After some tests I have found that the BIOS is broken.  I have tried to make sure it is the BIOS that's broken. And after unplugging everything unnecessary the same result remains.  And now I would like to replace the broken motherboard with a new one without a direct reinstallation of the operative system. Is this possible?  On the hard drive windows 8.1 is installed and on the motherboard a AMD chip is found.  Is the installation on the hard drive possible to use again? Can the motherboard be upgraded without a reinstallation beeing necessarily?
I am upgrading my PC, but I'm sticking to my old HDD and gfx card. I would like to avoid reinstalling Win 8. Is this possible? Or, at least, is it possible to use Windows 8's refresh pc option?  UPDATE  It worked like a charm. Windows acted as if it was the first boot and displayed the "Getting devices ready %  " progress bar. I am not sure if this proves you can do it in every scenario, but my new gear is relatively modern (some gigabyte board with two PCIe 3.0 slots and USB 3.0 support + i5), so I guess we can agree the reinstall is unnecessary in most cases.
One word/phrase to describe the reaction when you eat a very spicy-hot food I've read the discussion here about .  I've also read this one: .  But I did not find any word or phrase that describes the reaction someone has when eating a too spicy-hot food. You know, they tend to sweat, catch their breath, and even sometimes shed tears; due to the spiciness of the food.  So my questions:        What do you say to describe the reaction someone has when being excitedly "suffered" by a very spicy-hot food? In Indonesian, we would call it kepedasan.   What do you say when you get that thing [the answer to question 1] with you, other than the list I enclose below:                Oh, spicy!     My God, it's spicy-hot!                      Is that it? How do I properly install a system app given its .apk? I removed a system app (com.android.mms) and I have the .apk needed to restore it, however it won't install through the standard channels (running the .apk gives me "application not installed"). What's the proper way to install a system app's .apk? What is the difference between Newtonian and Lagrangian mechanics in a nutshell? What is Lagrangian mechanics, and what's the difference compared to Newtonian mechanics? I'm a mathematician/computer scientist, not a physicist, so I'm kind of looking for something like the explanation of the Lagrangian formulation of mechanics you'd give to someone who just finished a semester of college physics.  Things I'm hoping to have explained to me:   What's the overall difference in layman's terms? From what I've read so far, it sounds like Newtonian mechanics takes a more local "cause-and-effect"/"apply a force, get a reaction" view, while Lagrangian mechanics takes a more global "minimize this quantity" view. Or, to put it more axiomatically, Newtonian mechanics starts with Newton's three laws of motion, while Lagrangian mechanics starts with the Principle of Least Action. How do the approaches differ mathematically/when you're trying to solve a problem? Kind of similar to above, I'm guessing that Newtonian solutions start with drawing a bunch of force vectors, while Lagrangian solutions start with defining some function (calculating the Lagrangian...?) you want to minimize, but I really have no idea. What are the pros/cons of each approach? What questions are more naturally solved in each? For example, I believe Fermat's Principle of Least Time is something that's very naturally explained in Lagrangian mechanics ("minimize the time it takes to get between these two points"), but more difficult to explain in Newtonian mechanics since it requires knowing your endpoint. Under what circumstances will a passive HDMI-to-VGA adapter work? I have bought a no-brand, passive HDMI Male to VGA Female adapter, to link up a PC with a more dated monitor. It did not work.  After doing some reading, I have learned that buying such an adapter is often discouraged because in many cases it will not convert the signal from Digital to Analog, or the Motherboard/CPU on a specific computer might not be compatible with that particular adapter.   So my question is: seeing how there are so many of these passive adapters on the market, are there circumstances under which they actually do suffice to connect an HDMI output to a VGA input? Or are they generally just a rip-off?  Example of the kind of adapter I bought: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages After upgrading from 10.04 to 12.04 I am trying to install different packages.  For instance ia32-libs and skype (4.0).  When trying to install these, I am getting the 'Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages' error message.   Output of commands:  sudo apt-get install -f Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree        Reading state information... Done 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.   After running this:  sudo dpkg --configure -a foo@foo:~$ sudo apt-get install -f Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree        Reading state information... Done 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded. What is the opposite of "parallel" in architecture? The two towers of the Verrazano Bridge are not parallel: they are slightly [???] to account for the curvature of the earth.    What is that word? How to create csv files in controller method from list I want to create csv files from lists and send an email attaching them, how to do that in a controller method? Layers with different directional drop shadows in Photoshop I am wondering how to have 2 different directional drop shadows in the one file with Photoshop. e.g. 2 different type layers — one has a drop shadow at 90 degrees, the other at -45 degrees.  Currently it seems Photoshop only lets me have 1 universal direction for the whole file, which I find really pointless.   I know how to apply different drop shadows and merge down layers to achieve the same thing, but its tedious and not exactly streamlined for making future changes to that layer.  