Posts by Catweazle

More detail is needed please. We need to know what make and model of computer you have, what are its specifications/components if it's not a Brand name PC, what Windows version you're using.

We'd also like to know if this is a new problem or if it's happened since you got/built the PC. What you were doing on or to the PC in the period before you first noticed the behaviour would help as well.

What you are missing is the fact that you cannot move a drive with Windows XP installed on it to another system. It must be freshly installed with Windows XP so that it can be used. That's part of the copyright protection in place - Windows Product Activation.

Secondly, if the drive has been installed with Data Lifeguard Tools, that program should be used to undo the changes made to it, so it can be used again in a system which can recognise the full capacity of the drive.

Get the version of DLT which runs from floppy disk, I'd suggest, remove the drive overlay setup from it, partition and format it again then install Windows XP cleanly to it.

This usually relates to a conflict between video drivers and DirectDraw. Ensure you have the latest versions of DirectX and your Display driver installed.

Get the latest version of DirectX from Windows update.

Get the latest version of your display driver from:

* The system manufacturer website if it's a 'name brand' PC with onboard video
* The motherboard manufacturer website if it's a 'white box' or homebuilt PC with onboard video
* www.nvidia.com or www.ati.com if it's an NVidia or ATi display card.

I see no problem with providing that information either. The facility to do so is a documented feature of Windows.

To learn how to log in as 'administrator' see this article.

If people have sensitive and important data stored on their PCs, then setting a password is not sufficient protection, I'm afraid, and withholding information here about documented OS features and procedures is not going to help them!

The main consideration in this instance, however, is that of Privacy. That child may be 13 years old, but he still has a right to his own privacy. As a parent and grandparent myself, I'd accept that if there is reason for concern, checking a PC for signs of offensive or dangerous material may be warranted. I do NOT, on the other hand, think that there is justification for accessing a child's PC and reading things like private diaries, documents and other writings, or other similarly personal information and files.

Start - Programs - Accessories - system Tools - Disk Cleanup

Then, if you're really, really fussy about it, you can search for and delete the following. Windows will continue to work:

All files in \Windows\Temp which are dated earlier than the current date
*.- in the system drive root directory
*.1st in the sytem drive root directory (if you've backed up the registry)
~$.doc
*.bak
*.bmp on \WINDOWS (If you don't use Wallpepers)
*.CAB (If you have a Windows CD to add and remove Windows components from)
*.chk in the system drive root directory
*.fts
*.gid
*.log in the system drive root directory or in \WINDOWS
*.old (Unless they are files you've purposely renamed and you need again)
*.prv
*.shs
*.tmp
*.wbk

I wouldn't bother. In total, such files usually only take up a small portion of overall drive space, and only slow things down to a negligible extent. If you're getting cramped for space, add another drive!

Your sig is a part of your user profile, and when you change it the change is relected throughout all your contributions.

If you want to maintain thoughtful snippets and comments that you've made from time to time, so that people can read them again later, why not do so in a topic in the 'Lounge' section? Others can add their own snippets and thoughtful comments there also.

belikemike, I think you're expending mental energy over something that isn't worth worrying about.

Boot time is not directly the result of processor speed, and it is not directly the result of RAM speed. It may be impacted on quite noticably where one hard drive has faster data transfer speed than another, but primarily it is the result of differences in onboard components and installed cards etc in the system, together with the way Windows is configured. Network components, in particular, create delays when you compare one with another, and that includes Firewire as well as all the other facets of networking which Windows caters to. Ot doesn't even matter if your system isn't connected to a network really, the fact that it is there means that it is checked anyway.

Unless your system is taking several minutes to boot up, as even many quite new and powerful systems do, then it's simply not worth worrying about. The silliest thing to do, I believe, is to sit down at your PC, press the power button and then wait impatiently for it to load. Much better to turn it on on the way past to do something more productive, like pouring yourself a beverage!

