If you want a really good example of where a box like this would be needed, look no further than your local church. Traditional churches by nature are all non-profit organizations that operate on a very tight shoestring budget. Whatever technology is brought into the church must have good longevity to it because there’s simply no other purchase options. They can’t lease computer boxes. Whatever they get, they own, and it has to last a long time.

You could, if so desired, opt not to build but rather go with a brand name like Dell as they have new desktop PCs starting at $269. But maybe you’re in the situation where you have to deal with existing PCs because the budget simply won’t allow for the purchase of new computers. In this instance you have to refit them with new parts that will stand the test of time. That’s what this how-to covers.

The icons seen below are from Icon Archive. Be sure to check that place out for some truly good looking icons for Windows, Mac or Linux.

  Motherboard and CPU

It used to be that AMD was cheaper than Intel, but this is no longer the case. Were you to compare AMD vs. Intel in both motherboard and CPU prices, you’ll find they’re almost identical on the lower end of the cost spectrum.

When it comes to long-haul computing, the prevention of heat is a major consideration. Fortunately this is easy to take care of, because all you have to do is employ the use of a low-watt CPU. AMD has 45-watt offerings and Intel has 35-watt. Either is a good choice.

  RAM

With desktop memory the goal is to use the "slowest" possible sticks you can buy. Once again this is done to avoid heat. Use the bare minimum clock speed that the RAM banks will support, and put the maximum amount of RAM in the box it can support.

Also try, if possible, to use same-brand RAM. This will avoid any unforeseen issues with old RAM, as in some instances old sticks do not "play nice" with new ones. It is rare when this happens, but not out of the realm of possibility and you probably don’t have a RAM tester. (If you do have one however, use it.)

  Hard Drive

This step is simple, stick with 7200rpm hard disk drives. Were it a few years ago I would have recommended to use a 5400rpm (again, for less heat), but those offerings are now all but gone for standard 3.5-inch drives, and you’ll spend too much on a 5400rpm due to its rarity. The tried-and-true 7200rpm SATA of any media storage size works fine.

  Sound Card

Any. Doesn’t matter what you use as long as it works. You’ll most likely use the on-board sound from the motherboard anyway.

  Video Card

If the motherboard has a built-in video port, use it. Heat is avoided by doing this. If there isn’t any on-board video, what to use for a video card depends on the operating system. I’ll cover that in a moment.

  Optical drive

As long as the customer reviews for the optical drive you’re shopping for are favorable and it can play, read and burn CDs and DVDs, that’s all that matters.

  Case fans

This is the only part of the build where you absolutely cannot go low-cost. The case fans you use must be of premium grade, have good bearings and be as quiet as possible. Their only job in life is to cool, so don’t go cheap with these.

Here’s an example of a premium case fan. Yes, it’s almost $25 per fan. But it’s one of the best you can buy and totally worth the money.

I’m not saying you have to buy $25 case fans, but don’t go with the two-dollar cheap stuff. Do so and the PC’s life will end earlier.

  Operating System

If the box has a legal licensed copy of Windows XP or Vista, you’re all set. Continue to use it, continue to automatically download auto-updates as they are provided.

XP runs happily with 1GB of RAM and a 64MB video card. You can’t game on it, but you can do just about everything else.

The system requirements for Vista state it can get by on 1GB RAM, but as everybody knows it needs at least 2GB. The minimums also state that 128MB video is needed, but in reality 512MB suits it much better.

If the box has an illegal copy of XP or Vista, you need to either purchase a license of Windows 7 or switch to Linux – especially if the box you’re building is going to be used by somebody else. Why? Because somewhere along the line Windows will break without its needed updates eventually. And if you’re the one building a box for someone else, guess who gets the first phone call when somehow the end user magically turns on auto-updates and WGA disables Windows? That’s right, you do. Do you honestly want to deal with that?

The purchase of 7 is out of the question for most people because it blows the budget. You’d have to buy a full license of Windows 7 Home Premium, which costs just under $110. The "Starter" Edition of Windows 7 is only available to OEMs and not the general public unfortunately.

Linux’s strongest point is that it’s free. The flavor that’s the most suitable choice is the very recently released Ubuntu 9.10.

If you happen to be building/refitting a box for someone else, and that person only requires the basics of computing, you may want to consider Ubuntu Netbook Remix instead. It’s designed for netbooks, but has superior performance on low-end computer boxes. It also helps that the 9.10 UNR interface is super-friendly to use.

