pointertovoid

I feel it's way too early to find mobos not working with W2k. I've just received one with an Ich10r. Intel doesn't give any Ahci nor Raid driver for W2k, but the Ich10r works perfectly without any added driver provided you choose "IDE mode" in the Bios. By "works perfectly" I mean same measured performance as with Xp and the specialized driver and Ahci mode - even in Atto with Q=4 and Q=10. Which is rather normal, as P-Ata had its equivalent to Ncq since Ata5 (=Udma/100). So the only limit is the absence of Raid with official drivers. ---- Software written for Xp does NOT necessarily run on W2k. For instance, Kernel.exe and User.dll have more entries on Xp than on W2k. And unfortunately, Intel's Ahci and Raid drivers for Ich9-9r-10-10r do make use of these entries.

Meanwhile I've received a pair of these 500GB Seagate 7200.12 aka ST3500418AS. Both run without surprise on my Ich10r, both have been approved by the full test of Seatools. Nice. The model has 500GB per platter and rotates at 7200rpm (beware many competitors don't), giving a huge throughput of 134MB/s at contiguous read. Sizes that give this maximum throughput are 250GB (1 head), 500GB (1 platter), 750GB (3 heads) and 1TB (2 platters). The 250GB and 500GB are more silent and start more quickly; I suppose their arm is faster as well, though the specs are identical. Seagate had issued a ST3500410AS and few weeks later the ST3500418AS. They are nearly identical, and some users even tell their disk with a ST3500418AS tag report as ST3500410AS in the Smart. The ST3500410AS is said to be a "low-halogen" product. There seems to be as well a small speed improvement in the ST3500418AS' arm speed: on Hd Tune's benchmark for access time, you see a cloud of points within a band whose thickness is one platter rotation period. The ST3500410AS had - from curves I found on the Net - quite a bit points over this band, corresponding to some seek attempts that took more time than most ones did, needing one platter rotation more. The ST3500418AS shows nearly none of these out-of-band points, neither on the Net nor in my measurements. According to Seagate's datasheet, the ST3500418AS make a bit more noise. These disks are very silent. Nothing to do with the 8GB 5400rpm with ball bearings I had before from Seagate - the age of a disk design is more important for noise than the brand. Both the spindle and the arm are more silent than the J8080 = Hds721680plat80 and Hds721616plat80 I still use, which are already totally acceptable and better than the Sp0802n I enjoyed before. Well done! Random access time is 2ms less good than for my J8080 = Hds721680plat80. Atto's performance is better nevertheless, including at small chunks. I didn't find how to set the AAM on this disk. Seatools has no setting for it, HdTune 3.50 shows one and allows the user to play with it, which even lits the Led for disk access, and this setting is memorized and given back by the disk, but it has no effect on speed nor noise. I will try with other means, but did someone ever achieve a difference? If not, I'll consider that the AAM is a functionless feature on the 7200.12. Here are Atto's results, equally good on my Ich10r and on my Jmb36x, with the JMicron driver and the Infinst but without any Ahci not Stor driver, for 1 and 4 requests in the queue: In the absence of the Infinst, results are minimally less good, except at 0.5kB where they jump to 13..16MB/s. Such figures at Atto may be the best among any 7200rpm drive, but didn't give me the short boot time I hoped, probably because of the mobo.

Hello again, In the case I wouldn't find one single convenient keyboard to type in many languages, I consider having several keyboards connected at the same time to the computer. How many keyboards can I connect and use? 1, 2, 6...? Is this possible with Ps2 connectors and some splitter? Or Usb only? Are all keyboards active at the same time? Do I need to switch the layout applied by Windows when I go from one keyboard to another? Thanks!

Most disk diagnostic software from manufacturers doesn't care whether you're in Raid mode or not and find its way to access disks individually. So try first staying in Raid mode.

