ldb

I thought I would try Kernel Ex, but when I installed it and rebooted, all I got was a blank desktop. I heard my sound card load and could move the mouse, but nothing else worked. The version I tried was 4.0 RC2. Fortunately I was able to go to safe mode and do an uninstall and also had a backup ready to go just in case.

I have 98SE and repeatedly find that I cannot print web based coupons because the coupon printing software does not work on 98. I believe this has something to do with being able to print the bar code and being enabled for bar code recognition. I think Windows ME has this ability. Can anyone with ME or 98SEtoME confirm this? What files would I need to install in order for this to work or is it just that the software developers are leaving out 98? This is really pi$$ing me off. Thanks

I am using a windows Vista 32 bit home premium notebook computer for which the wireless network detection has stopped working. I updated the driver for the built in wireless card with out any results. I also tried a plug in wireless card which windows detected and said was working properly and this did not work either. This leaves me to believe that something is wrong with the OS. I can get on the internet via dialup modem and also by the ethernet connection with a DSL modem. I have been to several hotspots that I know have wifi and no networks show up. When I click on the "Connect to" in the start menu, nothing happens. When I click on "connect to a network" in control panel, I get an error loading wizards message saying module not found. All critical windows updates have been installed. Any ideas, this is not my computer so I do not have much history on it. Thanks

What happened to the en-US versions? I may want to try this again some time. In the mean time, I have found that a fresh install of version 2.0.0.20 from downloaded copy seems to work better and is more stable than the continually patched version I was using. Seems faster than the April 1 version of the 2.0.0.22pre I had trouble with.

I tried Bon Echo 22pre, but went back to Firefox 20 due to crashes related to shockwave. Could not install shockwave 11 as it would immediately crash my otherwise stable machine. Reinstalled shockwave 10 and now all is well again.

Are you all installing these builds on top of your old FF installs or uninstalling first? The built in updater is not picking these up as I never got a notification for release 2.0.0.21. Did you have to reinstall your plugins if uninstalling? Thanks

Thanks Herbalist, that worked awesomely. I would not have thought of that. My version of Acronis is 8.0 and I did not get a lot of documentation as this was a free version given out by Acronis. The My Book partition showed up as drive D where it is normally drive K in Windows. I did a backup to the USB drive and was able to see it in the Acronis interface from the boot CD. This saved me a lot of fiddling around.

I got the drive to show up, thanks. I removed the switches from the devices and then realized that I had remarked out himem.sys and once I undid this, the drive showed up. Should I add back the switches, I have 2 USB ports on my computer. My next problem is to get these drivers to load with the Acronis imaging software. I have created an Acronis boot disk which works perfectly by itself, but I believe it closes the session so I cannot add drivers to it. I think I might have to create another boot disk with CDrom support as the USB drive uses a drive letter of the CDrom which I do not have loaded in DOS. I now have BIOS set to CDrom as 1st boot device and will probably have to change that to floppy. First I will load up USB drivers and then try and run the Acronis program from the CD. As this is a boot CD, I hope it does not restart the boot process and then I lose the USB driver. I might also be able to put the USB driver files on a CD first and then create the Acronis boot disk on the same CD. I might also be able to create the Acronis files on the USB HD and run it from there. Any other suggestions accepted. My goal is to do my system backups on the USB HD and do any restores from there. I am now burning my backups on a single CDRW disk as the only one that works is the one that came with the drive.

I have a 320 GB My Book USB hard drive. This drive works well under windows, especially after I renamed the autorun.inf file which was causing some error messages. I would like to make this drive visible in DOS so I could use it for system backups. I have USB for legacy devices set to auto in BIOS. Any other suggestions or drivers I could install to get this functioning? Thanks

I have never been able to install PPV 2003 as an error message would come up saying that I needed at least 98SE to install it and I as a matter of fact do, go figure. I have also not ever run across a PP file that PPV 97 would not open.

No problems here.

That does not disable swap file usage, it only tells system to use ram first if possible. Disabling swapfile is not recommended. According to the Cacheman wizard, a large readahead buffer is 256 kb and is optimal for faster loading of individual programs. If you do a lot of multitasking, then leaving it at the default of 64 kb is optimal. This version of Cacheman also has settings for Windows 98 with over 512 MB of ram so even with ram to burn, it does not appear to them that setting a very large readahead buffer is the prudent thing to do. I do not have Cacheman running in the background, but try as I might, I could not get the Mdgx setting of hex = 00 00 00 ff copied and converted into a reg file to merge with my registry even though it said it did. I think that is because I have Cachemen optimizations selected in the files system properties of the performance tab when right clicking on my computer.

You might also try a different PCI slot for the LAN card as sometimes these go bad. Also if the motherboard has an onboard LAN, make sure it is disabled. You can use a program called Boot Log Analyzer to see boot delays.

You might be able to read voltages in BIOS, I know I can. Otherwise try something like Motherboard Monitor. If you have another good power supply, try it.

