Two computing questions

1) Is it okay to burn a disc while performing other cpu-intensive tasks? As in, ones that shouldn't affect anything disk-wise (thinking gzdoom with high-def textures, models etc that don't take long to load - or even playing a current game and just starting the burn once the level has loaded)

2) I don't know how anyone has managed to get networks to "just work" over the 15 years. I've had so many issues with this. In the XP days, I could only get two computers to see each other if they were using identical network cards. I invested in a router for windows 7 systems a while ago, but guess what? The whole "homegroup" system falls apart and computers see themselves over the network but never each other (actually that has been the problem since day one in xp for me)

The only way I've gotten networking running is by advanced sharing every drive, and actually having to create user accounts for EVERY computer I want to connect (e.g having user accounts that are the same name as each pc I want to be "seen" over the network).

Is there any networking solution where you just buy a router, connect patch cables, and windows just sees everything right from the start? I imagine that's how it's meant to be, but it never has been for me - and I consider myself quite adept when it comes to non-networking aspects of computers.

invictius said:

1) Is it okay to burn a disc while performing other cpu-intensive tasks? As in, ones that shouldn't affect anything disk-wise (thinking gzdoom with high-def textures, models etc that don't take long to load - or even playing a current game and just starting the burn once the level has loaded)

As long as you don't use an excessively high writing speed -anything 16x and below for CDs, 4x and below for DVDs) you should be fine, provided that your drivers are stable and can work in DMA mode without hiccups.

invictius said:

Is there any networking solution where you just buy a router, connect patch cables, and windows just sees everything right from the start? I imagine that's how it's meant to be, but it never has been for me - and I consider myself quite adept when it comes to non-networking aspects of computers.

The closest you can come to that is turning on simple sharing, and putting all computers on the same network subdomain, e.g. 192.168.2.x, which most routers (those that have their own DHCP servers, at least) will do by default anyway.

You might have to type in the IP address or the name of a computer into each other to get them to "see" each other for the first time, though. You might want to make sure the network crawling and discovery service is on, if you want every possible automation.

If your computers can't see each other on your LAN, you probably have Windows Firewall enabled and it is blocking the ports used for WINS, SMB, and WMI. Either turn off your firewalls and depend on your main router for protection (not sure if a good idea these days), or research and make sure those ports are allowed for incoming and outgoing traffic on all machines.

invictius said:

1) Is it okay to burn a disc while performing other cpu-intensive tasks?

Meh - in the bad old days before buffer underrun protection, even having the screensaver kick in could be enough to spike a burn. Modern optical drives are far more tolerant, though it wouldn't hurt to play safe and raise the priority of your burning software in Windows Task Manager.