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Before I do this: – post beeps, which I need to hear.

The mobo manual refers to a front speaker wire to attach, which will also give me the beeps. I have no such wire in my case, yet the old mobo beeped just fine. The only sound wire from the front is attached to front mike-earphone connectors, no speaker. But the wire doesn’t fit those pins anyway, it fits the green connector below the onboard sound, with 8 pins arranged in 2 rows, one being blank. Where should my post beeps come from? I hear nothing.

Here’s the mobo:

http://www.newegg.co…N82E16813128388

The case never had a manual.
http://www.buy.com/r…tingid=74807918

I reset the CMOS both ways. There are other issues here. I know the front power switch is defective. I’m on my 3rd Thermaltake PSU under warranty, don’t know if it’s good, but the juice keep going on and off. The board’s not shorting out in the case; I checked all the standoffs yesterday when assembling it.

I shorted the front power switch pins with a screwdriver to bypass the defective switch, but the power still keeps going on and off.

Thanks. Have to put everything on hold because the mobo isn’t posting and the monitor is blank. I have to get a friend over here to test things.

The mobo is SATA. To anyone tuning in late, here’s the scenario:

XP SP3 and all updates
Using same CPU
new mobo
new identical HD
trying to keep my XP installatuion without a complete repair install or a reinstall.

There’s a complication Byron, that I didn’t mention. The HD, SATA 80 GB Seagate, was damaged in the accident too. Installation of C is an IMAGE on a 10 GB HD. Everything’s wired up, ready to go, but the image, made with EASEUS Todo Backup, has to go on that HD first. And I can’t do it on this comp, no SATA socket.

Data is not an issue, backed both up to this comp and on media.

I’m sorry I’ve hijacked your thread, Byron. I don’t want people to get confused here. I’m going to move my issue to a new thread, and start with the last Q and A.

Have you Googled “Apple tech newsletters?”

TB version #?
Was it on http://www.mozillazine.org that you posted? Dan Raisch or Daifne usually have a fix for everything there.
How often do you compact your folders?
And what add-ons do you have?

Have you tried any of these?
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Disappearing_mail

I have been keeping the extra one in my car ever since a good friend had their house hit by lightning and effectively burn to the ground losing everything..

But suppose the lightning hits a tree, and it falls on your car?

Win XP activation isn’t an issue.

What I meant was: if I have to use the UBCD+Win CD combo, and it then lets me into the Windows GUI, do I then just put in the mobo drivers CD, and that’s it? ALL DONE? And yes, the chipset and all the drivers will be different. I couldn’t get a duplicate of the old mobo any more.

Thanks, Byron, I’m setting aside all of Sunday for this. If they find my dead body with a gun on Monday morning, I bequeath you my Pentium D 830 CPU, which you can use to toast marshmallows….

Some interesting techniques.

As far as labeling drives and partitions, I give them all logical names to avoid problems. This one is Bear (a pun for the barebone kit I started with,) C is BearSysProg, D is BearData. On my secondary comp, C is SecSysProg, D is SecData.. My flash drives are Flash and Flash2. I keep shared folder names consistent across the network too.

If they fix the memory link finally I’ll be happy – that’s the only change I want.

Not familiar with that feature. What is it?

No if I find it’s too complex with the new ribbon interface, I’ll switch to Safari or Opera. We all use FF to avoid IE.

I’m attached to my existing computer because I built it myself less than 2 years ago for $250. I reused my old speakers, mike and CD-RW, pricewise all minor items. And no, it’s not cheaper to replace. Bottom line at Dell with XP is $607 w shipping, HP just as bad. One with Win 7 would make my scanner, printer, some software obsolete. Add that to the price.

Everything is a commodity. No product has built-in obsolescence more than computers, and if you disagree, you might be one or 2 generations younger than me or you don’t understand American marketing. Americans need everything newer and supposedly better constantly. Ask Intel or Microsoft how they feel about that, or the makers of the 54″ TV’s that cost $500 to mount on the wall.

If someone else wants to get into this debate, we might have something interesting going here.

They’ve gone way beyond security fixes, and the extensions are not all updated. And didn’t Personas and themes add just bloat? Tabs, when I do the same thing with multiple windows on the taskbar. Not sure how the awesome bar works, but I know it’s far from complete, even with 1200 bookmarks.

With TweakUI, I long ago move My Documents in XP to Drive D, where it lives happily with all my data.

But going through my Application Data, I’ve found that a lot of it is useless or generic anyway, except Mozilla profiles, which give you a location choice when you install the programs. For instance, Yahoo Messenger doesn’t store your profile there, but on their own servers, as I found when my preferences keep getting corrupted. Some Application Data consists of useless icons, some are temp files, some folders are empty, some are logs that I don’t need to preserve. Of all the folders there, I’ve backed up only the one for Irfanview, and once is enough.

Because data changes faster than the C drive, I keep the backups separate. I make 1 image of C (system+programs) with a Seagate tool, and I back up the data with Karen’s Replicator on a schedule. And it works very well.

Is this all very different in Win 7?

Speaking of charity and the NY mentality–

I’ve belonged 14 years to a PC users group, and about 6 months ago I was unemployed, extremely broke. There’s a committee in our group that refurbs older comps and gives them to (501)c’s. I offered to work among the volunteers one night in exchange for an old sound card, anything that functioned, explaining my financial situation, and that I would keep the “payment” under my hat. I was turned down with no reason given.

I live in the NYC metro area, maybe 30 million people, but the nearest parts store, MicroCenter, is too far away, through NJ traffic and a pricey bridge toll. I’ve tried buying parts from nearby repair shops, but each time I was overcharged, once by 5x the retail price, and the part was defective. Everyone’s out to get you.

I do get some used parts through my friend who’s on the board of all 5 nearby PC user groups, but they’re often ancient, only suitable for this old backup comp. People hold onto their old PC’s as 2nd PC on their network, and don’t chuck them till they’re extremely dead, which is what I’m doing with my old PC. Anyway, used parts die prematurely, have no warranty, and finding the right parts at the right time can be a full-time profession.

But you missed my point. I’m outraged at the racket the manufacturers and software developers have with making their products obsolete at an alarmingly rapid rate, more than any other consumer product I’ve seen in 64 years.