Andromeda43

Aloron, Can I ask a question before this thing gets hauled off somewhere, where I can't find it? Why are you reinstalling Windows, more than once? Your best bet if this is (for some crazy reason) something you're going to have to do again, is to do the install, get it all exactly the way you want it and then make a Ghost Image of C: and burn it to a CD or DVD for a permanent Restore Disk. I do this for my customers after I set up a new computer for them. It blows away the factory restore disk. You can drop me a PM if you want specifics. Andromeda43

From the description of the problem, the above quote would be my first guess. It may take several lines to get the whole job done but I believe it's quite doable. XCOPY Rules: XCOPY: Copies files and directory trees. XCOPY source [destination] [/A | /M] [/D[:date]] [/P] [/s [/E]] [/W] [/C] [/Q] [/F] [/L] [/H] [/R] [/T] [/K] [/N] source Specifies the file(s) to copy. destination Specifies the location and/or name of new files. /A Copies files with the archive attribute set, doesn't change the attribute. /M Copies files with the archive attribute set, turns off the archive attribute. /D:date Copies files changed on or after the specified date. If no date is given, copies only those files whose source time is newer than the destination time. /P Prompts you before creating each destination file. /S Copies directories and subdirectories except empty ones. /E Copies directories and subdirectories, including empty ones. Same as /S /E. May be used to modify /T. /W Prompts you to press a key before copying. /C Continues copying even if errors occur. /I If destination does not exist and copying more than one file, assumes that destination must be a directory. /Q Does not display file names while copying. /F Displays full source and destination file names while copying. /L Displays files that would be copied. /H Copies hidden and system files also. /R Overwrites read‑only files. /T Creates directory structure, but does not copy files. Does not include empty directories or subdirectories. /T /E includes empty directories and subdirectories. /U Updates the files that already exist in destination. /K Copies attributes. Normal Xcopy will reset read‑only attributes. /Y Overwrites existing files without prompting. /‑Y Prompts you before overwriting existing files. /N Copy using the generated short names.

www.cheapguys.com It's where I have my own Corporate Account and purchase most of my computer parts. Of course, I can walk in the front door and check out the discount rack. Cheers, Andromeda43

And the cooling wars go on......... I would just buy a boxed CPU and install the fan provided by the manufacturer. I don't know about Intel, but if you get an AMD CPU, the factory supplied cooler will be more than enough to keep it cool. That's in my own experience anyway. Have fun building that super system. That can be a real blast! Good Luck, Andromeda43 B)

The grey material (SilPad) was put there by the manufacturer who knows exactly what is required for that heat sink to work properly with that CPU... USE it....do not remove it or add anything to it. Cheers!

On a mobo that old, the battery (that green thingy) is indeed soldered onto the board and has probably by now FAILED. Once failed, it will leak acid out onto the board shorting out the board. Look for any discoloration of the board around the battery. Many of those old boards did indeed have cmos reset jumpers, somewhere close to the battery (usually). I was working on one of those several years back and the shorted battery caught on Fire while I was working on it. Actually it was the shorted mobo that caught on fire. If you decide to unsolder that battery and get a replacement,,,,,one will have to be custom made for you. No-one has those laying around any more. Some battery company like "Batteries Plus" can help you. Be carefull unsoldering on a mobo....those are multi-layer boards and are easily damaged by hand soldering. Good Luck, Andromeda43

The hard drive is usually the biggest speed bump in a PC. Giving the CPU lots of ram so it doesn't have to use the HD so much is a good start. 256 megs of ram just won't get it.....512 is much better and 1 gig is GREAT! Then increasing the overall efficiency of the HD by keeping it clean and defragged is the next step. By clean, I mean remove every file off of the HD that you don't need. I'm somewhat of a neat-freak so I wrote me a batch file to delete the junk from every temp and cache folder on the HD and I run my batch file from the startup folder so I get a free cleanup every time I reboot my PC. I share this technique with all my customers so their PC's just never get 'loaded' with garbage. Most people hate to do maintenance on their computers so this technique keeps their PC's clean with NO user intervention required. Then there's a more High-Tech answer to HD speed. Install a SATA controller card in an open PCI slot and an IDE to SATA dongle on the back of your IDE drive. Connect the SATA drive cable from the Dongle to the SATA controller card and you'll have an IDE drive running at SATA speeds. I've done it on several PC's and it WORKS fantastic. Total cost for the setup is about $50. Cheaper than a new SATA drive. Good Luck, Andromeda43

