Posted 04/15/09 at 06:19:09 PM by The Maximum PC Staff

I’m having trouble formatting my C: drive. When I right-click my drive and try to format it, I get an error telling me that it can’t format when other applications are running. I’ve uninstalled everything that I could and it still won’t let me format. Is my hard drive shot or just corrupt? I don’t have my restore disc.

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Posted 02/27/09 at 12:45:40 AM by Thomas McDonald

There are a lot of things we could say about Fallout 3. Sure, it’s Elder Scrolls: The Mutant Years, but damn, it’s still a brilliant piece of role-playing design: a wide-open world with amazing sights and challenges at every turn.

Rather than descanting at length upon stats and perks, I want to talk about the single most mind-blowing part of the entire character creation system: facial hair. Fallout 3 opens a new era in beard and mustache design. You have never, ever seen such an assortment of whiskers in any game, ranging from the pathetic wisps of a teenager’s first attempt to huge Burnside sprouts and styles not seen outside of movies like Gettysburg or Tombstone. And these aren’t just the paste-ons from Oblivion: These are complete, textured moving models.

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Posted 02/26/09 at 11:50:12 AM by Tom Halfhill

Three years ago, I wrote about the Godson-2, a Chinese microprocessor that’s largely compatible with the MIPS architecture. I speculated that its successor, the Godson-3, would be a quad-core chip and that the Chinese needed x86 compatibility to break into the worldwide PC market.

So I wasn’t too surprised when the Godson-3 was unveiled at a recent technology conference in Silicon Valley. Sure enough, the first version has four cores, and the Chinese are adding more than 200 new instructions for x86 software emulation. These developments indicate that Chinese microprocessor technology is rapidly catching up with the rest of the world.

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Posted 02/25/09 at 01:21:18 PM by Quinn Norton

Whew, that was quite an election, but my hope muscle is hopelessly strained and my change gland is exhausted. So I’m turning to a new pastime: second-guessing the Obama administration’s next moves.

I’m long on questions. Will his new trade representative continue forcing DMCA-like laws on our partners? Will his appointees to the Department of Justice prioritize IP cases? What legislation will he support regarding copyright terms, patent reforms, orphan works, and DMCA reforms?

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Posted 02/20/09 at 02:40:36 PM by Tom Edwards

If your laptop needs are limited to email and epic rounds of Bookworm on cross-country flights, plenty of machines will do the job. However, if you need to do something a bit more power intensive­, your options are much more limited.

Will Urbina couldn’t find a desktop replacement that suited his needs for video editing; everything available was lacking in some area—so he built the CinematographHD. And although this 82 lb. rig may stretch the definition of portable, we salute his no-compromises approach. The images here give a hint of what Will created, but to get the full picture, check out his build video at http://www.vimeo.com/1847710.

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Posted 02/20/09 at 11:45:51 AM by The Maximum PC Staff

I have two 256MB RAM modules. I recently bought an additional 1GB DIMM. A friend of mine asked me to try his RAM, as it was the same as mine. I tried it and my computer flashed an error. I stopped immediately, removed my friend’s RAM, and shut off my computer. The 1GB DIMM was installed and so were the other two 256MB sticks. But now the computer only recognizes the 1GB and says the other slots are empty, despite the presence of the 256MB DIMMS. How can I get the system to recognize the rest of the RAM?

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Posted 02/18/09 at 12:45:32 PM by The Maximum PC Staff

I built a computer for a friend a couple of years back, and it was working fine until a few weeks ago, when the computer started to lock up on boot and the screen would stay black. I tried to reinstall Windows XP, only to have it freeze halfway into the setup. Eventually I was able to reinstall XP. All case fans, the CPU fan, and drive lights work fine. I updated video drivers, replaced the videocard, the memory, and the power supply, and even switched out hard drives; the system still locks. I’m at a loss for what to do next. I suspect maybe the mobo is at fault. Can you help?

 Read on to find out the answer to Howard's question!

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Posted 02/17/09 at 07:45:21 PM by The Maximum PC Staff

I recently upgraded my cable Internet service from 5Mbps to 10Mbps. Not seeing any increase in speed, I contacted my provider’s tech support. The tech said Internet Explorer 7 is loaded with time-consuming security routines and that it is also designed for Vista. Since I’m running XP, he suggested I roll back to Internet Explorer 6 in order to see major improvements in web-page loading speeds. He also said I should uninstall SP3 first, or IE7 would not uninstall. So I tried this on one of my machines. Using Add/Remove Programs, I removed SP3, rebooted, then removed IE7. On reboot, I was back to IE6.

He was right! Even after allowing Automatic Updates to reinstall SP3, web pages are loading twice as fast, or faster.

Now, there has to be a catch, somewhere. I have had no problems (yet) with any of the web pages I’ve visited since rolling back to IE6. Am I putting my system at risk by having less security? Are there features in IE7 I’m missing out on by not using IE7? Is my system’s life in peril without IE7?!

I know you all like Firefox 3, but my question is simply about IE6 vs. IE7. I’m very pleased, so far, with the speedier IE6.

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