MAFinOKC

After years of being satisfied Dell customers, we had a horrible experience last year with a new Dell, so now we've gone to buying from a reputable local no-name clone shop. We're running Win XP Home on a PC with a Gigabyte main board, an AMD Phenom II processor, and a Radeon X1550 Series video card. It came with a Cyberlink DVD program that didn't seem to be working right, so I uninstalled it. So of course Windows Media Player became unable to play DVDs. I installed MPlayer Media Player and it plays DVDs just fine, but WMP didn't pick up the appropriate codecs for DVD playing from it. I installed XP Codec Pack 2.5.0 and now WMP says there's a conflict about digital rights management. XP Codec Pack installed the old Windows Media Player Classic and when I try to play DVDs on it, I get the error message "Digital Copy Protect Failure." Updating the video driver didn't help. What should I do next? Is it worth it to buy one of the Windows Media Player plugins for sale on the Microsoft website? I really hate to buy anything from Microsoft I don't have to buy.

I work in a large hospital complex. I visit the hospital floors every day. My office computer and the hospital computers are running Win XP Pro and Office 2003. Most of the staff-access computers on the hospital floors are now totally locked down using single-sign-on. They provide access to server-based Office apps, so if you need to use one, you connect to the server over a Citrix connection. They provide access to your network share so that you can save documents to your personal space. Customized settings, e.g. changes I make in the global template Normal.dot (I'm guessing that's what I'm modifying), are periodically purged and the template is reset to the basic default template. Is there a way to have a template stored somewhere on my computer or network share that I can access to restore all my personal settings? I have looked at the Template and Add-ins function in Microsoft Word, but I can't find any good explanation of how to do what I want to do. Any suggestions?

Revised post: Dear Fernando, I recently posted a thank-you message because your method of driver integration worked for me. Now, however, there is a problem. To recap: We purchased a refurbished Dell XPS 720 running Windows XP Media Center 2005. I was unable to set up a RAID1 array until I found your guide, which worked perfectly. However, after about two weeks, we now have a "RAID failure" and lost-access error message. The computer came with a Seagate Barracuda 320-GB HD. The second drive we added is an identical Seagate Barracuda. The RAID array error message from the nVidia MediaShield program says the array is "degraded." The newer of the two drives is still working and the computer is functioning normally. What do I do next? How do I figure out if this is a software problem, non-disk hardware problem, or the disk has actually failed? I tried running Seatools for DOS on the hard drive and got an error message but I have a feeling that Seatools does not run correctly on a mirrored drive. ADDENDUM: After a few days, NVIDIA MediaShield's message has changed. Both drives now read as "Healthy" but the RAID array is "Degraded." No popup or context (right-click) command is associated with HD0, but "Delete Array" appears when I click on HD1. No "Rebuild Array" command is available. I've tried going into the RAID manager at machine startup prior to OS loading, but the Rebuild Array command does not seem to work, i.e., nothing happens when I try to execute it.

Thank you! That's good enough.

Dear Fernando, Please accept my sincerest appreciation for your post on integration of NVIDIA nForce RAID and SATA drivers. We recently bought a refurbished Dell XPS 720 running Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 with a 320-GB Seagate Barracuda HD. We installed a second identical HD and I foolishly thought the instructions in the XPS manual would allow me to reinstall the OS onto a RAID1 array. I tried it without "doing my homework" and succeeded only in rendering the machine inoperative. After scouring the Web for days trying to find a solution, I came across your post and I'm delighted to say it worked. However, I have a sort of followup question: I went to the file archive you pointed at and downloaded your zipped archives of the appropriate drivers. However, it seems to me that I used only a few files from the whole package. What are all the other files for, and should I have done something else with them? Yours, MAFinOKC Oklahoma