Hello you all! In a near future, I'll have to type a lot in 5+ languages with Latin letters, some heavily hyphenated (Spanish, Portuguese, -gasp- French, English, German) and I would enjoy so much using a single keyboard for all, since typing mistakes skyrocket when you change your keyboard layout, and since you type so much slower then... Which keyboard layout do you suggest as the least bad for that? It can be exotic provided it's better and not worse than common ones. I don't mind changing my habits once. An introduction here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_layout The characters I need are quite a bit, and dead keys to add hyphens look like the best compromise, but the layouts I've seen also need an Alt- or even Alt-Shift-something combination just to type some of the dead keys, which I feel quite impractical. From the Wiki article, these layouts may cover nearly all needs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:KB_US-International.svg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:KB_Latin_American.svg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:KB_Portuguese.svg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:KB_Portuguese.svg For comparison, this is the stock of characters I have to use with copy-paste: ¿ ¡ «» áéíóú ÁÉÍÓÚ ã õ ñ ç Ã Õ Ñ Ç âêîôû ß ÂÊÎÔÛ äëïöü æ œ ÄËÏÖÜ Æ Œ àèìòù ÀÈÌÒÙ where some quote characters are still missing. And yes, I do need hyphenated capital letters, of course. Suggestions?

The first possible explanation is a bad contact between the Ram and their sockets on the mobo. Use a brush to remove dust from both, and an eraser (a rubber) to clean the contacts at the Ram. Then, you may try to power up the computer without any ram and observe what the Leds and beeper say about the boot process - find the codes according to your mobo's Bios. Can you test each Ram module on an other Mobo with Memtest86+ ?

Raid-0 does read separate files from different disks when these files are smaller than the stripe size (simplified explanation). This is the normal behaviour of any Raid-0. Some controllers do it in Raid-1 as well, but not nearly all do. And when writing, Raid-1 is worse of course; writing happens every time you read a folder in Windows, unless you lit NtfsDontUpdateLastAccess (name a bit imprecise) in the register. Stripe size is meant just for the purpose you describe. Having stripes bigger than sectors means that small files probably fit into on single stripe, thus allowing the Raid controller to ask a single disk access the data and use the other(s) disk(s) work on other small files in parallel. For bigger files that span several stripes, all disks work on the same request. Though, the Raid controller doesn't know about files, alas - the OS only gives it sector numbers. So files sometimes span stripe boundaries though it wouldn't be necessary and this slows the Raid down. On an OS and applications that would issue only one request at a time, here's how stripe size can be optimized: - If a request needs to access two disks, latency growth from: arm move +half-turn of a platter turn, to: arm move +two-thirds of a platter turn (because platters aren't synchronized nowadays, because of adaptive zoning) so you first loose 1/6 of a turn, for instance 1.39ms at 7200rpm; - But then the file is read with twice the throughput, say 200MB/s instead of 100MB/s with two disks; - With such figures, the breakeven is at 278kB, which is bigger than the average file size of W2k-Xp. With faster platters (15000rpm scsi, Flash...) stripes can be smaller again. And if all your files are big (pictures, video...) you can choose any stripe size. However, Nt4 and successors allow software to launch more requests before a pending one is fulfilled. With several requests pending, disks working independently are better. With Ncq as well. This favours bigger stripes. Beginning with Xp, the prefetch does what applications should have done since Nt4: launch parallel requests. This explains why applications launch faster on Xp than they do on W2k, provided Ram is big enough. With such parallel requests, bigger stripes are better. One limit is that you want your parallel requests fall on different disks, and if the prefetch calls neighbour files composing an application, they should better be in different stripes. On a file server, several users and applications issue many requests at any time, so bigger stripes are better.

Hello everybody! In a quest for a fast (but silent) Hdd for my OS, I concluded that Seagate's ST3500418AS - 500GB on a single platter, 7200.12 series - is faster (as of June 2009) than their counterparts at my beloved Hitachi and Samsung, which have "only" 332GB per platter and perform less well on small files according to Atto. But then, I have bad feelings about Seagate, whose 7200.11 series was botched. So has anyone experience (failures, incompatibilities, bad firmware releases, bad batches, other worries...) with that disk or that series? Thanks!

Found another scenario where customers may not need 32GB of Ssd: in a client-server network where the workstation only has the minimum OS locally and picks all the applications it needs over Ethernet from an Scsi server. Such a workstation has no Hdd at all and needs again 4GB or 8GB Ssd. Nice for the silence as well.

