Computer issues and advice needed

Hi All and especially the techies here.

I have a few questions i am hoping for some others have experienced.

1) Is anyone experiencing issues with windows 7 lately.

For me all was fine when i first got my machine setup on it but just the past month i am losing usb connections to all sorts. Items like my usb phone for skype, then my scanner and then my usb card readers. Not only once did this occur. Windows trouble shooter could not throw any light on it so i simply uninstalled the software for the device and reinstalled the whole device again.

2) Anyone use a particularly good registry editor to clean up the registry?
Any recommendations in this regard.

3) How many of you have way more than one machine.

I am thinking of breaking up my computing needs across several machines to partition functional use.

Example .....Email/contact management communication and accounting on one machine

Media work like video and photographic manipulation on another (new hot rod i am looking to purchase)

Weather station software and security camera on another (using a older XP machine) dedicated role and connected to the web.

Any thoughts on this.

Being a one man business and a higghly self reliant character i cannot afford for the tech interference or distraction in my schedule and am beginning to think this is a way to ensure certain functions dont get affected by others.

I often try and buy new small utilities say something as simple as a duplicate file finder or some converter and i fear that all these little extras one accumulates over time are having an effect on my computer.

By the way if there is anyone out there that is running adobe premier and wants to get a handle on what it takes to make it really breeze then there is a great benchmark site that a number of users have setup for the various CS versions of Premier. Pm if you like to know there are too many to link to all of them. One thing i noticed though is while we keep buying new processors and machines, the guys with fast hard discs and loads of memory find that even lesser processors do better than a hotrod processor and less memory and slow discs.

Not having dipsticked the tech component market until recently i was not aware of the increase in speed of the hard discs available and not for huge dollars either.

Any comments on multiple boot platforms with win 7.

anyone tried to use the temp install concept on win7 apparently it has a feature where one can try software out without it neccessary being fully integrated to your machine such that if you decide it aint for you then you can ditch it without the pollution being left behind.

Anyone have any experience comment with the following Asus motherboard going to be building a new machine and make it dedicated to media getting in as high as economically practical to me and cruise down the decay curve a little longer this time.

Thanks for any and all input.

Rob

Let's see...

I'm a firm believer in running multiple machines and I've got 4 at this moment that meets my needs

1. Main Personal Machine - Intel Quad Core Desktop - Win 764bit
   Use for everything. Photo Manipulation, Video, Surfing, Email, Etc...
2. Work Machine - Dual Core Dell Laptop - Win xp
   Work only.
3. Weather Station - Small micro atx box running Ubuntu
   Doesn't need to be too powerful, just updating a few graphs and uploading to my weather sit. Very low power, just sits there mostly ignored year in year out and doesn't crash. ever.
4. Music Masheen - AMD Quad Core - Win 7 64bit
   Since I need this machine to be very low latency, I only put my music software on it. I shouldn't even connect to the internet on it, but I do need to get software patches and like to do some research on it from time to time while I work on it.

I'd be interested in any 'cleanup' or 'speedup' programs as well.

I've got Premeir elements and it seems to run fine on my main machine.

My main personal machine has been experiencing some lockups lately. Seems to be fine today, especially since I blew the dust off the cpu cooler yesterday...

The big concepts I use to keep safe is to only do work on the work machne, only do music on the music machine, and weather updating on my weather machine.

My main machine is where I can load up software and do whatever experimenting I want.

Technically it is a triple boot machine, and I can boot into Win 7, Win xp, or Ubuntu on it, but I haven't run anything but win 7 on it for quite a while....

Oh, and that Mobo looks pretty good. I usually just check the reviews on Newegg for any big red flags and make sure it has the ports and speeds I want.

I usually go for the fastest processor I can buy without breaking the bank, with the full understanding that next year it will be the slow one in the group and I can probably upgrade the CPU on the cheap.

I'm sure there will be some other guys with better more current info, but it's always fun putting together a new box...

Lots of research to be done for sure!

Thank you very much Brent, yeah the research is so time consuming. Having yet to be trully happy with any pc given the tendency of the marketing to hype things up and under deliver, i have become the eternal skeptic and that does not assist in making selections. User reviews are very powerful especially on a site like New Egg.

I am trying hard to look to support a very local guy on the computer side as i would like to give up tech and focus on being a user but "trust me" which is what he says and money dont go together. Going to pop in there today and discuss this whole thing with him. I dont particularly want to get into the whole overclocking setup excercise and options again.

Time is my enemy lately or should i say lack of time.

Do look at all the reviews...sometimes the very low ones say they gave it 1 egg because it was damage in shipment which has nothing to do with the devices performance.

Jeff Bower said:

Do look at all the reviews...sometimes the very low ones say they gave it 1 egg because it was damage in shipment which has nothing to do with the devices performance.

Click to expand...

+1 on that. You also need to screen out the low reviews of the people that attempted to do something above their pay grade, if you know what I mean...

