LosOjos

ah that's a shame, I thought it would just be an ordinary 360 pad inside (it doesn't do anything that you couldn't do with a 360 pad)

A long-weight.

@PhilNeal - I don't know who gave you that advice but were they drunk? that's for comparing lesson marks, not aspects/results (unless I'm missing something, in which case feel free to make me eat my words!)

BSODs when watching streaming video which stopped when I disabled part of AMDs driver is a driver problem, nothing to do with games. There are many, many people who have had exactly the same issue as me and the fix varies from removing a stick of RAM (!!!) to installing older drivers and beyond. In my case, I'm still not sure whether it was hard-setting the system RAM size in msconfig or disabling "ATI External Events" service. Either way, it's a driver issue. I'm not saying these issues are exclusive to AMD but in all my time using NVidia I had one beta driver release cause BSODs, reverting to previous fixed it. Nothing like the faff I've had trying to get this AMD card to stop BSOD'ing on me.

It seems to me your mind is already made up... Last thing I'll say - you can never have too much space.

Windows 7 x64: 20GB Microsoft Office 2013: 3GB Adobe Photoshop CS5: 1GB That's nearly half the drive gone before you add in user profiles, windows/office updates, driver installations... 60GB won't last long

Is that over LAN, WLAN or Internet? Unfortunately, my GTX560 is a generation too old to be supported ShadowPlay could be the push I need for an upgrade though

That extra 500GB for pure storage is a very good idea and could make this workable, but you will probably have to simlink the Users folder away from the 60GB drive or it'll fill up in no time. Just read up on all the pit falls that go with that; I know a lot of people had major headaches trying to upgrade to Windows 8.1 because of it, think the end result was backing up the folders, removing simlinks, applying update, restoring simlink, restoring backups... I was too lazy so accepted my fate with Windows' limited library redirection EDIT: although it is worth noting, the PC I'm talking about has 3 users so if it's a single logon machine, 60GB might be enough for Windows with basic library redirection

It's do-able, but I wouldn't personally. I have a 120GB SSD for Windows 8 in my home machine and that filled up really quickly. Admittedly, I do have a few programs I use regularly sitting on there too (including CS5) but nothing else. My "Users" folders are moved as far as possible to an HDD (using Windows own tools to do so as simlinks have been reported to break Windows Updates; upside no compatibility problems, downside additional space taken up by AppData) My second drive is 300GB HDD used for programs and videos; that's almost full. My third drive is a 1TB RAID1 with important documents as well as games on it (with an internet connection as slow as mine, I'd rather take the RAID performance hit than have to download them all again if I had a HDD failure!) - that too is about 75% full now. It all comes down to how much space you personally use, I know I use a lot compared to some people because I'm also a photographer (about 1/3 of the 1TB RAID is taken up with photos), but I do think that unless you can afford a 480GB SSD, at the moment your money is still better spent on a moderate sized (120GB+) SSD for Windows and core programs plus a large HDD or, better still SSHD, for storage.

So they're looking to get in to health now using "non-wearable" tech, they're not going to release games on smartphones but plan to interact with customers via smartphones, they're still dedicated to consoles and they are already in the process of licensing their characters to third parties. Are they trying to make Dr. Mario a reality? http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f8/Dr._Mario_box_art.jpg

hahaha brilliant!

You shouldn't need to mess with INF/EXE files, once it's installed it'll be listed. If you do have to get the INF, try opening the EXE in 7-Zip, you might be able to just extract. I'm doing this from memory, so it may not be exact, but this is what I did: Open Device Manager Locate problematic controller/guitar Right click, uninstall Right click, "Update Driver" "Browse my Computer" "Let me pick from a list" Find the category that matches a genuine 360 pad (it's either HID or Game Controller, I'll check later if you like) Select "Microsoft" from the vendor list, and "Genuine 360 Game Pad" from the driver I can't remember the exact steps, but it was something along those lines. After that, the pad showed as genuine 360 pad in Device Manager and the "360 Pad Status" utility even picks it up as genuine, despite the fact Windows wouldn't automatically install that driver for the device.

I had to actually force it to use the driver, i.e. "Device Manager > Update Driver > Select from list" to make it work but once I did that, it was fine not ideal I know and it supports the point being made that PCs are currently too error-prone for a lot of gamers but then again, what else would I do with my spare time?

Perhaps it's not the Voodoo I'm thinking of then, I just remember having a GPU around that time that worked flawlessly with games designed for it but the problem at the time was there wasn't a standard as such, so although one game might work brilliantly, the next wouldn't work at all. I remember one game in particular had fantastic graphics* on the box but without the exact right GPU, all the 3D models were pretty much textureless, block coloured eyesores! Thank $deity for standards *for the time!

If I remember right, getting most games to run on it was something akin to Voodoo!

