Sfor

I do have several WRV200 routers distributed among my clients. They do work as IPSec G2G VPN gateways and Internet gateway NAT routes with WLAN disabled. Recently I'm observing tendency for WRV200 to hang a few times a day. The replacement of the device does not solve the problem. All do have the latest 1.0.39 firmware installed. After a few months of observations of the fenomenon, I came to the conclusion, the WRV200 starts to hang frequently after adding a new Windows XP SP3 to the network. So, far there were just Windows 98, Windows 2000 and Windows XP SP2 upgraded later to SP3 in all networks. But, after addind compures with default fresh instalation of Windows XP SP3, something triggers WRV200 instability issue. I've observed the effect in 3 different networks with 4 or 5 different WRV200 devices. I'm suspecting some XP SP3 specific network related component is the cause of the phenomenon. I have no idea, which particular system service could be related. Apparently, upgrading the XP to SP3 after installation of SP2 is safe. On the other hand installation of the SP3 directly with Windows XP Professional or Home triggers the issue. The same goes to the reinstalation of SP2 with SP3. Something with SP3 network setup wizard in the system installer seems to make the key difference. That's why I'm looking for differences in default network setup between XP SP3 and SP2 upgraded later to SP3.

I'm planning to install a Windows 2000 along with Windows 98. So, I do have a few questions about how Windows 2000 SP4 Professional can get along with large hard drives and FAT32 partitions. In case of Windows 98 the demads are quite simple. It is safe to install it on a partition smaller than 128GB, then some patching will be necesary, before it will be safe to use partitions above LBA48 limit. It is a good idea to keep FAT32 partitions below 1GB in size, as well. But, what about Windows 2000? I know the SP3 is necesary. There is also a LBA48 registry key to be turned on. In any case: - Is it necesary to install Windows 2000 SP4 on a partition below LBA48 limit? Perhaps the problem was fixed in the installer of the Windows 2000 SP4. - Is it safe to use huge FAT32 partitions? Currently I do have a couple of 600-999GB FAT32 partitions filled with data. In my case the HDD hardware is a bit extreme. I do have one 2TB and one 1.5TB hard drives installed. The plan is to install a Winndows 2000 SP4 Professional on the first partition of the second HDD (about 200GB). So, should I decrease the size of the targeted partition, before installing the Windows 2000, then turn the registry LBA48 support on, then resize the partition back to 200GB? Also, I've been observing some differences in HTTP file download speeds between Windows 98 and 2000. Apparently, I'm unable to get the full connection speed from Windows 98 unless using more than just one connection. On the same computer from the same server I'm getting a full connection transfer speed with just one HTTP connection. The conclusion could be, the Windows 98 is not as fast as Windows 2000 with TCP traffic by adding some significant delay in packet processing.

I've noticed a difference in download speed between Windows 98 and Windows 2000 on the same computer. I'm using WGET to download files through scripting. While I'm getting full 240kb/s on Windows 2000 the Windows 98 goes up to 178kb/s, with the same file. Since I did not tested it on other computers, I can not say for sure the difference comes just from the OS used. I can get the full connection speed on Windows 98, as well. But, I have to use two simultaneous file downloads, to get such a score. The first impression is, the Windows 98 adds a significant delay to the TCP traffic. When added to the overal response times of the HTTP server the top possible single connection speed can decrease below the ISP connection speed.

The device is no longer in my posession, I'm afraid. It worked well for more than a year, and now it ia a part of a backup server. I'm planning to buy a few of those in the future. The modification was emulating the 80 wires cable. Inside of those line from pin 34 is grounded. So, IDE controller can see a difference between 40 wire and 80 wire cables.

The smbclient does not work, as well. But, it provides some information about source of the problem. Here is the message: ------------------------------------------------ Addition of a following line to smb.conf solved the problem: client lanman auth = yes

Well, the BackupPC does use the Samba settings, while working with SMB shares. So, BackupPC national character settings are ignored, in such a case. All I had to do was to set a correct national character translation in the samba.conf. The BackupPC expects Samba to convert national characters to UTF8. But, I've encountered yet another problem. Apparently, I can not access password protected Windows 98 network shares with Samba. Everything works fine, if no password is necesary.

