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There were three screws in the case, shorting out the motherboard. Shook it out, put the board back in, and all is well. Currently putting NetBSD 6.1.4 on it.

Yeah, I got really lucky with this one. Not a P4, Intel Graphics, SXGA model... DDR2 RAM... And it still works great to boot. I want to give it 2 GB RAM and at least an 80GB hard drive. I found the RAM on Amazon for $17, and the hard drive is a bit steeper at $40 so I'll hold off on the HDD and...

Sorry if it seems like I'm spamming, and in a way I guess I am, but I am reporting my findings as I find them. I took the hinge cover off and tightened the hinges. Still isn't perfect but it is miles better than what it was. At the same time I was confronted with the screws for holding the...

So yes, it does use a special adapter that is hellishly difficult to get off for the HDD. And yes, it only has 1 memory slot readily accessible -- populated with one 512MB stick, which tells me that either the rest of the RAM is soldered on (which doesn't make any sense to me) or is in another...

Wow. That is such bullcrap. BTW, I figured out that it doesn't have DDR-266 RAM like I thought it did, rather it has DDR2-533. I was shocked. Also, I saw the nForce2 name scrolling past during bootup, but it doesn't have that. It has an Intel 915G/GM, which steals some system RAM, making it...

From my grandma, who gave it to me because it was really slow. That and the fact that it was ~10 years old told her she needed to buy a new one. Apparently this model is notorious for having issues. The motherboard will occasionally get small cracks in it and cause severe instability. Which...

Yeah, I'd agree with you there. I've been finding that I can't have near as many tabs open on my P4 as I can the laptop, not just because the P4 is weaker, but it starts swapping to disk way too soon. I had my RAM half full if that and it slows to unusable speeds. Chrome here, occasionally IE...

Arch was confusing to set up... Mostly because I had to do everything by hand. I used the beginner's guide, which helped a lot. Setting up Ubuntu was easy and painless as always, though during its short run on the P4 I had go-arounds with GRUB because both HDDs were GPT. I had to wipe the whole...

Arch was confusing to set up... Mostly because I had to do everything by hand. I used the beginner's guide, which helped a lot. Setting up Ubuntu was easy and painless as always, though during its short run on the P4 I had go-arounds with GRUB because both HDDs were GPT. I had to wipe the whole...

After another reboot and playing with the volumes, it is working. Rhythmbox still crashes on trying to play songs on its first run of that boot cycle (all subsequent instances of the program execute without issue). I've tried clearing my library cache (/~/.local/Rhythmbox directory; proposed...

On my laptop, I now have a custom configured install of Ubuntu server with MATE and etc. Version is 14.04. I thought you guys could help me! I have the Alsa info right here: http://www.alsa-project.org/db/?f=40b5d306a3a1c2da439fbd89526f2c6a910b31c2 and I have tried uninstalling alsa-base and...

That'd be why I'd be setting it up on the ancient one. On another note, testing out a minimal install of Ubuntu server (Arch is good, very good; however, it can't handle .deb packages), had many go-rounds with the partitioner (I had to remove my GPT table on both drives, and start anew with an...

That Linux From Scratch thing is very interesting, perhaps I might take a crack at it over the summer. For now I think just getting Arch set up how I want it will be enough of a victory, though. Maybe the Linux From Scratch project will be the reason I keep that old 1.7GHz P4 around...

No, I did not. That right there is where I went wrong. I guess X.Org wasn't a listed prerequisite, as I was able to install the lightdm-gtk2-greeter and accountsservice packages without it. Needless to say that they wouldn't run without it though. Wow, that whole thing about LBAs went right...

...is one of the most difficult operating systems to set up and use in this day and age, period. But I did it. I won't lie, I had help from a tutorial, if that lessens the victory any. Installing everything had to be done through the CLI, and pacman saw a lot of use (and abuse). I had...

Maybe not literally, but we as students are very much pressured to take the higher education. And to get a higher education, unless you were born with the silver spoon in hand, you have to take out loans. It isn't like the 1980's anymore where if you had a job while you were in college you...

Well, you said it yourself. I wouldn't really notice a difference. The extra 3MB L2 cache would be beneficial, but honestly I don't feel it. I might as well stick with what I have and then just get an all new system when I find the funds. So, about 5-10 years from now. Eh, whatever, my uncle...

I applied, got accepted, did the testing, etc etc etc. I will actually technically be graduating high school a year later but with my associate's degree in hand. I did something called compass testing, maxed out the scale in english with a 99, did pretty good in pre-algebra with an 86, and...

Welcome to the family! Compared to all of the other guys, I'm rather new myself.

Any of you guys played it? It's from ~2002. Much more complex to play than Oblivion or Skyrim. Runs on a much more modest system too, but for the best quality you want something roundabout what you'd use for Oblivion. I used to not like it at all. It was slow, clunky, difficult, and a whole...

What does this have to do with computers, exactly? I mean, the General board isn't that hard to find... ... maybe I'm just tired...

Same here. Honestly, I find that with AdBlock Plus enabled, my experience goes much more smoothly. Seems faster too. It is kinda sad to see some of those "Please disable your adblocker for us!" messages that some websites throw up in place of ads.

Pale Moon is far from a perfect replica, having odd changes from the 3.6 UI like the 4.x+ buttons and such, but it's far more usable. I can use it on my GX270! I haven't done a side-by-side comparison yet, but it feels faster than Chrome!

