Andromeda43

I'm a staunch proponent of drive partitioning. One for the OS (C: ) and one for Stuff (D: ) or whatever. One huge drive with the OS and data just taking up the first 10 to 20 gigs is about as sane as a 25,000 sq ft house with NO walls, not even for the crapper. (get a mental picture of that, if you will) But five parts. on just one drive? I'd have to say that's just asking for trouble. Obviously. When (not if) the drive crashes, you've lost five partitions, not just one or two. Keeping all that stuff backed up has got to be a nightmare. Good Luck, Andromeda43 B)

Kingston? My memory supplier tells me that about 80% of Kingston memory is refurbished RAM, made up from chips that failed final inspection at the original mfg. plant. There will NEVER be any kingston ram in any PC of mine. RAM is the very Heart of any system,,,,,not a very good place to pinch pennies! Good Luck, Andromeda43 B)

The program that you run from your RUN box (just above the start button on your desktop) Services.msc is the program that will show you how each service is set up to run. There are three settings. Disabled = self explanatory Manual = Will only start when called by some other program or service Automatic = Will run on boot and keep running. SO,,,,,how are your two services set? If not already on Automatic, then reset them to automatic. Just right click on any service to get the context menu and pic Properties from that menu. You should be able to take it from there. Apply your changes, and reboot to get everything running. Cheers! Andromeda43 B)

I used to have a neat little "Screen Print" program that would either print your screen or save it to a file. Somewhere between 98 and XP, I lost it. SO, now I just copy the screen to the clipboard, as you already stated you know how to do, and then paste it from the clipboard into any program, like WordPerfect, Word or even MS Paint or Wordpad. Then just save it as the file name you choose. NO big deal. Andromeda43 B)

A BSOD contains info that will tell you exactly what's wrong. Write it down the next time. Then post it here. But in general terms, it can be (usually) caused by some kind of conflict. Quite often something like a bad driver or failing software. Or even two pieces of software fighting over a memory location. I saw one the other day on one of my systems that was caused by a loose SATA data cable. Who would'a thunk it? So, to start, reseat all your plug in cards, data cables and RAM. Then seriously minimize the number of programs that you have running on your system. Then do a very thorough scan for Viruses and Spyware on your system. I could probably fix it, if I could just get to it. Fixing computers is what I do for a living. Good luck to you, me B)

My best ergonomic tip: Make sure your glasses are set for the distance from your eyes to the screen. Special 'Computer' glasses may be needed. My own Bi-Focal is set to 18"....perfect for me. Then make sure your screen is tilted at a perfect 90° angle to your line of vision. A comfortable chair helps too, if you're going to spend 12 hrs a day at your PC like I do. I have an expensive, high backed desk chair, that I got at a ridiculously low price (on clearance sale) at Office Max. Cheers Mates! Andromeda43 B)

That's exactly how I've always perceived time......as a pictograph. (or picture, fading into the distance, getting dimmer and dimmer as the years pass) I've always perceived a year as a circle, well lighted by the sun during the summer and in the shade in the winter. But why did you ask about "Synesthesia" ??? It's definitely not something normally discussed. Andromeda43 B)

What am I bid for a Spider Man comic #1? Since I bought the very first edition, I've been a Spidey fan. Can't wait for the next episode to come out.

Two possibilities for you. I've been using AVG Anti Virus for years, both FREE and Pro. You just can't get a better FREE anti virus program, for any price. When you first get the program there will be an upgrade.....usually a BIG one, but after that your daily updates can be as small as 50k. Even on slow Dial up, that will go by in a wink. And the dailies are automatic,,,,you won't even know its happening till its done. After a lifetime of slow Dial Up, I just went to "Wild Blue" satellite internet. I bought the minimal service and I get great download speeds of over 512 kbps. I've even seen bursts of speed far in excess of that. I download over 50 megs of software a week, and boy do I enjoy the increased speed. Wild Blue is available anywhere in the US or Canada. www.wildblue.net Cheers! Andromeda43

