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Ask the Doctor: A Bandwidth Battle

The Maximum PC Staff — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 14:00:53 -0600

I built my computer about a month ago—it’s nothing special. I’m running an Intel Pentium D 820 on an Asus P5W DH Deluxe motherboard. For a videocard, I’m rocking a BFG 9800 GTX.

I stumbled upon the System Information at the bottom-left corner of the Nvidia Control Panel recently. When I clicked it, I took note of the plethora of information on the 9800 GTX. What caught my eye was the very last line: BUS: PCI Express x4. That seems off, given that my card uses an x16 interface. What gives?

—Juan Campos

Check out Juan's answer, after the jump!

Ask the Doctor: Stock Cooler Safety

The Maximum PC Staff — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 18:45:44 -0600

How far can I safely overclock a CPU if I’m using a stock cooler? I was building a budget rig and when I had money left over, I decided to upgrade from a high-end Athlon 64 to a really low-end 2.2GHz Phenom. I want to up the performance, even by a tiny bit, but I’m hesitant to do it with a stock cooler. Please help!

—Andy Shores

Check out Andy's answer, after the jump!

Ask the Doctor: A Two-PSU Kind of Day

The Maximum PC Staff — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 13:40:11 -0600

My Tagan TG900-U96 Turbojet 900-watt PSU recently burned out. I returned it, but it was no longer being supported through the third-party vendor I got it from. The vendor sent me an Apevia Warlock 900-watt PSU to replace my Tagan. I swapped it out, but now when I turn on the computer it won’t boot all the way. I get power lights, and the keyboard and mouse light up, but the monitor never kicks on, nor do the other connected peripherals (external Zip drive, printer, and scanner).
What could be going wrong with my computer? I never had this happen with the Tagan. Could something have been corrupted when the original PSU died?

—Ben Locke

Click for Ben's answer, after the jump!

Ask the Doctor: Windex Worries

The Maximum PC Staff — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 11:00:00 -0600

A couple weeks ago I received a Dell Inspiron 6400 from a friend of mine. I was told that he used Windex directly on the screen, which dripped into the bottom of the LCD (between the screen and the housing). It now has a small, permanent “white fire” pattern on the bottom-center of the LCD screen. It appears not to be a physical effect, as I cannot see it when the laptop is off, but I can see it even when the backlight is turned off.
What should I do to fix my display?

—Jason Wesley

Check out Jason's answer, after the jump!

Can't Hear Jack

The Maximum PC Staff — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 15:45:04 -0600

I finally took the plunge and built my own rig. Everything worked fine until I plugged my Boston Acoustic Digital BA735 speakers into my EVGA 680i motherboard’s onboard outputs: Nothing happened. I received no sound at all. I tried the same speakers with a Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer card and got the same result: zilch. Am I missing something here?

—Rich M.

The answer to Rich's question, after the jump!

Second Opinion: DVR Video over FireWire

The Maximum PC Staff — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 11:00:00 -0500

Second Opinion is where readers respond to the Doctor, share their wisdom, correct him if he's wrong, and generally show the world what smart, beautiful people you are.

I can’t agree more with the Doctor regarding his advice to Michael Collins (June 2008) on a TiVo as the best option to extend your DVRing capabilities, especially for transferring recorded programs to a computer. The TiVoToGo feature is great. However, the Doctor’s advice regarding the FireWire ports of most cable DVRs is, as Dwight Schrute would say, “False!”

More after the jump.

Disappearing DVD

The Maximum PC Staff — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 17:00:00 -0500

In your June 2008 issue, Frank Buttell mentioned a problem with a disappearing hard drive. I have also had that problem with Vista Ultimate, except my disappearing drive was my DVD +/- RW with LightScribe. I am dual-booting with XP Pro x64 edition and Vista Ultimate (32 bit). The drive is fine in XP, but in Vista, it will randomly disappear. A restart or sometimes a disconnect and reconnect of the SATA cable will solve the problem. So something must be up. What’s going on?

—Joshua Parnell

Don't disappear; hope remains after the jump.

Backing Up My Games

The Maximum PC Staff — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 14:00:00 -0500

My question regards backing up games using tools like ImgBurn and Daemon Tools. I use ImgBurn to create the ISO from a disk and Daemon Tools to mount the ISO. But for some reason, with half of my games I get the message “Please insert the original disk” when I try to run the game from the ISO. My method works with older games but not newer ones. I understand that some of these games might have some kind of protection on them preventing me from running them off an ISO, but I paid for these games and I should be able to create backups of them. Do you know how I can back up my games so they actually work?

—Sgt. Christopher Basquit

Gotta go forward to go back, Christopher - hit the jump for the answer.