PC Problems

Amit is finding that GTA 4 runs fairly slowly on his pretty high spec PC and wonders if a RAM upgrade might help. Amit, my best advice if you’re playing games on a PC is to max out the RAM and get as much as you can. You can input your PC model in the ‘Memory Advisor” tool at www.crucial.com and it will tell you the type and max amount of RAM you can put in your PC. I’d also recommend you get the best graphic card you can too. Don’t forget the CPU can also be upgraded.

Sanjeet is seeing a 6 way screen split and flickering on his monitor (below). I’ve had this before with my own monitors and it turned out to be a faulty video/graphics card which I had to replace. You could try refitting the card or maybe updating the drivers.

Joshua presses SHIFT + 2 and gets an inverted comma. Presumably you want an @ symbol instead Joshua? Looks like it’s simply a keyboard or language setting and not a fault. If you go to Control Panel – Regional and Language options – Languages – Details and change your keyboard input language and region it should sort the problem.

Joshua’s documents and web pages are scrolling automatically when he views them! The quickest thing to try is have a look at your mouse and make sure it’s ok. Might have dirty balls or blocked laser. Also check the mouse settings and drivers. Trying a different mouse would also be a quick test. You might also have sticky keys on your keyboard so make sure they are all fully up and not depressed and try to test with another keyboard also. Apart from that I can’t think of anything else that would cause this but I suppose it’s possible some weird virus could be the reason so do a quick scan with decent, updated anti-virus software.

Aileen’s PC won’t startup anymore and lights flash when plugged in. Aileen keeps her pc in a dampish environment in her Garden Centre! I’m sure I don’t need to say that you can’t really keep a PC in a damp or cold environment and your problem probably stems from this. Try bring it somewhere dry for a while. Open it up if you’re brave enough and see is there any moisture or condensation on the inside, if so, not good! When you try to turn it on and there’s no noise from the fans or hard disks then you might have a serious problem, could be the motherboard, dead hard drives or maybe a dodgy power supply.