Posts by TallCool1

I'm trying to establish a video link with my son. We're both on ntl world broadband and have XP professional.
Using netmeeting I can see him, he can't see me only my flower icon.
I can't hear him but he can hear me. Any tips?

It may have to do with your firewall/security settings. You can also try the Yahoo! Instant Messenger and see if it works for you -- that has video chat, as well.

I just replace my secondary hard drive on my 1700 Mhz computer. I also added another 512 Mb of PC 2100 DDR SDRAM. I have spent the last 2 days trying to get things to work and now XP starts to load and hangs. After checking with the Microsoft Knowledge base, they seem to think that it is hardware related. Anyone know if there is a diagonostic software that runs in DOS mode. I downloaded a RAM tester from Microsoft. Naturally it does not run in DOS mode. I have already tried to repair XP and then totally reformatted and reinstalled the operating system. Please help.

A good RAM test that runs from a boot floppy or CD is MemTest86. It's available in both floppy-bootable and CD-bootable versions.

Did your old secondary drive fail, or did you just want to swap it out for a bigger one? There's a utility available that allows a user to make the new drive's serial number match the old one. A serial number mismatch sometimes causes problems, though it's more likely to trigger a forced XP reactivation than a crash -- but it's Windows, so anything is possible...

Are there single cd's available for knoppix cd's in the market?
http://www.nondos.com/frames/download_knoppix.html

how can i download knoppix from there manually and then get a cd...u wil notice that the knoppix there is more than 850 mb so which means I better get a floppy but how can I use the blank floppy.

You mean blank CD-R, right? Actually, the ISO image file is about 700 MB, hence my comment about "broadband is good", but there are alternatives: http://www.Knoppix.net has both download links and purchase links. There are Knoppix mirrors all over the world, but you can also buy disks for $5 or even less on-line. You may also be able to buy them locally -- find a local Linux user group (LUG) via GLUE and ask if they will sell you one. Odds on, they will -- they might even give you one free or cheap. I have probably distributed nearly a hundred CDs this way myself to interested newbies.

Need help using win me had virus, cleaned virus now on startup files missing and cannot open programs. Can I restore files by reloading me or can I get files from somewhere. Need to fix without losing any drivers or data because cannot open programs to backup data.

Is your Win ME CD full or upgrade? You can do a full in-place reinstall with no loss of data, but the procedure varies slightly.

I have Roxio Easy CD Creator 5 and I've used it for a few months now without any problems. Today i tried to burn a cd and a program error box popped up. It said, "CREAT50.exe has generated errors and will be closed by Windows. You will need to restart the program. An error log is being created." and i clicked ok. I restarted my computer and tried to burn the cd again on a new blank disk and this error came up again. What is causing it and how do i fix it?

Start by finding the error log and reading its contents. Post them so we can help.

This hold me back in relation to hijackthis , I am not confident it's realiable , as it found items it was no longer there.I thank you anyway for your attention.

Oh, they are still there, all right. They lurk anywhere they can -- the registry, of course, but also in the IE temp-file cache. For severe infestations, read this and follow the instructions: Microsoft's Really Hidden Files. The hijackers know this stuff, you should too.

I am a complete noobie. I don't know anything about Linux. Can someone please give me some tutorials?

There are several ways to go about this.

I can't rcommend Red Hat (now Fedora, for all practical end-user purposes) or Mandrake for beginners, though Mandrake has a live-CD version. A newbie should not be forced to install Linux just to try it out. The best way to start is with a CD-bootable Linux, if you have enough memory (128 MB or more. "More" is better :)). That way, you can experiment in a "sandbox" until you feel comfortable enough to install Linux as a dual-boot (or triple-boot) system.

The best known Live Linux-on-CD distributions are Knoppix and an up-and comer, Mepis. These run entirely from CD but can also be used as Linux install discs. They are both based on Debian, one of the leading free distros and KDE, the K Desktop Environment. Lindows and Xandros are both also based on Debian and KDE.

