TheVirus

Your best bet is to find an image you like and then try to photoshop some pizazz into it. Usually, I'll just find an image in Google Images and crop it to my liking, not a fan of the whole in-your-face images. To each his own, I suppose Good luck. Also, if you don't want to get Photoshop, you can snag Paint.NET (http://www.getpaint.net) or The GiMP (http://www.gimp.org).

Good on ya for getting a Thermaltake PSU. Quality stuff. I would have been disappointed if you had purchased some cheap no-name brand. The PSU is quite possibly the most delicate peripheral of a PC. A bad one can fry pretty much every other part of your computer, I've had it happen twice (same PSU, two different sets of equipment). However, I think I would have purchased a more powerful PSU just to future-proof yourself, depending on the prices of 500w+ models. It seems like you don't upgrade often so I don't think it'll be a big deal, honestly. Your next upgrade will most likely include an entirely new, and hopefully not eMachine, PC. Best of luck, let me know if you need help with anything.

Not sure about that. Some of our SonicWalls blocked it for no reason. I think it's the content filtering service (CFS) that the SonicWalls are subscribed to. We don't block every website that's porn/gaming/etc related, we let the CFS do it and just allow certain sites. Contact your school's network administrator and see if they can unblock it. I doubt they purposefully blocked it, probably just their CFS similar to SonicWalls.

Definitely a GTX 2xx series. Newegg has promotions on them all the time now so you can get 5-25 dollars off. Sign up for their newsletter and see what comes in. I have a GTX280 and it's incredible, but fucking huge. Don't SLI/Crossfire video cards, it's absolutely not worth it. Also, don't forget about your CPU. Just because you get a new video card doesn't mean you can up the settings if you're still running a crap CPU. CPUs are just as much of a bottleneck as VGA cards are.

Seems like some settings in the UnrealEd got messed up. Reinstalling the SDK should have worked, unless you didn't confirm that it was deleted. Try removing it and making sure the UnrealEd.ini file is gone. I think I had this issue in the past when I was playing around with UT 2004.

Definitely the video card. Looks like the on-board RAM fried (artifacts). If you used the motherboard's on-board video and didn't get any artifacts then it's a safe bet that it is indeed the video card. What model is the computer? You shouldn't need a new PSU if you're going to a 9xxx model, depending on that eMachine's age, it should have a 400w+ PSU. Also, most video cards come with a lifetime warranty. Contact the manufacturer and see if you can RMA it for a new one. If they don't carry that card in stock anymore they will probably give you a free upgrade to the closet thing.

Good on you for protecting your router A lot of people don't and it can lead them to getting in trouble. As long as you're not using WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) then you're good. You can also hide the SSID (make it so it doesn't broadcast) and also only allow specific MAC addresses to connect (though, they can be cloned). Depends on how paranoid you are

Not true. Routers and Windows Firewall only prevent incoming connections, not outgoing. Most trojans and viruses will utilize outgoing connections to contact their host. A firewall like NOD32 or some other derivative will allow you to know exactly what programs are accessing the internet. Don't assume a router will protect you because it won't forward all the ports, that just stops some incoming attacks from worms and networked viruses, but there are ways around it.

The best anti-virus solution is a smart user. Don't use Internet Explorer, use Firefox, Opera, or Chrome. Firefox has an amazing array of addons (Ad block+, No Script, etc). Make sure you know what you're downloading and running. As far as software goes, AVG is decent. Both Norton and McAfee are crap, unless you get the corporate versions but even those aren't that great. NOD32 and BitDefender are both the best, in my opinion. Kaspersky is a resource hog and I didn't care for it. NOD32 and BD are both lightweight and offer excellent protection. If you don't want to spend money, get AVG. Personally, I don't run virus software since I just watch what I do and only I use my PC. Edit: There's also AntiVir Personal, I think it's free, and it's quite good.

What did I just watch :ohwell: