Various PC Related Questions
 

[B]Question One:[/B]

I've been testing out this program [URL="http://www.tune-up.com/products/tuneup-utilities/"]Tune Up Utilities[/URL] to speed up my PC, turn off unnecessary options, defrag yadda yadda.

Has anyone had experience with it either bad or good as I undertook the defrag process and it took almost two days to complete. :confused:

Drive situation:

Refer: Everest report below

The source of most of the time was associated to H drive which is made up of approx 180 .mkv files ranging from 4 - 11gig.

[B]Question Two:[/B]

Was previously using a copy of w7 Ultimate x64 and didn't have the current issue I'm having with an OEM copy of w7 x64 Home Premium I purchased from MCG Tech.

When ever playing 1080p movies 'after further inspection it also seems that this is the case with HDTV, 720p :confused:', it defaults to windows basic mode. This wasn't an issue with w7 Ultimate 'I'm thinking its possibly a driver issue but I'm pretty sure I have installed all the latest gfx drivers. Basically is there any difference from Home Prem to Ultimate that would affect this? I'm assuming not but open to suggestions.

System is as follows

Refer: Everest report below

[IMG]http://i48.tinypic.com/2ic2nn7.png[/IMG]
[B]
Question Three:[/B]

I have slowly been able to fix this and some of it has been pot luck 'ghost in the machine etc etc', but I still have another 2 x 1tb hdds' that arn't showing up on my computer 'Nor are they showing up in disc management', the drives were checked at Austin Computers and deemed to be in working order, only problem at that point in time was that the OS drive had crashed and I was hoping they would be able to fix it and get the remaining drives to show up but alas it was stuffed and I wasn't about to pay them $180 to install a copy of windows onto a blank drive 'which is outrageous as the copy of OEM w7 Home Premium was like 100 something dollars to purchase.

Any ideas regarding the above, alternate system checks or software that may be able to help? 'note all drivers are up to date'.

Sub question:

- Does anybody know of any driver checking software that will be able to give me some level of certainty that all drivers are up to date?; and
- Anyone able to point me in the right direction for valid sites I can research regarding optimising w7.

Please Note: Where I have posted all drivers are up to date it is based on the assumption that I'm not receiving false positives from windows update/other windows reporting systems that have stated this.

Cheers in advance!

[B]Update:[/B]

Hardware Report from Everest:

[IMG]http://i45.tinypic.com/1zefhfn.png[/IMG]

Re the drives not showing up, if they're brand new have they been initialised? Run Computer Management from the Win7 start menu search bar, click Disk Management and it should offer to initialise any new disks. See 'Initialize Disks' on this page:

[url]http://news.softpedia.com/news/Disk-management-under-Windows-XP-31331.shtml[/url]

(It's for XP but the process is the same) Don't set up dynamic volumes unless that's what you're after - also explained on that page.

Win 7's 'windows update' procedure includes most of the drivers needed for the system. Check for a little flag icon in your system tray, or run 'Action Center' from the control panel. E.g. mine sometimes prompts me to install Nvidia or audio drivers, but I prefer to get them from the original website.

You can answer a couple of q's on nvidia.com to get the right drivers for your system - I do this every couple of months.

Have you tried VLC (freeware) for video playback? I've seen Windows Media Player stuttering badly where VLC sails through.