Andromeda43

Send it where? and HOW?

Stop being such a goof about validation. Like who really gives a sh**? Do YOU? Do I? There's a g'zillion copies of XP roaming around out there that require NO validation at all, no matter how many times you install or re-Install them. And ya know what?.....they pass the MS validation check program with flying colors. Am I advocating hacking or warez? heck NO, just stating a very well know fact. NO illegal activity intended. Merry Christmas,

I'll gladly second that motion! I've used Ghost since Ghostsoft Inc. first wrote it a decade ago. (long before Symantec got their grubby mits on it and started screwing with it.) Ghost 2003 is still available over the internet for under $7.00 usd. and it's pretty much the original program. When I first set up a PC and get it just purrrrrrrfect, I immediately make a Ghost image and let Ghost burn it to a CD or DVD. It also puts itself on the disk as the boot sector. So, if your HD does a "Mt St. Helens" and you have to do a total reinstall of your OS plus goodies, you just boot up with your Ghost restore DVD and run Ghost and do a Restore and in minutes you're all back up and running. I've set up this system for many of my own customers and it just works GRRRRRRRREAT! With my SATA drive, the restore only takes five minutes from my D: drive,,,,a little longer from a DVD. I do a restore after a backup, for a Defrag like none you've ever seen since '98 days. After the restore, all files are in sequencial order with NO spaces and NO fragmentation. Good Luck and Merry Christmas everyone, Andromeda43

Gads I feel stupid because I don't understand the reason for this thread at all. Why not just minimize it to the taskbar? OE6 can be minimized any ol' time you want by just clicking the little underscore symbol in the upper right hand corner of the window. Like any other windows program. Or it can be run minimized from the 'git-go' by setting up the shortcut to "Run Minimized". I really don't see the need to open a forum thread to do that simple thing. C'mon guru's .....what am I missing here? I don't care what forum its put in....sounds like a really useless question to me. cheers

A friend gave me a DVD with several episodes of Star Trek on it. I wanted to see it on my 25" TV using sVideo. I found that I had to have the 'puter turned off when I hooked up the sVideo cable. When I turned on the 'puter, it saw the sVideo line active and shut down my video output to a low resolution level. The picture on the TV was viewable but not nearly as nice as the one on my 21" Nokia monitor. Now I don't even bother with the TV any more, I just watch my vid's on my PC monitor. A bit smaller but so very much clearer. Not sure why, but my 21" monitor weighs half again more than my 25" TV. It's sure one Heavy little dude. Merry Christmas everyone, Andromeda43

Many things are possible,,,you could shoot yourself in the foot, or dye your hair day-glow-green, but why on earth would you want to? ME is a total piece of crap,,,,everyone knows that, so why on earth would you want to upgrade to That??? That 98 machine was never built for an OS the size and weight of XP. If XP would even load, the performance would be absolutely Horrible. Today, any PC without a CD drive is like NO PC at all. Nothing but a piece of junk, a door stop, a boat anchor. You'd never be able to install any software that you couldn't download via your ISP connection. Scrap it, junk it, or whatever, but forget upgrading it to a larger and more demanding OS. If it had a working CD rom drive, I might suggest doing an upgrade to 98/SE w/Sp2. I have a few tweaks for 98/SE that can also make it run a lot more efficient. Good Luck and have a great day, Andromeda43

I take exception to that..... Well, not really, but I thought I was the only person on the net who talked that way. That's almost word for word what I am constantly telling people. And being flamed for... And that's not based on personal opinion or predudice. That's based on 40 years of experience as a tech and many years taking Norton off of my customer's PC's, and then removing all the viruses that Norton never even saw. (God, I hate that program....It's the only software I know that can reduce a nice running little PC to a whimpering mess. Like a whipped pup.) Great Call! Happy Holidays everyone, Andromeda43

I've run into several problems, like playing music CD's with 98/SE. 1. Media Player 7.1 is the last one that "fits" windows 98/SE. Anything newer (and much larger) can easily overload the CPU and ram. MP 9 is very problematical and MP-10 is a total disaster. 2. Other running programs can cause Media Player to hang, skip and in general FAIL. If you want to play games or play CD's, shut down all other programs that might be running. Good Luck and Happy Holidays, Andromeda43

