My CD ROM drives jsut stopped working one day.  They open and close but
they do not read the disk.  I did a troubleshooter and it says that
they are working properly.  Any ideas on how to fix this or what is
wrong?

I have two Dell computers.  Both have USB 2.0 and Firewire imputs.
They both have graphics cards that run 2 monitors each.  I  want to
loose a keybord & mouse and free up some desk space.  I have see many
KVM switches that offer Keyboard, Mouse and Monitor switching.  Is

Things have changed since the last time I bought a mouse.  Now there are
"laser" sensors, 800dpi, 1600dpi, wireless rechargeable's, etc.  What makes
a difference and what's just smoke and mirrors?  Do the mice that support
higher dpi track noticeably better?  Do the laser sensors ...

I hope someone can advise about this question I have. I already have 2
external enclosures I use. One for a external hard drive, my 3rd.
Second for an external DVD writer I am using. I need a external
enclosure for a Digi Deck that converts music tapes (cassette) to

I've got an old Agfa Snapscan e25 but I can't remember which one of all
the AC adaptors lying around here accompanied the scanner. Since the
output voltages vary (12V, 16V, ...), I guess I'll have to pick the right
one. But I can't find this in the documentation nor on the web. ...

I have a damaged HD on my Gateway Profile 1B desktop. Rather than replace
the 6 gig HD, which is expensive, I want to buy an external HD, load it with
Windows XP, connect it to the Gateway via its USB 1 port and operate from
the external HD.  Can I do this?

I seem to need some sort of software driver to enable my new Maxtor sata
harddrive to work in my 2year old computer. The sata drive works just fine
when hooked up to another, newer, computer I have so I know the drive is ok.
Both computers run XP-home. The bios and diskmgmt.msc both ...

I have a WinXP machine with an MSI 875P series motherboard, and Ami
BIOS. The computer has been running perfectly happily for about 18
months with no problems.
It's developed a problem with the BIOS over the last few days that's

I bought windows xp service pack 2, because MS told me that they
wouldn't support windows ME anymore. Once I installed it, I had huge
crashes to power off whenever I tried to use my DVD drive or cd drive in
windows. It worked fine in linux.

Thought Id mention this since the BenQ and NEC are two popular cheap
DVD writers.
Ive been noticing since my main system with the NEC is out of service
at the moment since I RMAd my MB --- that the BenQ drive on my second

   I have a Toshiba 4060XCDT on which I have replaced the existing CD drive
with a DVD-CDR/W drive (also Toshiba).  The replacement drive works fine,
except that the system will not boot from a bootable DVD or CD.  Replacing
the original CD drive, restores bootability, and the ...

I'm having problem getting an older pentium 4 computer to boot.  The
power switch doesn't do a thing except light up the power LED on the
case.  The power supply has a test switch and when I turn that on, the
CD Rom, Hard drive and fans come on, but I don't hear the "beep"

I want to make my old computer as silent as possible. I've already
replaced cheap fan on chipset with Zalman radiator. Now it's time to
replace standard cooler on processor with something less noisy (standard
fan on processor runs at 5500RPM and makes me sick).

I have problem with finding new fans (produced by Sam Lam Technology) which
are suitable for my laptop. If anyone know how to find them, I will be
thankful.
Part numbers are:

I've got a new PC,
Once in a while (about every 5-15 minutes) my system freeze for a 4-5
seconds period...
When I inspect the System Event Log, I got the following entries everytime