How is this achieved? Determine the Galois group of $\mathbb{Q}(\sqrt{a+b\sqrt{d}})$ Suppose $L=\mathbb{Q}(\sqrt{a+b\sqrt{d}})$,($d$ and $a+b\sqrt{d}$ are square free algebraic integers) when is $L/\mathbb{Q}$ a normal extension? When does $Aut(L/\mathbb{Q})=\mathbb{Z}/4\mathbb{Z}$ or $Aut(L/\mathbb{Q})=\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z}\times \mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z}$? I have connected speakers to the back panel of my computer at work and I would like to have them always enabled (I can switch them off on the speaker casing). However when I connect headphones on the front panel system automatically says that the rear output is unplugged.  I found a solution to disable auto detection with Alsamixer and it works almost ok except the fact that after system restart I need to reconfigure the settings again... How can I set this once and forget about it? Breaking a hard-link in-place? I am keeping my dotfiles under version control and the script deploying them creates hard links. I also use etckeeper to put my /etc under version control. Recently I have gotten warnings like this:  warning: hard-linked files could cause problems with bzr   A simple copy (cp filename.ext filename.ext) will not work:  cp: `filename.ext' and `filename.ext' are the same file   Renaming/moving a file - except across volumes - also doesn't break the hard-link.  So my question is: is there a way to break a hard-link to a file without actually having to know where the other hard-link/s to that file is/are? Do commuting matrices share the same eigenvectors? In one of my exams I'm asked to prove the following      Suppose $A,B\in \mathbb R^{n\times n}$, and $AB=BA$, then $A,B$ share the same eigenvectors.    My attempt is let $\xi$ be an eigenvector corresponding to $\lambda$ of $A$, then $A\xi=\lambda\xi$, then I want to show $\xi$ is also some eigenvector of $B$ but I get stuck. So, my friend just implemented a bunch of new mods into his SMP server, which meant a host of new commands to play with.  I thought I'd give the /mobspawn command a few goes, and see what I could achieve.  So I headed off to the server's jail (I forget why this particular location compelled me), and gave it a few spins.    I seem to have made a bit of an error in judgement.     What can I do to get rid of this mess?  Is there a command or some other technique I can use to clear out any mobs in my immediate vicinity? How do injuries work with Polyjuice Potion? We know that if you (using Polyjuice), take the form of someone who had been injured, you assume that injured form (e.g. Barty/Moody). If you are injured, presumably you would be uninjured while under Polyjuice. My question is, is this in real-time? That is, if you take a Polyjuice, and while you're still under its effects, the person being transformed into gets injured (or even dies), will that injury be transferred onto you? And conversely, if you get injured while in someone else's body, will that transfer over to your real body after the Polyjuice wears off, will it disappear, or will it go to the person you turned into? Open a direct file on the hard drive from Firefox (file:///) I have a small PHP system I created for myself. This system contains a few .doc and .docx file documents. I want to be able to open them directly from the browser without downloading them.  I created a link: &lt;a href="file:///c:/mysite/myfile.docx"&gt;myfile&lt;/a&gt;. But Firefox does not open the link. href="http://localhost/myfile.docx" works fine - it offers me to download the file.  Any ideas on how I can do it? Do I need to change something in the Firefox options or security settings? If $a_1, a_2, ..., a_n$ is a reduced residue system $\mod p$ and $a_1', a_2', ..., a_n'$ is another reduced residue system $\mod p$ then $a_1 a_1', a_2 a_2', ..., a_n a_n'$  is not a reduced modulo system $\mod p$.  Not able to show a counter to it. Help Needed. If GCD $(a_1,\ldots, a_n)=1$ then there's a matrix in $SL_n(\mathbb{Z})$ with first row $(a_1,\ldots, a_n)$ Let $n \geq 2$. Let $a_1, a_2, \ldots, a_n$ be $n$ integers such that $\gcd\left(a_1, a_2, \ldots, a_n\right) = 1$. Prove that there exists a matrix in $\operatorname{SL}_n\left(\mathbb{Z}\right)$ whose first row is $\left(a_1, a_2, \ldots, a_n\right)$.   Since the gcd of the integers $a_1,\ldots, a_n$ is $1$, there exists weights $x_i \in \mathbb{Z}$ such that $a_1x_1+\cdots+ a_nx_n=1$. My two ideas are (a) to brute force construct an $n\times n$ matrix with first row $a_1,\ldots ,a_n$ and to construct the remaining rows such that the determinant is $\sum a_ix_i=1$ or (b) to use induction.  (a) (Constructive) This is tedious since once I find a way to construct the remaining $n-1$ rows to ensure that $a_1x_1$ appears in the determinant, I am not sure how to modify these $n-1$ rows to ensure  that only the terms $a_ix_i$ appear in the cofactor expansion. If such a matrix exists, I'd like to see it.  (ii) (Non-constructive) If I proceed by induction then the base case $n=2$ is settled since I can choose the 2nd row to be $-x_2, x_1$ so that the determinant is $a_1x_1-a_2(-x_2)=1$. However, I'm not sure how to use the inductive hypothesis to show that if I can construct such an $n\times n$-matrix then I can construct an $\left(n+1\right) \times \left(n+1\right)$-matrix with the desired property. In particular, if the gcd $(a_1,\ldots ,a_{n+1})$ is $1$, it is not necesarry that the gcd of any $n$ of these terms is $1$, so induction may not even apply here.  How can I construct such a matrix or prove that one exists (without necessarily constructing it)? Python argparse: default value or specified value What does // mean in a path? How do I obtain the ebony blade and how do I power it up? The ebony blade is a katana like two handed weapon in Skyrim.  Its apparently associated with one of the daedric quests, but which one, and how do I start it?  Also, once I obtain it, how do I power it up?