Now, I wish I'd not upgraded all my 98 PC's to 98/SE. In 98/SE and ME, there is the scanreg.exe program that's set to run on boot up for each calendar day. Then if you boot up from a 98 boot disk (usually a floppy disk) you can run Scanreg.exe /restore from the DOS prompt and it will show you the last five restore points from which you can select the one you want to restore. But for the very best backup ever, you can use Ghost 2003 which will back up the entire C: drive and compress it into a backup Image file(s). Ghost will even offer to make that image file to a CD or DVD burner, if you have one. And, last but not least, it will offer to put the Boot info on the CD/DVD making it bootable. I've been doing this for years and it's really the nuts! Good Luck, Andromeda43

this is a place for facts, not opinions. Opinion never fixed a computer in his life. I've installed 98/SE OEM over 98 more times than I even want to admit to. (Sorry, Bill !) You first copy the SE OEM disk to a folder on the HD. Only the \win98\ folder need be copied. Then you boot up the PC with your 98 boot disk and go into the windows folder and rename win.com to win.old .....then you navigate into the newly created \win98\ folder and run Setup.exe /ie /is Setup will start and run normally. It only looks for win.com, not the registry. Setup will also run much faster and smoother from the folder on the HD than from the original CD. And, if ever 98/SE needs to install some new feature.....the files are already on the HD. This is a hard, cold fact that MS probably doesn't want anyone to know about. (Bbviously! ) But I've been doing it as long as there's been copies of 98/SE OEM on the streets. In this process, all apps, data and drivers are preserved. (Don't ask me why it works....it just does!) Cheers Mates! B)

Generally speaking, one heck of a good upgrade for any ol' 98 machine is an MS upgrade to 98/SE followed by the install of the Unofficial Service Pack for Windows 98/SE. Both printer and USB support are increased. All the necessary elements are readily available. Cheers!

Hi Titusville, Ocala here, Have you tried to run any HD maintenance? Chkdsk? Defrag? Clean out all the junk? Have you run any AV and/or AS scans? Have you gone into MSCONFIG and shut down all unneeded TSR's? Have you shut down (disabled) unneeded Services? Everything I've mentioned here can impact system performance and so impact Windows Explorer. If you've got 100,000 or more temporary internet files on your HD, explorer WILL be slow to open as it has to read the directories for all those files. I recently took over 500,000 junk files off of a customers PC. It was slower than crap, opening Explorer and doing many other operations. I also run all my HD's in FAT-32 mode and I use XP-Pro+SP2. I've never noticed any particular problem running Windows Exploder. I usually open exploder with the 'window + E key' combination. I just tried it and Explorer opens in less than a second. But then, I keep my HD squeeky clean. Windows doesn't have to work very hard to read it. Cheers Mate! Andromeda43 B)

If Windows XP was installed in Default mode, then the HD is formatted NTFS. Windows 95 thru ME are all DOS based and the HD format will be FAT16 or FAT32...... NO DOS based OS will be able to even see an NTFS partition. Adversely, if you put the Win-95 HD in an XP system, XP will read it just fine. That's what you'll need to do. That's called "Backward Compatibility". In a similar manner, XP will also read DOS based floppy disks, flash drives, etc. You really don't have a problem. Everything is working as designed. Just hook up the old HD to the new system and copy files to your hearts content. It should work just fine. I do it all the time. Cheers! Andromeda43 B)

I'm sometimes confused whether some people post out of ignorance or malice. Almost every new motherboard today is SATA compatible. Almost every new computer maker is going to the SATA drives for their greatly increased speed, while holding the prices down. SATA drives are even showing up in laptops. The drive hardware is virtually the same as in IDE drives, only the interface logic is different. IDE to SATA converters (dongles) are flying off of the computer store shelves as people get the SATA mobo's and want to still use their old IDE drives. I have two 80 gig Maxtor IDE/133 drives working off of SATA mobo ports, with the IDE to SATA dongles mounted on the drives. They can exchange data up to 1500mbps. Why won't an AM2 mobo run 98? Apparently, it will ! I just built a new system with the AMD 3800+ dual core, 64bit CPU, on an MSI AM2 mobo. I can boot up that system with my 98/SE boot disk and run dos programs, like Ghost 2003 and many batch files and everything works just fine. As a test, I just set up an old WD 8.5gig HD on this new system. I used the IDE to SATA dongle so I could run the old IDE drive off of a SATA port on the mobo. I installed Windows 98 and then upgraded to Windows 98/SE. There were a few glitches, mainly the lack of 98/SE drivers for my vid card, etc. But 98/SE runs! If I used an older vid card for which I have the 98 drivers, then that would be OK too. I'll grant that 98/SE doesn't run perfect on this AM2 mobo, but it does install and run. The lack of hardware drivers will be the big stumbling block. WELL, after all that, I'm ready for a good nights sleep. NI'tol ! Andromeda43 B)

Just today, my friend and software guru told me that he read (somewhere) that Microsoft has released windows 98, 98/SE and ME into the public domain. I take that to mean that we are free to sell it, buy it, or modify it in any way we want, without fear of prosecution. Have any of y'alls heard anything about that? Andromeda43

