KenjiUmino

try balanced cables and if that does not help then look for an inexpensive isolator (direct input box) that has a "ground lift" function - does not have to be a top of the line active box but the ground lift seems to be important.
 
I did some tests at work the other day and flipping the "ground lift" switch on our passive DI box fixed noise problems with yamaha HS series monitor speakers that even had noise when a dedicated audio interface and balanced connection was used (we used a M-audio fast track pro for testing) 
 
getting computers and monitor speakers to play nice with each other is very problematic - anyone wants to guess how many supposedly "faulty" speakers i get to my desk at work because of this ?

ground connection is just one of the many problems - switching type power converters / regulators also might introduce noise to the signal chain even affecting other equippment that is not directly connected to the PC in any way - the band i am with recorded some songs recently and we had the bass amp produce static sounds and rustle at random until we unplugged the laptop from the mains (bass amp was not electrically connected to the laptop in any way other than both wall sockets probably sharing the same power line)
 
this is not a typical "ground issue" as it can also happen with any standard issue phone charger (wich usually only have your countrys default 2 pin plugs on them with no ground/earth contacts at all)

If you get this to work, some programs may not run correctly with a processor of the speed of a P4. It's always been my opinion that older operating systems, such as Windows 98, should be put on old computers to match.

kind of - but failing so many times in a row was not like the usual and expected "hickup"
 
i also found some information while searching a solution for a different and seemingly unrelated problem with the resident evil 7 PC demo and vcredist
 
i learned that there has been a bug affecting windows update causing it to either not find new updates at all or failing to manually install them on almost every attempt to do so (taking forever on installation without any progress.)
 
and i guess this is what happened here because i tried installing IE 10 manually and the installation was just sitting there and never completing
 
any attempt to repair or reinstall vcredist also failed the same way
 
both seem to somehow rely on the windows update function for their installer.
 
it also looks like no updates have been found or installed AT ALL on this computer since i set it up about a month ago (even though i had automatic update enabled)
 
now if it really was because of said bug then that would explain why IE 10 was not installed already and why security essentials failed to update so many times.
 
i fixed it by downloading THIS update pack (german website) wich installs 5 microsoft updates in a specific order. 
 
it failed the first time like it failed on IE and VC but i got it installed on the second try.
 
after that, installation of vcredist finished successfully in a matter of seconds, so did any other manual installations and windows update immediately found and installed a ton of stuff like it has been sitting under a rock for weeks (if the bug prevented it from finding any updates at all, it probably did sit under a rock all the time) 

i work at a repair shop for electronic music equippment (guitar amps, digital pianos, keyboards, monitor speakers - all the stuff that gets your rock rolling) - i'd say that counts as "professional techie" 
 
computers and videogames is my hobby / passion / obsession ... whatever you wanna call it

Vodoo's are classics  

running win9x games in compatibility mode fails more often than not and there is no such thing as a "win 98 VM" for gaming either - never seen it working. ever.
 
this exactly matches my experience
 
stay below 1 GHz CPU speed - more will cause trouble with some games
stay below 1 GB RAM size - windows 98 can't even use that much and more will cause trouble 
 
watch the size of your HDD - windows 98 has no native support for NTFS and the size cap for a FAT 32 partition is somewhere around 120 GB AFAIK - given how "small" all the games and applications are by todays standards, you probably won't need terabytes of HDD space anyways
 
don't know about your radeon 3450 but you will probably not find win 98 drivers for any graphics cards newer then the geforce 6000 series (if you are using a pentium 3 or first gen. pentium 4 you probably won't have PCI-express on your mainboard and be stuck with AGP graphics cards anyways)
 
and while you're at it, get a sound card (SB16 or AWE32 compatible) and a 3dfx voodoo card for maximum compatibility with 90's games

haha ... i use mint cinnamon on my laptop ... no forced updates, no BS ... maybe thats why this kind of stuff is bothering me so much recently - i am not that used to it any more

Android is a highly fragmented steaming hot pile of shit. Google has not done nearly enough to force people to update. Also android requires an app to show it's permission before you install it. If you're letting a "flash light" app have access to sms, contacts, BT, internet, then there is really nothing anyone can do.

for real - seems like no one cares about 16:10 any more they just go wider and wider wich maybe makes sense for games and movies but the industry is totally ignoring the fact that a percentage of people also do other stuff with their computers and a bit more height is really nice to have then - i am thinking of, say a DAW where more vertical "space" means you can have a bunch of tracks on screen at once and still have room for transport buttons and maybe a mixer tab.
 
like so: 
 
you can see 8 tracks on screen at the same time while in 16:9 ....
you only got 7 tracks without scrolling or anything else.
 
it is saddening that this ratio might be forgotten about pretty soon - i got like one of the last thinkpad models that has a 1280x800 screen but the TN panel itself is sooo bad - now for every newer model there are TN and IPS versions available but they are all 16:9 
 

Another idea: Maybe someone hit Win+P. Press that and switch to the correct video output mode.

In the next update of Windows 10 in March, you can hide this section.
Before:

 
 
After:


(click on the side button that is under the the hamburger (3 straight lines) button to show the app list)
 
The option is (or will be, if you don't want to go to the Insider Preview now and you want to or can wait): Settings > Personalization > Start, and turn on the option: Hide app list in Start menu
 
Apologies for the large images. I am on my laptop (125% DPI)
 
Hope this helps.