It ain't hackin'..... the registered key is kept on your HD. Belarc Advisor can and will find it and display it for you. Always has. It really doesn't matter if AOL is shown as installed in your Add/Remove list. Just go into your hard drive with windows explorer and delete all and any folder that says AOL on it. Look in Program Files and also look in \Windows\. Do a search for "AOL" and delete all suspect entries. It CAN be removed.....just takes a little while and some persistance. Then run a good registry cleaner like "Easy Cleaner". And YES, it's almost as bad as a virus. I'm constantly removing it from my customer's PC's. I've been told, that the parent company of AOL also owns Gator, Claria and who knows how many other Spyware companies. Well anyway, it's best removed whenever possible. Good Luck and Happy Holidays, Andromeda43

Yup! Windows 98/SE is still alive and well in 2005. For the older PC's still running only 64 megs of 100mhz ram, it's the Nuts! I'm still cleaning up the old 98 machines and making them run better than new. All it takes is a little bit of time and effort. It ain't rocket science. Happy Holidays everyone, Andromeda43

No NO NOOO, a thousand times NO! Go back has caused more hate and discontent than I can count. Once it's screwed up a HD, only a re-format will solve the problem. Since 98 was a wee small boy, there's been a registry restore built right into Windows. I've used "Scanreg" hundreds of times to recover an errant 98. Every day you boot up 98, you get a restore point automaticly. It keeps five restore points only. So anytime you have a problem, you can boot up with your 98 boot disk and run Scanreg /restore and go back to any point in the last five days, that the computer was booted. For a much more usefull restore you can always use Ghost 2003 from Symantec. It's for sale on the internet for as little as six bucks and change. The installed program can make a boot disk for you that you can use to boot up your PC and do Ghost backups or Ghost restores. It runs in DOS mode. Version 2003 is almost exactly like the version that Symantec bought from Ghostsoft, Inc. That means that Symantec didn't have time to screw it up, like they have so many other good programs. I still use mine two or more times a week to make a Ghost Image file of my Windows XP partition and burn the image file to a DVD. Ghost 2003 also can put itself on the DVD as a boot sector, so you wind up with a bootable Restore disk. That's all you need to restore your Ghost image to a new or reformatted HD. On my Ghost boot disk (floppy or CD) I've included my own HD cleanup routine which I can run or not from the menu I've created on the boot disk. I can also delete the windows swap file, so I don't have to back that up every time I do a Ghost image. I find using Ghost the most usefull and user friendly method of doing regular backups that I've ever heard of. With my SATA hard drive, Ghost will do a complete backup of my C: partition and save it to D: (the second partition on my SATA drive) in just under three minutes. It will also burn the image file to a DVD which takes a few minutes longer. Good Luck and Happy Holidays, Andromeda43

Those BSOD's can be caused by a number of different things, from a bad memory chip to a piece of spyware or even a virus or Trojan. Troubleshooting that is a long and tedious process. You could start by reseating all your plug in cards and ram chips. Then do a very thorough scan for spyware using at least two programs like; AdAware SE/Personal and Spybot Search & Destroy. Then, get AVG 7.1 FREE , anti-virus program and do the updates and then do a full scan. Eliminate all programs from the startup folder, not absolutely needed for windows to run. You'll find that folder when you RUN 'MSCONFIG'. BSOD's are not a normal function of Windows......something's causing it....you just need to eliminate as many possibilities as possible.....hopefully one of them will be the right one. Good Luck and Happy Holidays, Andromeda43

When you say "crash" ME, I think you may be using the wrong term. If you have ME and want to go back to Windows 98 (I would hope you're talking about 98/SE) then you first need to get all your data files copied off of your hard disk (C:) before you start. Then make sure you have the driver disks for all your hardware; Motherboard, video card, modem, sound card, ETC. Not having the 98 drivers for some piece of hardware like your video card could ruin your day. Then you need to make yourself a boot floppy....using ME is just fine for this project. Then boot up with your ME boot floppy and format C: Then put in your 98 install CD and go to the \Win98\ folder and run Setup.exe Windows 98 will then begin to install. Before you even start this procedure, make sure your 98 CD is free of scratches or mars. Also make sure you have the original 25 digit registry key for that CD. Getting 98 back on the HD is the easy part.....getting all the hardware drivers loaded is another matter all together. You may want to just clean up ME, dump out those worthless Restore files and go on from there. ME has some great attributes not found in 98 or even 98/SE. Since learning how to work with ME, I've never gone back to SE on any computer I've worked on. If you decide to just fix ME and keep it....I can help you. Good Luck and Happy Holidays, Andromeda43

