TravisO

I'd say wait a few weeks and get the Core 2 Duo e8300, it will be more than twice as fast and it's not too bad at $163. Please realize the Pentium Dual Cores ARE NOT anywhere near as good as the Core 2 Duos. I could understand if you were trying to build a super cheap system, but when you're buying a $200 mobo and a $90 CPU, something is wrong with your thinking. You can get a $80 mobo and this $163 cpu, have a cheaper faster system that runs cooler, quieter and sucks less power. Round it off with the Nvidia 8800GT or an ATI3850 and you have a very efficient system where a 300w PSU would still be enough!

No, adding more ram isn't going to help you. Any ram that goes un-used doesn't benefit you at all. And as others have pointed out, you need to be running the 64bit version of Windows to even see the 8gb. If you find your framerate lacking, sounds like your CPU and/or video card isn't up to snuff. Also since you're running Vista, if you have Aero running, try turning it off and see if it improves your gaming speed.

It's hard to say, you do have 256mb of ram, but that's not as much in Windows as it use to be. If you had 512 of ram, I would say absolutely. Another thing I should point out that most people don't realize, WinXP is faster and can use less ram than Win2000 after you configure it properly (disable the extra features, disable the services you don't use). I've actually stress tested both and there's no comparison, XP is faster on the same hardware after it's properly configured. And if you want to get really dirty, use NLite to customize your install disk before you upgrade. What people get confused with XP is if available ram is there, the OS will use it for pre-caching. This is what makes XP faster, but it also gives people a false impression that it uses more ram. If the ram isn't available, this simply won't happen. But ultimately, 256 is just barely enough to run XP, but if you run all the newest apps (IE7, Office 2007, etc) 256 isn't enough to cut it anymore. I have ran XP on a similar computer, and it did run fine, so it's your call. I guess if you want to run recent software, going to XP would be a good idea. IMHO Win2000 is just as abondoned as Win98 is, MS has proven they've turned their back to 2000 after IE7 and MS Antispyware won't support it, and there's many more apps from them too that won't work. Honestly, installing 2000 isn't really an upgrade in your situation, it's just a 98 replacement that's going to use way more ram and not really bring you up to date... go XP or stay in 98.

He's correct, there's no easy fix for it, you'll need to move on to 64bit in order to fully make use of 4GB or more ram.

What a bunch of a**holes

Actually you guys should be way more optimistic about the OS after Vista, as MS's track record has been very good in this aspect. What I'm referring to is MS's one-two punch with their OS/Kernels. Everytime MS releases a major kernel improvement, the OS is just fine, but with the second release, they spend all their time perfecting the OS. Just look at history... 98 (second punch) was substantially better than 95 (first punch), XP is substantially better than 2000. So it's pretty fair to expect Windows 7 to be substantially better than Vista. It should be faster, require less memory (but possibly pre-cache more aggressively which is how XP got a bad rep of needing more ram, but doesn't) and have the UI we'd like to see. I'm very optimistic about Windows 7, and MS is shooting for a 2009/2010 release date, they learned their lesson about 5yr dev cycles. We'll get to see all the neat things Vista was suppose to gave but didn't make it, such as the SQL based file system, and resolution independence.

I have an Access 97 (with SR-1 integrated) install disc, and because Access 97 MDBs cannot be written to from newer versions of Access and upgrading is usually not always an option. Can SR-2 be integrated into my Access 97 cd so that when I install it I don't have to manually apply the patches again, so far a quick Google search reveals nothing.

Actually I would insist on a 20", not because of the size, but because you get 1600x1200 resolution which will be especially important as Windows becomes more resolution independent. Plus that size at that resolution gives you 100dpi, which starts giving you some great fidelity. I recommend: Best Quality is: Samsung 204B for ~$300 @ http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16824001226 Good Price but lower resolution: Acer 20" for $190 @ http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16824009109 If you keep looking around you can find some great monitors /w reliable reviews: http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory.as...me=LCD-Monitors If you look around you can find it on Google products for $271 but make extra sure it's not "open box" as you have to assume any open box LCD has dead pixels (that's why it was returned and there weren't enough dead pixels for a factory repair so the company just resells it).

Stop being lazy and read for yourself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_2_duo and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amd#Current_and_future The Intel Core 2 Duo is a little bit more expensive, but it's way faster, runs cooler and uses less watts, get one. Core 2 Duos are the god of multi-threading, PentiumD's multi-threading support is a joke at best.

This is an old subject that's been brought up on virtually every tech site and every tech forum. Firefox isn't leaking, it aggressively caches EVERY page you ever view. If the memory isn't available, it simply won't use it, but I do admit Firefox doesn't give back memory after it takes it, and I often kill the process once a day and restart Firefox (so it re-opens all my tabs). There is a setting in FF where you can set a limit to it's caching, but it doesn't work for me: # Access the "about:config" url by typing that in # Find the browser.cache.memory.capacity key. # Double-click it to change the value # Adjust the value. For those with 512MB to 1GB of RAM, start with a value of 15000. For those with less (between 128MB to 512MB), try a value of 5000

Even funnier that it was his first post, so it's possible he registered for an account just to give you a wrong answer that you explicitly said was of no use in your original question!