In fact, my own systems don't even ever get turned off unless I'm leaving the premises. I wouldn't know HOW long it takes for them to boot :D

I'd personally choose an Antec NeoPower or an OCZ ModStream if I was to purchase a modular PSU, not one from a little known manufacturer. Antec and OCZ have a reputation for manufacturing quality product.

Yes, I've seen instances where problems have cropped up from the use of XConnect PSUs, but then I've also seen glowing reports about them from people who've bought them and are happy with it.

What motherboard do you have? What make/model RAM modules do you have?

Your 2200+ processor uses a 133MHz bus setting, but the system uses DDR modules, so it actually operates at a speed of 266MHz front side bus. That's the speed of the communication line between processor and the system.

If the 400MHz PC3200 module is compatible with your system and recognised by it accurately, the RAM will be OK. It's a hardware compatibility matter, not a clcokspeed matter.

The thing is, however, your system is most efficient if the RAM operates at the same speed as front side bus. If I was in your situation, I'd underclock that RAM to operate it at 266MHz, so that the system would get the best performance. Running it at 400MHz may slow the system down, not speed it up!

What is the make and model of your motherboard please?

Sure there is. Use a Binary or Hex editor. Heres a listing:

http://www.bookcase.com/library/software/msdos.util.binedit.html

This one looks good to me:

http://www.hhdsoftware.com/hexeditor.html

The DOSSHELL of MS-DOS 5.0 and later had that facility built into the Editor :)

ooops....

Apologies for the earlier error. Now I'm convinced that stopping work and getting some sleep at 3 am was a good idea :)

The 64M x 64, the 32M x 64 and the 32M x 8 refer to capcities.

Memory chips and memory modules are organised as matrices of cells. The figures represent width and depth of that matrix, and their product represents overall capacity. But they're measured in mega[/]bits[/i]. not megabytes. Calculate the product of the figure, then divide by 8 to get capacity in megabytes.

It gets a bit complicated, because the capacity needs to be considered in light of other factors to determine what type of memory module it is. Memory modules are organised in different way - a single memory chip may contain more than one units of capacity, a 'double sided' module of RAM may have all the chips physically located on the one side!

Suffice to say that, for a 64M x 64 module, the unit of capacity is 64 megabits, there are 64 such units present, thus the module has 4096 megabits, or 512 megabytes, capacity.

If your motherboard is restriced to 32M chips, then that module is not suitable for use in it.

My main concern is the quality of RAM sold by Crucial. they don't actually make it. They commission the stuff from manufacturers of generic, unbranded RAM then rebadge and sell it. I've seen examples of quite a …

Questions should go in the section for the appropriate Windows version, djm 123. I've moved this to the Windows 98 section for you.

According to the specifications on their website, CT64M64S4D7E is not non-parity, it's ECC

http://www.crucial.com/store/listModule.asp?module=SDRAM%2C+PC133&cat=RAM&package=allModules

CT64M64S4D75 is the non-parity module

Was I confronted with a system like that and couldn't correct it with virus and other nasties tools, I'd wipe it, fresh install and see if it corrected the problem. If it didn't I'd be looking for hardware problems.

You mentioned 'they' and 'end-user'. Is this for a customer?

Certainly some interesting things come out of MIT.

One of the recent efforts was the generation of a computer program which writes randomly created research papers with 'context-free grammar', charts and diagrams.

"[They] submitted two of the randomly assembled papers to the World Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics (WMSCI), scheduled to be held July 10-13 in Orlando, Florida. To their surprise, one of the papers -- "Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy" -- was accepted for presentation.....

....."Rooter" features such mind-bending gems as: "the model for our heuristic consists of four independent components: simulated annealing, active networks, flexible modalities, and the study of reinforcement learning" and "We implemented our scatter/gather I/O server in Simula-67, augmented with opportunistically pipelined extensions.""