The leading alternate GUI (graphical user interface) under Linux is GNOME, the GNU Object Modeling Environment, which has its own live CD, Gnoppix.

There are a number of Linux portals available for beginners to get information. These include YoLinux, Linux.org, and Linux.com. Once you feel more comfortable with Linux and want to dig deeper, check out the Linux Documentation …

Tried the safe mode and it still loads with this scrambled mess where most of the screen is black but can see a few recognizable items. But not enough to make any opening of video settings etc.

It sounds like you need a new monitor. Try borrowing one as a cross-check. Running in Safe Mode, you should always see a proper, if lo-res display. Anything else is likely the monitor (though it could be the video card). That series of Acers is prone to bad solder connections, among other things.

Ok i finally bought a 9600XT and new mobo and put it in, now on all my games the game either hangs or freezes making me restart my pc.
Could this be because my pc is getting too warm because when I touch the case the case is pretty warm. Or is it something else
Im running a 250watt power supply

That's likely your problem -- too small a power supply for the system. If you are concerned about temperatures, download something like CPUCool from http://www.podien.de or Motherboard Monitor from http://mbm.livewiredev.com to check them.

Make sure that all your fans are working, including the CPU cooler...

I'm having the same problem with IE its saying the page cannot be displayed.

The follwing are hijackers and troublemakers: New.net, jbeakuoo.exe, searchxl.com, and mysearchnow.com
You need to use Hijack This to remove those. Go to their forum and post this list for further help.

I have xp professional installed on computer (HP). It looks like it is booting a corrupted video dll file or something as the windows xp professional logo comes on during boot, then the screen goes haywire. I can see the desktop load but it is shows about 20 desktops with no way of doing anything but crying...

Your video scan rate is not matching your monitor's capabilities. Start by going into Safe Mode. Once in Safe Mode, right-click on the desktop. Go to Properties -> Settings and set the screen resolution to 800 x 600, then go to the button Advanced -> Monitors and select your monitor from the list. This will limit the modes to those that your Acer can handle.

Go to http://www.EntechTaiwan.com and download MultiRes. This will allow you to change your resolution and refresh rates on-the-fly. You want your refresh rates as high as your monitor will allow -- at least 75 Hz, though 85 Hz is better.

Whenever I shut down my computer, it immediately starts back up again. I just built this computer a while ago, and it has done this ever since. I cannot figure it out; I have tried everything.
Running WinXP home SP1 (bleh), on syntax sis s648 mobo, P4 3.06, Radeon 9200se 128mb, maxtor 120gb, etc.

There's a fix for this; search on the Microsoft website. What's happening is that Windows is crashing while shutting down -- and the default action under XP is to reboot on a crash. This can be changed, and it may help in diagnosis.

The likely problem is a bad driver not "letting go" properly at shutdown. For starters, check to make sure all drivers are up-to-date.

I am not that tech/computer savvy------However, I have a Toshiba Tecra 510CDT, 133 mhz laptop. I want to know if the following hard drive is compatible. (I can get it free, if it is): TOSHIBA HARD DRIVE FOR LAPTOP...4 GIG....MK4313MAT....HDD2141. Very thin..measures about 3/8".

Look at the Toshiba user manual. Some laptops do not have a provision for changing the hard drive type or capacity. Check the BIOS and see if there is a drive selection page.

You should be able to download the book in PDF from Toshiba.

The determining size (form factor) of a hard drive is its width. Most laptops use 2.5" drives, most desktops 3.5" drives.

I really would like to overclock, but whenever i try increasing the multiplier or the mhz the machine refuses to boot :(

Make sure that the heatsink is right and on correctly. Use CPUCool to check the temperature at normal speeds. With that board, you should be able to bump the front-side bus speed up to about 180 MHz or more without problems. That puts the PCI bus at about 37-38 MHz; occasionally (but rarely), a PCI card will choke when overclocked that high. What brand of RAM? What PCI cards, if any?

Is there somthing wrong with my new power supply? Or do i have to edit somthing in bio's?