Oh that AXP kicks the P4's butt, but I need it for a test bed and the AXP doesn't have SSE2 (believe it or not, that's actually a big deal, I was surprised).

That heatsink was really hard to take off, and I'm sure I irreparably damaged some key components of the mobo, so now I couldn't use it again if I wanted to, but I now have a fully uncovered Barton core AXP. I will give HP their props - the thermal paste is still tacky. Must've been fairly high...

As I said in Goodbye Firefox, I will be retiring my Athlon XP 3000+ based desktop. I think I'll take the CPU out, maybe frame it and hang it on my wall. Like I should have done for my PIII, as it was the computer that taught me how to fix hardware. Humorously enough, I have never seen an...

Ouch. To try Pale Moon on Linux I will have to compile it. Might not be such a good idea for me, I think instead I'll just slap a Windows install on my AXP and - - CRAP. SSE2 is required. Theoretically I could put it on my P4, but... it wouldn't do it justice. Maybe my GX270? Yeah, I think...

*ultra facepalm* Why didn't I just do my friggin' research?! I looked up Pale Moon. Bam. Answer to my "getting FF 3.6 UI back" question. Just removed the proxy from Chrome, let's see how it goes. Edit: AAAAAAnd it works again. Yup, that's a proxy I'll never use again. It did what it sad it...

This. This. A thousand times this. I haven't had the memory issue on Linux, but the Win32 version is almost unusable. For once IE is actually preferable. I don't like the new UI but I didn't like the previous one either. I stopped using Firefox after a brief tango with version 4 that left me...

I realized something. If I have to trick the operating system into installing adequate drivers for my hardware, perhaps I should not be using that OS with that hardware, no? So, this is why I'm back to Linux, yet again. I can virtualize Win7 for those things that I just can't ever get working...

I just got Xubuntu 14.04 and I am quite impressed with some of the changes. Gone is the hide-away dock, replaced with a much better "start menu." Though I will say that the repos don't seem to be fully populated yet. There's quite a fair bit of software that I could get on 13.10 but not 14.04.

Well, turns out fixing UT99 was as simple as running it in a window! I had to edit its INI file to make it start in a window by default, but it is working properly again. No Merc, I had not thought of that. Hmm, I might look into that further. Has anyone else heard the rumors about Update 2...

I hate to say it but I concur with Merc. If I were to develop Diabetes, of which there is a tangible chance though my metabolism acts like it's on crack, as it runs in my birth mother's side (wow, I just get hammered with diseases, considering Diabetes, Parkinson's Dystonia, classic Parkinson's...

Wow jtr, that looks rough. we also lost quite a few trees, around half of the 20 or so we had between us and Grandma and Grandpa. All broken off about 5.5ft up from the ground, so the tornado or whatever didn't quite touch down but it came pretty darn close. The saddest thing is, I was the most...

We were very lucky. Our satellite dish got bent in half, and shingles are missing from our house, Grandma's house and Grandma's garage, and there's a small hole in the roof of their garage, but that's about it. Oh, our makeshift skirting (plywood boards, I'm not kidding) got a few pieces torn...

So I just installed 8.1 Pro x64 this morning and only just finished getting all my stuff back to the way it was about an hour ago. I'm home from school (water heater came on way too late for me to get a shower at a decent time, and I hold myself to higher standards than some certain freshmen I...

I'm a fair bit late to the party, but: Transformers (1986) LoTR (whole trilogy, haven't seen the Hobbit movies yet but it was the only one of the books I read so I thought it was pretty awesome) A Series of Unfortunate Events (though it strayed a bit from the books, it was pretty good and Jim...

Surprisingly enough, the power is back on. The electric company must be on top of things.

We get back home and get all of a day before an F1 tornado rips through, cuts our power (with optimist estimates at around three days before its fixed, storm took down entire poles) and screws up our roof. Thank God for house insurance, if nothing else. We might not have school if it doesn't...

My laptops HDD is dead. I've reseated connectors and I'm getting DRDY errors while booting. Spectacular.

That most security screws can be turned with a small enough flathead? I had to open up my gameboy color once, the A button wasn't working, same kind of thing with the security screws. I would have taken it to be repaired by a professional, but I was strapped for cash as always and it was about...

IT'S ALIVE! IT'S ALIIIIIIIIIIIVE!

Still battery-indicator looping. I reseated the battery connector. and some other plugs. if it doesnt work now I'm just gonna trash it.

So I reconnected a couple plugs (were disconnected for some reason)... Waiting on the verdict, it's plugged in right now. ARGH I hate waiting for the battery indicator to pop up...

Doh I'm an idiot. I just realized I can use tweezers instead of the special tools it supposedly requires. And I'm a pro at making different bits turn different screws... so I'll be checking thst out when I get home. Isopropyl alcohol is a lot cheaper than a new tablet.

I can't get ahold of the tools and I can't get into the tab without dealing terrible, terrible damage to it otherwise. Apparently the tab was designed to be easy to build, not repair.

It still isn't working. Should I give it another week or should I start trying percussive repairs?

Reddit... /r/talesfromtechsupport. See if you can spot a few posts by yours truly!

D'awwwww... makes me wish my little sister was still that little. She's four now. As mubs said, I would invest in that sawed-off ASAP. It won't be long at all before you have to put the fear of God into some boy.

I cant open it. Not without irreparably damaging it, at least.