oldgoat43

Several years back, I upgraded my own 98/SE system to XP-Pro SP1, with an upgrade CD. The upgrade went off without a hitch. There was NO problem at all with program compatibility. But XP didn't like my sound card, modem, scanner or one of my printers. I had a new modem and sound card on the shelf (I'm in the PC business) but I had to buy a new scanner and I never did get that printer working with XP. I wound up replacing that too. Doing an upgrade on an older PC is always fraught with disaster. I lucked out, but many other people have not been so lucky. You'll find horror stories about upgrades gone sour, all over the internet. Finally after several years, I decided just recently to Clone my C: drive to a new HD and reformat my old C: drive and do a clean install of XP....(now XP + SP2). (I slipstreamed SP2 with XP, shortly after SP2 was released) I now have an exclusive XP install with no remnants of 98/SE on the HD. My PC now runs much better and my registry has lost about 30megs of bloat and my C: drive has lost about 4 gigs of file loading. It was well worthwhile to do the Clean Install. My best advise would be to make a complete backup of your system, before you start. I use Ghost, but other people use Acronis True Image, etc. Good Luck, Goat

I could be terribly wrong, but isn't 1394 a Firewire port? Please clarify! goat

I'm sorry,,,,, Did you actually try Partition Magic in Vista, or are you just assuming that it won't work? Vista sits on an NTFS formatted HD, just like XP, 2K and NT. PM8 works fine with all the other NTFS based OS's. Just curious!

I'm glad to hear someone say that about the Clam thing. I know one gal that absolutely swears by it. One little program that does run quite well from a CD, Flash Drive or whatever, is vCleaner from AVG. Then you can just install AVG 7.5 FREE and do a full scan from Windows. When you're out in the field, in someones home or business office, you can't incorporate another PC into your work,,,,you have to use what you can carry in with you. Believe me.....I've been running service calls for 43 years. You take what you need with you. You can download vCleaner Here. I use that often as a Precursory scanner, before loading AVG 7.5 FREE. Good Luck The OldGoat

There are many things a person can do to improve system performance a little here and a little there till you finally have a system that runs pretty well. I include the following quote, because it's very good advise. Again, I say, as a tech that works on hundreds of XP machines, "That's good advise". But, if you can tweak the registry a little and get the Kernal up off the hard drive and loaded into RAM, performance takes a huge leap forward. Probably the last thing I do when tuning up an XP PC, is shut down the totally redundant Services. I found the info from Black Viper somewhat confusing, so I opted to take my lead from Gene Goldring instead. Looks like his site has been updated since I first printed out his list of services. Find that list here. Gene Goldring Making XP run decent is very DO'able. (I do it every day) Good Luck and Happy Computing! The OldGoat

That's about the simplest two word answer I've ever heard for a complex question. In all seriousness......does your motherboard properly identify the drive in the Bios setup? If the system was designed for a 12 gig drive, it must be very old.....not able to properly handle a 80 gig drive at all. Just maybe.....

Since installing Vista Ultimate, I've backed it up several times using my Ghost 2003 boot disk (floppy or CD, makes no difference). It Works like a charm. Me

All those files are also in the \system32\dllcache folder as well. Just copy the file back to the system32 folder. You could always boot up the system with a Barts PE disk or a Knoppix disk. or, as was suggested, slave that Hd off of another PC and use windows in that PC to copy the file. There are many ways to solve the problem. Me

I like tweaks! I use tweaks! On the typical XP computer, I get close to a 100% increase in system performance with my 'tweaks', shutting down redundant Services and a general (very thorough) HD cleaning. For a long time I did them manually in 'Regedit', but doing that took a long time and there was always the possibility of my dislexia or auldtimers disease causing a miscomboble. Then some very nice "Gnome' " came to my rescue and put all the critical tweaks into one little registry script. Now, it only takes a second or two to incorporate my 'Tweaks' and there's no longer the threat of me screwing it up somehow. Shutting down redundant Services is now in a neat little batch file. Touche! I also use my own "cleanup.bat" file to remove all the old temp files, etc. from the HD. Using scripts, batch files, etc., greatly speeds up the process of tuning up a PC. Cheers! OG

With a few hundred hours troubleshooting just such problems, I'd have to concur that it's most likely a hardware problem. There is an undocumented keyboard sequence on some computers, that will cause windows to do a crash shutdown. I had that once myself. Also any bad keyboard or mouse will do it too. Those are usually easy enough to replace, for troubleshooting purposes anyway. Even a dirty ram stick can cause it. The list just goes on and on. Good Luck, OG

What OS are you using. Some basic info would sure be helpful. If you're using windows XP, the correct program for working with the Services is: services.msc Just type that into the RUN box above the START button and press ENTER. It gives you all the info you mentioned. Good Luck, OG

Now there's one guy who's got a handle on the situation (finally). After letting AutoUpdates inject IE7 into my PC, I found all sorts of problems with O.E. etc. It was an easy choice to just go to Add/Remove programs and dump that turkey. I've blocked IE7 from ever downloading again. I too have been a fan of Mike Burgess and his custom hosts file, for many long months. I signed up for his newsletter (Hosts Alerts) and have his "Hosts Secure" program to download the latest Hosts file and install it where it needs to be. Maybe just deleting the old hosts file and replacing it with the latest one from Mike, would solve a bunch of problems. I'd sure give it a try. Like, what can it hurt? OldGoat43

Repair install does NOT mean format the drive Give'em books and give'em books and they just eat the pages! Take the computer to a tech familiar with doing HD cleanups. There's a few of us around. Bring your lunch though.....it takes several hours to do it right. finis

I could gag and puke at those who constantly worry about M$'s rights! What about OUR rights? If you own the computer, then do what you want to do with it. finis

Unless you're in a Ultra Clean Computer Room, those little fans need to be taken out and thoroughly cleaned about once a year or oftener. Little known fact: the fans can also be relubricated by using a very small syringe to inject one drop of high quality machine oil through the seal on the bottom of the fan and into the bearing cavity. I've kept my fans running for years that way....long after the factory lubrication was used up. Takes a few minutes of your time, but it's sure a lot cheaper than buying new fans, if you can find them. Good Luck,