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/04/14/mit.prank.reut/

Unsurprisingly, the conference organizers came up with a rather thin excuse in relation to the paper getting accepted for presentation :D

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=836929

Try those instructions :)

Are you asking if there's some way to make the internal modem work in XP? If so, then I'd suggest the answer is no. As I said earlier, there were quite a few Lucent WinModems which simply weren't compatible with XP. You could possible get them to work, after a fashion, by using generic modem drivers, but it would be with reduced functionality.

Hi Linda,

There is a time limit in place after which posts cannot be edited by members. This is to ensure that editing only takes place for purposes where the person posting realises that there is additional information which should have been included in the post, and does so shortly after making the post.

It is also to ensure that comments cannot be made, subjected to discussion, and then later changed rendering the discussion in the thread meaningless and useless.

If you've had the time limit expire, and want to provide additional information, please feel free to make a further post in the topic.

Okay, some comments if I may. In a professional capacity. I write IT for a living, and get commissioned to write software reviews from time to time.

* That's a pretty good attempt to write software review snippets in the way print and web editors like them. Brief comments, a score, the sort of thing busy people like to quickly scan. That form of presentation brings advertising revenue for publications.

* That form of review presentation is not particularly informative, as I'll explain further on. It asumes that products in a 'category' can be directly compared one to the other and must necessarily be mutually independant, whereas they can actually have 'niche' purposes and be complemantary.

* You've produced a lengthy piece, but with no formatting so it loses readability. There are also some spellling and grammatical errors. At the least, compose such pieces in a word processor, and make use of a spelling and grammar check. Also make use of formatting tools available.

Now onto the more specific comments.

Spyware detection tools report in different ways. Some report a particular infection as a single 'thing'. Some report the components of that particular infection as separate 'things'. You can't necessarily make direct value comparisons between them in accordance with the number of 'objects' they detect.

No single spyware detection tool detects every infection. All spyware detection tools detect particular infections that others don't. that's the nature of the field, and the most …

Arun Sewak, I'd suggest you ditch that modem and replace it with an external one. Some WinModems simply have problems with Windows XP and drivers do not fix them! They are poor quality components in any case, and using an external modem will give a much more reliable internet connection. a samll bit of expense maybe, but certainly a beneficial one.

If your motherboard does not accomodate SATA drives then you can't use one.

In addition, the onlt ATA133 (or UDMA133 if you want to use that term) drives that I know of are Maxtor brand, and I wouldn't go near them. Had too many problems with Maxtor drives in the past!

ATA100 is fine to use. The data transfer speed listed is an 'ideal situation' thing and won't be reached consistently anyway.

The important factor is to get a drive of 7200rpm or netter, and with 8Mb of cache. 2Mb cache drives have lower performance.

It's really the rotation speed and the amount of cache that gives performance, not some fancy number in its description ;)

I think it's a conflict between the software used. The OCR program is apparently not creating files readable by the older version of Word on the laptop, or the newer version of Word is saving the files with formatting code that the older system can't handle. Try saving the files in another format, perhaps rtf or text files, and then open them on the laptop.

Can't say I get that pleasure. My kids all have homes and families of their own. But being a bloke who works from home, I fortunately get to see quite a bit of the grandkids.

I'm glad of that. I figure my role is to corrupt them. Their parents are far too straight! :D

That's actually a damn good troubleshooting exercise, nanosani. Doesn't have to be files over 1Gb either. Searching for files in excess of 400 or 500Mb would be a useful thing to do. I just tried it and the only things I found on this system were a Game demo download, the pagefile and the hibernation file.

I'd suggest that people carefully read the 'Privacy statement' on that site. It's a classic example of an agreement whereby you tell someone that it's OK to bombard you with spam!

umm.... Janine, that doesn't make sense.

MpG, could you please let us know what make and model of scanner it is, and also what, if any, OCR software is being used with the scanner. When you scan a document the scanner by nature creates an image file, not a document file. You'd normally use a graphics program to view the scanned image. If OCR (Optical character recognition) software is being used to convert the image file to a document file, the source of the problem may lie there.

http://www.ontrack.com/resources/bits/dataRecoveryBasics.pdf

That's just one of the links I immediately found by using the search techniques described in the article I linked.

