Sekkira

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it the case that the lower latency of anything, the better?

As far as I know, the R2 requires SP2 (from what I remember reading yesterday). Also, I have had no issues whatsoever with the Service Pack. However, I'm running this as a workstation so don't take my word as a bible.

I doubt it's the latter, the ram should be running with a 2.5 CAS Latency, as said before the other new stick of ram was running at 3, putting them out of synch. You're probably right about it being a motherboard circuitry issue, but I really can't diagnose that, don't have the tools. Even so, it runs fine as it is now and this was the last upgrade I'm doing to this comp anyway. If I needed to get a new motherboard, I'd be going for the whole box and dice, getting top of the line Mobo, CPU, GFX Card and 2gb of ram. No real driver support for 64bit (for what I'm doing, I'm well aware 64bit tech is nothing new) at the moment, but something like that would last me years. So yeah, thanks for the help with this guys.

Don't mean to derail a thread, but I think this question isn't big enough to warrant its own topic: What's R2 stand for? Revision 2? Is that a different release of 2003? Edit: Just to point out, considering this isn't my topic, the original post's question is priority.

(following up old topics I've started out of courtesy) This was fixed by formatting the disk entirely then changing it to a basic disk. Obviously I backed up with a recovery tool beforehand and didn't lose any data. Further information is in this topic where I experienced more issues: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=94568&hl=

(following up old topics I've started out of courtesy) Well I couldn't solve the specific issues I'm having and reinstalled. Everything works fine now. If anyone has anything to add on these issues later on, feel free to add the info here for reference.

(following up old topics I've started out of courtesy) Thanks for the info there, just posting to say I'm having no issues running the system as a workstation under SP2.

Yep, that seemed to be the problem. Grabbed a new stick of 512MB Kingston and it works fine with the current 512 stick. The system goes unstable with the 256MB stick in there, but that was expected as it's single sided. As long as the two 512MB sticks work together it's fine.

Hmm, you're right, it seems the CAS Latency in the 256 can switch between 2.5 and 3 which is why the stick works fine with each of the two 512 sticks but the two 512 sticks don't work with each other. Looks like it's another trip back to MSY tomorrow

I figured someone would need more information, not a problem. The motherboard is a Gigabyte 7VT600P-RZ Running an AMD Athlon XP 2600+ (the old Athlons, not the 64bit ones). The old 512MB double sided stick is a Ram Bo VSS3200/512 512MB DDR PC3200 CL2.5. The new 512MB double sided stick is a Apacer 512MB UNB PC3200 CL3. The 256MB single sided stick is a Veritech VM256M DDR400 VT400F/256 0504. Looking at these number, I have no idea what they mean, but I do notice a consistancy with the CL thing whatever that is, it looks like the CL2.5 may be incompatible wth the CL3. I'll do some research to see if this is the case, if not I'll do a memtest on all three then report back.

Recently I reinstalled 2003, having some unrepairable problems in the system due to hardware failures and bad maintanence practice and I managed to get ahold of another 512MB* of RAM to add to the existing 768MB. When I did do this though, I found the system to go completely unstable. Originally I put it down to the 256MB stick being the cause as it's single sided while the two 512MB sticks are double sided. This was quickly proven false when I removed the stick and ran at 1024MB. Even then it was completely unstable as if it couldn't handle any more than 768MB. My next thought was it was the new stick of which I took back to the store today and got it exchanged. When the system continued to malfunction, I repeated both the previous steps and then tried removing the old 512MB stick and adding the new one as a process of elimination to make sure it wasn't that screwing the system up. As expected it runs fine while used alone with the 256MB stick which proved neither of the three sticks are faulty. So I've put it down to something funny playing up with the hardware (ie. the two 512MB sticks are fighting over the 256MB stick like a retarded circuit board love triangle) or the system isn't recognising the extra RAM properly. For arguments sake, I'll go with the latter for the final step of elimination**. I am prepared to reinstall to rectify this problem if it is the only way, but surely there must be some way to fix it without blowing the system away. Anyone have any idea of what's going on? *Using DDR400 for all three sticks as it's an old 32bit AMD system **If it's a hardware problem (which I doubt it is at this point) I'll have to cut my losses and that dream 64bit system is going to come a little sooner than expected *waves goodbye to $2000*

Continuing on from here, I reinstalled the system entirely after having some annoying issues with everything. I've got all programs up to date and SP2 installed fine without any issues to my use of the system bar one little nagging thing. The OS now doesn't recognise the watercolor theme (yes I'm quite fond of the one displayed in the 2003 to workstation guide >_>). Instead the window display will go blank as if there's no skin for the window at all. Anyone else experienced this and/or have a solution to it?

I remember reading on these forums quite a while ago about advise to not instal SP1 on 2003 if you're using it as a workstation, however, lately I've been considering it as SP2 is now out. I've done a bit of searching on the forum but I don't find any topic which address this issue. Is it wise to install SP1 & SP2 on 2003 if I'm using it as a workstation? Is there anything I might need to worry about assuming it is okay to do so?

