There is no display when I turn on my PC

My printer does not communicate with my PC, or only prints garbled text

My PC seems to be excessively noisy, is there anything I can do about this?

My PC boots into the BIOS and reports an incorrect frequency setting, what can I do?

One of my PCI cards is not detected by the system, what can I do?

How do I correct the time displayed by my PC?

How do I change the BIOS boot order so that My PC will boot from a CDROM or a floppy disk?

My screen is flickering, how can I remedy this?

My Windows product code is not being accepted, what can I do?

I am trying to enter the product ID code and some of the keys on my keyboard do not work

Why are there two faint horizontal lines across the screen of my monitor?

What is the actual clock speed of my AMD Athlon XP CPU?

My PC hangs when I try to write a CD, or Nero exits with an error message partway through the burn process



There is no display when I turn on my PC

It sounds as if the AGP card has become dislodged in transit. Surprisingly this is a fairly common occurrence with new PC's, or with systems that have been moved or received a knock. Open the system case and firmly push the AGP card into the AGP slot. Don't be afraid to push firmly! Be sure to leave the power cable plugged in at the wall but powered off at the socket in order to earth the chassis and prevent static damage from your hands. Touch the grey area of the chassis in order to discharge static to ground. After reseating the card turn on the system, it should boot normally in to Windows.

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My printer does not communicate with my PC, or only prints garbled text

You may need to change the parallel port mode in the system BIOS to a setting more suitable for your printer. To access the BIOS tap the 'del' key from the moment you power on the system. Go to the integrated peripherals section and locate the entry for LPT mode, it may be set to bi-directional, try changing it to EPP, ECP or ECP/EPP. Save settings and exit, reboot and go into Windows. If a new port is not detected on loading go into the device manager and delete the parallel port entry, reboot and Windows should detect the change.

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My PC seems to be excessively noisy, is there anything I can do about this?

Whilst perceptions of acceptable noise level are subjective and difficult to quantify we do find that people who have been used to a Pentium III system with only a CPU fan and a power supply fan often find a high performance Pentium IV or Athlon machine to be relatively noisy. Most consider the noise to be an acceptable trade off for the high performance. An Athlon system, for example, contains a CPU fan, a power supply fan, a case fan, a chipset fan on the motherboard and often a graphics card fan.

If the fans are working properly they should operate with a steady hum without changing pitch. If any one of the fans appears to be making a grinding noise then it has a dry bearing and needs to be replaced. Open the side of the case and listen carefully, if you think that any of the fans are faulty please contact our technical support department who will be happy to advise you.

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My PC boots into the BIOS and reports an incorrect frequency setting, what can I do?

To prevent the PC from booting into the BIOS in future restart the PC, tap the 'del' key continuously to enter the BIOS, go to the chip configuration menu and set SDRAM configuration to user defined. Set the following three values (CAS latency) (RAS to CAS delay) (RAS precharge delay) to the lowest possible value, either 2.5 or 3T. Press F10 to save settings and exit.

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One of my PCI cards is not detected by the system, what can I do?

Check that the card is listed in device manager (control panel>system>device manager). If the card is not present in the list then check for a category called ‘other devices’. If this is present and you have a device listed showing a yellow exclamation mark then you need to reinstall the drivers from the original CD. If there is no ‘other devices’ category then the card is not being detected by the PC. You will need to open the case and firmly push the relevant card back into the PCI slot. Be sure to leave the power cable plugged in at the wall but powered off at the socket in order to earth the chassis and prevent static damage from your hands. Touch the grey area of the chassis in order to discharge static to ground. After reseating the card reboot the system, Windows should detect the card and install the drivers.

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How do I correct the time displayed by my PC?

Restart the PC, tap the 'del' key continuously to enter the BIOS and go to the main menu. Use the cursor keys to highlight the time and change the value by pressing the plus or minus keys or the page up and page down keys. Once you have changed the hours move on to the minutes. Once the time is set correctly press the F10 key to save settings and exit.

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How do I change the BIOS boot order so that My PC will boot from a CDROM or a floppy disk?

1. Turn the PC on and immediately start tapping the DELETE or DEL key. Keep tapping this (approx 2/3 times a second will suffice) until a menu appears. This is the BIOS.
2. Use the LEFT/RIGHT arrow keys on the keyboard to move along the upper menu until you highlight BOOT. The boot device list will appear (There may be a pause before this list appears)
3. Use the UP/DOWN arrow keys to move the highlight so it is next to ATAPI CD-ROM or floppy disk
4. Press the + (Plus symbol) on the keypad (far right on keyboard) to move the ATAPI CD-ROM or floppy disk heading up the list. Do it again to move it to the top position.
5. Press F10 and then ENTER to save the change and exit the BIOS. The screen will go black and the system will reboot.

