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This looks like it has possibilities .... I'll investigate it further. Thanks !!

I need (I think) a utility that will for certain allow me to unplug a USB-connected disk drive from my Windows XP/Pro platform. I have an external hard drive that seems to retain its connectivity under certain conditions, even after I've stopped all "obvious" programs (i.e., those with some announced presence in the task bar) and open up the Task Manager and made sure there were no applications running, and no processes the I think would be doing any I/O. Somewhere, something is latching on to this device and just will not let go. So, is there a utility? Any other suggestions?

I am running Windows XP SP2, with latest fixes per the Feb 07 Patch Tuesday, 1.5 GB RAM, Pentium 4 @ 2.0 GHz, three hard disks with 21.1 GB free space on system drive (c:). About 4-6 weeks ago I started having performance problems. Hibernation was painfully slow. When hard disks were idle and they had to start again because of demand, the mouse and all other activity would freeze up until the HD operation was completed. About the time the HD cache stopped working, I installed an ATI Radeon 9200 dual-head AGP graphics adapter and a second monitor, with latest AGI driver and Net Framework 2.0 (1.1 is still installed). Can't understand what, if anything, this would have to do with disk caching... I selected Properties on my C drive, "hardware", the first disk specified (Quantum FireballP AS40.0), properties for that drive, then "Policies", and got the screen "Write caching and Safe Removal" ... the contents of the screen were grayed out, as if the hard drive did not provide the "Optimize for performance" or "Optimize for quick removal" choice ... while the enable cache option was clicked, both were grayed out, which is indicative of current performance. I could change the power scheme under Power Options Properties, but I'd rather not. Any suggestions?

Works fine ... I think that with CSS a little knowledge can sometimes do great harm! Thanks!

I'm building a test page for a customer. Features an ugly color of pink (their choice), and a left menu that centers properly in MSIE but not in FireFox. If I get it centered properly in FireFox, then it doesn't center properly in MSIE. I'm certainly no heavy duty pro when it comes to CSS (heck, I still use tables at times). Any suggestions? Here is the test URL: http://centenarylex.com/LilLambs/index2.shtml Bob

Yes, but I'm not going to reinstall for this problem ... although the slow hibernation is a major pain, I just don't have the time to reload XP, SP2, all the upgrades from the MS site, and then reconfigure network, wifi, etc.

Have you defraged your hard drive(s) ?? That would account for some slowdown, but not for all, I'm sorry to say. I assume you are using Windows XP SP2 with the latest patches? Please confirm ...

I hibernated after the last cold boot a few minutes ago, and the time was down to 1:12 ... Firefox is at 42,300K with just two tabs open (I normally have 4-5 tabs open at once). New Information: Last night I starting reviewing the "Event Viewer", and found that during the start of hibernation I was getting an System error "The device, \Device\Ide\IdeDeviceP0T0L0, did not respond within the timeout period." I did not get that error with this latest hibernate test.

I did a cold boot, and Firefox came up, with only the Windows Task Manager and Firefox running, at about 28K ... with two tabs open, 40K. I think I have a problem with Firefox not clean up its memory useage ... I'll deal with that on their forum. What do you mean by "reload" ... reinstalling the operating system?

Other than FireFox, my browser of choice, all the other tasks seem to be in check. But, check here to see if you agree with my conclusion ... at the point when I took that screen print, I had Eudora, Windows Task Manager, Notetab Pro (my preferred HTML editor), WS_FTP LE (FTP program), Adobe Photoshop CS, and FireFox running as active tasks, with a bunch of supporting applets and tasks. I'd like your opinion ....

I turned off hibernation and checked the defrag status report after a status scan: hyberfil.sys was not fragmented. Ran defrag anyway, and turned hibernation back on. Results: no change in hibernation time. Note: returning from hibernation is as fast as it has always been.

Running Windows XP SP2, with latest fixes per the Feb 07 Patch Tuesday, on Gateway 700SE tower with 1.5 GB RAM, Pentium 4 @ 2.0 GHz, three hard disks with 21.1 GB free space on system drive (c:). After installing an ATI Radeon 9200 dual-head AGP graphics adapter and a second monitor, with latest AGI driver and Net Framework 2.0 (1.1 is still installed), hibernation, which I use often, went from about 15 seconds to about 2:15. No noticed changes in performance elsewhere in the system. (1) Applied latest fixes from Feb 07 Patch Tuesday to Net Framework 2.0 (there were several as I recall) ... hibernation reduced to about 1:49. (2) Defragmented drive c:, the system volume (which has hiberfil.sys), and reduced hibernation by only 7 more seconds. (3) After backing up the registry, used PC Tools' Registry Mechanic to scan and fix any registry problems and then compact and optimize my registry. No difference in hibernation after that. Does anyone have any ideas?