I just went through one of the missions (minor spoiler):

and it glitched out on me, so I had to abort the mission and restart it. As I went through it again, I saw that resources I found in my previous run were still marked on the map, and were now marked as "Obtained". On the other hand, all the bases/enemies respawned as expected.

Did I get to keep the resources I acquired in the aborted run?

Did I get to keep the soldiers?

Unfortunately I can't tell myself from looking through my mother base info, so I'm hoping someone can confirm whether you get to keep these things if you abort a mission.

Thanks for the detailed response! Looks like the PS3 controller is winning... A couple of questions about the PS3 controller:

1) Does it have rechargeable batteries, or doe sit use AA batteries like the xbox controller?

2) Do I have to buy any special cables/connects for it (other than bluetooth), or does it use a regular USB cable?

2.1) Is this cable included with PS3 controllers?

2.2) If the controller has rechargeable batteries, do they get charged through the USB cable?

3) Has anyone encountered any games that do *not* work well with a PS3 controller?

I'm thinking of geting a gamepad for racing/flying/platformer games. My immediate choice was an Xbox 360 wireless controller, but that was just because of the (supposed) ease of hooking it up to Windows.

I'm a pure PC gamer, so I don't have a clue about either controller type, or any other gamepads out there (Logitech?). Does anyone have any recommendations for a gamepad, keeping features, ease of use, game compatilibty, battery life, etc. in mind?

Being able to hook up the controller up with an Android phone is a bonus (the PS3 controller wins here due to bluetooth as far as I understand).

Could someone please recommend a good SATA to molex power adapter?

... Just kidding. I have such a connector, and I noticed that one of the pins on the SATA end is missing. From wikipedia this seems to be the 3.3V rail (orange); the wires that go into the SATA end are yellow, 2 blacks, and red. Wikipedia says that most current SATA HDDs do not use the 3.3V rail, so this makes sense, but could someone confirm?

The HDD I'm trying to power up is a Western Digital WD1002FAEX. How can I make sure it doesn't need the 3.3V rail? WD's website doesn't mention any electrical details. Would it damage the HDD if I power it up with this adapter and it *does* in fact need the 3.3V rail?

I recently got back into BF3 and I'm tempted to buy Premium (for the expansion pack bundle deal), but I'm afraid of repeating the same mistake I made with Battielfield 2's expansion pack. Everyone played that expansion pack for right about 2.5 weeks, after which it was all but forgotten. I don't even remember its name anymore.

Anyone has any comments, either for/against buying the expansion packs/Premium? Can anyone who has Close Quarters vouch for the playerbase and/or whether it's worth buying Premium?

P.S. Seems there's plenty of people playing B2K, but that expansion pack is a bit of a special case since it was bundled with BF3 preorder...

You just have to set the drive as raid and then either you need to specify the hard drives that run in raid or it detects the automatically once you set them to raid.

Silicel1

I did se tthe drives as RAID through the bios. There's no option to specify which hard drives run in RAID as far as I see.

The RAID utility during bootup has the following options:

Create RAID volue: Selecting will show a message saying "Not enough available space to create a volume"

Delete RAID volume: I don't want to do that...

Reset Disks to non-RAID: This will basically format the disk I choose.

Recovery Volume Options: Here I can select Enable Only Recovery Disk or Enable Only Master Disk. Selecting either will show the message" There are no Recovery volumes available".

Also, now if I restore the disk config in the bios to normal (IDE) instead of RAID, I get the same Windows bootup error about \Boot\BCD

Is it possible?

Woke up this morning, hit the mouse to take my computer out of suspend, and it wouldn't POST. Among the dumb things I thought of was clearing CMOS. The problem was eventually solved by just unplugging the power cable and plugging it back in, but the CMOS has already been cleared...

Question now is how to re-enable RAID 1. No hardware was changed other than CMOS clearing, no cables were swapped, everything is back as it was. I re-enabled RAID 1 through the BIOS, but now Windows won't bootup and suggests that I run a repair. Before I do that, I was wondering if there's anything else I should do.

My MOBO is Asrock P67 Extreme4 Gen3.

Yesterday it was $15 on steam, so I bought it on a semi-impulse. I kept hearing hype about it around the time it came out, and I watched the video review and liked what i saw.

But now, 2 hours and a bit into the game (I recently got the crossbow), I don't see what all the fuss was about. It's an FPS, plain and simple. I heard people call it borderlands+fallout... that's BS. There are no RPG elements, unless you count talking to NPCs and having a basic inventory system.

The graphics are 'okay' as long as you keep your distance. Every texture up close looks like a pre-2000 game. The vehicle physics are at the same level of mario kart, the environment physics are nonexistent (shooting a skull dangling from a rope does nothing beyond emitting a puff of dust).

On the upside: the sounds are good, conversations are with NPCs are lively, vehicle racing/shooting is entertatining, shooting and moving feels solid. By far the strongest point I can come up with for this game is the enemies' movements though... it's F'n brilliant - the way shooting someone in the shoulder make them spin around and stumble around for support, headshotting someone knocks them back flat on the ground, the way mutants perform crazy acrobatics while evading your shots... endlessly entertaining and satisfying. Also, the game runs smoothly; some rare texture pop-ins are the worst flaw I've seen.

But, overall, I'm not impressed.. It's an entertaining game, an okay game, but shallow. So, what was all the hype about? Am I talking to soon, perhaps? I'll keep playing of course, hopefully I'll be pleasantly surprised later into the game...

I built a new system at the start of October with an i5 2500k. I kept the stock fan and it was always cool and silent, until today. The noise I started noticing today sometimes sounds like squeaking noise, as if the fan shaft isn't rotating smoothly. Other times I hear what sounds like a rustling noise, as if the fan is hitting something very lightly with the tips of the blades as it's spinning.

I opened up the case and check that there are no wires in the way. Some dust is starting to build up but overall the fan and heatsink are still clear. This noise comes and goes, whether I'm gaming or just sitting idle. Turning the RPM down on the CPU fan helped reduece the noise when it does start up, but it's still there.

Any ideas? (Please don't jump to the usual 'omg u haz to buy teh cooler masterz hyper 212!!!!1111' suggestion... I like the stock fan, works well for me, just need to find out where this noise is coming from.)

I have a 850 watt PSU. Does this mean the computer is continuously sucking 850W out of the wall or does the consumption vary with the current load on the system?