It's your power supply. Nothing in the BIOS would have any effect on this problem. It sounds like the PS is going into shutdown. Probably: the internal PS fan is not turning.

What's the difference between co-operative multitasking and preemptive multitasking?

Cooperative multitasking is the environment in which programs hand off system control from one to the next. The worst problem with this is that if a program crashes, hangs, or is poorly written the entire system can crash or hang up with an exception error, another is that some programs are more cooperative and/or CPU intensive than others, leading to choppy sound, etc.

Preemptive multitasking is an environment in which task switching is controlled by the kernel, not the progams. In theory, this means less crashing, since the kernel can "switch away" from a misbehaving task -- but in practice (especially since Win9x is a mixture of 16- and 32-bit underpinnings) this is partly where BSoDs (Blue Screens of Death) come from. Win NT/XP is less prone to this, since the 16-bit parts of the code base are not present.

More detail is off-topic for this thread, but there's more on the Win32 API here: http://www.iseran.com/Win32/FAQ/faq.htm
and I am in the process of writing an essay called Windows Names and Versions which I will post to my site soon (before the first of the year -- it's almost done) along with most of my other writings.

Hi. I'm running an Athlon 2400+ with 512 DDR ram with Windows XP Pro. However, I've noticed that whenever I begin to burn a CD, or simulate a burning, my CPU usage shoots up to 100%. As you can imagine, my computer becomes pretty much unusable when this happens so I have to let it burn and not use my PC for a while.

That's a classic symptom of the DMA settings being incorrect. Under NT 5.x. it's automatic -- but the fact that the problem happened under Win 2000 and XP indicates that a BIOS setting may be at fault.

It's usually under Integrated Peripherals. Make sure it's set to DMA or Auto, not PIO. This would not show as an error or appear on the process list, but would swamp the CPU while burning, and during some reads.

Since Windows is so dependent upon cooperative multitasking (as opposed to preemptive multitasking), the fewer processes contending for CPU resources, the better.

Whoops, my bad. Cog-skip moment. Win32 does, in fact, do preemptive multitasking since NT. It's 16-bit Windows stuff that does cooperative multitasking, meaning that Win9x is a mixed bag at best, and that's why running 16-bit executables in an NT environment can sometimes cause problems -- and one of the reasons XP was so late.

The rest of my comments still hold true, however. See http://freewebhosting.hostdepartment.com/k/kadaitcha/compatibility.html

Hello, Is there any way to change or erase the date last accessed info on a file?

Look for a "touch" command that will work on NTFS. I know it exists.

the site you recomended me gave me the instructions to put this here and that you'd know which to delete, so here they are...

MyWebSearch and possibly other spyware is there, probably downloaded with Smiley Central. That's what stands out.

I've got svchost taking 100% CPU (it's the RPC service) on my Windows XP Pro. I don't have any virus (did a full scan using F-Secure Anti Virus 2004) and it didn't find any virus.

You also might want to go to http://www.GRC.com and run Shoot the Messenger to explicitly turn off RPC. The MS patches don't really turn it off; the Blaster worm and Messenger spam are blocked, but other processes can still access RPC.

ooh i got it fixed thankx a lot for the help.I'm using this built-in card but still I don't notice my process going slow !?

Sound quality, for the most part, is not the issue. My point was that for the small increment in price, you get a good boost in performance. The less you burden the CPU, the better the performance. Since Windows is so dependent upon cooperative multitasking (as opposed to preemptive multitasking)*, the fewer processes contending for CPU resources, the better. This would be most noticed with gaming, of course, but there are a surprising number of cases where this comes in to play.

For example, you are playing an MP3 and a system sound chimes. Now, in addition to decompressing and decoding the music file on-the-fly from the hard drive and doing the digital-to-analog conversion and driving the output, the CPU has to do the same thing with a WAV file. You may (or may not) hear a glitch, but think about the resources being diverted from other tasks -- something's got to give. Even if, on average, AC '97 only takes 2% of the CPU time (for example), its peak load may be as high as 20% or more.