Thank you so much! I try it and tell you.

W2k can run on 128MB, you lose about 10% speed as compared to 256MB, provided nothing else runs... Avast for instance takes 78MB right now on my W2k and Firefox 79MB right now. So 128MB limit you to feasibility tests. But 512MB would be comfortable, yes. Just test your Ram with Memtest86! Free, easy, and then you'll know. WinMe accepts 512MB without any tweaking (see other discussions on this forum). To know if you Cd is sound, use CdSpeed http://www.cdspeed2000.com it will tell you if you Cd can be read without errors. If your Cd is a burnt one, with properly burnt but badly chosen files, CdSpeed can't tell it. W2k is definitely worth it. The best Win I've had up to now (among 95a-95b-98-98se-Me-Nt4-Xp). If you try and enjoy it, remember to store locally every update before July 2010 when Microsoft will stop support. Updates for W95 just disappeared from MS site; Nt4 had a better fate, but I won't take any chances for my nice W2k.

From what I checked 2 months ago, nVidia gave full support of all chipsets on W2k. Which is NOT the case at Intel which officially stops Ahci and Raid support on W2k at Ich8. I searched through Gigabyte's site and for instance the C51 Chipset Driver v8.26 for W2k http://europe.giga-byte.com/FileList/Drive..._nvidia_c51.exe (32MB) cites in its Inf file the MCP51S = nF430/410 and MCP55S = nF590/570/550 (n650sli) and MCP55 v9.20 for W2k http://europe.giga-byte.com/FileList/Drive...ia_mcp55_2k.exe cites in its Inf file and Readme the C55/MCP55 and C19/MCP55 (n680sli) all including Sata, Raid, F6 bootdiskette and everything. However I haven't used them by myself for having bought meanwhile a less power-hungry P45 chipset, so this is no experimental knowledge.

Hello everybody! SSD may be quick (at least a few among them...) but are quite expensive (especially the few ones that are faster than an HDD). On the other hand, they have capacities I don't need (32GB, 80GB, 160GB). Such capacity may be interesting for a laptop with a single disk bay, but isn't necessary for my desktop: I would have an additional HDD even if the SSD had 160GB, and then, what I really need to put on the SSD is Windows, without the paging file, and maybe a few tiny applications - everything fits into 4GB easily, and 8GB would hold nearly every application I use. I haven't found such an SSD - tell me if you know one with the speed I'm looking for! The nearest equivalent would be a quick CF card on a Pata adapter, but they aren't that fast: about 45MB/s. A Raid of them would achieve just 90MB/s at the expense of 8s added boot time for the Bios of the controller: bad bargain. No, I really want to have something like 200MB/s with no added boot time. Would more people be interested in such a disk, or am I the only one on Earth? About 200MB/s, really quick on small files as well, capacity 4GB or 8GB, size 2.5" or 3.5", for maybe 50€ (us$70)? What do you think? If enough people want to have such an SSD, it may encourage manufacturers to offer one.

Same mistake again and again, Cluberti. Xp licence counts cores, not sockets as Vista does.

Until the disk is detected, you won't be able to do anything with it. You may try another cable, another port, another controller or computer, reduce controller speed to Sata-150 by the Bios, but if the disk doesn't respond: adios, bye-bye. Did you try the same port with an other disk? Seatools detail their diagnostic, giving a separate result for the data transmission. Then, if you have important unbacked data on the platters, you may try to take the printed circuit board of another HDD of exactly the same model and put it on your platters, it sometimes works. There are also specialized (and not very cheap) companies who recover data from out-of-order disks.

If you plan to use a dual-core Cpu, don't forget to use an OS that makes use of it. Xp Home doesn't, Xp Pro does.