I see this or a similar question quite often in the forums. What most folks, even some so-called techs, don't realize is that there are TWO completely different types of PATA drive data cables. One is just a "Straight Through" cable with one connector for the motherboard and two for the HD's. A drive jumpered as master can be put on either of the two drive connectors with equal results. Likewise a second drive jumpered as SLAVE. Then there's the "Cable Select" cable. It will have a little cut in it somewhere between the two drive connectors making the connector on the End the master connector and the one in the middle the Slave connector. Any drive connected to this type of cable must be jumpered as "Cable Select". Before someone starts playing with the jumpers, it helps to know for sure what type of cable they have. Cables that have the words "Master" and "Slave" printed on them are most likely the cables that require all jumpers to be set to Cable Select. As far as the usefullness of all this.....well, the jury is still out on that one. I try to always use the "Straight Through" type of cables whenever possible. I've thrown away dozens of Master/Slave cables over the years. Good Luck, Andromeda43

Just a thought...... If you don't want to copy a certain subdirectory but you DO want to keep it, you could simply move it to a different location, then do the xcopy and then move it back,,,all within the same batch file. Or, you could even just let xcopy duplicate the whole tree structure and then delete the info you don't want....still from within the same batch file. Sometimes when I want to do something but I don't know exactly how to do it directly, I develope a "Work Around". This is one of them cases. I love XCopy, but it does have a few limitations. Good Luck, Andromeda43 B)

When Windows reads a CD it must follow certain criteria. Other os's or programs may be able to bypass those windows' criteria and read the CD anyway. ISOBuster is a good example. Taking care on how you burn your CD's will assure a more reliable READ later on. I always shut down all running programs, especially AV and AS programs before I ever open Nero to burn a CD. I use a little utility called "End It All 2" that does this for me. I also burn all my CD's at 8 or 16x.....never the 40x plus that Nero says I can use, if I want to. One simple rule to follow, is: "The slower the burn, the better the burn". For the greatest compatibility with other readers, always burn SLOW. Good Luck, Andromeda43 B)

That would have been my own first comment. Then, I would ask, where did this Hosts file come from that you're using? I get the updated hosts file from Mike Burgess every two weeks. It's got about 11,000+ lines to it. But the size of the file is only 141kb. Who are you trying to protect with your monstrous hosts file? Just Curious, Andromeda43

If you haven't fussed around with your Pagefile, windows will have set it to 1.5x the size of your ram. Then there's a little thing called "overage". Get used to it or you'll go nuts. Enjoy! Andromeda43 B)

It's a CAB file written by M$, not your father's Zip file. And why do you even want to fuss with a CAB file?

Can you do a Registry Restore to a time before all this hate and discontent started? If not....check your Boot.ini file. You may have to edit it, to get it back to normal. Cheers mate!

The upgrade should work just fine....but yes it's going to ask you for the 25 digit KEY. It did come with the package, didn't it? That's all it will ask you for. I got from 98/SE to XP-Pro with an upgrade CD. Worked fine. It was a huge leap, but went off without a hitch. I cleaned up my system and did a Ghost Image of C: before I started. You should do that too, if you want to keep your data and be able to go back to where you are now in case of problems. I've still got that Ghost Image of C: with my old 98/SE on it, around here somewhere. I did have to change my sound card, modem and scanner because XP didn't like them. good luck, Andromeda43

If you format C: the process will erase everything on that drive (partition). Is that what you want to do? Other than that, the answer to your question is "YOU CAN'T!" Why would you even want to? Curious minds want to know..... Cheers mates

It's DSL! It's a network connection from the PC to the DSL modem....it's alive as soon as the system boots up! I still don't understand what all this talk about dialing up is all about. There is NO DIALUP with DSL! Or shouldn't be anyway because how are you going to Dial a network connection. I work with DSL setups every day and I've yet to see one that had to dial out. If it fails to connect when the computer boots up, something if just VERY wrong. Cheers

leoleo, What are you wanting to do with this slipstreamed version of windows? SP1 will not be supported by M$ and falls way short of being a secure OS. To repair many problems with SP1 and greatly increase system security, SP2 is a must. Andromeda43 B)

