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[PyroDesu]

I'd personally drop the soundcard and replace the WiFi USB poppet with a proper WiFi card with antennas. Or just cable the damn thing to the router for a fraction of the cost and better reliability.

The 660 is slightly old now, still good but you might consider the 750ti instead, similar performance IIRC and a hell of a lot quieter.

The capture card specified having a sound card, he decided on the USB WiFi (and has no access to an ethernet port - we're both college students, but when they renovated his dorm they stripped out the ethernet ports).

As for the GPU, I've seen a lot of stuff saying the 660 is better.

[Aklyon]

I would second the card suggestion. Haven't had the best luck with usb wifis, though neither usb or card are quite as good at it as my laptop's wireless is.

[Thief^]

The laptop's WiFi likely has a very tall antenna each side of the screen. Much better than a raisin-sized USB thing.

As for the capture card, won't the onboard sound be fine? Dedicated sound cards are pretty much considered a great aste of money these days

[PyroDesu]

The laptop's WiFi likely has a very tall antenna each side of the screen. Much better than a raisin-sized USB thing.

As for the capture card, won't the onboard sound be fine? Dedicated sound cards are pretty much considered a great aste of money these days

I've no idea. And as far as I'm aware, he doesn't either. I think he wants to play it safe.

And another reason for the USB thing is he isn't even sure if we could stick another PCI card in there and have it fit with his case. If we can, I'll advise him to get the card when I meet him for payment this afternoon (If he's even ordered the parts yet, he ordered them today).

EDIT: I don't suppose anyone here knows how to check what wifi protocol a network is using? I need to know if the campus network operates on ac before I can tell him to get a PCI network card.

[Tellemurius]

The laptop's WiFi likely has a very tall antenna each side of the screen. Much better than a raisin-sized USB thing.

As for the capture card, won't the onboard sound be fine? Dedicated sound cards are pretty much considered a great aste of money these days

I've no idea. And as far as I'm aware, he doesn't either. I think he wants to play it safe.

And another reason for the USB thing is he isn't even sure if we could stick another PCI card in there and have it fit with his case. If we can, I'll advise him to get the card when I meet him for payment this afternoon (If he's even ordered the parts yet, he ordered them today).

EDIT: I don't suppose anyone here knows how to check what wifi protocol a network is using? I need to know if the campus network operates on ac before I can tell him to get a PCI network card.

You can pull up the network details or hover your mouse over the wireless icon in the taskbar and it will tell you the wireless protocol.

[PyroDesu]

The laptop's WiFi likely has a very tall antenna each side of the screen. Much better than a raisin-sized USB thing.

As for the capture card, won't the onboard sound be fine? Dedicated sound cards are pretty much considered a great aste of money these days

I've no idea. And as far as I'm aware, he doesn't either. I think he wants to play it safe.

And another reason for the USB thing is he isn't even sure if we could stick another PCI card in there and have it fit with his case. If we can, I'll advise him to get the card when I meet him for payment this afternoon (If he's even ordered the parts yet, he ordered them today).

EDIT: I don't suppose anyone here knows how to check what wifi protocol a network is using? I need to know if the campus network operates on ac before I can tell him to get a PCI network card.

You can pull up the network details or hover your mouse over the wireless icon in the taskbar and it will tell you the wireless protocol.

Doesn't tell me what protocol is being used, with either Windows 8 or Ubuntu. Just says 802.11 and the name of the network, respective to the network.

Not that it matters now. Dude's trying to pull out entirely because he had a little trouble finding a part.

[Aklyon]

That doesn't sound like a very confident dude.

[PyroDesu]

That doesn't sound like a very confident dude.

He was confident enough to give me 30 down of 100, when I had told him it was nonrefundable.

He's asking for a refund though, so I'm not sure if he read that part...

[wierd]

Usually, most wifi nics have a kind of "hidden" settings menu buried inside thier driver's property pages, where you can set the preamble, set the antenna diversity mode, etc.

If the card is a dual protocol mode card (B/G/N, or B/G, or A/N, or something newer like H), there will be a mode selector in there too.

You can force a card out of "auto mode" and into a specific version of 802.11x this way, so say a  BGN card will ignore crappy B protocol APs. (Or, even only connect to N APs)

[ShadowHammer]

I'm having problems with the hard drive space on my computer being used up for what seems like no reason.

I just noticed this now, but it seems to have been going on for a little while, as the disk space has dropped from ~25 or 30 GB free to about 4 GB. I assumed I had just not checked in a a while and this was my messy self gradually using up space; however, in the past hour(ish) I've lost almost 0.3 GB seemingly spontaneously.

Things I can recall doing during the hour in which 0.3 GB evaporated:
-Browsed the internet (no sketchy sites or anything - these forums, xkcd.com, various statistics/news websites doing research)
-Typed up said research in a word document (16 KB)
-Made several images with paint.net (combined size of maybe 100 KB) and used a my space generator (non-sketchyness not assured, but I've used it before with no ill effects) to create a few .gifs with them (downloaded said .gifs, total size ~15 KB).
-Attempted to play KSP, but upon it finishing the loading screen, a windows dialog box popped up, informing me that I should shut down the program to conserve memory, which I did.
-Skype and stickies have been open the whole time, as per usual.

Does anyone have advice on figuring out the issue here? Should I just clean up unnecessary files and hope the 0.3 GB disappearing was just a mistake between keyboard and chair?

[Lord Shonus]

Run SpaceMonger or TreeSizeFree to figure out what's taking up the space. It's possible that the usage is just normal bloat, but it's also possible you may have a worm or something.

[Rose]

WinDirStat for the win!

[wierd]

It could also be abnormally large MFT, if it is an NTFS volume.

(Funny thing-- NTFS likes to put metadata into the MFT, but it never wants to delete it afterwards...)

I have seen MFTs get to be over 10gb in size. On a drive that has had EVERY FILE deleted. (Was previously full.)

sysinternals has a tool to check information about the MFT.
http://metadataconsulting.blogspot.com/2014/05/hoe-to-determine-windows-master-file.html

[foil]

Have you turned on Backups and forgot about it?

[ShadowHammer]

Run SpaceMonger or TreeSizeFree to figure out what's taking up the space. It's possible that the usage is just normal bloat, but it's also possible you may have a worm or something.

Thanks for the advice; I tried TreeSize Free, and it turned up something peculiar (note that, due to my general unfamiliarity with computers, these "peculiarities" may not actually be abnormal).
TreeSize Free tells me that my drive is 121 GB, but at the bottom, it also says I only have 116 GB. Also, all the files it displays under Local Disk only add up to about 94 GB when I add them together manually. Is this normal?

It also showed that WinSxS is over 20GB, and I have been having a slight issue recently wherein I am always told that a new update for windows is available. However, when I restart the computer to allow it to update, it says it is doing so, but the update-indicator-icon-thingy beside the shutdown button doesn't go away. This process is repeated every time I attempt to get this update to install.
I guess I'll try to clean up WinSxS and see if it is the cause of either or both problems.

It could also be abnormally large MFT, if it is an NTFS volume.

(Funny thing-- NTFS likes to put metadata into the MFT, but it never wants to delete it afterwards...)

I have seen MFTs get to be over 10gb in size. On a drive that has had EVERY FILE deleted. (Was previously full.)

sysinternals has a tool to check information about the MFT.
http://metadataconsulting.blogspot.com/2014/05/hoe-to-determine-windows-master-file.html

I checked this, but it's only 424 MB. Thanks for the advice anyway, though.

Have you turned on Backups and forgot about it?

I don't believe so, but it's definitely possible. How would I check?