These are just suggestions: 1. Definitely do the TCP registry tweaks using something like TCP Optimiser. 2. Download Cacheman 5.11 and tweak the memory and cache settings for the amount of memory you have. 3. Check the BIOS to see if the CPU settings including any L1 or L2 caches are enabled. 4. While in BIOS, see if you are using the correct DMA or UDMA settings for that hard drive you are using. 5. Download something like SiSoft Sandra where you can test the system components. Get an earlier version from say FileHippo. 6. Check device manager for any conflicts. 7. Run Scandisk and Defrag the Hard drive. 8. Switch browser from IE if using that to Firefox 2.0 as IE is all screwed up and much slower. 9. Consider a hard drive upgrade as the one you are using is a definite hinderance to the system. Not sure what your BIOS will accept, but you will see a noticeable improvement with a HD that runs 7,200 rpm and has an 8 MB cache. 10. Check your swapfile size, some reccommend one that is 2.5X the amount of memory. With 320, that should not be necessary. I would start with 128 minimum and no maximum and lower the minimum until you see usage above it, then raise it.

could you report how large file copy/paste operations on the same hard drive are affected? are they faster/slower/improved. i will do some experiments shortly by copy/pasting 1 gb files to different and same partition after adjusting the from 4k to 64 to 512 k to 1024 k and so on... i will report later. is your hard disc i/o operations improved? I have asked a couple of times how to test for determining the correct size. I would imagine that your system configuration would have a lot of influence on it, but am not sure what tests would tell you when you went too big for example. I am up to 1024 now with no discernible ill effects yet. I have 512 or ram so there is plenty of room for buffers. My system is fairly speedy anyway so I am not too sure how to measure any improvements that may have occurred. The programs I run before shutdown yesterday seemed a little more snappier.

I edit my response about cacheman, the slider only went up to 512 on my initial view. When I manually edited the registry and increased it to 1024, a new slider appeared in cacheman with my setting listed and able to be lowered to 512 and increased much higher.

The registry setting is ---- [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem] "ReadAheadThreshold"=hex:00,00,16,00 ----------- This is the best setting for my machine, maybe to high for you. 16 = 1024 just change "00 00 01 00" to "00 00 16 00" other settings are --- 64 = 4096 32 = 2048 16 = 1024 ------ this is my best setting 8 = 512 4 = 264 2 = 128 1 = 64 Hope this helps you, Charlie Cacheman also only lets you go up to 512. Still waiting on information on how how to test what is the best setting.

"This is the best setting for my machine, maybe to high for you. 16 = 1024 just change "00 00 01 00" to "00 00 16 00" How do you tell/test for what is the best setting? Thanks

If you purchase one of these cards that uses the PCI bus, can you disable USB in BIOS? Having this enabled in BIOS adds time to my bootup. Also will this allow devices attached to be seen while in DOS? Thanks

Both the IE and Firefox plugin seem to work for me. This also seems to have fixed the quality issues that version 124 and 115 had with some sites using Firefox 2.X.

Thanks for the reply. I guess I think the MB is starting to go. The CPU normally runs in the 80-100 degree range during normal internet surfing and in the 80's idle. If I play a flash video or play games like I used to in the past, the temp will climb over 100 degrees and then come back down. I just cannot see it going over 100 degrees by just being in the BIOS. But this is what it would do if I let it go long enough say over 5 minutes. My only explanation is that the CPU is trying to find information from the BIOS and having some trouble with it and heats up during the polling for info. By bypassing the halt on command, I boot directly and then everything runs normal. I do not find my normal CPU temps excessive, just what happens when I am in BIOS. These Northwoods are well know for their overclockability. The rest of my system buses are at normal clock speeds and this MB does support CPU's @ 533 FSB. I do not have a spare MB to test and the CPU temps in BIOS climb now without the USB drive attached. It may have just been a coincidence that when I tried to see if the USB drive could be viewed in DOS that is when I got the first Hardware warning also. It may be time to start thinking about a new computer, 6+ years is pretty decent IMO.

I was going to reflash the BIOS, but it may just be the MB hardware sensor going bad. The computer seems to run just fine after booting so I guess I am just going to leave well enough alone.

Wanted to see if my external USB hard drive was visible in DOS. Booted up machine and got a Hardware Monitor issue warning from BIOS. Did as suggested and went into power menu and could find no mention of what might be wrong. Noticed that CPU temperature was steadily climbing, checked fan, OK. V core voltage appears to be OK, Moving cursor around in Hardware Monitor section of BIOS very difficult but nothing else appears to be wrong. No problem moving cursor in rest of BIOS. Shutdown computer and removed USB drive and rebooted and still get hardware error. Turned off halt command in BIOS and let boot into windows. Once in windows, CPU begins to cool down and computer seems to run normally. This is a 6 year old computer home built. The CPU is a 1.6a P4 Northwoods running @ 2.133 G. It has been rock solid so far. Recently, I have added 256K of ram to total 512K. Increased video card color depth from 16 bit to 32 bit color. The USB hard drive thing was just a test, and I believe I have had this plugged in before boot in the past but never checked if it was visible in DOS. The drive is accessible through Explorer. Checked my BIOS V core setting which I have set to "Auto" and this seems to be working properly keeping 1.5-1.568 volts going to the CPU. I switched to manual v core and the voltage selections presented were NOT what they should be. They are supposed to be 1.5-1.85V and they were 1.1-1.275V, very confusing so I went directly back to "Auto". I am a little afraid to spend any time in DOS or BIOS due to the CPU runaway temp thing. Maybe the CPU is heating up trying to cope with BIOS warning? Any suggestions, Thanks

OK, found the download for unicows and installed it and now the CDex settings opens. I will do more experimenting later. thanks