pointertovoid

A hardware firewall brings nearly no security, since it doesn't check what application accesses the Net. I had to reboot only when installing Avast 7 while Avast 4.8 was still operating, just for fun - nothing meaningful. The other times Avast 7 installed without a whisper on W2k.

At Flash disks, Slc still makes sense, because below Vista (or Seven), Mlc get slower over time. SD cards are all slow because of their interface, bad choice. If you stay a P-Ata ports, a CF is the best choice, with only SLC being good. At Crystal Disk Mark's 4k writes, they give 0.2MB/s instead of 0.02MB/s. But if you have (or add) S-Ata ports, then a decent Ssd smashes any Flash card. They aren't so expensive now: I got a used 40GB Force 2 for 40€ including delivery, nice beast.

I bought four 600GB Velociraptors - the fastest Sata mechanical disk as these used parts were, errr, less expensive than usual Notice the arm's speed, much improved at the 450GB and 600GB series. And, with the driver ported by BlackWingCat to run the ich10r, they ruffled my hair Don't trust Atto's maximum throughput too much, since the VRaptors have 64MB buffer each and this version of Atto tests over a 256MB file... WinBench99 must be more accurate, as usual. Anyway, aligning Ntfs to 1MiB boundaries did improve Atto's results BUT W2k installs only on the volume it created, at sector 63 I suppose. Also interesting: the group exceeds 2TiB which W2k can't handle directly, but with Intel's Matrix Raid Bios (recent enough!), I could define two pseudo-disks smaller than 2TiB each, and only then it seems to work. That is, 2k wouldn't install at all in >2TiB, but by slicing the group, it did; I was lecherous enough to create the second pseudo-disk at around 2TiB distance from the Win volume and overlapping it, and a slow format of the higher volume didn't destroy the lower volume. So at least for Raid groups between 2TiB and 4TiB, this would be a solution. They didn't start W2k (F6 install easy) appreciably faster than a single VRaptor does, and certainly slower than my X25-E Ssd , but they allow to browse folders of uncompressed pictures very quickly, and are excellent at launching games - where Ssd don't have the capacity. Well done, BlackWingCat!

The excellent Defrag from W2k was offocially known to accept only clusters of 4kiB. Which could mean eather clusters of 4kiB or 8 sectors, which would then translate into 32kiB clusters. Could you tell us how is the volume Defrag didn't like, and maybe check a volume with the other size option? Contiguous files aren't good enough for Windows since W98fe. Windows post-95 have a task that observes what files are loaded at the same time (possibly what file chunks, even before Xp?) and groups them on the disk. This accelerates applications start quite a bit and is a clear superiority of W2k-Xp-etc built-in defragmenter, which competitors don't offer. Competitors do run faster but make a worse job, and each Defrag wants to "correct" what the other did.

Not up to now! I've tried the v2.8 Complete on Xpsp3 (not W2k) and the installer failed telling approximately "name base capacity exceeded". The v2.8 Basic succeeded on Xpsp3 - it has fewer files which might need fewer names perhaps. The portable version looks very interesting because I could copy it from an online computer to an offline one after adding the classes and styles and languages I need. Before I download 157MB... Could you tell if yours was a v2.8 or v2.9, and if your W2k was plain vanilla or rather supplemented with Kdw - Xp Api - UURollup and other extensions? Many thanks!

I've installed Office 2003 recently, and: - I does bring some grammar checking in several languages, including limited German declension, I appreciate; - On an X25-E SSD and a 3.3GHz Core 2 duo running W2k with Ahci, o2003 starts almost instantly (o97 really is instantaneous). On a 7k160 and PIIIs 1.4GHz, o2003 takes 1s while o97 takes zero.

Hello you all! I need LaTeX on my W2k, for which the most widely compatible with front-ends seems to be MikTeX. I've taken the v2.8, officially said to run on W2k. To install on a machine without Internet access, I've taken the "complete" flavour at 1.14GB And during installation, after 73.000 files from the total 77.000, it tells approximately "name space capacity exceeded" So if there are known remedies, please tell! Or if you know a specialized forum, of course. Thank you!