I am against WinModems for the same reason -- they are solely for the manufacturers' benefit, not yours. The price differential is minimal when you look at the overall cost of the system, but the performance gains are noticeable and worthwhile.

* Not …

I ran the realtek setup now there's something called AVRACK in my desktop which is something like a media player.Tried running a movie from there the video comes no audio error message says no audio hardware detected.I went to device manager and now there's no exclamation mark in ac97.still,no sound.should I uninstall something and reinstall again ?

Hmmm... The manual said Realtek ALC655 Codec, so that should work, unless there's more than one Realtek codec driver on the disc... make sure that the mute function isn't active and that the volume is turned up, as well.

can anyone explain exactly what's a backlight?

A liquid crystal display (LCD) panel produces no light of its own, so it has to have a light source to be visible. You can either have a display that uses ambient light (reflective, for example the original GameBoy) or one that is lit from behind (transmissive, like most laptops and cell phones). Lit from behind, hence "backlight." Most current laptops and desktop LCDs use fluorescent lamps running on a relatively high voltage using a high-frequency switching inverter; the DC supply is fed to an oscillator which in turn feeds a transformer to drive the lamp tube.

A flourescent lamp has an advantage over LEDs in efficiency and over an electroluminescent (EL) light source in color. Also, a display-sized white EL source is difficult and expensive to fabricate, which is why the tube lamp is still the most-used light source 15+ years after the introduction of the laptop. LEDs are making inroads, though. As ultraviolet LEDs become cheaper, brighter, and more efficient, they will even replace light bulbs in our homes, but may never fully replace fluorescent tubes in laptops.

I tried running the driver cd delivered along with the new motherboard but in the audio folder , there are three choices like ADI, SIGMATEL, REALTEK..which one should I choose? My soundcard was built-in.not willing to buy a blaster.

AC '97 is not a sound card; it's software. As I noted in my last message, AC '97 sound is like buying a Mercedes and tying a 50-pound lead weight to the back bumper, but to each his own...

According to the manual, it'a a Realtek codec.

I checked my device manager.There's an exclamation mark in yellow for " C-Media AC97 Audio Device.

Your old board had AC '97 (Audio Codec '97) sound. So does your new board; unfortunately, they use 2 different codecs and drivers, hence the conflict. No one should ever use AC '97 if they can avoid it.

My recommendation, as always in a case like this, is to get a SoundBlaster Live! (or better) sound card. AC '97 is software-based sound, in other words: the CPU does all the work. Even the fastest processor is dragged down by this.

You can purchase an OEM-version SB Live! for around $30-35 -- it's the best bang-for-the-buck upgrade you can do for your system.

Hi, I got this mnotherboard posted and then went in the cmos/bios settings to set it up. I then saved my changes and then the monitor won't display a signal. Have tried the gfx card in another computer and its fine. I've cleared cmos also. Please help (Xmas pressie)

Are you getting any beep codes or any other indications that the system is starting up (such as the keyboard lights flashing)?

i found this...its interesting
http://www.softwaretipsandtricks.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=6572

I'm glad that you were able to solve your own problem; thanks for sharing. It's good (and useful) when people post follow-ups.

I am working with a PC based (win98) digital video recorder. To save a video clip it uses Direct CD. It burns an AVI file to a CD without any problem and can be read on another PC. When the CD is put in a Mac, it is not recognized. The Mac sees the CD as being blank.

As you have found, Direct CD is not very compatible, especially older versions. This is because it uses drag-and-drop packet writing, which is not "true" ISO 9660. Use the regular or "classic" CD Creator in track-at-once (TAO) mode instead.

you should probally have one if you have windows xp pro

Actually, no. Most users only get a recovery CD, not a full OS CD. Besides, recovery is useless (in this case) -- the fix is editing the Registry, as I said before, and nothing else.

the old model was GA 8IE 2004 -- don't know the new one.

Run AIDA32 to find the model number and report.