One of the few things that may prove to be a roadblock with UNR is printing. This is not Ubuntu’s fault, but rather the fact that most printers only come provided with proprietary Windows and Mac control software.

Check printer compatibility here for Ubuntu. It’s well worth the time to take a few minutes to read that over for your specific printer. Yours should be there as the lists are extensive. You know you’re in good shape if your printer is listed as both supported and working.

  Mouse

At least mid-grade quality, not wireless and manufactured by Microsoft or Logitech.

  Keyboard

Same requirements as the mouse.

  Monitor

You’ll most likely be using the existing monitor. If buying another, don’t buy used. Buy new.

The price for a new low-cost LCD monitor off the shelf will be between $125 and $175.

If you opt to buy online, specifically seek out the ones with free shipping, else you’ll pay the same price as you would off the shelf for the same thing.

As for the size, don’t buy anything under 18 inches. It’s simply not worth it.

  Software

In a basic sense, your computer must be able to:

• Browse the web
• Have the ability to use instant messaging easily
• Compose documents and spreadsheets and be able to share those documents easily
• Be able to import images from a digital camera easily
• Be able to edit images on a basic level easily
• Print
• Be able to burn CDs and DVDs
• Play DVD video
• Have sufficient protection against spyware, malware and viruses

Here’s each point covered one by one. I’m listing very specific choices that don’t require any additional software unless absolutely necessary. The less software installed, the better off the overall installation is.

Browse the web

Windows: Internet Explorer
Ubuntu: Firefox

Instant messaging

Windows: Windows Live Messenger
Ubuntu: Pidgin

Documents and Spreadsheets

Windows: OpenOffice
Ubuntu: OpenOffice

Digital Camera image import / Basic photo editing

Windows: Windows Live Photo Gallery
Ubuntu: F-Spot

Printing

Windows: Use provided printer control software CD or download from printer OEM’s web site
Ubuntu: Depends if the printer is supported or not by the OS (see above)

Burning CDs and DVDs

Windows, Data/Backup: Built-in to the OS natively, drag/drop
Windows, Music: Windows Media Player

Ubuntu, Data/Backup: Built-in to the OS natively, drag/drop
Ubuntu, Music: Brasero (included with OS)

Play DVD Video

Windows XP: Not included with DVD video codecs on fresh XP install. Codec must be provided by purchased player software such as WinDVD or CyberDVD.

Windows Vista/7: Codecs included, uses Windows Media Player to play DVDs.

Ubuntu: Codecs included, uses Totem to play DVDs.

Virus, spyware and malware protection

Windows: Microsoft Security Essentials or any other number of free protection suites.

Ubuntu: Generally speaking, not required because of the way Linux is designed. But if you feel you need it, there’s documentation aplenty on it.

  Placement

If you have the option, place the PC on the desk and not on the floor. As you know, computers are dirt magnets. This not only makes the computer box easier to clean but also keeps it away from dust and dirt that collects on the floor that the case fans would otherwise suck inside the box.

  Performance notes and other tips

The only time you’ll experience true slowdowns is on web pages with heavy Flash use. Then again, Flash will bring any web browser to its knees if you throw enough of that content at it even on the fastest of computers.

It is better if the PC has wired instead of wireless networking as it will speed things up quite a bit concerning internet usage. It’s not that wireless won’t work, but you want to give any speed advantage you can, so if you have the option, use wired internet connectivity.

Automate everything you possibly can. For example, if using a Windows OS you could use Defraggler to schedule drive defragmenting easily.

If you can, clone the drive once everything is installed, so if something busts on a major level, you’ve got a "vanilla" copy ready to be imaged back if the need arises.

Try (or instruct whoever is getting the PC) to get in the habit of "living in the browser." Keep installed apps to a minimum. The less apps there are, the less likely something will break on the software side and in many cases the speedier the OS will run, regardless of what OS it is. The best way to do this is to stay in the browser as much as possible.

For every app you download and install, save that to USB stick or CD/DVD. It’s also smart to perform a software inventory periodically just in case you have to reinstall the OS for whatever reason.

For any hardware you installed that has a warranty, put all the paperwork in an envelope and physically tape it to the side or top of the case. It’s not pretty, but you’ll never lose the info, should you need it.

Final notes

The best way to treat an older computer is to configure it like a kiosk would be. A kiosk by nature is set up to be simple and efficient. If you use Ubuntu Netbook Remix, this is very much how your computer will act, and that’s not a bad thing. You can do the same with Windows by hiding the taskbar, avoiding the Start menu when possible and placing the icons for the apps you regularly use on the desktop.

