Andromeda43

Hello Calorifer, Just one BSOD? That's surely NOT enough to worry about. There was probably some bad code in that thing you were looking at. If one of my customers called me with that same problem, my response would have to be "Forgetaboutit!". Whenever something weird like that happens, it's a very good time to give your system a 'physical'. Do a full system cleanup and then perform full scans with your AV and AS software. Follow up the cleaning out of the junk and AV and AS scans with a full Defrag. Now, quit worrying about it and go have some FUN! Y'all have a great day now, Y'hear? Andromeda43 B)

I'm almost ashamed to admit that as many times that I've seen that link posted, I've never gone there. I'm an old DOS and Batch file programmer, so when one of my customers complained about getting that annoying message from M$ that his windows was possibly illegal (it really wasn't) I set about finding the offending files and removing them. A simple DOS batch file took care of the problem. Since then I've eMailed it to several other people having the same problem. For those who can't receive executables on their email server, I've placed the "Kill Bogus Key Notification.bat" file on a server where I rent space. Anyone who wants it can download it HERE. Then don't download the WGA thing again. Or if you do, just run the batch file again to remove it. There have been many complaints of the M$ WGA thingy giving false positives. I'm just waiting for the class action suit to be filed against M$ for placing "Spyware" on peoples PC's. NOTHING should ever be put on your PC without your express permission. You can also TURN OFF auto-updates and only do manual updates and get just the updates you want. Cheers! Andromeda43 B)

That's what Registry Restore is for........ Use it and go back to a time before you put on the thing that caused the problem. Then, DON'T INSTALL BETAS. Wait for the tried and true version to come out. Or, even better yet, Don't Use I.E. at all. Join the 150,000,000 of us who have dumped that turkey for the much safer Mozilla Firefox. A beta of the worlds worse browser can't possibly be GOOD! Use your Registry Restore.....and be done with the problem. Cheers! Andromeda43 B)

Duh,,,,,why are you installing a new sound card? I see from the driver list that you have AC-97,,,,that's on-board sound. (sufficient for most peoples needs) If you're going to use a plug-in sound card for greater sound capability, you must first go into your BIOS and disable the on-board sound and remove the drivers for it in windows. Then you can install a PCI sound card, load the drivers for it, reboot and be up and running with your new sound card. Install the new sound card in any slot EXCEPT slot #1. That's (sort of) reserved for a PCI video card. Good Luck, Andromeda43 B)

That's what Registry Restore is for.....those little "Ooooops" that come along every now and again. When a system crashes, the copy of the registry in use at that moment can get 'scrambled'. (damaged) Doing a Registry Restore to a time earlier in the day or the previous day can get everything back up and running normally. Now, on some systems, a new restore point is only made when the system sees an "Event", like the installation of a new program or when a program like Spybot Search & Destroy takes out some Spyware. I didn't like that, because it's possible for a computer to go for weeks with NO new restore point being created. So, I took the situation in hand and wrote a script to force a Restore Point to be made. I put a shortcut to that script in my Startup folder so I get at least one new restore point every day when I boot or reboot my PC. For total disasters, I have a Ghost Image of my HD on a second HD, not more than a few days old that I can restore in just over four minutes. OH YES! Turn OFF Hibernation. That P.O.C. has caused more people more problems than anything else, including spyware and viruses. (as was recounted in this thread) A clean system will boot up in 20 sec's or less so Hibernation really is redundant. Just turn off your PC when not in use. Let it rest! Y'all have a great day now, Y'hear? Andromeda43 B)

