not42

I recently updated something and found that media would no longer play on my XBOX 360 from my PC. I kept getting a No Entry sign when I hit play, despite the fact that I could browse the files fine.

On looking in the Event Log on the Vista PC, I could see these errors being logged:

Proximity detection failed due to unknown error ‘0×80004004′. The best proximity time detected was -1 milliseconds.

No web searches revealed anything, but I worked it out:

Go into Media Player and select Library/Media Sharing. It will tell you that you don’t have sharing enabled. This is either because the firewall is wrong, or the network type is wrong.

To fix the issue, ensure that your current network is a ‘Private’ network, not a public one. Also ensure that the ‘Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service’ is set as an exception in the firewall settings.

Doing this enabled the Media Player Sharing dialog to work well, and the error to vanish and media to play.

A while back I got a Dell Vostro 200 for around $399, including LCD monitor. Great value and makes a great desktop.

PC’s never go fast enough however, especially when doing lots of video editing, so I investigated whether it was possible to overclock it. Turns out the motherboard is a Dell-specific board made by Foxconn. The G33M02. Looking at the Foxconn G33M, it looks like they have software overclocking… but that doesn’t work with the board.

Looking deeper, it has the ICS 9LP505-2HGLF PLL generating the CPU clock. ICS kindly provided the datasheet, which shows that it is not programmable though.

Therefore using software, it is NOT possible to overclock a Dell Vostro 200. Looks like a faster processor is what is required for me. That or to make a ‘BSEL’ modification to fool the processor into running at a higher FSB etc. Think I’ll take the safe option, but the next question is just how fast a CPU will it take?

If only Dell would tell us…