You really DO need to learn better internet search techniques, Janine. I don't care WHAT your course instructor says, effective information searching is something that anyone who is involved in repairing and upgrading PCs needs to have in their 'toolbox', and that includes looking beyond the first few results returned from a search.

Here's some other searches:

FAT structure
Directory entry structure

The question about 'Steps' to rebuilding obviously refers to the content of your coursework. It will be a description of the process according to the coursework author's description, and the way they personally have presented the information. Different people organise the information they write down in different ways. Just because the authors of that coursework have referred to the process, it doesn't necessarily follow that EVERYONE involved with PCs will describe and refer to the process in the same way. Sometimes, you can only find the answer to a specific question in the textbook. :D

Oh hell no. In 90% or more of cases, people who had their system crash after downloading a Critical Update from Microsoft had something seriously wrong on their systems beforehand, and it was usually a software problem which had resulted from an unprotected and infected system!

Rebooted? That sounds weird :confused:

If there's been any confusion in their installation that'd fix it. They'd be redetected and installed afresh. Sometimes settings simply get screwed up in the registry, and uninstalling the drive usually cleans that up.

If getting rid of Norton fixes the problem, then get rid of it. BOTH versions!

Got to http://free.grisoft.com/freeweb.php and download/install AVG antivirus free edition :)

In most cases you do need to copy the files to floppy. You also need to omit certain .pdf document files when you copy the drivers to floppy, as they are too large to fit.

I'm not certain about the storage space figures mate, I just know that if I had a 10Gb partition for a system one, I wouldn't ever let it get below 3Gb free, and preferably leave more free room than that. Windows likes room to breathe, and that means drive space as well as RAM.

I'd be uninstalling some programs, and reinstalling them to a Program files folder on a different partition.

To address the suspended System Restore function, read here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/299904

That goes for partitions also mate. Windows sees them as a drive. 12% for system restore chews up over 1Gb, and how much space you got reserved for the page file? Windows will also need room for temp files, especially if it's creating image files and such I'd imagine.

3Gb can be chewed up pretty quick.

It's not taking 3Gb of space to do that. How big is the drive in total?

There is a percentage of it reserved for System restore, there needs to be enough space for the page file. you simply can't use the entire drive for storage if Windows is installed on it also.

I'm merely suggesting, kosmoe, in a jocular fashion of course, that we sometimes have products and updates unavailable to us simply because they have issues with a very very small proportion of the almost limitless combinations of equipment that PCs can be. When such 'issues' arise, the noise we hear about them is somewhat disproportionate to the extent of the problem.

This are actually due for release on the 18th, as I understand it. Intel is 'fudging the facts' a little there, and has moved the release date forward in any case in a vain attempt to upstage AMD, which is due to release dual-core Opterons on 21st April.

The 840 dual-core processors will primarily be a lower-end workstation processor. For gaming, on the other hand, a single core P4 3.8GHz kicks butt on them as I understand it. And an AMD64 3800+ kicks butt on that!

The original release of the patch stuffed up on some systems and crashed them. I think it might've been one of those "You have one chance in 385,679,312,984 of this occurring to you, and we don't want that person complaining, so we'll withdraw it and fix the bloody thing! Wish some people weren't such crybabies!" things ;)

Hi dcc.

Just about any unbuffered, 'single sided' SD-RAM modules of up to 256Mb each should be fine in that system. PC133 modules will simply operate at 100MHz rather than the faster speed. They don't need to be CAS2. On the 'Advanced chipset' menu in BIOS setup, set 'Configure SDRAM timing by SPD' to "Enabled".

Having modules of the same make and model will be best. Mixing and matching memory modules from different manufacturers increases the risk of incompatibilities between one module and another.

