System battery voltage is low / hard drive recommendations+2

[Post] (Msg. 1) Posted: 02 Mar 2008 11:40 am
Post subject: Hard Drives/System Battery Voltage Low Error/End Processes Reply with quote Reply without quote Edit/Delete this post Delete this post
Hi all have a few questions for those in the know.

You might remember I posted in here a few months back about a screen, that's all fixed up now and thanks to www.dabs.com got one at a very good price!

Anyway have 4 main questions for you:

1) Hard Drive Recommendations

I was going to mothball my dell dimension 8300 (windows XP sp2) but since funds are low, have decided to replace and upgrade the hard drive for extra capacity as I like to use my pc for making music.... have looked at my current hard drive and its a western digital WDC WD1200JB-75CRA0 111GB

Is it best to stick with a similar sized hard drive or can I upgrade to a larger one?

Are there any restrictions on using a different hard drive manufacturer and are there any better ones on the market at the moment?

Have seen a

* WD Caviar SE WD1600AAJS
* Hard drive
* 160 GB
* internal
* 3.5"
* SATA-300
* 7200 rpm
* buffer: 8 MB

for around £40... also what sort of spec should I be looking at? If possible would like a hard drive that I can re-use when I do actually get around to building my own pc.. s one that is compatible with pentium 4 and a quadcore would be good.. if they make them!

Also have heard about a new Hard drive that doesn't store old deleted files and hence is more secure, does anyone know about that?

Would I have to replace the memory parts as well?


2) Wiping Old Hard Drive / Secure Deletion

I use eraser by heidi a lot but have only just started using hence, other personal data present on the old hard drive needs wiping securely, can anyone recommend a tool to do it, that will permanently delete everything?


3) System Battery Voltage is Low

Have had this error on start up (before windows begins /in dos mode) for ages now and its not the power cable... how and where can I buy a new battery if that's what I need?


4) End Process in Task manager

I have recently been looking at ending certain processes in the Task Manager( ctrl alt delete) process tab, as the pc is very slow... as yet I haven't changed any entries marked with the SYSTEM tag, am I right to assume that these could affect the operation of the pc in a big way?

After changing priority's on some programs like AOL, which seems to eat up alot of power for not doing anything.. I think the pc on start up is getting quicker and opening programs is getting quicker!

Have got a trial version of "Ashampoo Power Up 3" but found that it disabled some programs so I had to leave it and restore the backup, is there anything else I can install as a freeware product that does something similar and even a program which controls the task manager effectively?

That's it


Thanks in advance to anyone that can help, this website is always top notch for any pc queries Wink


Nozzer Wink

1. I don't know enough about speeds to offer any recommendations.
2. Defrag the drive and use Heidi eraser to wipe the free space. That will get rid of the areas you aren't sure about. (If you need a walk through on what steps to take to just wipe the free space yell).

I would not wipe the entire drive just yet. Some manufactures include a tool so you can clone your old hard drive to the new one. You might want to do that, then see if the new drive works properly before you do any serious wiping.

To completely wipe a drive, I use Darik's Boot and Nuke. You put it on a floppy, boot from the floppy and it will do a thorough wiping. A major word of caution: if you decide to use this, disconnect the new drive. You do not want to accidentally wipe the wrong drive. A few minutes of inconvenience (opening the case, disconnecting the power) is sure worth avoiding a huge problem.

3. Is this a desktop or a notebook? A new CMOS battery can be bought at any big box store. It is a pretty common variety, button battery CR2032. If it is a desktop, maybe one of the rails on the power supply is below the tolerance. I'm sure one of the experts here can tell you how to test your power supply.

4. As far as you controlling what loads at startup, I use Mike Lin's Startup Monitor and Startup Control Panel
http://www.mlin.net/StartupMonitor.shtml
http://www.mlin.net/StartupCPL.shtml
Bill P's WinPatrol http://www.winpatrol.com/download.html
is also very good.