, the same thing is happening with 2 different CPU's, so its definitely not bent pins. No I haven't tried a long CMOS clear yet, but I will try it overnight tonight - although I'm not holding out too much hope that is the problem.

Yeah, under normal circumstances I would have done just that, like changing from a single core to dual core, or even just a different CPU. However, this time I figured since they were both Opty 165's, I would be ok just changing it out as is. I have since cleared CMOS and loaded optimized defaults, and am still having serious issues. Assuming the CPU and memory are both ok - as I have tested them in my other computer - it seems that the motherboard is jacked. Is it really possible I messed something up just by changing the CPU without clearing CMOS first? Just seems kind of odd to me.

Ok, this could be a fairly long post, so be warned! A bit over a week ago, I get a new Opteron 165 from Newegg to put in a computer I am building for my parents. It turns out to be a CCBBE0610 stepping. I figure since I am not planning on OC'ing their computer very much, so I will take out my CCBWE0550 stepping from one of my computers, and give that to them, and take the 0610 for myself. Very simple process, pop out the 0550 and put in the 0610, right? I leave all the BIOS settings the same, since a 0610 *should* be able to handle the 2610mhz that I was running the 0550 at (@ stock voltage). Well, turns out its not stable. So I drop all timings and everything back to stock. Still not stable - at 1800mhz! I figure I must not have seated the heatsink properly or something - there is no way it can't be stable at 1800mhz. Take off heatsink, take out CPU, clean off and reapply thermal paste, etc etc. Still can't get it stable. Clear CMOS, and load optimized settings. Still not stable. Temps are all fine, low 30's, but for some reason I keep getting random reboots and freezes. So I think maybe I just got a bad CPU. Switch the 0610 with the 0615 from my other computer. The 0610 now works fine in my other computer at 2700mhz, now the 0615 (which was running great at 2700mhz @ stock voltage in other computer) is now not stable even at stock 1800mhz speed. I now figure maybe something weird happened to memory, even though I didn't touch it in the move. Swap out the memory between my two computers. Still getting random freezing and reboots. Both pairs of memory sticks run fine and pass Memtest in my 'South' computer, both fail in my 'North' computer. When I put them in the yellow slots, the computer will not even get past the BIOS screen, it just freezes. In the orange slots, it will boot, but usually will freeze up Windows. Does anyone know what I could have possibly done to cause this behavior? It really seems like it is something wrong with the board (DFI DR-Expert). The odd thing is that it is on a motherboard tray in my case, so I literally didn't even touch the board itself, the tray just slides out, I unscrew the heatsink from the CPU bracket, and screw it back in. I have cleared CMOS, and loaded optimal settings, done everything I can think of - but with no success. Any advice would be greatly appeciated!

I actually switched the memory out from my other computer, and its doing the same thing, so I have pretty much ruled that out as the cause since both sets work in my other computer just fine. i quit!

Now another thing to add, a couple of times when I have actually been in the BIOS, it freezes on me. What would cause this, power supply, bad cpu, bad ram? A couple of times after I cleared the CMOS, and just let it boot, it actually gets to the Windows loading screen, and then the BSOD comes up. This is driving me nuts!

Yes, it detects hard drives/optical drives.