I'm the resident Ghost officianado (or something like that) and I'm here to tell you, there's nothing on this planet or any other that I'm aware of any simpler than Norton's Ghost 2003. (originally written by Ghostsoft, Inc. in the mid 90's) I've been using it for years for myself and to back up my customer's HD's when they are here in my shop. A Ghost image on a bootable DVD makes one heck of a great System Restore Disk. Better and faster than anything you'll ever get from a computer manufacturer. I just boot up with my Ghost boot floppy or CD and do a Partition to Image file and let Ghost burn it directly to a DVD. Ghost 2003 will write to the DVD with NO special drivers loaded. It works only in DOS so bypasses XP entirely. (and it reads an NTFS partition with NO problems) Before writing, it will ask you if you want the boot disk put on the DVD as a boot sector. Just say yes and the job is as good as done. If you ever need to restore that image, like to a replacement HD, just boot up with the DVD and Ghost will run. Just tell Ghost what you want it to do and the Game's Afoot! I make my own Ghost DVD's several times a week, so I keep everything up to date. Ghost (the entire package) can be purchased over the internet for less than $10. All you really need is the Ghost.exe file out of that package to do what I do. I never install it on the HD. The windows GUI is just a waste of time and HD space. As a side line, do a Ghost backup followed by a Ghost restore to have all the files re-written to the HD in perfect sequential order.....no spaces between files and NO fragmentation. Y'all have a great day now, Y'hear? Andromeda43 B)

What about the 'Corporate' version? Then there are those "unofficial" versions. And, how about the "Russian" version? I think that's the one Bill Gates uses. rofl

In the past, I've fixed a g'zillion problems with 98/SE by just running setup.exe /is /ie from the original 98/SE OEM CD. All you have to do to make that work is rename win.com to win.old and then boot up with your Windows 98/Se CD and run the install. Have your 25 digit Key available. OR...you can boot up with a 98 or ME bood floppy and run Setup.exe from there with the appropriate path in the command line. OR...If you like, you can also run it right from your HD. Make a folder for it under C:\ and copy everything from the CD's \win98\ folder to the folder on the HD and run Setup.exe from there. That's preferrable if you don't have a boot disk with CD drivers on it. If you need a very good boot floppy, download a copy of my own customized Windows ME boot floppy (wnMEboot.exe) from my personal Download site. Run this .exe file and it will prompt you to insert a blank 3.5" floppy disk. Then it will burn the image of my own ME boot disk to that floppy. This is a great Service Tool for anyone still working with 98, 98/SE or win-ME. Look around,,,,,there's some other great programs on that site too. Beers all around!

I.E. 5.x is a dead issue. Many things just don't work well with it at all. It's become just too dangerous to use. Replace it with I.E. 6.x and be done with it. You can get the IE 6 CD from Microshaft or from any good tech. (It seems like I've had it,,,,forever!) Then get all the latest fixes and patches for it from M$. Cheers, Andromeda43 B)

Just curious.....Is this PC running on Windows 98 or 98 Second Edition? If old 98, you'd be time and effort (and money) ahead to upgrade that machine to Windows 98/SE and then add the Unofficial Service Pack 2. (a real Godsend, although God didn't write it.) Old 98 is just too lacking in so many areas. The upgrade can be done with the 98/SE upgrade CD or even with an OEM CD. I've done it both ways. The process is a bit different, but the end result is the same. A much better running PC. Good Luck, Shadow B)

If the heads have crashed the surface of the platters and abraided the surface, there is NO software program in the world that's going to fix that. The best you can hope for is a program that will try to recover the data from that section and move it to a safe place in a good spot on the disk. The best software ever for that is "Spinrite 6" from GRC.Com It will check all aspects of the hard drive and report to you any problems it finds. I've been using it since I first discovered it in the early 90's. (in an earlier version, of course) Every technician worth his salt should have a copy of "Spinrite 6". (and most already do) This is NOT some cheap freeware, shareware or wannabee. It's a highly sophisticated, Professional Software tool and is NOT Cheap. It's $89 for new users. It's the most expensive service tool I've ever purchased. You may need to take your HD to a technician for recovery or borrow a copy of Spinrite from someone who already has it. Andromeda43 B)

From here, it looks like you're going about it all wrong. (of course, I could be wrong) Extract the whole file to a folder on your PC, of your choice. Take the part of it you want and save to a permanent folder on your hard drive or burn it to a CD and discard the rest. Job done and you'll have a permanent copy of the drivers you need.