Posted 04/13/2009 at 08:09:47pm

If not then it's of no use to you, at least speaking strictly i7. If you do then simply go to intel.com and figure it out, it's not that hard as you'll find it where you find the other downloads for the DX58SO.

Posted 04/13/2009 at 07:57:51pm

You might not want to be so much of an ignorant fanboy. I'm not saying there's anything inherently wrong with Gigabyte boards, I've owned/built plenty, but your statement is that of a total fanboy or someone that if he doesn't already work for Gigabyte apparently should in their marketing dept. I don't see any Giga boards at the top of the OC speed charts and reliability is very apparently no better nor features, especially if you take into account Gigabyte's typically not very good software. The best thing is that the two top of the line Giga boards offer 10 SATA ports. For some reason the Gigabyte boards have been seeing a lot of eth port failures too. Do you build systems for a living like I do? Yeah, didn't think so.

Posted 03/02/2009 at 03:37:40pm

Most likely after selecting that you also will need to select it at boot time to boot first or it will boot from your currently bootin primary drive.

Posted 03/02/2009 at 03:08:43pm

Download both 32 and 64 bit and use the bootsect from the 32 bit image to infuse the boot manager onto your USB flash drive but copy the 64 bit image contents. The bootsectors created are identical so you can infuse the boot manager from the 32 bit version in your 32 bit environment but copy the 64 bit image contents to then install the 64 bit version. Of course at this time you'll have to either already have those images or get them from somewhere else as MS isn't offering them for download anymore but they do still provide keys.

Posted 02/27/2009 at 01:54:31am

I was wondering while reading this why you got such limited results. Not that they were bad, just not noteworthy. Finally there it was, the motherboard you used, "Intel DX58SO “SmackEDover”." I've got nothing against Intel boards, I'm replying from one of my systems that happens to use a Bad Axe 2 with a Q6700 running at 3.6 on air that has been crunching away on distributed computing projects for over a year almost non-stop and zero issues. However their performance "Extreme" boards are not quite up there with many other motherboards when it comes to overclocking and from my experience the DX58SO is not an exception. The Bad Axe 2 I'm using is probably the best of the Intel Extreme category. Actually, strike the probably. I have my hands on a lot of hardware since I build systems and the Bad Axe 2 is the only one of the extreme boards that has been able to get in the same OC ballpark as a number of other makers like Asus, EVGA, Gigabyte and others from the same generation. It's old hardware now and there are other boards I could put this Q6700 in now that would perform better but it's been established so I leave it as there is no sense fooling with this unless the board takes a dive. I built a new i7 920, EVGA X58 on air for myself two months ago and it wasn't even breathing hard at the 3.66 you recorded and there are plenty of other examples like this out there using EVGA X58, Asus P6T, Gigabyte, etc. mbs. Those aren't just bragging number either as they are well documented and I won't even talk about what my 920 is clocked at right now. I have to wonder why you chose this comparison using the DX58SO. Maybe because Intel supplied the whole kit? I don't know. Anyway put that 920 in a P6T or EVGA X58 and you'll get a different OC experience.

As for the AMD fanboy ghot and the ridiculous comments. There's nothing much more entertaining than someone who doesn't have that much knowledge spouting off about the brand they blindly follow. I don't build just Intel systems nor do I blindly follow either cpumaker, in fact for a few years my systems were mainly AMD based. That situation may return someday, but right now if you aren't budget building Intel is the choice. I use and recommend AMD cpus for media centers and they work excellent for that purpose, workstation environs or top gaming machines they aren't the top dog and haven't been for awhile. ANY Core i7 absolutely crushes any other choice out there right now.

Posted 02/27/2009 at 01:04:56am

Simply put any option/argument following an executable is always meant to have a space between the executable and the option/argument following it. If you encountered an error it isn't because the instructions are wrong. Check bootsect.exe /help and look at the proper syntax, bootsect {/help|/nt60|/nt52} {SYS|ALL|<DriveLetter>:} [/force] [/mbr]. Somewhere along the way whether there was a space after the executable and before the argument it was changed to allow either to work. You must have typo'd or something else created the issue because his syntax was correct but both work. BTW, why all the caps?

Posted 02/01/2009 at 03:58:01pm

Yeah, it makes you sound cool to dismiss Symantec's products, however your coolness is not reality. 

I could leave my comments at that but I won't and yes I'm going to rip into fools that think NIS is junk and that their beloved this or that is great. Most of you show how little you know with your comments. To paraphrase some "my Avast doesn't look like that", are you stupid? Did you pay attention to your install? Get rid of your junk Avast anyway. Glad to see that this roundup brought out PC Tools for what it is, complete and utter junk, no matter the version. NIS features that don't work in Vista 64, the right click scan is the ONLY one I know of and apparently that MaxPC knows of as well or they'd list them. If there's more then MaxPC you need to list them not alude to there being more. Anyone know of more? Name them and lets see how crucial they are. I was disappointed in the right click scanning missing but it's not a make or break item. BIG DEAL. More to that is NIS (and obviously the AV alone as well) still tags a fair number of false hits. The fewest number of false hits I've gotten is with ESET. NIS doesn't work with Zone Alarm? So what?  YoPa, you need a clue buddy and someone else already clued you in that you don't need nor would you want to use ZA with NIS. You can use either suite but I'd choose NIS of ZA anyday currently. Kapsersky, well this is another once very good product that's turned garbage, much like BitDefender which has become junk and unfriendly to knowledgable users.

Now here we come to the real meat on this issue. I don't see anywhere in the MaxPC's roundup here any mention of false hits. False hits are a huge issue. To keep down panic and refrain from trashing something that is harmless you don't want false hits to be very high. ESPECIALLY for any AV or Suite that doesn't give you an option to not delete or quarantine an item. Well NIS doesn't give you full control over this, so it's made for or dumbed down for stupid users that don't know what they are doing. This is a glaring fail point for me, it takes what I know NIS to be a very top notch and resource stingy suite to being at very best an 8 on the scale here. ESET is my choice. The biggest problem I have with ESET though is that they are now gouging on price with single user licenses costing what almost everyone else gives you 3 licenses for. Wake up ESET, your pricing strategy keeps me from successfully recommending your product to customers.

Acknowledge the reality that Symantec has once again made Norton products recommendable and just short of excellent. Get rid of taking away my control of all supposed risks and get the false hits in check and I'll use it again on my own systems. If you look you will see that MaxPC's results here fit right in with Virus Bulletin's. Like it or not all you Symantec haters, they actually do make a very effective tool and lately it has become a lot more system friendly making it a very good product except for what I noted above about full control over actions on all hits and false positves. Still on my personal systems that I have full control over I use ESET and the family currently gets NIS. Again speaking of VB, you'll notice that there are a lot of AV and suite venders that no longer want to take part in VB's testing. They like to paint it as if it's unfair or tainted but in reality their junk product just doesn't cut it so they don't want it scrutinized.

Posted 07/19/2008 at 07:59:22am

So I take it none of you thought it a wise idea to write your slipstreamed image to rewritable media first to test it out? ALWAYS a good idea.