That's kind of why I'm glad Corsair went with a stealth bomber looking matte black with the Obsidian. It doesn't really show fingerprints or dirt, and it looks cool. Anyway, back on topic from before the thread got derailed, the Obsidian 650D is a really nice case that I highly recommend for anyone doing a new build. I have no real complaints about it. It runs cool, it's quiet, it's very roomy and easy to to build inside, and the build quality is excellent.
I agree on the cases. I used to buy whatever was on sale for like $30-40. It's ok if you set it up in one location and never touch and or open it again. But I used to live in apartments and they would get fucked up during moves. I eventually dabbled with $100+ full tower steel cases and they hold up much much better. It's worth the price in my opinion, especially if you're putting $1500 worth of parts into it, what's another $80 to get a good case. I also only get full towers now since I find it easier to maneuver my fat hands.
@supersonic Didn't you get a Rosewill Thor with your new build? That's supposed to be another really good high-end full tower ATX case from what I've heard.
Can someone explain what this is and how it can improve device speeds vs. wifi? It comes highly recommended from SlickDeals and the reviews on newegg and amazon are also really good. I just don't get how it works... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?SID=IO5jfg_pEeKjdx7tkVD5Sg0_0_UkJ_0_0&AID=10440897&PID=1225267&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-_-cables-_-na-_-na&Item=N82E16833181170
These basically run Ethernet over your house power lines. They can be useful in the right circumstances. For instance if wifi doesn't reach one side of your house or if your wireless router needs to be far away from your modem. I've used them before. Cons As far as a I know, just 1 per house Can't use power strips or surge protectors, needs a wall plug
I've managed to use these using power strips/ not directly in a wall plug. Both same floor, new extension/upstairs downstairs.
@supersonic Those things are fine if your house has a relatively recent electrical system. If it's old crappy stuff from decades ago, they may not work reliably. Go have a look at your circuit box. If it's some ancient piece of junk, you'll probably be out of luck with those. In my house I just gave up and bought gigabit switches and a bunch of cat6. I went up into the attic, dropped it down, and did outlets. Streaming to the PS3s is totally smooth now, even with 1080p HD content, whereas it used to be a stuttery mess over wifi.
Done another laptop screen replacement job today, it is becoming more and more common as I guess more people have laptops. Have to say it was the easiest one yet, Samsung make it very easy to replace with just 14 screens needing to be removed. 4 on the bezel, 4 on the hinges and 6 on the screen mounting brackets. HP are probably the worst offenders for making it really hard to replace screens, the last one I did I had to take the whole thing apart to get the screen assembly away from the main body.
Riddle me this. I need to swap drives in a laptop. The laptop's original hard drive which works fine came loaded with Win 7 and a recovery partition. I don't have the recovery disks, or stand alone copy of win 7. The new drive will need a fresh install of Windows 7 which can only come from the recovery partition of the old drive. How do I make this happen? I was thinking I could format the drive, perform a recovery and then image that drive to the new drive. I've never worked with recovery partitions before so I'm not sure if that will work like I expect. Alternatively I could image the drive to the new drive then format and recover.
I would try to image both partitions and reinstall from the new disk first as proof of concept that you can do it in the future and discard the old one.
I cloned the drive and installed the new one into the laptop. The laptop booted to windows with some disk check errors. I rebooted and started the recovery process. The process completed and when it was done it rebooted to an error. It said there is a problem with windows and I should use the Win install disk to correct the problem. The recovery portion no longer works so I can't try it again. I might put the old drive back in and then see if I can make a recovery disk. I have no idea if this is possible but if it is I'll attempt a DVD recovery on the new drive. If that doesn't work I can risk a recovery on the original disk and then clone it. If that recovery fails I'll need to get a fresh install of Windows.
Ah yes, those restore partitions will quite often allow you to create restore disks so hopefully this one will. Just look under the manufacturers software that is no doubt installed and hopefully it is there somewhere, I know Dell and Sony give you the option to create new media at any time.
I found the Lenova software package. I had to install the software which took over an hour but now I can create a recovery DVD. The problem I have now is getting a working DVD drive. The laptop doesn’t have one and I think my external one is broke. I tried a flash drive and that didn’t work. *sigh*
Had a crazy idea and googled it and apparently you can use Daemon tools to create and mount a blank DVD then you could try to offer that as the DVD for the recovery disk? It may not work at all, I have no idea if the virtual DVD drive will even have write capabilities but it might be an option? http://www.ehow.com/how_8354729_mount-blank-dvd-daemon-tools.html If you don't have a working DVD drive in the laptop in question you may have to create it on another and then copy the image to the laptop to mount it. This is a lot of faffing about you are doing, I hope you are charging big bucks!
Recover the windows key: http://www.magicaljellybean.com/keyfinder/ Burn a copy of Windows using the ISO: http://www.mydigitallife.info/download-windows-7-iso-official-32-bit-and-64-bit-direct-download-links/ Or put it on a flash drive (remember to select FAT16 LBA when making the flash drive, FAT32 rarely works): http://wintoflash.com/home/en/ Format the drive and reinstall windows. Problem solved and it will be a clean install. No cloning or weird recovery bullshit, which never works anyway in my experience. Hand the person a burned windows disc with their key written on it, then kick them in the nuts for making you jump through so many hoops.