This script will allow you to pause a named VM on a named server. Call it from a BAT with the server name as first argument, VM name as second (I've done it this way to make it easily expandable if you add more VMs in the future): Option Explicit Dim CallWMI Dim InventoryVMs Dim ServerName Dim VMName 'Check arguments If WScript.Arguments.Length <> 2 Then WScript.Echo "Usage: CScript PauseVM.vbs ""Server Name"" ""VM Name""" WScript.Quit End If ServerName = WScript.Arguments(0) VMName = WScript.Arguments(1) Set CallWMI = GetObject("winmgmts:\\" + ServerName + "\root\virtualization") Set InventoryVMs = CallWMI.ExecQuery("SELECT * FROM Msvm_ComputerSystem WHERE ElementName='" & VMName & "'") InventoryVMs.ItemIndex(0).RequestStateChange(32768) I haven't tested it (can't, I'm not an NM ) but the source is here, I just added argument handling: How to use PowerShell or VBScript scripting with Hyper-V To call the script, save it somewhere your BAT can find it and pass it through CScript to direct any error messages to the console, otherwise it'll lock up waiting for you to respond to an error dialog. For example, if the script was saved as PauseVM.vbs and you were trying to pause a VM called "Machine1" on a server called "Server1", you'd put this in your BAT: CScript PauseVM.vbs "Server1" "Machine1" EDIT: missed a line break from the original source, it should work now

I'm assuming that the VMs are running on Hyper-V?

Just out of curiosity, did you try the 360 pad drivers? I'd have thought that internally it was just another pad... This worked for me with a third party 360 pad that Windows 7 couldn't find drivers for, forced it to use MS 360 driver and it works perfectly.

If her machine recently crashed/shut down/logged off while she was editing the document, the lock file might still be present in her documents or possibly the temp folder. Try clearing out her temp folder first, then look to see if there's a hidden file in the same folder as the spreadsheet called something like "~$example.xls" (where the original workbook is called "example.xls"), if so, delete it and try again.

I'm yet to put the R9 270 through it's paces, but initial thoughts are 'OK'. Compared to my GTX 560, I can't honestly say I've noticed the vast improvement that on paper it should deliver, and the 560 only cost me half what the 270 did! (admittedly it was an ex-display model so I made a good saving on it) I'm having a gaming night this saturday so I'll put the 270 under some real pressure then and see how it fares - at the moment, I'd recommend a GTX660 though

OK, I'm just going to throw in to the mix that I had the same budget for my recent build and all sources said R9 270X, and on paper you can't argue. However, I had a lot of trouble with the card (plain 270 in the end) that turned out to be down to a driver problem. It appears to be sorted now, but I'm not alone in having AMD driver problems and it appears to be a long standing issue. Take from that what you will. In terms of performance, I do think you'd be hard pushed to beat the R9 270X for sub-£150. However, based on my driver nightmare, I'll be sticking to NVidia in future. On the NVidia front, the main things to know are that first digit is the generation, with the latest being 7. This mainly affects DirectX version compatiability but also often means slightly more efficient power use and if there is a couple of generations gap, faster core memory clocks. The main thing to look for is the last two digits, as they are the range; higher is better. x80 is top of the range, £300+. You'll pay considerably fore for a 7th gen GPU than a 6th with not a lot of noticeable gain, so I'd go with a 6 myself. eBuyer have a range of 660's under £150 at the moment: Graphics Cards Nvidia - NVIDIA GTX 660 Series | Ebuyer.com And just for comparison, here's how the R9 270X stacks up against the GTX 660 (both on stock clocks, some manufacturers apply a factory overclock): http://www.hwcompare.com/15671/geforce-gtx-660-vs-radeon-r9-270x/ As you can see, for similar priced cards you are getting a significant performance boost from AMD, just be wary that you might have some driver troubleshooting to do if you go that route EDIT: that ASUS 660 posted by @nephilim is a very good deal

What's your budget?

I think I misunderstood the problem; just to be clear, is the problem that if the first column is blank, then no value is put in to your calculated column?

This is why I think a modular design, similar to this, is the way forward. Simply pop a label on the front of the game, for arguments sake let's say that the GPU is given an arbitrary ID based on it's overall power such as GPU1 to GPU10 (this can just keep increasing over the years). Games have a label "GPU1 required, GPU4 for HD." You know which GPU you have, so you know what to expect from the game. The geeks amongst us will still know that GPU4 is a GTX 780/R9 290X, but those who just want to play have a simple numbering system to judge whether their machine is up to task or not.

Cost and space. I'd rather spend ~£1,000 on a single box that does it all than pay as much or more for separate devices that will take up more space, use up more energy, require upgrading every time a new technology comes out (HVD? Upgrade the drive, not buy a whole new machine!)