Sean-Ward.com

I had [?link:http://sean-ward.com/?q=node/149 previously mentioned] that I was going to be formatting my computer at home. The partitioning/formatting went okay once I connected my hard drive to the IDE cable master slot instead of the slave slot. I only got as far as installing Windows on a partition of about 148 GB, as I wanted to get Windows configured and what not, which of course meant installing drivers that Windows couldn’t find. So, I took care of all that and then installed Firefox and all of its extensions, and then decided that DDO should be next. I threw it in, installed it, and let it update. Silly me, I thought I’d get in some play time. How wrong I was.

I ran into an issue I had before where the game and computer would freeze up and require me to press the reset button. I figured it was due to the graphics being set to high, as happened when I installed the game. Turning down the graphic settings did not help at all. I checked to make sure it was seated correctly and then ran through several iterations of installing and uninstalling and upgrading and downgrading video, audio, and chipset drivers in case that was the issue. For all I tried, I could not get the game to run for more than a handful of minutes. I was convinced that it had to be my video card, my [?external:http://pny.com/products/verto/mainstream/6600gtagp8x.asp PNY Verto GeForce 6600 GT]. I eventually managed to find an AGP card I could temporarily borrow to try and resolve the issue. Even though I had used some canned air to blow off the video card while I was playing around with the components the previous week, I decided to go all out.

I popped the fan/heat sink combo off of the card and blew the compresses air at and into it at every angle I could. A bit of dust was hiding in there, as if it was a pocket dimension. When I went to reattach it, I noticed that the thermal paste that should form the connection between the chip and the heatsink was more spread around where it was supposed to be rather than on the chip. Using a tooth pick, I took some of the paste and placed it on the chip. Popping the video card back in, I fired up DDO and let it run. Surprisingly, it kept running. All it took was to clean it as well as reapply the thermal paste.

I hadn’t originally thought that the video card was overheating, as I was using [?external:http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php SpeedFan] to monitor the computer to check just that, and at no point was the temperature getting high enough to cause a freeze. Then again, considering that the thermal paste may not have been in contact with the heatsink, it may have been creating a pocket of air between the chip and the heatsink. Or something like that. All I know is that the machine was running last night, and I was able to play DDO with the graphic settings set to the optimal for my system.

Now the least of my concerns is to get the microphone setup the way I want.

Update - 20:39
The microphone has been defeated. I changed the from the sounds card’s mic port to the motherboard’s mic port, and after dealing with some of the settings, got it to work. A guildmate helped me test it, and it seems like I am good to go with DDO now. I still get some lag in the Marketplace, but hey, it’s the Marketplace; it’s like DDO’s attempt at Lagforge, I mean Ironforge.

To say the least, I was pleasently surprised when my computer turned on once I had connected the new power supply, motherboard, sound card, and 512 sitck with my previous video card, 512 stick, hard drive, DVD burner, and floppy drive. However, I think I am going to format my machine this weekend, as both motherboards had the same chipset (nVidia nf3), so there are a couple issues with that. One example is that the default connection for the built-in ethernet is still being used by Windows, successfully I might add. However, if I try to delete it, the computer reboots, which is not a desired to result. So I guess I’ll be backing up and reformating the hard drive. Perhaps this time I’ll add a boot section for Ubuntu. I think I can spare the room, having 250GB of space.

I briefly jumped on DDO last night after getting the computer set up, and marveled at my ability to begin playing almsot immediately after logging on and increasing my graphics quality. I’ll have to give some of my other games another try and see how much and what type of improvement I can get now that the system resources have improved.

All after the format of course.

As far as the format/partioning goes, here’s what I’m thinking I’m going to do (assuming 240GB available):

Windows XP:	148 GB
Ubuntu 6.06:	30 GB
Ubuntu Swap:	2 GB
FAT32:	60 GB

I’m basing these off of [?external:http://www.crhc.uiuc.edu/~mjmille2/howtos/dual-boot-linux-and-windows/ Matthew Miller’s setup], which I think makes some sense. I currently do not have a need for the 148 GB I’m setting aside for Windows XP, but I feel this will be more than adequate for my needs. The same goes for Ubuntu, as I want it there to try stuff out, but I don’t think I’ll need it per se. It was suggested on that site that I have an Ubuntu swap drive of double the memory space, though I’ve typically seen this only as 500 MB. The FAT32 partition would be so that I could share data between Windows XP and Ubuntu, such as documents, Firefox, or Thunderbird (if I get around to it).

So, we’ll see how it all goes.