Samsung's diagnostic program is called Shdiag.exe and is available here http://www.samsung.com/global/business/hdd...ort_Shdiag.html you have to provide a disquette with an Ms-Dos and paste ShDiag on it. You may also like Seatools, from Seagate but this one accepts other brands: http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/seatools prefer however the manufacturer's tool each time you can. These tools should be considered as the reference to decide if a disk is healthy or not. By the way, they don't need a running OS. And you can often choose between a diskette and a Cdrom version. Also the "Ultimate Boot Disk" (UBD) which is a bootable Cd that includes nearly all disk testing sofware, but not as quick and must be learnt. I've had several worries with signal and power cables on disks recently, so changing yours may be worth a trial.

I didn't buy Cals at eBay, but all my workstation licences. They all work fine and are genuine. They're cheaper for being second-hand, or because the software isn't fashionable any more, or because an eBay shop has no real-estate expenses. Absolutely no reason to be fake. 15 Cals: just ask the seller. He may offer 3 packs of 5 cals. Here in old Europe, Justice of half a dozen countries has said that even reselling OEM licences without the original hardware is legal - whatever the so-called licence alleges - and consequently, even "necessary technical means" used by a licence buyer to install it on a new hardware are legal as well. Since then, Microsoft avoids going to trial in the remaining European countries about such topics. So in the case of Oem licences, you may have a look at Justice decisions in your countries.

W2k installs on Fat32 as well as on Ntfs, nothing to worry there. Putting a W2k after a W98 on the same computer lets W2k overwrite the boot sector. W2k then proposes to load W98, but only if W2k works long enough for it - which wasn't your case. Testing for defect hardware is a good idea based on the behaviour you describe. One way is to let the computer run a Linux from a live Cd http://www.ubuntu.com in which case whether Ubuntu runs doesn't depend at all on your Windows installation. It doesn't depend on the HDD, neither - but on the Cd driver, yes. You also have Ram testers on bootable diskettes or Cd http://www.memtest.org http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp as well as HDD tests from bootable diskettes and Cd, but they depend on the disk manufacturer. http://www.seagate.com/support/seatools rather universal and the "Ultimate Boot Disk"

Nearly everything about disk capacity limit is wrong. I regularly use W95b on disks exceeding 32GB and exceeding 137GB. No particular measure for it. W95-98-Me-2k-Xp-2k3 (but not Fat32) is limited to about 2TB disk capacity for coding sector numbers on 32 bits, a limit of both Windows and of Mbr-type partitions. And Fat32 is the same from W95b to WMe. W95-98-Me is not limited to Lba28 and doesn't even notice the 137GB barrier. It completely relies on the Bios, and operating these Win over 137GB works without any effort if the Bios is able of it. Added drivers - like Intel's one - do not modify Windows' behaviour at 137GB, but shortcut a limited Bios to enable Win accessing bigger disks. Just like the "disk installers" provided by disks manufacturers do. About processors, I've just installed a W95b on a 1400MHz PIIIs 80GB without any patch. This confirms once again that the 350MHz refer to Amd processors.

Hello everybody! When you install Office97, it brings new file filters to W95, which allow many applications to read and write images (among others) in formats that didn't exist before. Typically, Jpg and Png and some more are added to Bmp. MsPaint.exe has a bug on W95 and crashes when one tries to use these formats brought by Office97. This is solved by a patch from MS called Paint95.exe, which brings MsPaint.exe v5.0.1523.1 which uses the added file formats properly. Nice, fine. Except that I found Paint95.exe only in English, and then all its user interface speaks English, which is a bit inelegant on my computer and quite annoying for some relatives of mine. So does anyone: - Know if the patch, Paint95.exe, ever had translated versions? - Knows where to find a French Paint95.exe or a French MsPaint.exe v5.0.1523.1? - Have a French one in a desk drawer...? Thanks a lot!