Hi nice people, nice to see you again! I need LaTeX on my W2k, the only free option for Wysiwym edition being LyX. What recent version fits? In the past I could install v1.5.4, now v1.6.10 and v2.0.3 refuse to install, and with each weighing 35MB to 200MB I won't try them all... For v2.0.2 I read a strange statement telling "the standard installer won't run on 2k, try the alternative one". And: can I install on a machine without Internet access? Apparently, even the "bundle" versions need downloaded extensions for the included MikTeX. Can I install by copy+paste from a machine (Xp or W2k) with Internet access? (Trying soon, but other people's experience serves as well) Thank you!

What about the Arctic i30? It's meant for socket 1156, 1155, 2011 and more, while a30 is the equivalent for Amd. The design resemble the 7 pro I use with much pleasure on my socket 775: efficient, silent, very cheap. I consider offering an i30 to a relative who assembles his gamer's machine, so your experience is welcome!

The latest Avast 7 antivirus runs on W2k. The editor tells it officially. Users had even success on W2k Server. An outdated firewall isn't a big worry to me, as it works without updated malware definitions.

Via chipsets are bugged. You're observing the consequences, with a very high probability. Among others, their disk host makes write errors. It started before your Km266 and continued after. Via never improved that. People who experienced it tell "Via never again". Meanwhile Via changed the company's name and tries again to sell chipsets. I experienced it with Win98se, which I considered the worst Win I ever had, because of Via. Many Windows users had already switched at that time to WinMe, which got the infamous reputation. Thereafter, Microsoft put sensitive error tests in their Windows installation disks, so users don't accuse Microsoft. This tells why W2k and Xp don't install on buggy hardware while W98se does. Installing W2k or Xp from the CD is in fact a good test of hardware health. Notice the Via chip for USB 2.0 on Pci works great.

At least for W2k Pro, Avast 7 again supports it officially. I really appreciate their kindness.

For Windows 2000 there is a patch that Microsoft didn't test nor distribute widely: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/890202/en-us you could search the equivalent for W2k3. Good luck ! http://support.microsoft.com/kb/873402/EN-US

Hello fine people, nice to see you again! I had bad experience with the post-Rollup1 patches for USB. Clearing that took me long. Knowing that the uSp5 includes many such untested patches, I personally stay away from it. At the HfSlip subforum, you may find lists of W2k updates, post-Sp4 and Rollup1. The order seems to have limited importance with W2k - a great progress over W95.

I wanted to try Wiper.exe but it denied working. Obtained there: http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/staff/ryderocz/misc/wiper_0525.zip http://www.gskill.us/firmware/wiper.zip Wiper is allegedly (doubtful) written by Indilinx, the SSD controller manufacturer, and distributed by Ocz and Gskill but not Corsair. They gave the same answers for the Corsair and Ocz disks: - No disk fits - Barefoot report: system error Wiper is said to explain the SSD which sectors are unused by files, thus giving to Xp and W2k3 an equivalent to Seven's Trim function. Wiper must be started from time to time, it reclaims as much disk space as the file systems accepts to give, then releases this space and tells the SSD where the obtained sectors were. Can Wiper.exe run on W2k? I use the BWC-ported Ahci driver for W2k. In addition, Wiper seems to need KB934205 to run on disks <128GiB, and while KB934205 is included in Xp's Sp2, I couldn't find it for W2k nor in its Sp4. I'll give a new try to a different approach: a secure erase by GPartEd. Not convenient on a regular basis, but I want to check this Ssd before it's used on a Seven machine.

Trim and Linux: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIM#Discard_parameter_in_Linux "TRIM is supported in the Linux kernel since version 2.6.33"

Hello nice boys and girls! Bought a used SSD, model Corsair Force F40, alias CSSD-F40GB2-A, with a Sandforce controller, firmware v2.2. Features Ahci, Ncq, Trim. 40GB. Test software declares it healthy. It carried a Linux-type volume on 2/3 of the capacity only. If the Smart is read properly, the SSD ran for 1000h in 3 powerups, so it may have run shortly in a server. Speed measurements from different benchmark software are very inconsistent. This is NOT related with volume alignment, already tried. HdTach, HdTune consistently see an irregular read speed of 180MB/s on 2/3 of the capacity, then the regular high speed expected. IOMeter sees 180MB/s long reads and 40MB/s long writes everywhere, just as Crystal Disk Mark does. Atto sees 280MB/s reads and 260MB/s writes everywhere. Queue depth acts as expected everywhere. (Click to enlarge) The rest of the hardware runs smoothly with other SSD like the X25E or Vertex2: ich10r in Ahci mode, driver BlackWingCat for W2k. Explanation please? Some fix as well? Can this be related with the Trim information that W2k doesn't supply, as HdTach and HdTune see the erratic behaviour approximately where the previous volume was? And can I wipe out such now irrelevant Trim information? Thank you!