That is soooo true. In the research for my recent build, I found people griping about the Intel motherboard I was looking at and the built in video not working. But they purchased a processor that didn't have the video support built into it. People need to read the features and capabilities before they plop down and buy something. Or at least not give a bad report when it was user error. Jim.

Rob Keeble said:

Any thoughts on this.

Click to expand...

Yes. A general purpose computer is just that: a general purpose computer. Build a hot one, do your work there, and be done with it.

Of course, I can only say this because I have five other machines in the house. And my main box boots to three OSs, just like Brent's.

But if you're looking to be efficient, and save time, go with the "one ring to rule them all" concept. Keeping multiple machines running, and switching back and forth between them, is fun, and frankly both interesting and challenging. But it's a long way from efficient...

Thanks,

Bill

Sounds like they released a new USB driver or something for W7.

I only have a couple of pc's anymore. I have a EMC box setup for the CNC Router in the shop, a laptop running vista I've been using less and less, then my main desktop in the office which is hooked up to the 32" tv as my monitor which runs vista. I've gotten away from having different hardware or boot partitions and gone to using Virtual Box (VB) instead. I've got a couple of older pps that don't run on Vista so I loaded up XP on VB instead.

I also reload most of my PC's once a year to keep from going through registry clean-ups. I've found testing software within VB lets me install and uninstall software without causing issues with the host OS. Once I'm happy with the software, I'll load on the host OS if I intend to use it frequently.

Strangely, I thought Rob was a mac guy...

Bill Lantry said:

I can only say this because I have five other machines in the house. And my main box boots to three OSs, just like Brent's.

But if you're looking to be efficient, and save time, go with the "one ring to rule them all" concept. Keeping multiple machines running, and switching back and forth between them, is fun, and frankly both interesting and challenging. But it's a long way from efficient...

Click to expand...

I hate rebooting, and gave up on multiple OS's long ago because of that. It never fails that I want something from the other OS once I've rebooted. I use Virtualbox now for the rare times I need another OS. I have Linux and WinXP virtual machines installed on my mac that I can fire up under Virtualbox whenever I need them, and still keep my main OS up and running.

I do the same on my work machine.

Another option, if you really want/need multiple machines, is to install VNC server on them. We have that on our servers at work. So you can fire up VNC client from your desktop, and connect to any of the other machines and take over the desktop. (This is just like RDP but it is more portable if you want or need to be cross-platform. I can run VNC client on my mac, and take over the desktop of our Win 2003 servers, for instance)

Thank you each and everyone. Art I have used VNC before exactly like you say but the gray hair had me forget that, thanks for the reminder its exactly what will work for me. I also have the multi boot phobia of what i want is on the other OS.

Bill you absolutely correct in my view on all counts, my only concern in splitting things is to have a setup where "touch wood" hardware failure aside it will always be in good shape. I cannot afford to have issues with mail contacts and accounting. But i can live without editing or dealing with pictures or video without crisis. Between having email on the web and a duplicate on one machine i covermyself pretty good.

I think i am going to compile a list of hardware and take it to the local computer guy and see what his thoughts are and price. Hey i believe very much in keeping the local guy going or when we need him he aint gonna be there. then its no use crying.


Darren do you keep a ghost of your original install to be able to wipe and reinstall each year to avoid registry issues? If so doesnt that mean you have to go through a stream of updates after each clean up.


So no one has a favorite registry tool. I have tried a few but honestly dont even want to mention names because i felt they all caused me trouble, but then it could also have been the operator.

Thanks for the input guys.

Hi Rob!
You have a lot of good ideas. I also want to help you.
Very good general purpose motherboard chosen. To do this, it is good to have i7 Quad processor. The more memory you choose based on the QVL.
Use of the SSDs drive system is. Much faster your computer will be. For storing data, use a separate HDD. Video cuts to be more and faster HDD.
(7200 RPM HDD.) stripe or RAID 5 mode. Often do defrag cent. This system accelerates. The video card does not have much to spend, but it must be at least 1 GB of DDR3 RAM.
PREMIER A very good program, but I prefer the EDIUS. Much more user friendly. http://www.grassvalley.com/products/edius_6
The wipes GPU-based.
Easy to manipulate images on the ACDSee program I use.
http://store.acdsee.com/store/acd/e...=TZZNUgoHArEAAFwk8c4AAAAa&rests=1301695826137
IObit tidying up the use of the program.
http://www.iobit.com/advancedsystemcarepro.html
Watch out! SSDs do not need a defrag!
It is very important for good power supply. for example:
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/list.aspx?s=51&ck=41
I do not use more than one operating system. Prefer multiple users.
I know that they were not spared by the bank card, but believe me it is cheaper in the long run.

Sorry if I wrote foundations.

Jozsef

HI Rob!
I usually re-install the 2-3 year windows.
Just because I'm bored alreadySome rules:
IObit, defragmentation, virus regular cleaning, use all Windows update, correct removal of programs. The use of HDDs up to 80 percent.
Separate system HDD (SSDs) is used.

Jozsef

The only thing I can come up with Rob. Is to hit it twice with a ball peen hammer and call me in the morning.