My own little messy contribution... On a 1GHz PIII 128MB, W95, W98se, WMe will all be swift and are all dirt-cheap. Then I would definitely prefer WMe, which is better than 98 in any respect, and does have some advantages over W95b/c: dX9.0c, more drivers, easy Usb, more applications. W2k is comfortable with a 1GHz PIII but won't boot up and down as quickly as W95-98-Me do. Consider 1min boot time on this configuration instead of 15s. 128MB make it 10% slower than 256MB, and then you'll add applications that eat up Ram. So stay at WMe (or 95b/c) if you're offline and want speed. Online, I feel much more comfortable with W2k: user accounts that don't access Ntfs-protected system folders, still security-maintained OS and IE... Dual-boot Me-2k in an option, I have such a machine, but then you need Fat32 on many volumes, less good. Wdm drivers were introduced with W95 osr2.1, that is, W95b with Usb. There is no general rule that a Vxd designed for 98 should run on 95. First, its installer may well refuse it, and even if it installs naturally or artificially, it may well crash the system as many entry points lack on W95. I increasingly believe that moderators write mistakes deliberately to provoke responses in a thread. There is no such thing as a general 32GB limit on W95. I know Microsoft have written that in the KB, and a few bits of W95 may not work properly, but these are all started by the user's action and can be replaced by free equivalents. And the 137GB barrier is strictly defined by the Bios and can even be overriden by some drivers (Intel chipset). I could install W95b on a 160GB Raid-0 without any precaution. If I remember well, the 350MHz limit is for Amd processors only, and a patch exists anyway. I've just installed W95b on a 1400MHz PIII without any patch, by the absolutely standard method.

Just stumbled here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/158238/en on a paragraph telling that W95b with Usb and W95c support Wdm drivers: "For OSR 2.1 and OSR 2.5, only files that have been updated to provide support for the Win32 Driver Model (WDM) and Universal Serial Bus (USB)..." To know if you have an Osr 2.1 cdrom, look after "With USB bus" printed on the Cd. It must also contain a (Drive letter):\95b\OTHER\USB folder. Its contents, USBSUPP.EXE, can also be downloaded equally well (it has to be installed separately in both cases), but I guess WDM is brought by other files. Win95 licences don't specify which version they legitimate, and their keys are accepted by all W95 version - letting me suppose that Microsoft wanted it that way.

Hello you all! You may know (but are perfectly allowed to ignore) that w95euro.exe, which installs on W95 half a dozen fonts with the Euro symbol (€, you know), refuses to install if Msaa is already there. So the standard answer is to put w95euro.exe first, and Msaardk.exe later. By the way, some may be as happy as I am to find OffTTUpd.exe by googling "OffTTUpd.exe" site:microsoft.com as this one adds more fonts with the euro symbol, provided w95euro.exe is already there. For W95-98-Nt3.51-Nt4. For people who had put Msaardk.exe first and can't use w95euro.exe then, a solution is there http://erpman1.tripod.com/win95upd.html which tells to replace post-Msaa User.exe User32.dll Gdi.exe Gdi32.dll by their original W95 versions, use w95euro.exe and OffTTUpd.exe, and paste the post-Msaa versions back. I guess one obtains the same situation as if installing w95euro.exe first and Msaa then. BUT After having used erpman1's trick, I see a few things that don't really work, and that should explain why the w95euro.exe installer refuses to coexist with Msaa... - On W95's Charmap, the Euro symbol is absent, except for the MS Sans font, which is not a Truetype one; - On WordPad, same gag as Charmap, which is less negligible; - On Metapad (a Notepad replacement), the Euro symbol exists for any font added by the patches. To be clear: txt files don't specify a font, but Metapad allows the user to choose the font used to display texts. - On Internet Explorer, same as on Metapad. SO Has someone seen other malfunctions when w95euro.exe and Msaardk.exe coexist on W95? Something more troubling than Charmap and WordPad? Like MsWord, printers... Thank you!

Hello everybody! The only Msaa for W95b I found at Microsoft is English, which is sort of annoying, as it replaces User.exe and User32.dll, and then my French (I guess: any non-English) W95b starts speaking English in many dialog boxes, like "Really close without saving? - Yes - No - Abort". So: Has someone ever seen a non-English Msaa for W95b? It's the v1.3, not the v2.0 for W98+. Better, would someone have a French one, or know where to find it, provided it does exist? Alternatively: Has someone French User.exe and Gdi.exe v4.01.0970 (the version number brought by the English Msaa 1.3), or know where to find them, provided they do exist? Answers for other non-English languages would be helpful clues as well! Thank you!