If you are trying to boot from a CD-ROM, have set the boot order correctly and still encounter problems this may be because you have two CD drives in your system. Try placing the disk in the other drive and try again. Note that the system will not automatically boot from the CD, a message will appear onscreen asking you to ‘press any key to boot from CD’, if you do nothing then the system will boot normally.

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My screen is flickering, how can I remedy this?

To prevent the screen from flickering you will need to adjust the refresh rate. To do so go to control panel>display>settings>advanced>monitor and set the refresh rate to 75 or 85hz. If this fails to remove the flicker make sure that there are no sources of interference nearby. These can include power supply units, speakers, television sets, mains sockets, fridges, microwave ovens and mobile phones.

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My Windows product code is not being accepted, what can I do?

First of all check that you have read the code correctly. The font can sometimes be unclear; it is often a good idea to get some one else to verify and read out the code whilst you type it in. If the code is still not being accepted check that the version of Windows named on the product code sticker is the same as that installed on your PC. Windows XP Home codes will not work with Windows XP Professional, and Windows Me codes will not wok with either version of XP. If you think that you have been supplied the wrong product code for your version of windows please contact our customer services department, they will be happy to assist you.

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I am trying to enter the product ID code and some of the keys on my keyboard do not work

Keys that do not feature as part of the product ID code are disabled on the product ID screen. Check the code again carefully to be sure that you are trying to enter the correct letters or numbers.

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Why are there two faint horizontal lines across the screen of my monitor?

Your monitor features a Diamondtron or Trinitron tube. This type of tube uses a heavy aperture grill to keep the picture sharp. The lines you see are the faint shadows of the two bars of metal holding the grill in place and are a necessary part of the design on the monitor. They are most visible on white or light coloured background. Users tend not to notice them after a while, most concur that this is an acceptable trade off for the improved image quality offered by a Trinitron or Diamondtron tube.

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What is the actual clock speed of my AMD Athlon XP CPU?

The AMD Athlon XP series or processors are named after the speed that an older AMD thunderbird CPU would have to operate at to offer equivalent performance. The actual clock speeds of the XP series CPU's are listed below:

The AMD Athlon XP processor 2800+ operates at a frequency of   2.25GHz or   166x13.5
The AMD Athlon XP processor 2700+ operates at a frequency of   2.16GHz or   166X13
The AMD Athlon XP processor 2600+ operates at a frequency of   2.13GHz or   133x114.5
The AMD Athlon XP processor 2400+ operates at a frequency of   2.00GHz or  
133X14
The AMD Athlon XP processor 2200+ operates at a frequency of   1.80GHz or   133x13.5
The AMD Athlon XP processor 2100+ operates at a frequency of   1.73GHz or   133X13
The AMD Athlon XP processor 2000+ operates at a frequency of   1.67GHz or   133x12.5
The AMD Athlon XP processor 1900+ operates at a frequency of   1.60GHz or   133X12
The AMD Athlon XP processor 1800+ operates at a frequency of   1.53GHz or   133x11.5
The AMD Athlon XP processor 1700+ operates at a frequency of   1.47GHz or   133x11
The AMD Athlon XP processor 1600+ operates at a frequency of   1.40GHz or   133x10.5
The AMD Athlon XP processor 1500+ operates at a frequency of   1.33GHz or   133x10

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My PC hangs when I try to write a CD, or Nero exits with an error message partway through the burn process

In order to resolve this problem please take the following steps:

1) Download the latest update for Nero from http://www.nero.com
2) Make sure that DMA is disabled for the CDRW. Go to device manager (control panel>system>device manager) locate the disk controllers entry, double click, go to properties for the secondary IDE controller>settings, make sure DMA is disabled for the primary and secondary devices. Click ok, reboot and try Nero again. (Note if DMA is already disabled try enabling it)
3) You may need to reinstall the Chipset drivers from your motherboard CD. Locate the driver CD (supplied with system, most likely says ASUS on the front). Choose to install the Chipset drivers, either Intel, VIA or ALI, depending on your system.
4) Try burning an image of the CD to be copied to the hard drive first, then burning it to disk. Select the Nero image recorder as the active device from the ‘CD Recorder’ menu and choose the disk copy option. The CD will be imaged to the hard disk as an .img file. Set the active device back to the CDRW drive and choose to burn image, select the image of the CD on your hard drive and it will be written to CD

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