Shoshoni, I do too and I've outlined my process here and in other forums so many times my fingers are sore from all the typing, but did you notice that we're still in the 12% group? I guess it's the old addage, "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink". That sounds like something a wise old Indian would say. I got my own copy of Norton's Ghost on a driver disk that came with a new motherboard. So for me it was FREE, but I've found it for sale on the internet for as low a price as $6.95. (your own search results may varry) I tried installing it into windows but I found that was totally redundant, as the program has to shell out to DOS to run the Ghost.exe program file. So why bother and load windows and my hard drive with another large program. I just run it from a Boot Floppy or Boot CD and it's so much faster and efficient. Since I keep all my HD partitions in FAT-32 mode, I can delete my pagefile, old Restore points and all the other garbage files that build up in windows, from a simple batch file on my boot disk. (It's all menu driven) That winds up reducing the size of my Ghost Image file by almost 2 gigabytes. So much so that I can get my backup image file on a single DVD, which Ghost does for me automaticly. For a quickie backup which I do several times a week, I just let Ghost write the Image to my second HD. That takes all of four minutes with my SATA drive. When I do the backup to a DVD it takes about a half hour. A restore from the HD image, takes only a few seconds longer than making the backup. That sure takes all the drudgery out of doing a restore if some new piece of crap software or windows update goes haywire on me. I store my DVD copies of my HD in a vault about twenty miles away for top security. Keeping ones HD clean on a weekly basis goes a long way toward NOT having to reload windows. I even wrote a DOS batch file to dump all the folders that windows uses to store junk files. I added a few folders that certain programs like AVG use as cache or quarantine. I put a shortcut to that batch program in my Startup folder for a daily cleanup. I've detailed that cleanup process in other threads so I won't repeat it here. Happy Computing! Andromeda43 B)

There are two drivers from Sandisk. The Mini driver and the Micro driver. If you got the Mini driver, it will not work with a Micro drive. The micro driver, however, will work fine on a Mini drive. I have both types of drives and I use them on 98/SE machines all the time after installing the Micro driver and rebooting the system. I'm glad you got your little drive working, but you shouldn't have had to go outside for a special driver. Congrat's! Andromeda43 B)

Or, stop using that P.O.C. program and start using "Easy Cleaner" which is very safe to use and won't screw up your PC, like so many people have found that CCleaner can.

You mean like this:??? Like Takeshi said, in Windows XP there is NO scandisk and the scandisk from 98 or ME won't run on a NTFS partition. Now if you're using 98 or ME and you're really talking about running the real "Scandisk.exe" then the log file will be "Scandisk.log" and it will be in the root directory. I run XP-Pro but on a FAT-32 partition so I can still use the old Scandisk and it makes the log that I printed out above. Good Luck, Andromeda43 B)

It takes a program to do screen prints. It's built into windows...so to speak. But in the bios.....there's NO such program either running or available. Digital photos of the screens is as close as you're going to get. Then later, in windows, print out the photos. Or, just write down the sequence. Have fun...... Andromeda43 B)

The neat thing about Ghost 2003 (Ghost.exe) is that it will run from a DOS boot disk (floppy or CD) and it will burn its image file to a second partition, second hard drive or even to a CD or DVD. It will also span CD/DVD's if the file size exceeds the disk size. I make quickie backups to my second partition on my SATA drive, at least two or three times a week. Then about once a week or so, I make the backup to DVD. Ghost installs itself on the DVD as the boot sector and thusly makes the DVD self booting. Good drive maintenance keeps my backup Image file size down to what a DVD can handle (with max compression). Running Ghost 2003 from a boot disk bypasses all the windows BS and gets the job done in the fastest possible. time. On my SATA drive that takes only four minutes. Burning to a DVD takes about a half hour or so. No bid deal. Now, for the worlds best defrag, do a Ghost backup followed immediately by a Ghost restore and all files are rewritten in perfect order with NO spaces and NO fragmentation. Afterward, my HD looks like THIS, when viewed by Windows Defrag. A reinstall of Windows is NEVER required if you have a Ghost image on a DVD of your system all set up the way you want it. Of course if you're a total masochist and really into PAIN.....reload windows to your hearts content. You have my blessing! Andromeda43 B)

Hibernation causes lots of problems for lots of people. Stop using it. When setting up a PC that's one of the first things I disable. There are critical things that windows needs to do that can only be done on a cold reboot. So, shut down your PC when you're not using it for an extended period of time. Windows will love you for it. Cheers! Andromeda43