In your original post, you used the incorrect syntax to enter your copy command. The copy command cannot copy a folder,,,,only files within a folder. For that to work the correct syntax would have been: copy C:\dfs\*.* D:\backup The simple 'copy' command is usefull but very limited in its scope. Most DOS efficienadoes would opt for the more powerfull and capable XCopy command. If you wanted the files to be on the D: drive in a folder still named "dfs", then you should have made a folder on D: with that name before you entered the copy command. Maybe a little DOS tutorial would be advisable before doing any more work in DOS. It's very specific and just the slightest slip can invalidate an entire command line, or even erase your hard drive. It might have been advisable to just do a drag and drop or even a copy and paste of those files from windows explorer, assuming of course that you do have Windows on that PC. Good Luck, Andromeda43 Here's the rules for XCopy: 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.

Hmmmmmmm! I've been working on PC's for over twenty years and to this day, I've never installed a Driver for any monitor. Windows always figgers that out by itself and I've never seen a problem with it. I've still not seen one monitor that came with a driver disk, and I've installed hundreds of them. You just plug them in and they work, up to their own capabilities and those of the attached video card. Now, video card drivers are a different matter. Guess I've just missed out on all the fun....wot? Cheers Mates! B)

Lets get down to the basics. OK? Windows 98 like all its predicessors is a DOS based program (OS). NO Dos based OS or utilities can SEE an NTFS partition. One exception I can think of to this rule is Norton's Ghost 2003. When booted from a dos disk, Ghost can see and backup an NTFS partition. NO, 98 cannot even see a NTFS partition, let alone run on one. If you're truly a windows 98 lover, having an NTFS partition anywhere on your PC should be the very last thing on earth that you'd want. It would avail you absolutely NOTHING! It would be invisible to anything but an NT based OS. (or Ghost 2003) For a true 98 lover, NTFS is pure B.S.! Having said all that, I want to wish you all a very Happy Holiday Season, Andromeda43

XP home is like termites......it should be eradicated wherever possible. What a real piece of c..r..a..p.. it is. There's a great version of Xp-Pro that came out of Russia that has a key that's readily accepted by MS. Or, so I've been told. Sonic, have you heard about that?

The most reliable Defrag program is the one that came with windows. Use that and nothing else and you won't have any problems. The only better defrag you'll ever get is to do a Restore of a hard drive backup,,,,like with Norton's Ghost 2003, a DOS based backup program. I would hook your HD into another system where you can access all your data files and copy them to a CD/DVD. Then reformat your HD and reinstall your OS and programs. Then never trust your HD to something given to you by a "friend". Good Luck and Happy Holidays, Andromeda43

Yes Steve,,,,if you made a nLited CD for them and used your Pro version, that would be illegal, if you really give a dang. XP Home is a stripped down and crippled version of Windows XP and should be totally eradicated, if possible and wherever possible. The only real FIX for a screwed up XP-Home is to overlay it with an upgrade CD using XP-Pro/SP2. That fixes the problems every time. Good luck Steve, Happy Holidays, Andromeda43

That's not always true. It's an option of the individual ISP. Some do require a log-in procedure before the actual connection is completed. Clicking on a desktop icon is usually required to accomplish this. It's not common, but it does exist. If there was a question and request for information in the original post....I totally missed it. Sorry! Happy Holidays, Andromeda43

If you live in New York and you want to make a trip to Los Angeles, it's pretty hard to start in Cleveland, Oh. It's all about planning. (putting a 3.5" floppy drive in your computer is just good planning...it gives you so many more options and control over your PC.) Up untill June of this year, I was still building custom made PC's for my customers. I've never built a PC without a floppy drive. (and never will) Even if those customers never use the FD,,,,,I will. The best rescue CD is one made with a program like Ghost 2003 which not only puts an exact image of your C: drive on the disk, but the info from the boot floppy as well, as the boot sector for the CD. What you wind up with is a CD or DVD that can boot up your system with a brand new hard drive in it, or an old one that you may have had to re-format and then restore everything from your old HD. You never loose a single bit of information. I've been using this system for several years and setting up like systems for my customers. I have one customer who runs three corporations from his office PC. Every afternoon at about 5PM he makes a Ghost image of his entire C: drive. It's dirt cheap insurance against disaster. His 100% disaster insurance costs him about twenty cents a day. My own Ghost images no longer fit on a CD so I'm now using DVD's. I do keep my C: drive as clean as possible so a Ghost image will fit on a single DVD. During the backup process, Ghost offers to use my Boot Floppy as the boot image on the DVD. I always say "Yes" to the offer and wind up with a bootable recovery disk. I just can't think of anything any simpler than that and with my new SATA drive, my backups are done in very short order. Doing a Ghost backup and putting the image file on the second partition of my SATA drive takes only three (3) minutes. If you only have a CD burner and not a DVD burner, Ghost will span as many CD's as needed to create it's image file. Considering the now very low cost of Norton's Ghost 2003, there's no reason why anyone should not have a copy for their own use. At least half of the cries for help that we see in these on-line forums could be totally eliminated if people would just start doing weekly backups. Happy Holidays everyone! Andromeda43

