MaximumPC 2005 03

POWER-SUPPLY UPGRADE

CRIPPLES BOOT TIMES

I recently replaced my croaked-

out 400W power supply with

a new 400W PSU from Vigor.

My PC now takes about five

times as long to boot. All the

additional time is spent in the

power-on self test (POST). When

it does boot, everything appears

to run fine. Any ideas why this

happens?

—EDEN STOLLMAN

The Doctor suspects that your BIOS

was reset either when the old

power supply took a dump or during

the swap out. You should go into the

BIOS and look for the setting that

lets you enable “rapid boot,” “quick

boot,” or “quick power on self test.”

If such a setting were disabled, the

machine might spend more time

performing a test of the RAM. With a

gig or more of memory, testing each

byte could take quite some time.

An alternative diagnosis is that

something was bumped loose dur-

ing the upgrade. An IDE cable or

power cable that’s partially discon-

nected could be the cause of the

boot delay. If none of the above are

the problem, it’s possible something

was damaged when your original

power supply went bad.

VIDEOCARD DISPLAYS

WEIRD SPOTS

I have an ATI Radeon 9600 XT

256MB videocard that has been

bugging me for a long time.

When I play Need for Speed:

Underground and Prince of Persia,

the graphics start to break down.

The screen shows a lot of weird

blemishes and you can hardly

even see what’s happening. I’ve

already updated to the latest

driver. I have e-mailed ATI

and all I got back were some

directions that I’ve already taken

into consideration.

—GEORGE

The problems you describe are

representative of one of two things.

Either your card is overheating or

it’s actually failing. To combat the

first problem, the Doctor recom-

mends installing an additional com-

puter fan (8cm or 12cm would work

best) to move air over the top and

the bottom of your videocard. If that

doesn’t help, you should send the

card in for warranty service. If your

warranty has expired, you might

have to purchase a new videocard.

PAUSING VIDEOS PISS ME OFF

I’ve got a new Sony double-

layer DVD burner (DRU-700A),

which appears to produce great

results with a single exception.

Halfway through each two-hour

film I copy, there’s a one-second

pause in the playback. It’s

reproducible on three different

DVD players. I’ve scrutinized

the master frame-by-frame on

my hard drive and I see no

problems. Is there any way to

avoid such glitches?

—MAX BRABSON

What you’ve encountered, Max, is

known as the layer switch. When

you play a disc composed of two

layers, whether it’s commercially

stamped or burned with one of the

new double-layer optical drives,

there’s a brief pause when the laser

reaches the end of the first layer and

switches to the second layer.

There are a couple options for

getting rid of the pause. If you can

make your movie fit on a single-layer

disc, you won’t experience the prob-

lem. Alternately, your DVD-burning

app may let you specify the location

of the layer switch. If you switch

layers when the screen is black, the

pause is much less noticeable. As

we went to press, Adobe’s Encore 2.5

is the only app we know of that lets

you do that, though.

NEW HARD DRIVE

ADDS TO BOOT TIME

I just replaced a dead hard drive

with a Western Digital 80GB

drive. The first thing I noticed

when I started up the machine is

an extra 20 seconds added to the

boot time. Boot now takes about

50 seconds, which isn’t super

offensive, but it is annoying. It

goes through POST and then at

about the 15-second mark, I get a

black screen for about 20 seconds,

then the Windows XP logo. From

then on everything works fine.

I’m running an Intel

845PESV motherboard, with the

latest chipset drivers and all the

latest device drivers. I’m using

Windows XP Pro with SP2.

—RICK WOOLFORD

The most likely cause is a jumper

configuration issue. Double-check

the jumper settings on all your IDE

devices. If everything is correct and

you’re setting the master/slave rela-

tionship manually, consider setting

all the devices to cable select. The

Doctor has seen slow boot times on

certain boards and chipsets when

drives are set to master/slave manu-

ally. If that doesn’t work, reseat

the IDE cable and/or try a different

80-pin cable. Finally, try to disable

unused devices, such as serial and

parallel ports, and if you’re not using

a USB keyboard or USB mouse, turn

off legacy USB support, as well.

CPU CANNOT BE SET

TO PROPER MULTIPLIER

My system refuses to boot or

install Windows if I set the

CPU multiplier to its proper

13.5x setting for my Athlon XP

2200+ on a 133MHz frontside

bus (to achieve its 1.8GHz rated

speed). If I underclock down to

the 13x multiplier, then it will

install Windows fine and the

system basically runs OK,

although some video games

still crap out. If I lower the

multiplier again to 12.5x, all

these games run perfectly.

THE DAY THE MUSIC DIED

After putting my whole music library onto my

4GB iPod, I formatted my PC and reinstalled

Windows XP Pro and iTunes. Upon connecting

my iPod, a window popped up and asked if I

wanted to update the library on my iPod with

the library on my computer. Thinking it meant

the opposite, I clicked yes. Now, all the music

is gone from both my iPod and my PC. Is there

any way to recover this music?

—NO MUSIC

Once you copy music onto your iPod, there’s no

Apple-sanctioned way to remove it—it’s the compa-

ny’s way of preventing nefarious music sharing. Still,

it’s possible to pull music off the iPod and back onto

your computer using an application such as PodUtil

(www.kennettnet.co.uk), but even this is unlikely to

work once your iPod has been sync’d with your tune-

less PC.

While your iPod

might seem like

a good place to

keep an emer-

gency backup of

your music, you’re

much better off

saving your tunes

to DVD-R/RW.

Of course, if any of the music you lost was original-

ly purchased through iTunes, you can always down-

load it to your PC again, as you are the rightful owner.

If that’s not the case, consider this: Losing all your

music is the perfect opportunity to re-rip everything

using one of the new lossless encoders, such as FLAC

or AAC Lossless.

Ask the Doctor Symptom Diagnosis Cure

 MA XIMUMPC MARCH 2005

While your iPod

might seem like

a good place to

keep an emer-

gency backup of

your music, you’re

much better off

saving your tunes

to DVD-R/RW.

Of course, if any of the music you lost was original-