Posted 10/21/09 at 01:30:53 PM by The Maximum PC Staff

Lately I’ve been having an issue on startup with my PC. During POST, my system will hang and fail to load past the Asus splash screen. My keyboard stops responding altogether, so I cannot hit Tab to see the POST messages. (I’ve changed keyboards and the issue persists.) When it does load past POST, it hangs just before the GRUB boot loader. When this happens, I usually have to hit the reset button and go through the process three times before I can load an OS. Other than the keyboard swap, I’ve made no major changes to my system that I think would prevent my PC from POSTing and I run everything at stock clocks. When I do load into an OS, everything is rock-solid and stable with no issues.

I have an Athlon 64 X2 4600+ on an Asus M2-N32 SLI Deluxe motherboard, 3GB DDR2 RAM, and an XFX 8800 GT. My keyboard is a Logitech G15. My PSU is a Cooler Master 600W eXtreme Power Duo.

My bet is on the PSU, but I really don’t have an easy way or the cash at the moment to test this. Please let me know if I’m on the right track.

Read our response to J.P. after the jump.

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Posted 09/09/09 at 08:00:14 PM by The Maximum PC Staff

I have 32-bit Vista installed on my system and have had it since it was released back in ’07. Each day when I start up, I sit and watch the cursor spin and watch the task bar fill. Every time I think it’s ready to go, it loads more programs. Is there some sort of graphical bar or gauge that can be loaded onto the desktop at logon that will show all of my background services loading, so I can tell at a glance whether my computer is actually ready to go? Windows 7 beta still offers NO progress bar/gauge to indicate when all background services are finished loading. I have used Sabayon Linux in the past and it did have a progress bar before the desktop had even appeared. This has really been a pain in my “mouse click,” so if you can help with this I would really appreciate it.

Read on to see the answer to Ray's question.

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Posted 02/10/09 at 03:00:00 PM by Josh Kampschmidt

So your computer is taking too long to boot, after being bogged down by dozens of startup applications you’ve downloaded over the years. You might want to just format, but that’s the coward’s way out. If you spend a little time tuning up your boot applications you may avoid the time it takes to wipe and restore your system altogether. Don’t give in to clutterware -- follow our guide to the essential methods of troubleshooting your PC’s start up sequence and freeing Windows of unnecessary resource hogs.

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Posted 01/02/09 at 02:00:00 PM by David Murphy

As we get ready to celebrate the end of 2008 and start of 2009, it's important to put down the champagne glasses for a moment and consider all of the big open-source stories that have come across over the past year.  There have been a lot.  In fact, we've even gone and chronicled some of the bigger stories for you already.  If you haven't checked it out yet, do so.  Like watching The Empire Strikes Back before A New Hope, you'll be lost if you read on much further.  That's because we're now taking a look at what's in store for the open-source world in 2009.

We'll get to the specific predictions in a big, but here's the big picture: the open-source software world is on the up, up, up.  We called this out in a news article awhile ago once the economy started taking a dive.  Guess what?  The economy's still taking a dive, and companies long and far are taking an increased interest in the open-source community.  That's because open-source solutions can help them generate cost savings over expensive, proprietary software without a loss of business quality or functionality. And that translates into increased opportunities for open-source developers -everybody wins!  Unless you're Microsoft and think the entire affair is rubbish.  But enough of that...  onto the predictions!

Click the link to jump into the open-source world of 2009!

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