If you approach computing this way with an older refitted PC box and build it as outlined above, it should easily last 5 or more years.

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Long Haul Low-Cost PC "Refit" How-To

I’m not going to pretend for a moment that there’s more than a few of you out there running Windows XP illegally. You’ve seen the very nice $50 price tag of Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade and said, "Okay, I can afford that, but can I upgrade a pirated copy of XP to Win 7?"

Answer: No. When you hit the WGA, the upgrade won’t work.

However.. I can tell you how to get Windows 7 for significantly less than the full-version $200 price tag.

Here’s how it’s done:

1. Buy a copy of Windows Vista Home Basic "System Builders" Edition from NewEgg. Cost is $84.99 with free shipping. This is a qualifying product for the Windows 7 Upgrade.
2. Pre-order your Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade for $49.99. Remember, this price only lasts until July 11, 2009. After that it’s $119 for the upgrade and $200 for the full version.

Your total cost will be $134.98. Shipping will be free on both products. This is significantly cheaper than the full $200 price tag for the full-version Win 7 price. Granted, you’ll never use the license of Windows Vista you purchased, but it does take $65 off what you would have spent for the full-version Win 7 otherwise. This is an easy, and moreover legal, way to save cash on the purchase of the OS.

Why go legal with Windows?

There’s really only one reason. It’s for Windows Update.

Windows Update started with Windows 98 which was over 10 years ago, however the Windows Genuine Advantage validation check didn’t occur until 2006.

If you are running Windows illegally, you basically can’t use WU at all and that’s a problem. Whenever critical updates are sent thru the WU system, you won’t be able to install it. Not easily, anyway.

The common comeback to that is, "Well, I don’t have to use WU. I could install the patches manually." Yes, you could. But you know full well that’s decidedly inconvenient and a pain to get done.

If you don’t feel like paying for Windows, just use Linux. But if you do use Windows, the one-time license cost is worth the price for the updates.

Most people take WU for granted, but it is vital to make sure critical updates are applied without any hassle.

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Running XP Illegally And Want Windows 7 Cheap?

If you unsubscribe from specific folders and/or set them to download headers only, this makes checking mail and overall use of the system much speedier.

For this article I’ll show you how to do this with the Windows Live Mail client. Remember, this app is not just for Hotmail. It can easily do POP and IMAP as well.

The default view in Windows Live Mail is that the menu bar is hidden. Show it by clicking the icon to the far right next to the blue help icon and select Show Menu Bar, like this:

When you do this you will see File, Edit, View, Go, Tools, Actions and Help appear at the top of the mail client.

Select your Gmail email account on the left (clicking Inbox is fine). You should see a button labeled IMAP Folders, like this:

If you do not see this button, make sure your Gmail account is selected.

If it is and you still don’t see it, click View then Customize Toolbar.

Looks like this:

Make sure IMAP Folders is listed under Current buttons as shown above. If not, select it from the left and place it on the right.

When done, click the IMAP Folders button. This will show your currently subscribed list.

Looks like this:

I suggest double-clicking the Starred folder so you can unsubscribe from it. There’s no reason to have it there when using an email client (unless you specifically want it there). On double-click the folder next to the word will disappear, meaning it is unsubscribed. If you want to subscribe again, double click again. Click OK when finished.

Setting a folder to download headers only or not download at all

With IMAP there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to fully download spam, so that’s the example I’ll use here.

Right-click the Spam folder, select Synchronization settings and choose Don’t synchronize or Headers only, like this:

All spams that on mail check from now on will now download just the header and not the body of the message. This will significantly speed up overall use just from doing this alone.

Bear in mind this can be done with any IMAP folder – even the inbox.

In addition, if you encounter Gmail IMAP server timeouts even if only a semi-regular basis, setting folders for headers-only should cure that ill in short order.

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Gmail IMAP Speed-Up Tips In Windows Live Mail

My preferred registry cleaner of choice is CCleaner because a) it works and b) the price is nice (free). In fact my use of it has been since it was formerly named “Crap Cleaner”.

There are a few things I’ve learned in my use of the software that allows it to do a “better job”, so to speak.

1. Run after uninstalling of apps and a reboot

What I previously used to do is run CCleaner right after I would uninstall an app. I don’t do that anymore. Instead I will uninstall whatever app I need to, reboot the computer, then run CCleaner. This seems to work much better.

