typographie

For a little while now (a month or two, maybe), I've been having random system freezes. The entire system stops responding, including the mouse cursor. No ctrl-alt-delete, no error message, no BSoD, nothing. Nothing obvious seems to trigger it. It's happened in demanding games, but its happened just as often when I'm just sitting on my desktop or surfing the internet.

The freezes seem to happen in bursts—e.g. it hasn't happened in a week or so, then I just froze twice in the last 10 minutes. I gamed for many hours without incident last night.

This is what I've checked or done so far without success:

• Taken apart the system and cleaned out dust. I've reseated the RAM and PCI cards, replaced thermal compound on both the CPU and video card.
  
• Uninstalled/driver-cleaned/reinstalled fresh drivers for video card, sound hardware, chipset, USB.
  
• Reformatted; reinstalled fresh Windows 7. I also set my BIOS to default when I did this.
  
• Checked heat at load and idle for relevant components—its always fine.
  
• Triple-checked overclocks for stability. They always pass, and I've crashed at stock settings anyway.
  
• Stress tests generate the expected heat and load, without exposing any problems.
  
• Windows is not generating any minidump files or problem reports for me to check.

I know there's other things I could try, like individually testing RAM modules. But at this point I want to know if there's anything easier/quicker I could try. If there's more you need to know, like a dxdiag or something, I'd be happy to provide it but I didn't want to dump tons of unnecessary info.

I've got Gw2.exe (freshly downloaded) and my 17.5 GB Gw2.dat from my previous installation together in C:\Games\Guild Wars 2. When I try to start up Gw2.exe, I get the following error:

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First thing I tried was right-clicking Gw2.exe and running it as administrator. It works and the game launches, so yeah, its definitely a file permissions thing. If I check the box for "Run this program as an administrator" in its Properties>Compatibility it too works, but then I'll get an unnecessary UAC prompt every time I want to launch it.

I assume/hope there's a setting somewhere that will change the permissions such that it will "just work" like it used to without having to jump through either of these hoops. Anyone know where it is?

Hello gents. I'm going to be getting a new video card soon; likely an HD 7870 or 7950. I have two DVI monitors, and I'd like to connect my television over HDMI as a third display.

I have, however, come to the disturbing realization that the outputs on the majority of aftermarket Radeon cards (including my preferred XFX and MSI products) are configured approximately like this: 1 DVI, 1 HDMI, and 2 mini DisplayPorts. So to connect all three of the aforementioned displays, I need a DVI-to-miniDP adapter. Complicating matters, I've read that it has to be an expensive active adapter to be compatible with Eyefinity.

Is this correct, and can I do better than ~$25 for an adapter from Newegg or Amazon? It really can't be a passive adapter? Can anyone think of another, perhaps better, perhaps cheaper alternative?

I recently installed a Geforce GT 210 as a cheap way to connect a third monitor (my television, actually) via HDMI, since my primary card (a GTX 460) is already running its maximum of two displays over DVI. Nearly everything appears to work as expected..  that is, the driver recognizes both cards, the HDMI works fine, gaming performance hasn't changed, etc.

However, ever since installing the 210, I have gotten some weird desktop behavior. Namely, occasional hitching, sluggish text selection, desktop backgrounds not transitioning smoothly, etc. Is it possible that Windows could be trying to use my 210 instead of the 460 to render Aero? If so, how do I change it?

Could having two PCI-e cards installed affect the speed of my PCI-e ports, even though they aren't using SLI?

I'm running Nvidia's 310.19 drivers, by the way. I've tried a couple different recent versions without noticing a difference.

I'll start by explaining what I want to do, and then ask a few questions after.

I want to connect my computer to a TV on the other side of the room, mostly for Netflix and other videos as I don't have a console gaming device. I measured as accurately as I could and found that a ~28 ft HDMI cable should do the job. My television has two HDMI outputs, and my video card (Geforce GTX 460) has a mini-HDMI output and an included adapter.

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First of all, does this plan even make sense? For all I know of computers, I'm pathetically new to modern TV technology. I'm basically assuming it will behave like a computer monitor, with a desktop extension, etc.

What do I look for in an HDMI cable suitable for this distance? I am aware through some research that long HDMI cables can cause degradation of the signal, but I'm seeing mixed information on whether or not 28 ft is long enough to cause a problem.

I'm confused about how HDMI audio works. I know the cable carries audio, and I know that the Nvidia driver includes an "HD Audio" component. Does this mean that my video card will become my PC's default audio device while I'm using the television?

Thanks for your help.