Westie

Entry No. 2 Bleached tree Focal Length: 17.0mm (35mm equivalent: 25mm... Exposure Time: 0.013 s (1/80) Aperture: f/4.5 ISO Equiv.: 100 Whitebalance: Auto Metering Mode: matrix Exposure: program (auto)

Well done Steve, and thanks for setting this up. Account opened and look forward to seeing a bumper crop of photos in Feb.

All fans working. None have gone "nuts" for the whole day. GPU staying at around 65C, but the system seems to be fine (and quiet). Thank you everyone for your help. Much appreciated. I'll be back with more problems soon. Westie.

Good luck with the new PC SW. I've got an HP 19'' screen and would be interested to see how you get on with a larger monitor with the old photo manipulation etc.

Nice one Snatcher - a great shot. Mr W would be tickled. Congratulations to you and to all the other great entries.

Processor is 43 motherboard 39. It's just the graphics card temp that is a bit higher at 65. Hey ho.

It's pretty much idling at the moment and has come to rest at about 65c. The fans are still quiet though, but def. working. I'll keep an eye on it and when its under load, to see if that makes much of a difference. What would be a GPU temp to start worrying about? Den - I downloaded a free prog - PC Wizard 2008, which tells you everything you might ever need to know about your system: PC Wizard 2008

Hi Chesters I cleaned every fan in sight!

Well, after 40 minutes of cleaning the PC with a brillo pad and hammer and chisel, I've got the dust off that was caked on the heatsink. I've treated the old girl to another 2GB of RAM. The result - she's purring like a kitten and no sign of the fan running hot, yet... Just the gentle hum of a hopefully contented 'puter. Looks like it's helped. previous results above. With a bit of a dust, the temp has come down a bit: Processor Temperature : 47 °C Mainboard Temperature : 36 °C GPU Temperature : 58 °C Hard Disk ST3200822AS : 35 °C Hard Disk ST3200822AS : 33 °C GPU temp has jumped though - is this a problem??

Naked model gets my vote. LOL.

Thanks for all the help. I'm now armed with a can of compressed air and I'll have a look inside the machine at the weekend. I think I'll avoid using a hoover. Knowing my luck, I'd clear out components that I needed. Chesters suggested that I should keep the machine plugged in (but off) when cleaning - is there a reason for that (earthing etc?). Space is a bit tight and it would be easier for me to unplug completely to take the casing off. I'm expecting there to be some caked on grime, as I've not cleaned inside the PC before in its 3 years of life. When the hard drive had a wobble about 4 months ago, an IT guy checked it over and said it was dusty, but not too bad. For the more stubborn stuff on fans, would using dry cotton buds be a good idea (used gently)? As for removing things and reapplying grease etc, I might just see how I get on with the compressed air first and see if that helps. I'm going to order 2gb RAM today, so that I can pop that in at the same time. Hopefully, these measures combined will make a bit of difference. Cheers everybody. Westie.

Hi SW. I had to get a tech guy round when we thought our hard drive had fried. Problem was sorted, but he mentioned that if I ever did need to rebuild, I'd be better off staying with the XP OS, as the Vista OS was likely to be replaced in the near future, as it had not proved popular/reliable. Ties in with what you are saying, but no idea about whether that means it's accurate info. Westie.

Cheers Den - will do - but first might need a bit of a steer on what the heatsink is though. LOL. I said I was a numpty.

Entry No.1 So short-sighted Date/Time: 2009:01:04 11:22:59 Resolution: 800 x 536 Flash Used: No Focal Length: 55.0mm (35mm equivalent: 82mm... Exposure Time: 0.250 s (1/4) Aperture: f/4.0 ISO Equiv.: 100 Whitebalance: Manual Metering Mode: matrix Exposure: Manual Exposure Mode: Manual Exposure Mode: Auto bracketing

Hi SW I'm the very proud owner of the Nikon 17-55mm. No more lens purchases for me for a year or three... So far, I love it. And oddly, you seem to get the best out of it using RAW!! Like you, I'm on the RAW nursery slopes at the moment, but nothing ventured... Nice shots from your fishing trip by the way. The morning light can be fantastic. There was a great example yesterday (did I manage to get the camera out?? No.) - frost on the ground, grey sky but then the sun peeped through - the colour was an almost unreal rust/pink combo. I just stood there in complete awe of mother nature. Hell - it even made the pylons in a distant field look good.

57 processes running. Mostly System Idle, so why the fan keeps going mental, I'll never know. Nothing out of the ordinary on the processes front, having Googled the ones that aren't familiar. I have an autobackup prog (Memeo) which seems to chew up a bit of the CPU when it's backing up, but max of about 60% and only for short spikes. Just scanned with SpyBot - nothing untoward there. Run AVG and nothing there. I've got a solid firewall with my router (ZyXEL), which also runs Kaspersky antivirus in the background. I haven't visited any (ahem) 'dubious' sites. I could get a 2GB upgrade for under £20, so maybe worth a punt?

Another (!) daughter shot, but it's so grey outside, I have to use my unwilling model. Getting to grips with my new lens - v. sharp wide open to my eyes.

If it's in your shed, you've no chance...

Hardware Monitoring : Asus A8000 Voltage CPU : 2.26 V +3.3V Voltage : 3.35 V +5V Voltage : 5.16 V +12V Voltage : 11.88 V Processor Fan : 3938 rpm Chassis Fan : 4189 rpm Processor Temperature : 52 °C Mainboard Temperature : 36 °C : NVIDIA GeForce 6200 TurboCache : nVidia Driver GPU Temperature : 47 °C : Hard Disk Monitoring : S.M.A.R.T Hard Disk ST3200822AS : 38 °C Hard Disk ST3200822AS : 36 °C My PC seems to be going into overdrive for the last 3 months. Just downloaded this prog. but I have no idea what it means (see above). Running an HP Pavilion with 1GB RAM, XP SP2. I run Photoshop CS3, but the PC seems to go itno overdrive as soon as it starts up, with just Outlook and IE7 running. Was thinking of upgrading the RAM to 4GB just to see, but any ideas on how I (you) can diagnose why this machine is running seemingly to max 70% CPU when there's little in the way of programmes running? PS You're dealing with a PC numpty here... Ta. Westie.

Happy New Year - a hangover indicates that 2009 started well. Start as you mean to carry on? LOL.

Just took delivery of my new baby - a second hand Nikon 17-55 f2.8, for a really good price. Lens and optics in mint condition. Battery charging. I've had to blow out an opportunity to go fishing off the beach with Elton to wait for it to be delivered, which led to him questioning my masculinity. Let the good times and the digital film roll. Might be able to squeak a couple of entries into the comp before the cut-off point. Trouble is, it is very grey and dreary out there. I'll cope. To all of you here - have a fantastic NYE and here's to a better 2009.

Congratulations SW - good result. And a record turn out on the vote too, which was very nice to see.

Great stuff Steve. Green with envy and green in terms of how you make shots like that. Stunning.

Well I'm willing to help out too. I don't know zip about much and with job etc, I couldn't do much more than evening work, but more than happy to help out, if that is of any use.

Lovely thought. I'm in.