That worked fine, I can see all the disks now via that method. Thanks Memnoch. My guess is then that the MMC is missing some calls or pointers to these things. Is there anything I can do about that? Is it worth it (could it cause some problems in the future) or can I just leave it be as it isn't much of an issue?

How would I go about editing the poperties of the Logical Disk Manager service? Also, I'll grab that Paragon Hard Disk manager you reccomend, however, I'm slightly worried that this problem may effect something deeper than just this display.

Okay so, a few weeks ago I started whining here on trying to figure out what was wrong with my disk, turns out the partition tables are screwed and I couldn't do anything to fix it (btw, thanks to all those who tried to help). My only other option was to backup using a disk recovery program, blow it all away and restore. The problem was that parts of my computer were still down, fauty PSU, video card still unrepaired and no access online with the PC. Now that I've got it all up and running again, I was going to do just that. Unfortunately the OS wont see the portable HDD I'm going to back up to because it's unformatted. Now here is the problem, when I go into Administrative settings -> Computer Management, I can't see any disks to manage in order to format this disk. I have no idea what caused this, what is wrong and how to fix it. Any ideas?

I managed to get online with the computer and am using it now to post this while sitting on the floor. Anyway, so far I've discovered more insight to this problem in that looking at the event viewer, it tells me it does start up the HD, but for some reason stops running it with quite a few errors. Going to the links supplied, there is no apparent information on this but I will provide screenshots of them: Anyone have any idea of what the problem is here? If it's fixable or what?

Basically, I recently moved over house temporarily (back story not important) and brought my PC along. I usually keep it constantly running for the PC health but have also encountered a strange problem among many (PSU breaking down, Graphics Card fan dismantling itself rather messily). None were as significant as my SATA II Seagate HD playing up. Now the thing is, when I first obtained it, I managed to have a lot of problems getting it working, being new to the SATA II scene at the time. Eventually I figured out the motherboard was incompatible and I had to put a jumper on those pins on the HD to bring it down to SATA I, which solved the problem and from then on I used it without incidence for a long time (less than a year though). When I set up the PC here though, I found that the system would not recognise the disk on boot, leading me originally to believe that something in it was faulty. On reboot (without shutdown), it recognised it without incident and booted into Windows 2003. To derail slightly, I have a Western Digital 160GB HD set up as my boot disk, with something like 10-20GB partition to the OS, 130-140GB assigned to Programs and a spare 10GB unallocated in case I decide to set up a dual boot. On the Seagate 250GB disk however, it is one giant partition dedicated to personal files for various, unimportant things. Unfortunately for me, that's about 150-200GB of various unimportant things. So anyway, when it boots into Windows, I find that disk missing from my computer. In the device manager, I can see both disks there, both running fine according to Windows. My next trip is into computer management of which I find the Seagate HD inactive/offline. Selecting it to bring it back offline does something, which I'm unsure what, but whatever it is, it doesn't bring the disk back online. So far, I've come to the conclusion that it could be something to do with the motherboard, which might require an expensive replacement (it's a 32-bit AMD, doing a quick search on AMD, I've not found anything other than 64-bit so I'd need a new CPU as well). I know I'd have to replace the PSU as it is a bit flaky, but nothing that seems to be doing anything damaging to the hardware. The other two conclusions is something to do with the HD, of which so far I have seen nothing actually wrong with it, or the software, of which I'm not entirely sure of how moving a PC from one place to another would effect the software. Either way, it appears it has somehow. On to the question: With this information, could anyone give insight into what's wrong and how to fix it, or may need more information?

Gyah, I'm completely new to the terminoligy. I just followed the directions in the guide and everything works.

Just used it again today after needed reinstall (everything was corrupted). But since I started using 2003 a few months ago, it's served me quite well.

And this my friends, is why I wont get SP1. *is glad he didn't install it*

You need to patch the dll of the theme. If you use the search button you can find the guide to it.

Nevermind, I had to reinstall cause everything was screwed beyond repair.

Basically, I've managed to restore my system rather nicely after a fatal crash that corrupted some system files in the OS a few day ago. However, I haven't been able to get hardware accelleration or the direct x features to work properly. Now I know when I first installed this system, I had that same trouble, but I had forgotten to install my video card drivers and once I had done that, I got everything working again. This time though, the drivers do install, but it doesn't seem to make a difference as I still am locked in to the default monitor that 2003 sets the video driver to when it doesn't know what your card is. I haven't been able to, or can't find where I could change this either. I have a GeForce FX 5200 Ultra 128MB. I was also recently astounded that neither MS nor nVidia actually support this combination of OS and video card, yet I have plenty of screens of games I had been playing on it (AO, GW, HL2). Also, the other one, which isn't too important, but purely for aesthetics, the skin tweak described in the guide to get the system working as a workstation. It doesn't seem to like skins at all, or maybe the tweak is corrupt or something, I'm not sure. When I try to change it to watercolour (the one shown in the guide, which is personally quite nice), the preview part shows just the wallpaper and if I actually apply that, it just changes the colours of the windowing. I also had this working before and had used the old install files for it that got it working. What is wrong with the system? It seems half there, as in even with the recover (which is practically a reinstall), something's missing.