What would be the best way (time efficient) to capture video from my DirecTV DVR to my PC? I don’t want to capture Hollywood movies—I can buy those. My interest is in capturing the near 100 hours of Brazilian Carnival on my DVR, then editing it down to a “best of” DVD or two. My PC has plenty of USB ports and free PCI-E and PCI expansion slots available.

Read the answer to Jeff's question after the jump.

My system keeps freezing. The cursor doesn’t move and Ctrl-Alt-Del doesn’t bring up Task Manager. The system won’t respond to anything. It either spontaneously reboots or I have to shut down manually. Checking the event log does not show any system errors. Is there another location for a system error log?

This system has a 1,600MHz bus-speed processor and memory. Intel does not have a single stick of compatible 1,600MHz RAM in its compatible memory list. I asked its tech support about this but have not received a response. How can a manufacturer claim to have a board with a 1,600MHz FSB yet not have compatible memory?

This build consists of an Intel DX48BT2 Extreme mobo, a QX9770 quad-core CPU, two XFX GeForce 9800 GPUs, two 2GB Corsair DDR2/1600 modules, and a Thermaltake Toughpower 1200W PSU, all running XP SP3. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Read our suggestions for Lucas after the jump.

I tried to install a Philips webcam made for XP on my Dell Inspiron 640m running Vista Home Premium. It corrupted one of my boot files. I had to get a replacement Vista disc sent from Microsoft after I discovered that using a friend’s Vista disc gave me only 30 days of use (Microsoft customer service was awesome—no joke!). Anyway, I thought all my programs and files had been wiped, but a month or so later I noticed that the hard drive was almost full. I checked the C: drive and, low and behold, all my old files and programs were in a folder called “Old Windows.” How do I get those reinstalled to their rightful place?

What determines whether the RAM on an i7 mother-board runs as dual- or tri-channel memory? Is there a difference between RAM sticks, or is the only difference in how they are placed in the motherboard slots?

The Dell XPS desktops that have Core i7 can run as dual-channel when they have DIMMs in four slots, with 4GB or 8GB RAM. The same machine can run as tri-channel with DIMMs in three slots for a total of 3GB, or in six slots for a total of 6GB or 12GB (though I don’t know who needs 12GB of RAM.)

Could the same 2GB sticks be used in dual- or tri-channel machines depending only on how they are placed in the slots?