Recently I changed my motherboard from gigabye to a newer model of gigabyte brand.since then I have'nt been able to listen to any type of audio from wmd 9.0 but the video comes allright.went to device manager everything is okay but the error message says that either i dont have any soundcard installed or it's being used by another program. My soundcard was built-in.

Motherboard model numbers would help (old and new), so we can tell whether it's a sound chip or AC '97 sound on board. Did you carry over your Windows install from the earlier MB, or install fresh? What version of Windows are you running?

Problem: Every time we open a program, word, excel, paint, etc. we select "look in" to pick a folder and it takes 45 sec in order for the computer to eventualy show us the list. Once it gets there, we have no problem. But you know what happens when people are impatient... things get worse. Is there anyone out there who can give me an explanation?

It's looking out on the network for the directories to load, I think. I don't know how to "force" local-only access in this case.

Well I got a laptop, one of thoses old 366mhz for travel only, and I got this problem which is quite annoying after about 5-10 mins the screen turns black, and it doesnt seem to be the screen saver since its at 60min(60minutes needs to be past for the screensaver starts)

This is not a screensaver issue -- it's a backlight issue. A screensaver does not affect the backlight and vice versa. Check the HPQ FAQs for backlight or Google it. It could be in the BIOS. There is nothing for this explicitly in Windows.

I can't boot off a floppy to get into dos or anything

Go into the BIOS and turn off Quick Boot. Perhaps the more verbose mode will give you more information. Try a MemTest86 floppy from http://MemTest86.com

It could also be something as simple as a DIMM being loose in its socket. Gently try to rock the sticks side-to-side in their sockets. If they wiggle at all, unlatch the loose one and try to reinsert it into its socket more securely. This is a not-uncommon problem.

I don't know if this is true or not anymore, but I remember reading somewhere that, if you can afford it, it's a good idea to get a CD-ROM/DVD-ROM drive in addition to your CD-RW/DVD-RW drive.

That's why I said that anything more than two drives was overkill...

Is there any way to make a game think my graphics card supports T and L (Texture and Lighting) even though it doesn't?

The short answer, NO. It would require more power to emulate T & L on a card that did not support it natively than such a card would have available in the first place.

I recently got a virus and cleaned it up. Some files were deleted. Now windows won't load. I get an error code 35. An application can 't load because it can't find the winsrv file.

I answered this in another thread earlier today. There is a Trojan that uses a server file by the name of winserv.exe. When you remove that Trojan, the Windows Registry may not get updated properly. That Registry reference is calling a file that no longer exists, hence the error.

It may be necessary to manually edit the Registry. Reference:
http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/backdoor.imiserv.html

hello when i sign into my msn it says this
"WE ARE SORRY WE COULDNT SIGN YOU IN BECAUSE THE SIGN IN NAME OR PASSWORD IS INCORRECT OR DOESN'T EXIST"
what does this mean I know that I have the right password and sign in name. I went to sign in one day and that came up..i dont know if you can help me or tell me what to do.

What version of Messenger are you running? There's been some changes to the service and old versions don't work anymore. Current is v6.1 and must be used. Either that or GAIM from http://GAIM.SourceForge.net, which is a multi-network client.

Is there anyway, that I can copy data from this computer's hard disk to another hard disk ?

Knoppix can do this, no problem, but NTFS is read-only under Linux. You can copy from NTFS to a vFAT partition, bypassing the password problem altogether.

I have a motherboard marked with the model number W6LXA-0. I went to lots of search engines and typed that in but nothing came up. There are also a few different names on it (SMC, PhaseLink, TMF, Intel and American megatrends) does anyone know anything about this board or where I could get info on it? This board also has an Award bios copyright 1997 serial number: 104962117

Assuming that it uses a Slot 1 Pentium II processor, it's probably an Intel board with the LX chipset. It was the predecessor to the BX chipset. The LX supports 66 MHz SDRAM and 2 USB ports, along with a 1x AGP slot. This series of boards was commonly used in Gateway computers and tops out at (about) a 400 MHz processor due to its 66 MHz front-side bus.