Are you using the old Centronics parallel printer port for that printer? I've got one friend/customer who lives in a very high lightning area. Over the past five years he's lost a half dozen or more printer ports to lightning damage. I finally stopped replacing mobo's for him and started using add-on printer port cards. You can also use a USB to parallel adaptor. Many retail electronics stores like Best Buy sell them. If you had a printer port test plug and test program like "Check-It Pro", you could test the port. A PCI printer port card might be your cheapest way to go. Good Luck, Andromeda43 (alias, The Printer Man)

If you read the Sandisk site very carefully, you'll see that they don't support 98 at all. The drivers are for 98/SE only. I have purchased several Sandisk thumbdrives since they first appeared in the local Staples (office supply) store. I just got another Cruzer Micro 512 for $29 with a $12 rebate. Windows 98 had such minimal USB support that even with the Sandisk drivers, it still won't work with the Cruzer Micro drive. Upgrade to 98/SE and install the Unofficial Service Pack and all will be well with the world. Cheers! Andromeda43 B)

Bledd, If you accidently reformatted your C: drive, how would you use the program to recover it? Does it have to be run from a boot disk or from within windows? Some info here on the application of the program would be very helpful here to me and those reading the forum. Thanks in advance, Andromeda43 PS: How's the summer weather in Wales?

I've used several file/registry cleaners over the years and found many of them, including CCleaner seriously lacking. I tried it, hated it, then deleted it. I use "Easy Cleaner" to clean my registry and my own XPCleanup.bat program to clean out folders on my HD where junk likes to collect. Good Luck,

Generally speaking, the OS doesn't get trashed. It's the garbage that it stashes in little out of the way places that eventually builds up to the place that performance is affected. I searched through my own system to locate all the folders where "crapola" is stored. I then put all those locations into a list and made that part of my XPCleanup.bat program. I then put my cleanup batch file in my startup folder for a daily cleanup. A well maintained computer will NEVER need a re-install of the OS. Reinstalling winders makes as much sence as putting a new motor in your car because the oil needs changing. NO intelligent person would ever do that. Cheers

And, you're trying to use this UK phone WHERE? I'm sure that in the UK it works just fine. But like everything else from their beer to their cars to their....well you see where I'm going. Their phone system is NOT the same as the phones here in the ol' US for instance. You can get voltage adaptors to use US devices in the UK which works for most things, but not for clocks that need a 60 cycle sign wave from which they derive the timing, or for syncronous motors that only run at the right speed on 60 cycles...NOT 50 cycles as in the UK and EU. If you're not using that phone in the UK, I'm not surprised that it's not working right. Do they even use the same modular phone plug?

I'm sorry, that looked like a very long thread and my time is limited so, I didn't read the whole thing... did anyone mention: XP Pro/Stripped to the Bone XP Pro/Corporate/Export edition XT (XP Pro with some Vista incorporated into it) Oh yes, the first version of windows that I ever tried was Windows 2.0. What a piece of granola that was! Happy 4th of July, everyone, B)

Yes! There's a little registry script that does it. Two actually. You'll find what you need on Kelly's Korner

There are many utils and batch files that can be run from your Startup folder for a daily cleanup. You can set these programs to delete just about anything you want. To even edit the registry. I run "MRU Blaster" in my own Startup folder along with my own "XPCleanup.bat" program. It's like daily Maid Service.

2003 what?

And where is this password supposed to be located.....can't be in the HD because you can't get into it till the password is entered (somewhere). Can't be on the computer because you said "any computer". So, just where is this password going to be kept? It sort of like picking yourself up by your own shoe strings. Good Luck,

PCCillin is not a task....its a program and starts from a registry entry and NOT the task scheduler. Task Scheduler is just one more of them totally redundant services that runs in the background of your OS, eating up CPU cycles and some ram. It's one of the first things I shut off when setting up a new PC with XP. Run your 'tasks' yourself at times that are convenient for you and leave that scheduler shut OFF. Pick one time, one day a week for instance to do your hard drive and files maintenance. Running "Disk Cleanup" and "Defrag" is a great place to start. Your computer will run more efficiently as a result.

The SP2 CD is easy to aquire and very easy to copy as well. You probably know someone who already has it. Just get a copy. Don't futz around with the VERY LONG download.