No word on when it come out though, but it shouldn't be too long. Also take note that this is still dual slot.

The whole 4k thing is kind of ridiculous. We should just be calling it 2160p, but nooooooo. Some marketing team decided to introduce a ridiculous moniker.

A: Calm down.
B: Stop swearing, it makes you sound stupid.
C: Controllers are expensive because the companies that make them want them to be expensive.
 
Also, building something that withstands many hundreds of thousands of hard button presses is no small feat. 

well, you get what you pay for.
 
you CAN get cheap controllers - even for consoles - but they straight up SUCK - trust me on that one, i had too many of them.
 
i am using a cheapo wired USB controller on my PS 3 at the moment but even the relatively "inexpensive" logitech F310 mentioned earlier is running circles around it - the cheapo does ok for slow games but even playing wipeout with it is a chore let alone any game where accuracy actually matters.
 
thats the thing most cheap input devices fail to deliver: accuracy/precision
 
cheap is just not good enough for serious gaming - sure, one can get a 20 bucks keyboard from a reputable brand and it will do fine for most of the tasks thrown at it but it will be compromised in one way or another (like only 5 keys can be pressed at once and stuff like that) - to some people this will never be an issue but to others it will absolutely ruin it depending on what and how they play - and the same goes for controllers.
 
when you need a controller, look at the price of the cheapest standard 1st party controller for your system as a baseline and only go up in price if extra features are needed.
 
anything below that will probably not give you a good experience. anything above it might just be for the sake of it and not give you much of an advantage (do i really need that shiny purple camoflage special edition controller ?) - unless you really want some specific features a more expensive controller offers (remappable buttons for example)
 
as a side note: quality gamepads have NEVER been cheap - no matter how advanced or primitive the technology at that time was - it's not like they have been "giving away" NES or SNES gamepads back in the day - even though they are considered "primitive" by todays standards.
 
my first logitech gamepad for PC? don't remember how much exactly i paid but i remember it was somewhat of a bitter pill to swallow, but boy was it worth the money.
i would still be rocking it today if DB15 gameport would still be a thing (or if i still had the USB adapter)

I let her pick some of the stuff so she thought it was cool, she also helped me build it which was pretty sweet. 

I am not saying that progress is a bad thing in general - and I actually liked the new interface.
 
I am not saying that windows 10 is crap just because it is new and different - it WAS good when it started but they butchered it and NOW it is crap. 
 
this is what killed it for me:
 
have a supposedly more refined and less shiny interface (no 3d-ish buttons, no transparency/glass effects) but perform worse on a machine that ran vista and 7 in full eye candy mode with no noticeable lag is kind of stupid - I thought windows 10 is more efficient ??? if its not the eye candy then what is using all those resources ?
 
and that is not only the problem with old hardware when even a brand new machine becomes unusably laggy and slow because some background process decides to cause 100% I/O load on the D: drive for NO APPARENT REASON - THIS is not acceptable.
 
to leave the computer on over night because some update kicked in that takes forever to finish and come back in the morning just just to find the pc stuck at the exact same 26% progress it was at when I went to bed - THIS is not acceptable.
 
a reset then caused the computer to boot into a black screen right after the bios logo.
 
if the user is not supposed to have control over wich updates get installed and wich don't then IT IS NOT ACCEPTABLE to roll out updates that can crash, are broken or do break things. period.
 
i just built this system and already have to suppress the urge to smash it with a huge old hammer and that is also not acceptable.
 
if I have to spend more time to work around problems then i can spend time actually using the damn thing then something is really, really wrong.
 
an operating system has ONE JOB: to let me operate the system and not get in the way.
windows 10 completely failed at this task. it got in the way too many times.
 
now windows 7 runs on this very machine without any of the problems mentioned above.
 
no - win7 does not have native FLAC support for media player
no - win7 can't use any of the games and apps from the windows store (I really started to like jigsaw)
yes - win7 is outdated technology wich has a lot of downsides
 
but at least I can actually USE my system.
 
maybe I should keep windows 10 on a virtual machine just to watch its progress - if they finally manage to get the stick out of their ass i might come back to it. but that won't be any time soon i'm afraid.

Can't you sign your devil contracts like everyone else, with a bloody fingerprint?
 
Kids these days...

People think there is more self control and measurement by not swearing. This is in my experience, utterly fucking false: one is able to be perfectly reasonable in the ideas being communicated as well as fair in a reply or argument while swearing. I consider it nothing sort of thought policing: what others might find offensive should be irrelevant to the fucking ideas being discussed because if you start making shitty concessions and censoring yourself, next people start asking you to stop using even more words cause they're "microaggressions" and start changing the definition of common fucking words to win arguments through false equivalencies and other fallacies.
 
People should deal with people and what's being said, not how it's being fucking said.

Yvonne  ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

I'd steal their hearts (figuratively, not literally). 

Best answer so far

You should be fine.

strange thing just happened: turned the PC on today and found out that all the fans are not spinning up (all connected to mainboard headers) - swapped the bigger PSU back in and they started spinning again - does that mean the 300W PSU is dodgy or simply does not like the mainboard ?

Please don't use Electoral Tape.  You might accidentally get Trump. Use Electrical Tape!