I am also running the free version of ZoneAlarm 3.7.202!

The latest free version of ZoneAlarm Free is 4.5.580 (just released). You should upgrade...

ok if the mobo only has connectors for 4 IDE drives is there a way that i can add a dvd-rom,dvd-burner,and a cd-rw. plus two hdd all at once?

There are add-in PCI boards that can provide additional IDE ports -- but remember, a DVD-burner can burn CD-Rs and CD-RWs as well as playing DVDs, so anything more than a DVD +/- burner plus a DVD-ROM drive is overkill. Even the DVD-ROM is optional, since drive-to-drive copy is rarely a good idea.

I keep getting a DRWIN error...anyone know what this is?

The only reference I have found on this is related to Sony CD burners and their bundled software. What CD burner do you have and what are you using to record CDs?

Hi there,
I have worrying problem. Whenever I power on my machine, a light blue screen appears before loading windows. It then requests scan disk within a specified period but also requests that I press any key to load without scan disk.

I promised that I would post when I found the cause of this. I have found it: a corrupted Windows Registry.

This can be easily confirmed by booting into Safe Mode. After running ChkDsk and booting fully into Safe Mode, reboot. If ChkDsk does not run on the next boot, the Registry problem is confirmed.

In my case, the WinXP install with problems was bootleg. I backed up the data and did an install-from-scratch with an OEM copy of WinXP Pro ($130 on eBay). The customer is happy; she didn't know her original XP Pro was illegal in the first place.

I used this Microsoft article for reference: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=316506

Actually No, the UDMA/EIDE connection on most boards in the past 2 years actually enable devices of different "speeds" to connected on the same IDE Channel without loss!

Oops... upon further checking, you are absolutely correct -- and I stand corrected. Thanks. One learns something new...

Kay I just changed DMA settings on the Primary IDE channel (houses BootDrive and Plextor). Device0 was set to PIO Olny, while Device1 was set to DMA. Device0 should be the hard drive though!?!? How would that affect anything? I'm not sure how the whole DMA thing works, in fact I thought the nForce2 chipsets did not support DMA?

All modern chipsets, including nForce, support DMA. Every modern IDE device should be set for DMA. PIO modes are vastly more CPU-intensive, as you have discovered; "programmed I/O" versus "direct memory access" -- get it?

Another important note: NEVER put a CD/DVD drive on the same IDE channel as a hard drive if it can be avoided. CD drives only support UDMA 33, and the bus access is only as fast as the slowest device -- so your whiz-bang UDMA 133 hard drive has just had 75% of its speed shaved off. The other reason is that since the bandwidth is shared between devices on each channel it will slow things down somewhat. Reserve the primary channel for main hard drives and the secondary channel for removable-media devices or backup hard drives where slow access is acceptable.

Could windows be stepping it back to prevent overheating of processor. I shut it down for about a half hour and upon reboot it was reading 2GHZ. What is the normal operating temp range for a processor.

Try CPUCool from http://www.podien.de -- it's the Swiss Army knife of CPU tools (uncrippled shareware, and a bargain at $15). In this case, it's the thermal-monitor function we need. A CPU should run at 50 C or less; 55 is a problem and 60 is critical. The hotter a processor runs, the shorter its lifespan.

Motherboard Monitor from http://mbm.livewiredev.com would also work, but it might be overkill in this case as it requires more effort to set up.

Windows does not normally do throttling, but it's possible that it might be in the BIOS or a side effect of the heat -- if that's the problem.

my girlfriends machine is a 1.3 pentium 3, 512 ram, xp home system. it work fine and then all of a sudden the scvhost will shoot up to 99% cpu usage and cause the system to slow to a crawl.

I just noticed that you seem to be running two antivirus programs -- Norton and RAV. This can cause no end of problems, including what you are experiencing.

Beta version only, scary

Not that scary -- I've been using EAC for over four years, and it's always been beta, but it's always been quite useful, and it keeps getting better and better.