You didn't get it. Software to compute combustion in a rocket is not abundant, quite the opposite. It is single-tasked and this won't change. A multi-core CPU does not accelerate single-task software. CPUs did not improve significantly on single-task software since the Core 2.

Thank you! (Muito obrigado!)

Quite precisely off-topic.

I use Atto 2.02 and 2.34 on Win95a and Win95b regularly, no single worry. Apparently this hasn't been mentioned nor discussed, sorry if I missed it... Have you installed the Usb 2.0 driver for the Southbridge? Win98se brings no Usb 2.0 driver, and I'm not quite sure the InfInst for your chipset are meant for Win98se. 10mn for 700MB correspond well to Usb 1.1 speed. In the so-called device manager, you must have a line with "extended USB" or Ehci or USB 2.0 or similar.

I certainly agree that the Hal does again what the Bios did, but the Bios has still an influence: - To start the machine, as you said; not specific to W2k but necessary - To switch off some parts of the hardware, which aren't switched on again by W2k So I'm very cautious before ruling out interactions. Just one example: I had a mobo whose Bios apparently didn't setup properly the SMBus that accesses the temperature sensors. W2k didn't neither, even with the proper mobo and chipset drivers. With nVidia and older Ati graphics drivers, all went fine. With newer Ati graphics drivers W2k couldn't boot - but WinMe did. This improved as I added the independent SpeedFan software that reads temperature sensors . My best explanation being that SpeedFan itself configures the SMBus properly. You know, computers are like explosives. The more you know them, the more you mistrust them.

There are dozens of CPU models on the market, but they don't really fit my needs... I need computing power for old software which is single-tasked. Sorry designers, I know this is difficult because semiconductor technology and physics go a different direction, but these are my real needs. I use regularly stone-old software. Some compute molecule conformations, others rocket fuel performance... (MS-DOS era with a graphical interface added!) They aren't maintained any more, I won't get a multicore version of them, and alternatives for Windows are really scarce. I bought a Core 2, a Duo because Solo don't exist, a E8600 because it was the fastest on single tasks. Fabulous beast, happy. Since then, progress has been faint on single-task speed. Clock speed stagnates (Over- or not) and single-task computation power has gained just 20% over all these years, at least on i86 and SSE programs, an improvement too small to let me change my machine. So if cycle efficiency can't improve more on old code (I know it's difficult) I'd like to have faster clocks. I don't care a bit about 4, 6 or 24 idling cores; I don't need hyperthreading; huge L2 L3 L4 cache size shouldn't bring much - I need one fast core. And in case this is impossible... Choosing a dual core for single-task performance, not for low cost, I'll never use an integrated GPU, as I also have video games. But I'd like the CPU to run cooler, so I can put a more silent fan, or have passive cooling at the CPU as well. If a recent computer could warm my room as little as my Tualatin did, it would be fine. Thank you for your attention, Mr. AMD, thank you for your attention, Mr. Intel, sorry for interrupting you.

Hello nice people! Several driving games want the player to use direction arrows AND the space bar at the same time, and I've already two keyboards that interlock these keys, that is, if you press the space bar and one arrow (I believe the left arrow) only one key acts. How inconvenient. So I redefine the controls in the games, replacing the space bar by a key that works at the same time as all arrows, but am not pleased with that. Do I do something wrong? A setting somewhere? Or are there more capable keyboard models? Thanks!

Could you try to orient the CPU cooler (yes, CPU, not GPU) so that it blow to the GPU cooler as well? More: if you have add-in cards near the video card, try to insert them farther away, to ease air flow. Fingers won't tell between +60°C and +90°C, and many display softwares give bad readings, so you could double-check with a different software, there are many ones. GPU are made much more resistant to heat than CPU, and +84°C would be normal, but at full compute capacity, not at idle.