Sysdll

Not at all. The worst attacks I’ve had have come from a state government site and an NFL forum. I use Tarun’s Anti-Malware Toolkit as well as his suggestions from http://wiki.lunarsoft.net/wiki/PC_Cleanup. The online scanners he lists can detect threats that other programs can’t. I also only surf as a user without administrative rights.

If you want a good laugh, check out the song “Virus Alert” by Weird Al Yankovic.

Everest home edition by Lavalys.

The bios in the last one I worked on was not fully ACPI compliant. Installing XP from the Compaq upgrade disk worked, as did a full install of Windows 2000. A full install of XP did not work. A bios upgrade was necessary to accomplish this. However Compaq and HP used different i810 boards in their PIII computers and this might not be the same in all of them. I was using this as an example to say as you did the difficulty in upgrading OEM i810 systems.

Not that easy with this one. A friend asked me to “tune up” a Compaq with the i810 chipset last year. The ram will have to be 256mb matching sticks of PC100. I found only Micron would work. The only pci graphics card that will work is a Matrox G45. The bios upgrade for XP has disappeared from the Compaq site. Officially the machine has to have ME installed and then upgraded to XP, although booting with an ME floppy and using a reboot utility to trick the cd into booting XP works. With all the upgrades the thing was more stable but no faster and for some reason the graphics were still fuzzy even with a Matrox card. All in all it’s a lot of work and I had the parts lying around and didn’t have to hunt or pay for them.

What reads 248mb? Agp aperture only means something if you have applications that use up the 512mb on your video card. I leave the agp aperture setting at the bios default. 64mb or 128mb on every board I've seen after 2001.

By all means, keep the girlfriend happy. There is a really good guide on Ebay about Sound Blaster Live sound cards. The third generation retail cards are the ones to look for. There are also some inexpensive Athlon and Tualatin systems out there. A 1.4 ghz processor can be adequate for basic computing with a little tweaking and fine tuning.

Wow! A trojan alert that involves the three letter agencies of the U. S. Government, the Chinese Government, an alleged religious cult, large financial institutions, major software companies, threats of crippling cyber attacks and even makes mention of Microsoft and Pat Robertson.

Go back to the last Catalyst that worked for you and wait for ATI to fix the problem. I’ve done it many times.

I buy agp cards for the old computers I refurbish from an Ebay seller called ReTekDirect. Their website says they ship to Nepal. Note to Moderators: I am not affiliated in any way with this company other than being a customer.

Using Driver Sweeper or Driver Cleaner in safe mode and deleting all the sound drivers also would be worth a try.

I’d go with the old creative card. Xp should install the drivers. There could be a problem with recording though. Older cards have latency problems and there could be a slight delay on the recordings you make with this card. And the DA, AD converters are going to sound thin. Try to record everything on your friends system. I use multiple setups for mixing and mastering. Huge speakers, tiny old car radio speakers and anything in between I can find. The trick is it to get the mix to sound good on any system not just on a state of art studio system. The old SBs have a ghetto blaster warmth when cranked; just make sure it’s not the only thing you use. I’ve seen used pro quality ISA sound cards for under $5.00 if you have those slots.

1.44 Floppy Disk is his enumeration of his boot options. He does not actually have a floppy drive. Although, as you may know, you can still set your BIOS to indicate you have a floppy even though no device is attached as floppy drives are in no way PnP. Ok, then Dr Dos must be on a rom chip on the motherboard or the XP cd has been tampered with.

Post #26….1.44 Floppy Disk [DR-DOS]A:/ Post #28…. I have no floppy drive. Sounds confusing to me. I also suspect the hard drive and or cables. But I suggest checking it first with WD Diag before buying new because other problems can cause these symptoms Loose connections. Take it apart and put it back together and make sure everything snaps into place. The XP disk could have errors which could explain why 98se installed. The cd rom drive could be on the way out, it might need cleaning or need upgraded firmware for XP. Power supply could be too small or failing. Video card incompatibility. Try it with a different card.

Take the floppy out of the A: drive.

Yes that is the latest bios. Try the two Western Digital utilities I mentioned in my earlier post. They also work from a floppy and don’t need an OS. If the hard drive has been in another computer writing 0’s to the whole drive will sometimes help.

I finally got around to setting this up. Just in case someone else ends up with one of these orphans, the trick is to disable everything onboard except ide for a cd-rom drive and use the pci slots for a sata controller, soundcard and network card. And don’t use any Soyo software except for the latest bios upgrade.

I’ve put together quite a few PIII’s machines and installed XP without problems. This is what I would do with that board. First I’d find the latest bios and drivers for the board and install 512mb of PC133 memory, XP will lag with less. Next I’d go for the fastest processor it will handle. A Pentium III 1.2 ghz or a Celeron-S 1.4 ghz. Then a faster video card. I wouldn’t go below a Radeon 9600XT or GeForce 5700 Ultra. All of this is available on Ebay and at very reasonable prices if your patient. With WD drives I run WD’s diagnostic software tests and write 0’s to the drive. Then setup the drive with WD Data Lifeguard software. Even with the upgrades it won’t play newer games (2004 and up) but for as a general purpose PC it will be OK.

Thank you for the links. The model number is P41845PE and it was free. I used to have a Mercedes and it never broke down. I found that car boring. I also had an MG that needed tweaking every day. I loved that car. I’m the same way with computers so this should be a fun project.

Yes it is. Thank you. I've fixed the typo in my first post.

Thanks Tripredacus. I’ll give driverpacks a try.

The Sound Blaster Live 5.1 SB0100 works on almost any machine with a pci slot and it has bass and treble. Make sure it’s the SB0100 because other models have problems. They’re usually under $10.00 on Ebay.

I just picked up a used Soyo Motherboard with an Intel 845PE chipset. The Soyo website is gone and the various driver sites have conflicting information or broken links. Does anyone know if I can use the chipset drivers and acceleration utility from the Intel site or do I need the Soyo drivers for this board? Thanks in advance.

Craigslist Free Stuff. Best place to find CRT's

Thanks Tripredacus, The last link says that by changing the file name back to the original the file was restored to normal. On the files I had this did not work. It is possible that this was an early version of something that got into my friends computer. There is no chance that my friend was playing around with any kind of programming so I’m still thinking it came from malware.