MaximumPC 2006 01

Ask the Doctor

64 MA XIMUMPC JANUARY 2006

how 2 IMPROVING YOUR PC EXPERIENCE, ONE STEP AT A TIME

Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s not Superman, it’s the

Doctor! He might not be faster than a speeding bullet or stronger than a

locomotive, but he’s a whiz at curing bedeviling PC problems. Send an email

describing yours to [email protected] and he’ll leap tall buildings in

a single bound to try and help.

Continued from page 6 2

In your November 2005 issue,

Bob Parlinari complained that a

customer in his computer store

had set a hard drive password

on one of the laptops on dis-

play. This then made it impossi-

ble for them to access the hard

drive. You suggested removing

the batteries from the machine

and stashing the power supplies

behind the counter to prevent

such tomfoolery.

I think I have a better solu-

tion: If store employees created

hard drive passwords for these

machines before they’re put on

display, wouldn’t that prevent

anyone else from creating a new

password without first entering

the old one?

—Martin J. Peverley

SECOND OPINION

They’re not rumors, Joe. Dell has

long preferred using custom-

designed and -built motherboards

and power supplies. Dell’s older

machines even use proprietary wir-

ing in power supplies that otherwise

look, smell, and fit industry specs.

Plug a normal mobo into one of

those PSUs, however, and you’ll be

lucky not to melt something.

The PSU in the XPS 600 is a

custom design that runs along the

bottom of the case, and the Doc

is 95 percent sure that you won’t

be able to jam an off-the-shelf

motherboard into the XPS 600’s

case without a lot of work. It can

be done, but is it worth the trouble

when you can just buy a new case

and PSU instead?

Dell defends its use of propri-

etary parts by claiming its designs

are superior to stock offerings.

While the Doctor agrees that Dell

hasn’t crossed into the nightmar-

ish territory of Packard-Bell-style

computer design, he remains

convinced that off-the-shelf parts

and designs are a superior hedge

against obsolescence.

NOT THAT UPDATE!

I’ve encountered an interesting

anomaly with Asus’ BIOS-update utility.

The program finds and downloads the

relevant patch, but when it displays a

message indicating that it’s going to

restart my PC, my Kodak EasyShare

installation software fires up and I

never get the BIOS update.

—Bill Morris

There’s an apparent conflict

between the BIOS update program

and your EasyShare software. Try

uninstalling the BIOS updater and

download and install the latest

version from Asus’ website. If you

continue to have problems, uninstall

EasyShare, run the BIOS updater,

and then reinstall EasyShare. If that

doesn’t work and you don’t want

to reinstall Windows, try a conven-

tional floppy-disk BIOS update.

MISTAKEN IDENTITY

I’m running a Soltek SL-K8TPro-939

with an AMD 64 3500+ and two

sticks of 512MB Kingston DDR400

memory. After I added two sticks of

generic 512MB DDR400, the machine

indicated during POST that it had

DDR333 dual-channel memory. I pulled

the Kingston sticks out and POST

once again tells me the machine has

DDR400 dual-channel memory.

I know you need matched sets for

dual channel, but must all four slots

have matched sets? I can’t figure out

what’s causing this oddity.

—Craig

The Doctor’s first prognosis is that

you have a processor issue. Athlon

64s feature the memory controller

inside the CPU, so that’s usually the

root cause of memory compatibility

problems. The original Socket 940

Athlon 64 FX-51, for example, could

operate at DDR400 only if two RAM

slots were filled. Populate all four

slots, and it would clock back to

DDR333. You have an Athlon 64

3500+, which means you could be

having the same problem—if your

CPU is based on the older 130nm

Clawhammer core (the newer 90nm

Venice core has an improved memory

controller). Also, some boards require

you to manually set the RAM speed

when using four DIMMs. The Doctor’s

first recommendation is to try manu-

ally setting the memory speed within

the motherboard’s BIOS. If that doesn’t

work, update your motherboard’s BIOS

and repeat this step. If your CPU has

the Venice (aka “rev e”) core, the pro-

cessor should be able to run both sets

of RAM modules as DDR400.

HAPPINESS IS A WARM LAP

I just purchased a Sony VAIO VGNFS760

notebook, which I love. It’s lil’ GeForce

Go 6400 handles Battlefield 2,

Max Payne 2, and all my other fave

games—it’s an excellent lappy for the

price. The only problem is that it locks

up if I play too long. I’m 99 percent

sure this is a heat problem, because

it’s thin and hot. I’ve seen all those little

table fans you put under your laptop

for extra cooling but I’m wondering if

they’re worth the price. Most are USB

powered, which means they suck juice

from your PSU and generate more heat.

Are these worth a poo?

—Justin Johnson

The best way to keep your note-

book cool is to use it on a hard,

flat surface with plenty of space

around the exhaust vents. If you’re

using your notebook on your bed,

or some other soft surface, it might

block the exhaust vents and cause

the notebook to overheat. A lap

cooler will help keep it cool for use

on your lap, and it might sufficient-

ly lower the internal temperature

to keep it from crashing, but it’s

still like trying to cool your desktop

PC by blowing a fan at the case,

instead of removing hot air from

inside it. A properly designed note-

book with unobstructed exhaust

vents should run games all day

without overheating.

WHAT’S THAT TICK-TOCK,

DOC?

Wh en I turn on my computer, which I

use constantly, my hard drive makes

these clicking sounds for a little while.

The noises eventually go away, but

when I download files, the clicking

sounds come back. My hard drive is

a Maxtor 4K060H3 and it’s a couple

years old. Do you think it’s failing?

—Vinson Luu

Because there’s no physical contact

between your hard drive’s platters

and its read/write heads, you should

never hear any clicking sounds

emanating from it. The only sound

you might hear is the faint “tick-

tick-tick” as the head assembly’s

arms flick back and forth. You

mention that you’ve owned this

drive for a few years, so it’s quite

likely it’s about to give up the

ghost. Consumer drives such as the

4K060H3 are designed to operate for

one to three years; enterprise drives

typically have a five-year lifespan.

Here are two measures you can

take to determine the drive’s health.

The first is to download Maxtor’s

PowerMax drive-integrity utility.

Boot your system using the floppy

disk this handy program creates,

and it will run a diagnostic routine

that informs you whether the drive

is failing. Alternatively, or if your PC

doesn’t have a floppy drive, open My

Computer, right-click the afflicted

drive, and choose Properties from the

pop-out menu. Click the Tools tab and

then the button labeled “Check Now.”

When the Check Disk window opens,

place a checkmark next to “automati-

cally fix file system errors” and then

click OK. Windows will examine the

drive for bad sectors, which are areas

of the drive that have become inca-

pable of storing data. If you find even

one bad sector, it’s time to get your

data the hell out of Dodge.