Xanin

I've got it all sorted now guys, I downloaded the SP2 update onto my laptop and transferred it to my desktop, and it sorted everything I now have my full 160 GB Thanks very much for all your help

I see, you've clarified a lot for me Shindo Hikaru. My XP CD is fairly old, and I don't have the internet at my address yet, so am unable to update to SP1a or above. My last install of Windows was my brother's copy of XP Pro SP2, but he since required the CD so I went back to my version of XP Home. Perhaps this is the reason why size has changed. I will see if I can update to SP2. Thanks again for the help

The missing 30 gigs isn't actually visible by windows. Windows reads the drive as 130 gigs total, as does Powerquest Partition Magic. I tried using Partition'Table Doctor and it detects the missing space, and labels it as 'Free', but I'm not sure when to go from there, as PTD doesn't have the partition resizing tool that Partition Magic does. When using the Windows partition manager it only detects my current 30 GB Win partition and my 100 GB file-storage partition, and doesn't notice the rest, so I doubt I'd be able to format the whole drive and include the missing 30 GB, as Windows doesn't think it's there. A friend of mine mentioned something about hard drives above 130 gb not being detected, could this be anything to do with it? I'll give that program a try, hopefully it will do something. Otherwise I'm stumped :/ Thanks for your help guys, I really appreciate it.

I recently formatted my desktop PC, and reinstalled WinXP Home Edition (SP1; need to update to SP2 soon). However, halfway through the installation I realised I was using the XP CD from my laptop, not the one provided to me with my desktop; for some reason my Mesh desktop only likes the original XP CD. Anyway, I couldn't exit out of the Windows installation, so had to restart and reformat and reinstall using the correct CD. Upon doing this, I noticed my hard drive was 30 gigs smaller; from 160 to 130. The partition I created the first XP installation on was around 30 gigs, so I'm thinking the Windows from the second installation isn't viewing this partition as free space, as it has Windows part-installed. I'm not sure if I'm talking crap here, or put this in the wrong section, but I would really like my 30 gigs back Any help would be appreciated Thank you!

I'd go with TweakUI, it saves all that registry editing (unless you're into that)

Regarding the sound system...I'm with ripken. I've got a Creative Audigy 2 ZS....I must say it kicks a**! The sound quality has been excellent for as long as I've used it, and there are loads of different ways to configure it all, I highly recommend it

Doesn't the My Pictures Slideshow screensaver do that?

I use musikCube, I'm pretty sure it does what you want. It's like iTunes; it's a library music player, and when viewing your library you can right-click on a song/album/artist/genre or whatever and click 'queue selected', and adds it to the currently playing list. You can also create playlists, and there are dynamic playlists and stuff. It's a sourceforge project, and is freeware. And plus, it's not iTunes lol I have a thing against that program

I've got a friend in Egypt, and apparently even the high-street stores in Cairo sell pirated goods....

I think that's a good idea too; I remember I once had a network problem, and once it was sorted I informed the guy who helped me by posting the results. Everyone was happy

'tis indeed faster. They tend to use celerons in laptops as far as I know. Hmm...I always get reminded of a certain vegetable when someone says 'celeron'.....

Success! I followed your advice and found that I was getting timeouts when doing a trace to msn, and when pinging the other computers. Also the fact that I could see some computers and not access them. I'm not sure what it was, but I think uninstalling my firewall did the trick.....I had it disabled but evidently that wasn't enough! Thank you so much for your help, I've been puzzling over this for days! Thanks again

I wish I knew what you were talking about! To be honest I only have partial knowledge when it comes to networking, so I'm not sure what my router does. I know it normally assigns IPs (DHCP I think?), but since I've set static IPs it's stopped that. This is the info for my router, if it is any help hxxp://www.netgear.com/products/details/DG834.php

Thanks for the reply Nois3, but I always get a ping timeout if I use the IP or the name. The shared internet connection is working though, so I'm not sure what could be causing the problem.

I use ACE Mega Codecs........it's got a lot in it, but come to think of it I heard some people say it may be illegal......anyone know?