I'm afraid it sounds like you need to do two things, Isam24.

* Drop that monitor into a repair shop to get checked and fixed or replaced if necessary.

* Rearrange the electricals or put some sort of guard around them so that baby can't get near the things. I'm glad it was your PC that got fried and not bubs! ;)

Yep. Let's say that I just got confronted by the Terminator and I was drunk. I pulverized the mongrel.

Now I know if I'd been sober I'd have pulverized him a bit better and a bit quicker, but do I care? Shit no! The bastard's pulverized isn't he?

Bung in a USB card. they're about as cheap as a cheap keyboard ;)

i just want a case that years from now will have almost no dust inside (or no dust at all!).

Every 6 months, drop your PC in to a repair shop and get them to clean it for you! Or do it yourself.

Hi Janine,

You've mentioned that you've looked on the internet, and caperjack has recommended that you use Google to do so. I have to wonder abour your internet search techniques. If you're simply typing some text into a search box and pressing the 'Search' button, then perhaps you need to refine your techniques a little.

Have a read of this article:

http://www.pcuser.com.au/pcuser/hs2.nsf/web/E650B0E7CE8136A1CA256F620037047B

where I've discussed the basic principles of using Search tools. It may help you. Be creative with the search terms and techniques you use. Don't hesitate to use further searches, based on information and key terms in what you read, rather than simply 'surfing' links from sites your initial search has uncovered.

Cheers.

Point one: There is no such thing as a '2600MHz' Athlon XP processor. The fastest one ever produced is the 3200+ model, which runs at 2200MHz. If your processor is a 2200+ it is supposed to operate at 1800MHz

Point two: There have been more than one model of many Athlon XP processors of the same Performance rating, and they are not all necessarily suitable for your board.

Try this:

Obtain your motherboard manual from

http://file-us.abit.com.tw/pub/download/manual/english/kx7-333r.pdf

Reset CMOS, following the instructions outlined on page 2-12 of that manual.

Reboot, and see if your system detects the processor at the correct speed, and operates correctly. If not, you seem to have a processor that is not suitable for the board. I can't be precisely sure, as the figures you've given don't fully make sense.

Report back please, and I'll look into it further if necessary.

Hey, hang on here!

The very first thing to try is resetting CMOS!

Remove the CMOS battery, with the power doisconnected of course, and replace it after waiting for several minutes for the CMOS memory to be cleared. That will set everything back to defaults.

It is a basic troubleshooting procedure to carry out when your system does not POST.

We also need a description of those beeps. How many, how long or short, etc etc.

It is most likely a hard drive problem, but it may be a different hardware problem also. "The Stop 0x7A message indicates that a page of kernel data was not found in the paging (virtual memory) file and could not be read into memory. This might be due to incompatible disk or controller drivers, firmware, or hardware."

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/Windows/XP/all/reskit/en-us/Default.asp?url=/resources/documentation/Windows/XP/all/reskit/en-us/prmd_stp_fvlq.asp

The fact that this has cropped up and is persisting also suggests that you've developed a hardware problem. If the drive diagnostics test reports no problems, let us know please.

Have you used a CD-RW disk, and ejected the disk before writing the files to CD perhaps? Try this and see if it fixes things up:

* Pop a blank CD into the drive. Cancel from the dialogue box asking what you want to do, or close the writable folder.
* Open Windows Explorer. Right-click on the CD-burner drive, and choose 'write these files to CD. Complete the wizard.

Eject the CD only after the burn process has completed.

* In device manager, right-click on each burner and choose 'Uninstall'.
* Reboot and allow the drives to be redetected.

Hang on. What are you using to burn CDs with? When you burn a CD, what program is used? Are you only using the Windows XP feature which enables you to pop in a blank disk, drap and drop or copy/paste files to a 'Writable CD folder', and then burn them to CD with the use of a Wizard?

If so, there should not be image files retained. If not, what software program is being used?

There is no 'default program'. Nero and such are third party apps.