2. Run the registry cleaner multiple times until zero “problems” are found.

While in the CCleaner app, under the big “Cleaner” icon on the left is “Registry” underneath. I run that after running the Cleaner. However what I will do is run that, clean out the crap, then run it again. If it finds more “problems”, I will keep running it and “fixing” stuff until it finds zero “problems”.

To date, the most I’ve ever had to run it in a single sitting was 5 times. However I did uninstall somewhere in the neighborhood 10 to 15 large applications that left of lot of garbage behind.

3. Do not select everything under “Advanced” in “Registry”.

This might seem like a good idea at first but it isn’t. Granted, it won’t harm your computer if you put a checkbox in all that stuff, but you’re better off either leaving everything unchecked or only check the ones you need cleaned out.

The two I have selected there are “Old Prefetch data” and “Window Size/Location Cache”.

There are some that say messing with Windows prefetch is a bad idea, however when I’m installing and uninstalling as many apps as I do, it’s more or less required I have to clean it up. To note: I do not disable prefetch, but I do clean it out periodically.

Concerning application window locations, I periodically run into apps that take it upon themselves to move stuff around that I don’t want moved around; that’s the reason I have that cache cleared.

The #1 reason I use CCleaner is:

It keeps me from having to reinstall Windows every 90 days.

Before I found CCleaner it was guaranteed I’d have to reinstall Windows every 3 months – and did so routinely. It seemed that was the only way to get Windows running smooth again. After CCleaner I didn’t have to do that anymore.

To note: CCleaner is not the only thing I use to clean up my Windows. I do manually perform registry edits, inspect the hard drive for “leftover” folders from old apps and so on. However CCleaner does take care of the major stuff that causes most slowdowns in the first place.

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CCleaner Power User Tips

1. Use the Zune theme

The Zune theme is available here:

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=75078

This gives XP a black and orange look. Additionally it’s a complete theme (unlike "Royale" which isn’t and has rough edges here and there).

Here’s an example of what it looks like:

Trust me when I say you will like this.

If you don’t feel like using this theme, the next best thing is "Silver". This is built-in to your XP already and is accessible from the Display icon in the Control Panel from the Appearance tab.

Looks like this:

Silver is arguably the best built-in theme in XP. The standard blue gives XP too much of a toy-like appearance, and the "Olive Green" just doesn’t cut it.

Zune and Silver work well.

Small end note: Using the Zune theme doesn’t mean you have to actually own a Microsoft Zune music player, nor do you have to do any sign-up stuff or any of that crapola. It’s just a theme, plain and simple.

2. Use no wallpaper or tiled wallpaper.

Full-screen wallpaper can actually slow your system down – especially if you’re using dual (or more) screens. The reason for the slowdown is because XP has to keep redrawing the screen with a high-res graphic behind it.

If you use no wallpaper, XP won’t have to redraw as much. And in fact this is true for any OS and not just Windows. Even on Mac OS X and Linux, having no wallpaper speeds up window/screen redraws quite a bit.

Tiled wallpaper (ex: "Coffee Bean" in Windows XP) draws much faster compared to full-screen wallpaper.

TIP: Do a Google Image Search for wallpaper pattern. You’ll see lots of cool-looking stuff there you can try out for wallpaper use.

3. Use the ClearType Tuner Powertoy.

It makes all your fonts look better and easier to read. This is a no-brainer. I use it; it works; it’s free; it’s awesome.

Get it here:

http://www.microsoft.com/typography/ClearTypePowerToy.mspx

To note: Only people with LCD monitors should use this. If you’re using CRT (i.e. "tubed" monitor), stick with what you have.

4. Adjust Active Title Bar to use a larger font.

When you use a larger font in the title bar area it makes all apps look better and easier to locate.

It’s done like this:

First, go to Display Properties ("Display" icon from Control Panel), click the Appearance tab and then the Advanced button.

Looks like this:

Note the "Advanced" button at the bottom right. Click that.

Where it states "Message Box", click that. The Item listed will be Active Title Bar.

Set the font to Arial and its size to 12 and bold it (the little "B" button). Then next to Active Title Bar, set to 25. THIS SHOULD ALWAYS BE 25. If it’s not it will make icons in the taskbar look "scrunched" and pixelated.

Confused? Match what you see below:

To note, you don’t have to use Arial. Other good fonts are Verdana, Trebuchet MS, Lucida Sans Unicode or whatever is loaded on your system.