Only partialy true. I'm using TCP/IP along with NetBEUI. Ipconfig will not affect NetBEUI protocol. Another problem is to run Ipconfig with power button.

That's not what I had in mind. I'm shutting down the server. The connection is maintained by a remote computer. This particular case is about shutting down Microsoft Networking server. Other computers are connecting to it from time to time. Quite often a connection is still active, when I'm shutting down the server. There are no files open, but the Windows still nags about some connections being active. It is not possible to kill a process responsible for Microsoft Networking services, I believe.

I do have a Windows 98 computer working without the monitor turned on, very often. I would like to be able to shut down the system with a single power button push, but there are network shutdown procedures in the way. Every time there is a network connection active, the shutdown stops asking if I do want to shutdown system, because there is a network connection active (I can not put the exact message here, since I'm using a polish language Windows version). Is there a way to get rid of these nagging dialogs? It should be possible to make an AutoIt script closing the dialogs automaticaly, but perhaps there is a simpler way.

One of the BackupPC systems of file restore is a TAR archive. The problem is I can get those TAR archive extracted correcty in Linux only. In Windows enviroment 7Zip does not detect polish national characters correctly. Is there any better extractor with national character support? I can only suspect the TAR files I'm dealing with are coded in UTF8.

I just obtained a 2TB HDD. Now I've got two (1.5TB and 2TB) Seagate drives. One of the partitions is 0.99TB, others are smaller. So far so good, but... After the computer remained idle for a few hours the new 2TB HDD had to spin up. Apparently it spinned down on its own. The data transfers were few times slower, than usual. System reboot solved the problem. The problem seems to be related to the mentioned Seagate auto spin down issue. But, it would be good to confirm the diagnose, first. As a partitioning software I had to use GParted. I've encountered an issue in the process. GParted failed on resizing a 512BG partition to 0.99TB. The size of the partition was changed, but the partition structures remained at 512GB. So, the system detected partition as 512GB, while partition managers were telling it's 0.99TB. I had to delete the partition and then to create a new one, again. The problem could be related to old version of System Rescue CD I'm using. Apparently, the support for FAT32 partitions larger than 256GB is just a partial one. This version of GParted does not show the stastistics for FAT32 partitions larger then 256GB.

I've encountered a problem with one of the portals and Firefox 2.0.0.20. The window scrolling was missing there. Everything was working perfectly fine with 2.0.0.17. I did not tested the 2.0.0.18-19, however.

Well, I can install the JRE enviroment above 6u20. But, the Firefox always wants to download and install additional plugin and fails at this task. I do believe Firefox tries to download and execute the JRE online installer. It does not seem to make any sense, since the whole JRE was installed, already.

I'm working with a 1.5TB Seagate drive and a 1TB WD internal drives, currently. The biggest partition size is 512GB. No problems detected, so far. The Seagate proclaims, their sector size translation firmware with SmartAllign technology is significantly faster, then solutions used in other drives. So, the difference between working with 512B and 4096B sectors is not a big one. They claim, their translation firmware is almost as fast as the advanced format alligning software running on a PC.

Right. Then it is safe to use 2TB drives, as long as they are working with 512B sectors. I know the Seagate has a technology of firmware related sector size translation. So it is not necesary to use any additional software with their drives. I'm curious if it is safe to buy just any 2TB drive. Or, perhaps one should carefully examine drives to be 512B sector size compatible.

Thanks to the ESDI_506.PDR patch and updated HDD controller drivers it is possible to work with hard drives bigger than 137GB. But it appears there is another problem with drives above 2TB. So I have a few questions related to this problem. - Does the problem start at 2TB or just above it? - What is the cause (system, driver, BIOS)? - Can it be avoided by reducing the drive capacity through a proper drive configuration? - Is it related to the sector size greater than 512 bytes? ------------------------------------------------- Conclusions: - Problem starts with drives larger than 2TB. - The cause is the old partition structure standard. - Windows 98 has an issue with partitions larger than 1TB.