It's common knowledge among techs, at least, that every PC running the old cluggy Win-98 should be upgraded to Win-98/SE. The USB and printer support is greatly enhanced and many other problems in 98 are fixed. Companies like SanDisk provide Mini and Micro drivers, but for 98/SE....not 98. I have them all. Windows ME has even greater USB support and does not require drivers for many USB devices. Copies of the 98/SE Upgrade CD are as common as can be and even a 98/SE OEM install CD can be made to work if you first rename 'win.com' to something else (like, win.old) so the setup.exe program on the CD can't see it. Then the upgrade to SE goes off without a hitch. The old registry, drivers and all data is preserved. I've never found any downside to doing this upgrade and the benefits are many. Add to that the 'Unofficial Service Pack for SE' and you have one very nice OS, Indeed. Just Googling for "98 USB drivers" will give you over 2 million hits. Google till you drop! Cheers! B)

Then it wouldn't be SAFE MODE anymore, then would it? You're wanting to DO IT but NOT DO IT at the same time. GET REAL! B)

If you can hex-edit the command interpreter, you can change the four letters of "Copy" to any other four letters you like. Don't make it longer or shorter than four letters though. That's been done, even back in the Commodore 64 days, to confuse unwanted users. I've done it myself, on many occasions. Good Luck, Andromeda43 B) EDIT: I have not had a HEX Editor for years, but I just found a real nice FREE one here: www.hhdsoftware.com/Products/home/hex-editor-free.html Open Command.com in the editor and you will see the hex addresses in the left column and the ASCII text in the right column. Scroll down to hex address 00010b60. You will find copy in that line represented by: 43 4f 50 59 Change those numbers and you will see the text in the right col. change too. Or, click your mouse on a letter,,,,change it by typing a new letter over it and you will see the numbers on the left side change accordingly. After making the changes you want, save the file. COPY will no longer be recognized by the Command interpreter. Good Luck

Sounds like your mind is already made up. So what's your question? Even for XP the dual core processor is overkill. A single core AMD processor would be much cheaper and do as well. DOS programs run just fine on a SATA II/300 hard drive and the performance is far superior to just using an old ATA-133, IDE drive. The cost of the SATA drive is about the same as the IDE. Good Luck, Andromeda43 B)

Mind you....it really doesn't matter to me, but.... Was it a new package? Or, had it already been used by your friend? If so, it's not legal for you to use it too. I think that's the proper response for this forum. I know a moderator will correct me if I'm wrong.

Pardon me, but..... Are you talking about "24" the TV series, where they are, every week, chasing the bad guys that have a terrible Virus? It seemed like every time I tuned in it was just more of the same. I just couldn't get into it! Sorry,

I don't mean to hijack this thread, but healing is just one more aspect of what this thread is really all about......Spirituality. It's hard to discuss just one aspect of it without discussing the rest. I'd never tell anyone to change churches, but if your church isn't preaching the word of Jesus, at least visit other churches that are. John Wimber was a secular music producer who was called by God to go buy a Bible and begin to read it. Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, John read and learned and was eventually filled by the Spirit himself. His call was to preach and teach Healing for the lay person. He wrote a book entitled, "Doin the stuff". Stuff? Stuff? you may well ask. Well, the "Stuff" is that which Jesus said to do. "Heal the sick, raise the dead and preach the Gospel to the whole world". WOW, that's a pretty big order for any man. But, that's just what John Wimber did. He formed the "Vinyard Christian Fellowships" which now number in the hundreds, worldwide. In the Vinyard churches, Healing is taught and practiced freely. In some "Assemblies of God" too. Just one more exercise of the "Spirit". Out of body experiences? You might say that our spirits are just "Dying" to get out of our bodies! For a personal account of one of the greatest out of body experiences that I personally every heard, just Google for "Richard Eby". His life, death and testimony are well documented. He also wrote several very good books about his experiences in Heaven and Hades. I personally heard his personal testimony on TBN and it was both thrilling and chilling at the same time. I'm sorry,,,,didn't mean to hijack this thread.

That's a little like asking how many candles you can light of'n one match. As for the product key, it matters what ver of XP it's for and where it came from.

M$ provides "Chkdsk" for that purpose, in every install of Windows. For a tech, there's always "Spinrite 6" from Steve Gibson (www.grc.com). It's NOT free, but every tech should have a copy. I got my first copy in the late 80's. Cheers! Andromeda43