VMware Player - a Windows 8 Demo

Indianatone said:

Thank you for the tutorials including the one on Zorin. I have been using VMware products for years and have many virtual machines. I find it great that as you have a backup of the VM if disater strikes you are backup and running instantly. You can keep the programs & games that need the full resources of the system on the host OS and run everything else virtually.
Keep up the good work and like the others have said nice to put a voice to the name.

Thanks for the nice comments. It is with the voice that I have problems right now. My system does not do proper voice recording any more. I always have to up the dBs by running the videos thru Format Factory. I think it is a hardware problem because it occurs with different recording programs and on different operating systems. Have to get in touch with Dell because the system is still under warrenty.

Because I have a hearing problem I had my system set up in a fashion the the sound in your videos worked just fine.
Great video, thank you very much Wolfgang!!

Layback Bear said:

Because I have a hearing problem I had my system set up in a fashion the the sound in your videos worked just fine.
Great video, thank you very much Wolfgang!!

Thank you. I am still chasing that audio (recording) problem in my system. I now think it is a hardware problem. Have to get with Dell - the system is still under warrenty.

I see we have completely different equipment so I don't think I could correctly give you any advice on your sound problem. Wish I could.

I appreciate the thought. This system is an XPS 8300. What's in my profile is pretty useless because I have 6 systems and you never know which one I am using. I will have to unravel that one myself. In the interim I can always boost the dBs.

Wolfgang, this may be a long shot. Perhaps your XPS8300 was part of the Intel Sandy Bridge problem especially if you purchased it after January 9th, 2011. Even if it is close either way, I'd check into it.

By now some of you may have heard that Intel representatives announced the discovery of a potential issue in one of the companion chipsets to the Intel® 2nd Generation Core™ processors, code named “Sandy Bridge.” Because Intel is committed to providing our customers products of the highest quality, we have proactively identified the affected part, stopped shipment of the product, and have begun to manufacture a new version of the support chip which will resolve this issue.

This issue only affects the Intel® 2nd Generation Core™ i5 and Core™ i7 quad core based systems that have been shipping since January 9th, 2011. If you believe your PC may contain the affected part please follow the instructions below.

Source: Intel Chipset With Potential Problem – What To Do (UPDATED) | Technology@Intel

If you have an Intel® 6 Series Express Chipset based system and you are experiencing an issue with SATA devices, such as hard disk drives, solid-state drives, DVD players, or Blue-ray* players, on ports 2–5, please contact your point of purchase to determine next steps.

To determine if you have one of the impacted Intel® 6 Series chipsets in your system, follow these steps.

Source, at the bottom of above link, and here: Intel® 6 Series Chipset — Chipset circuit design issue identified

There is a lot more technical information at this link, including, but not limited to: Intel® 6 Series Chipset Boards — Identifying the SATA ports on your desktop board

Wouldn't hurt to look....Nothing ventured, Nothing gained...

Thanks Steve. I'll work thru that and see whether it yields anything.

Update: I have this series i7. But they say that it only effects Sata operations where I have no problem. Could not find anything regarding audio.

Steve probably has a better answer. But the way I read it, there seems to be a batch of Sandy Bridge CPUs that were shipped during a certain period which were effected. One of the links tells you how to check whether you have such a CPU.