Just remember to keep the "size" setting next to "Active Title Bar" to 25 to avoid the scrunch/pixelation of taskbar icons.

5. Adjust "Message Text" and "Menu" to Tahoma.

Tahoma is a built-in font with XP and said honestly is the best menu font it has.

Follow the same instructions above – but click on "Message Text", set to Tahoma, size 8 and for "Selected" use the same settings.

It looks like this:

(Note under Item: that "Message Box" is selected – you want to do the same for "Selected Items" as well from that same drop-down menu.)

For those who have not-so perfect vision, try bolding the menu and dialog fonts. It makes the menus in XP a whole lot easier to see and use.

6. Set the Icon item to bold.

This is in the same section as the others mentioned above.

Looks like this:

The Item is "Icon", the font is "Tahoma", size 32, the font size is 8 and lastly, the "B" is impressed (by clicking on it) to indicate it’s set to bold.

This carries over to the Windows Explorer and makes stuff easier to read, like this:

The icons on your desktop will also have bolded fonts, and will also bold a few things in Internet Explorer (which is not a bad thing at all).

7. Use a useful screen saver.

Fancy screen savers eat CPU cycles and slow down your computer. I stopped using those years ago and instead use the JKDefrag screen saver instead.

Whenever my computer goes into a screen saver mode it automatcally starts defragging the hard drive. That’s useful.

How to do it:

Step 1. Get JKDefrag (free).

Step 2. From the ZIP file, extract two of the files, that being JKDefragScreenSaver.exe and JKDefragScreenSaver.scr, into the main Windows folder (usually C:\WINDOWS).

Step 3. Go to Display Properties from the Control Panel, click the Screen Saver tab and select JKDefragScreenSaver.

Looks like this:

Step 4. Click Settings.

Set your screen saver to "Blank", last defrag to 4 hours and status bar to Full status bar.

Looks like this:

Note that you don’t have to use "Blank", however it is better overall that you use a screen saver that doesn’t eat CPU cycles at all – and "Blank" is it.

When using this particular screen saver, JKDefrag will auto-defrag whenever your computer’s screen saver comes on – unless it was done fairly recently (less than 4 hours ago).

Basically put, you’ll never have to remember to defrag your drive because it will be done automatically. A defragged drive is a happy drive.

Additional tip:

From the Screen Saver tab click the button labeled Power. From that screen set your monitor(s) to turn OFF after a set amount of time (I suggest somewhere between 10 to 30 minutes). This will increase the life of your LCD monitor. There’s no excuse to have it on when not at your computer.

8. Use a bigger mouse cursor.

On every XP computer I’ve ever used I always set the mouse cursor to "Magnified" and enable the pointer shadow.

Looks like this:

This is available from the "Mouse" icon in the Control Panel and via the "Pointers" tab.

The default mouse pointer in XP is too small and you can lose it easily. With "Magnified" it’s easily located. While it’s true this is a non-animated cursor set, believe me when I say you won’t miss it – because seeing the pointer is more important than it doing some frilly animation.

Also be sure to check off "Enable pointer shadow" at the bottom. This does help with visibility.

Alternatives:

Other mouse sets with XP that work well are black and inverted.

9. Enable "Show location" for mouse pointer.

Even with single-screen setups it’s easy to lose where the mouse pointer is. You can take care of this in short order by going to Pointer Options from Mouse properties and checking off "Show location of pointer when I press the CTRL key".

Looks like this:

Check off the box at the bottom, click Apply, then tap your CTRL key once. You’ll see an animated circle appear around the pointer once.

This is very handy to have enabled – especially if you run a multi-monitor setup where you can lose the mouse a little too easily.

10. Make the taskbar "taller" so day and date is shown.

"One tier" high taskbar:

"Two tier" high taskbar:

As you can see, the date and day of week is shown when it’s "two tiers" high. This is good info to have at a glance.

How do to it:

1. Right click an empty area of the taskbar. A small menu will appear. One of the entries will be "Lock the taskbar". If there is a check next to it, click it to uncheck. If there is no check, leave it be and click outside the menu to close it.

2. Move your mouse to the top of the taskbar so your mouse cursor changes to an up/down double-arrow.

3. Left click, hold, and drag the taskbar up one tier.

That’s it. You should see the day and date at that point.

If you don’t like it you can drag it back down to where it was.