Partition Magic is a technicians tool and should only be used by technicians who understand the program, what it does and how it does it and how to use it. Reading these forums for the past few years I've read countless threads started by some user who's screwed up their HD with PM, (or similar software) because they didn't understand how to use it correctly. I've been using PM for several years and to date (knocking on wood) I've not messed up one single HD. PM will do almost anything you ask it to do. It only screws things up when you ask it to do the wrong thing, or the right things, but in the wrong sequence. Doing the right steps in the right sequence provides the right results.....every time. I heartily echo those sentiments. Happy Holidays everyone, Andromeda43

Of course they have! I used to have to pay $30 or more for a new 3.5" FD and now I can get one, white faced or black faced for just $7. Now that's change. Only those who have History with the home computer, really know how many things that have really not changed in the past fifteen years or more. Just look at the AT style keyboard. It's as ageless as the steering wheel, that hasn't really changed in nearly 100 years. The 3.5" FD separates the men from the boys, so to speak. The MEN still have them, use them and love them. The Boys, (nerds, geeks and gamers) don't even know what they are. And that's too bad, because the 3.5" FD still has a very vital place in the world of the Personal Computer. Using a FD is the quickest way to run hardware diagnostics, boot up a failing system or just transfer a file from one PC to another. (that's by the way called "Sneaker Net") And, they're cheap, erasable and reusable! I have 3.5" floppies that are over ten years old and I still use them. Just reformat and GO! Can't do that with a CD. I had one customer that was given a new HP computer for Christmas 2004. It came with NO floppy drive, but a space for it. My customer practically begged me to install a 3.5" floppy drive for them as they had over 150 3.5" floppy disks with old family photos and documents on them that they wanted to be able to access. Since I always carry two floppy drives with me (one white and one black) and FD cables, the install was quick and went off without a hitch. Abling up the drive in the bios finished the job and again I had one very happy customer. Just because something is below the cutting edge of technology or a few years old does not automaticly make it bad. Heck, I'm over 60 and I'm still functional.....mostly. If I had room in my case, I'd still have a 5.25" drive in there too, as I've got over 300 of the old 5.25" disks loaded with games and utilities. I do have two of the 5.25" drives, but they are on the parts shelf, not in my PC. If I did install one, it would be Drive "B". That drive letter is still "RESERVED". Happy Holidays everyone Andromeda43

Epson refills are great if you use Epson approved ink....one ink does NOT fit all. To refill Epson carts, you also need a chip resetter. I have one and the refill kits for all my Epson printers. I buy factory filled carts for my C62 and CX3200 so cheap that I've not refilled a cart in about a year. They use the same cart. But, if I get caught with my carts down....I CAN refill. My "Photo R-200" uses six different carts. I bought a refill kit for it from www.inkproducts.com for around $120. The kit includes six clear plastic carts, six bottles of ink and six hypo's to put the ink in the carts. Factory carts for the R-200 cannot be refilled. Cheers, Andromeda43

Mobo's (or vid cards) with little cheap fans on them are the pits! Finding the exact replacement fan can be a real chore and even then you just get another piece of c..r..a..p fan that's going to fail in just a few months anyway. I had one of them Asus mobo's and couldn't get rid of it fast enough to suit me. I'll NEVER have another mobo or vid card with a cooling fan on it. NEVER! Having said that.....while I did have that poc Asus mobo, I took the little fan off of the board and cleaned and oiled it several times. It's really not that hard to do. Use a hypo needle to inject a tiny bit of high grade machine oil through the oil seal on the bottom of the fan. You can get several years of use out of one of them little fans with a little "clean & oil" every few months. Good Luck, Andromeda43