I was able to install JRE 6u24 with a help of the /s switch. But, I see no difference. On every tested Firefox version, the result is a failed attempt to install Java Runtime Enviroment plugin. In case of Firefox 3.5.19: firefoxjre_exe.exe performed an illegal operation (or something like that). So, in the end, the problem is the Firefox trying to install the Java Runtime Enviroment plugin.

I was unable to install JRE 6u24. At first it complained about gdiplus.dll file missing. Then, after adding a gdiplus.dll from Open Office 2.4.1 installer crashed.

I have problems with getting JRE working with Firefox. There are many versions of Firefox 3 and JRE above 20. I'm looking for a usable combination. There are posts suggesting the Firefox 3.5 works better with Java, than 3.6 does. But, I had no luck to get it working in either one. My test case is the Ultra VNC Java client. It is working correctly with Firefox 2.0.0.17 and JRE 6u7. KernelEX 4.5 final. - JRE 6u7 - Firefox 2.0.0.17 works correctly, Firefox 3.5.19 works correctly, Firefox 3.6.17 fails on installing JRE plugin - JRE 6u20 - does not install - JRE 6u21 - Firefox 2.0.0.17 fails on installing JRE plugin, Firefox 3.5.19 fails on installing JRE plugin, Firefox 3.6.17 fails on installing JRE plugin - JRE 6u22 - Firefox 2.0.0.17 fails on installing JRE plugin, Firefox 3.5.19 fails on installing JRE plugin, Firefox 3.6.17 fails on installing JRE plugin - JRE 6u24 - silent instalation required (/s switch), Firefox 2.0.0.17 fails on installing JRE plugin, Firefox 3.5.19 fails on installing JRE plugin

AC97 devices are connected through the chipset, so the first part of the PCI ID is the chipset ID. The true device ID and manufacturer ID are contained in the SUBSYS_ string. The first four characters are the device ID, and the last four are the manufacturer ID, as far as I remember. So, it is possible to have a correct driver, but with wrong motherboard chipset reference. That's why AC97 driver .INF files tend to have a lot of PCI ID string entries related to multiple chipsets.

Well. The problem is more complicated, apparently. I found three different causes of the shutdown/reboot problems. - the integrated Broadcom Ethernet Controller. (not installing drivers or disabling in BIOS solves the problem) - USB controllers. (disabling BIOS legacy and IRQ support solves the problem) - integrated Intel 865G controller (After installing Intel driver the computer fails to reboot - replaced with other AGP card solved the problem) In the end, I just lost one PCI slot and BIOS legacy USB support. I think I can live with it.

I've tried the APM mode, already. For some reason the PNP Bios does not work, in such a case. The ethernet adapter along with many other devices are not detected at all. So, the APM mode seems to be useless.

I'm trying to install a Windows 98 on a HP/Compaq d530 with Asus P4SD motherboard. The biggest nuisance is the integrated Broadcom NetExtreme ethernet controller, so far. ACPI works well, without the Broadcom NetExtreme driver runnig. The system is shuting down and rebooting smoothly. After installing the Broadcom driver, the Windows 98 system freezes during shutdown or reeboot. I'm out of ideas, for the moment.

I have yet another problem with accessing files from Linux. This time I can not get the polish national characters in file names working correctly in Backup PC. This software uses smbclient, as far as I know. I have little experience with this scripting tool, I'm afraid. Anyways, the SMB access from Nautilus works perfectly. The only problem is Backup PC. I was able to get the national characters working correctly in the administative pannel in Backup PC by upgrading Ubuntu to 11.04. I was able to install a newer version of Backup PC, because of that. Older versions had a problem with processing national characters. Still I do not know, if the current problem is related to the Backup PC processing, or the SmbClient parameters, or something else.

Currently I do have just Seagate ST31000524AS and Western Digital WD10EARS. I had another Seagate 500GB SATA drive a while ago. But, the effect was exactly the same. I do not remember trying to connect both Seagate drives to the controller, at the same time. So, it is possible to say it was always a Seagate and WD pair. So, I can not use two other than Seagate drives, I'm afraid.