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10 Ways To Make Windows XP Look And Feel Better

Instead we follow these steps:

1. Go to the Control Panel.

2. Double-click the System icon.

3. Click the Advanced tab.

4. Next to Startup and Recovery, click the Settings button. (Note: There are three buttons labeled as this – click the one specifically next to Startup and Recovery).

5. Under Write debugging information, click the drop-down menu and select (none).

It looks similar to this:

Click OK after that. You’re done here.

Next we have to check to see if this is listed in the System Configuration Utility.

6. Click the Start button.

7. Click Run.

8. Type msconfig in the field and then click OK.

9. From the window that appears, click the Startup tab.

10. Look to see if dumprep 0 -k exists. If it does, it would look like this:

You can safely uncheck this as it is not a vital system process (again, that’s according to Microsoft).

Once done you exit the utility.

Why do any of this?

Anything Windows doesn’t have to load on boot (especially that stuff that’s not required like dumprep.exe) will make it start up faster. Every little bit helps!

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Getting Rid Of Dumprep.exe From Startup [Windows XP/2000]

This is not going to be a technical explanation of how the Linux file system works but rather it’s immediate differences between it and Windows.

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Real World Linux – Supported And Community Apps

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Real World Linux Use – Understanding The Linux File System

If you plan on doing spoken-word recordings (such as for a podcast) and don’t have the cash for fancy microphones or the like, Audacity can fix your audio easily.

In the following example I purposely had a fan running in the background to create noise, and spoke the phrase "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog."

Here’s what it looked like when I originally recorded the spoken phrase in Audacity:

The original recording (MP3 download)

There’s obviously a lot of noise in there. You can hear the hissssss noise in the background from the fan I had running.

What I need to do first is get rid of that hiss, so I press CTRL+A to select all the audio in the track, then click Effect then Noise Removal.

Looks like this:

From the next small window that appears I modify the sound to my liking:

I moved the slider to the "less" because that seemed to work best.

Now I have this:

The modified recording with noise removed (MP3 download)

However the audio is still a bit on the quiet side. I could use the Amplify filter but I’m going to use Compressor instead.

Looks like this:

After experimenting with the compressor I ended up with this:

Modified (final) recording with noise removal and compression added (MP3 download)

This is right around where I want to be. The hiss has been removed and the compression (which also has the option of auto-normalizing) brought out some more definition in the voice and added volume to boot – so I was happy with that.

This can be applied to any voice recording you do in Audacity.

Although my method here appears to be as simple as 1-2-3, it isn’t. My recording was short and very easy to work with. For longer recordings it takes a bit of practice to get the right noise removal and compression settings for your voice.

All of this is trial-and-error style – but don’t be afraid to experiment because that’s what it’s all about. Audacity is decent software, has the goods and delivers once you get familiarized with what it can do for you.

On a final note: Bear in mind that modifying the audio of recorded instruments is much different than voice because the waves are totally different. What works for voice doesn’t necessarily follow suit for guitars, drums, etc.

However this isn’t to say you shouldn’t try.

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Cleaning Up Spoken-Word Recorded Audio With Audacity

There is actually a Microsoft TechNet article called Demystifying the ‘Blue Screen of Death’ that does truly help in making sense of that blue screen, should you get one.

Some of the BSOD messages I’ve received have been:

INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE

This simply means Windows can’t read the hard disk correctly. I’ve encountered this when an older hard drive develops a few bad sectors. It doesn’t mean you have to throw the hard drive out. You can perform a regular (meaning not "quick") format which will mark those bad sectors, making the drive hopefully usable again.

NTFS_FILE_SYSTEM

In my experience this usually happens when your hard disk just has too much stuff on it and the data corrupts easily. For example, if you have a 120GB hard drive and 118GB is in use, you might get an NTFS_FILE_SYSTEM error until you free up some space, DEFRAG it (and run a CCleaner too just for safe measure).

Poorly programmed or too-old driver

In extremely rare instances I’ll download a driver and Windows doesn’t "agree" with it too well usually because it’s too old. For example, if I install a brand new nVidia video card but then use the drivers meant for a GeForce 6 (several generations ago), yeah, you most likely will get a BSOD out of this – and will be listed as such.

Solution: Always use current drivers. Head into "Safe Mode", kill the driver, reboot normally, install the newer version and this fixes driver-specific BSODs 99% of the time.

~ ~ ~

The TechNet article has a ton of info on how to read BSODs and understand what one is trying to tell you. So if your Windows installation happens to be "going blue" a lot, that article will certainly help.

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Can Anyone Make Sense Out Of The "Blue Screen Of Death"?