XP is faster, and actually uses less ram than 2000 after you configure it & disable the extra services. I've tested this under an extreme situation; I took a machine with 96mb of ram, booted 2000 and booted XP, XP was visibly faster. Yes XP does some pre-fetch stuff and makes use of un-used ram, but who cares, once you need the ram it's given up and that doesn't slow you down at all. Why do you think XP is faster than 2000 in the first place? Plus there are tons of security improvements to XP, it's the first MS OS where you can fully run as a non admin, and use RunAs to run admin functions or use some of their un-official tools like MakeMeAdmin, DropMyRights, PrivBar and such to make your non-admin life easier. These things don't work with 2000. Keep in mind most MS OSs are in 2 steps: revolutionary and evolutionary. The first is an overhaul (big ram & computing increase) the 2nd is improvements & tweaks (faster, sometimes even leaner). So Win95->98, Win2000->XP, Vista->Win 2009 (WinME didn't get a sequel because, well it sucked). So generally speaking you'll always want to run the 2nd OS when you can choose as it contains huge improvements over the one before it. PS: Task Manager does a HORRIBLE job reporting ram usage, for example it puts shared memory under every program. So if you have two 5mb programs that can share a 10mb block of memory (ex: .Net apps or a common DLL), Task Manager will report each program uses 15mb of ram (30mb total), when technically it's 10mb (20mb total). A better program to use (but much more complicated) is Process Monitor as it will list the shared amount of memory. http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysintern...essmonitor.mspx

There's a type called CREATOR OWNER that should be given FULL permission, as you want the owner, but not any user, to manipulate their own files.

Vista SP1 is going to contain just bug fixes, MS is saving all the new features for Vista R2 (2008), which you'll have to buy or upgrade to. Although it's possible some/most/all of the new features might be available via "Feature Packs" but who knows now-a-days. I'm hoping MS makes improvements available via Feature Packs as we can all agree it feels slimly we would have to pay to get the things that were suppose to be in Vista in the first place but were cut back due to time constraints.

I'm sure there's a magic macro out there, but being a web dev, I'd try this (it might not even work as I'm sure Word links are very different than HTML links but it's worth a shot). Find some classic ASP code (I have some but not on me) that looks at the folder and generates HTML links. Since classic ASP is usually VBScript, you can easily modify it to run in DOS and pipe it out to a .HTML file. View the file in your web browser, then copy and paste the text

Thanks, that hit the spot. FireFox user here and I never had to fiddle with IE7's new settings. I knew there was a place to edit tab settings somewhere but I was overlooking the obvious button there, I kept expecting to see a tab saying Tab (Firefox burnt into my brain).

I inherited this PC and I can't create new tabs in IE7. If I enable the Menu and look at File > New Tab is greyed out, and CTRL+T doesn't work either. Where can I revert IE7 to default tab mode?

I wouldn't touch it, and in fact I wouldn't be so quick to install the SP1 they're working on. Microsoft has already said there will be a SP1 but it will be for private testing, which tells me it's still in a very early state, not intended for running but testing only. I'd wait until there's a public release of SP1 beta before you install it on your machine, because at least that's gone through some quality control.

Sorry to be the guy to bust your bubble, but nothing you will do will ever make 98 support multiple cores. This isn't simply a driver issue or grabbing some DLLs from 2000/XP. It's an architectural issue within the 98 kernel, so unless somebody is going to severely rewrite the 98 kernel, don't held your breath. Supporting multiple cpus (or cores) was one of the reasons Microsoft had to rewrite Windows, creating the NT kernel, which 2000, XP and Vista all use. Microsoft didn't kill 9x just for giggles, it had some serious short comings that prevented it from scaling to future needs. Despite, as far as I know, an Intel Core 2 Duo will still run Win98, it just won't make use of the second core. And that 1 core is still significantly faster than your P3,P4,AMD cpu you have now.

Don't credit your setup or windows too much, all this means is he doesn't surf: porn, warez, free games, random sites, share files over IM. Even with Firefox and all updates, he'd get infected in 2 mins if he went to any of those sites. Running firewall free is outright a bad idea, because if a flaw in any of your services, RPC or TCP/IP stack exists, oneday a random vicious packet WILL get you. The only way to run malware safe without AV or anti-spyware is using XP or Vista as a non admin, and only RunAs specific tasks. But I still run a good & lean AV & Windows Defender + occasional Spybot scan just to be safe. I always relate using AV to using a car seatbelt. I know how to use a PC properly, and I know how to drive, but that doesn't make you 100% safe. I've even see annoyware/junkware on commercial discs too.

IE7 works fine on VLK Windows. What Microsoft has done though is mark leaked VLKs as invalid and given the original owner of the VLK a new key (and MS has tools that allow admins to re-key all machines in a network with 1 click). But back to the original question, the answer is, your Windows is not using a valid key, end of story.

The best one I've seen is pdfFactory.com, it gives a popup to preview the PDF before you save it along with various info (ex: file size). Combine that with their other product FinePrint.com which allows you to print multiple pages to a single page and you have a very powerfull publishing creation setup.

If you want to play with Win 3.11, I highly suggest you just do it via Virtual PC, as it will provide compatibility for ALL your hardware, that what I do. BTW if you look around hard enough you can find IE5 and WMP6 for Win 3.11, along with TCP/IP drivers, although surfing the net is painfully slow.

The ANI flaw is a Windows flaw, not an IE thing, FireFox will also pass the .ANI file to Windows and you'll still get infected. The question is, does Opera support ANI cursors too, if so, same problem. IMHO if this flaw is that critical (as they claim), MS should have provided a patch back to 98 & ME. Oh well, whatever, I knew the community would stand up and defend itself.

Your sound card probably has no onboard synth, and uses a softsynth driver instead. Check the laptop's website for the newest driver pack.