Andromeda43

Jaclaz, "SATA starts at 150." ??? Did you drop a zero? There are two SATA speeds.... SATA1 at 1500 and SATA2 at 3000. Both are worlds ahead of IDE. Anyway, I have several IDE to SATA adapters. They all work the same, no matter what the brand name. In my own experience, the IDE drive running on the IDE to SATA adapter will transfer data at close to SATA speeds. It blew me away the first time I saw it. I was running Ghost 2003 at the time and it shows the data transfer rate while it runs. (one of the few programs that actually do that) Apparently the IDE controller on the motherboard is the biggest bottleneck to IDE data transfer, not the drive itself. (Apparently) This is one of my own IDE drives, fitted with the IDE to SATA adapter. Just Google "IDE to SATA Adapter" and you'll get more info than you want or need. Happy Computing! Andromeda43 B) NOTE: In the picture, if you look closely, you'll see that the SATA data cable is pulling loose from the connector on the adapter. That's typical of SATA cables in general. I overcome that on my own drives by securing the cable to the drive or adapter with HOT GLUE. A bead of Silicone rubber would probably do as well.

When I opened this very subject on another forum, some time back, I got a lot of hoots, hollers and wise cracks, but NO substantial suggestions. In general it appeared that no-one was seriously interested in improving their gas mileage. I drive a small Suzuki Forenza that was supposed to get a lot better mileage than what I've been seeing in my personal driving. What a big disappointment that was! Racing down the interstate at 80mph+ doesn't get it! Driving with a dirty air filter, dirty oil and soft squishy tires don't get it either. My solution to better mileage is "Just Cool It" on the highway. Driving 65 to 70mph in the right lane on the interstate gives much better mileage than 80 to 90mph in the high speed lane. It's safer too. Then, I make sure that my tires are inflated to the recommended pressure, plus a little more. Firm tires roll easier and give better mileage than soft squishy tires. I exchanged the stock air filter with a "K&N" Air Cleaner, which I clean and re-oil on a regular maintenance schedule. I use a good quality Pennsylvania Grade motor oil and I add a can of STP on every oil change (every 3000 miles). I now get about 5 mpg more than when I did nothing to improve my mileage. I have NOT fooled around with the engine control computer or added any "Gadgets" to my car. I've done no more than any driver can do. Cheers! Andromeda43

If you can find your "RUN" box, somewhere above the START button....copy and paste the above location (C:\Windows\System32\diskmgmt.msc ) into the run box and press enter. This will run your Disk Management program. At least, it works on this Windows XP machine. I'd assume that it may also work on Vista. Good Luck,

No ideas here! And, does it really matter? Things like that should be filed under the title of "Stuff Happens". Enjoy!

What interface are you using? USB or Parallel ? Are you following the install instruction sheet to the letter? Most instructions for USB printers, plainly state, "Do Not connect USB cable till told to do so by the installation software". Or something to that effect. If you connect the USB cable too soon, then Windows tries to install the printer and a conflict results. It just happened to be on an HP printer install that I first found this out. I had to clean everything out of the computer, concerning that printer and then start over, following the instructions on the Install Sheet. Also, if you have old printers already installed, it may be helpful to fully remove the drivers and software before installing a new printer. Just a thought! B)

If your system is already optimized for top performance then any IDE drive will be a huge bottleneck for you. It's the slowest part of your system and your CPU is always sitting and waiting on the next bit of data from the drive. Max data transfer for an IDE drive is 133 and SATA1 is 1500, while SATA2 is 3000. If you only have two SATA ports on that mobo, they may well be only SATA1, but that's still a quantum leap above IDE. I'd not EVER buy a WD drive, even on sale, but getting a SATA drive to replace that old (slow) IDE drive would be a great step up for you. The MSI web site has this to say about that motherboard. ******************************************* This micro ATX motherboard packs quite a punch considering its size (9.6" x 7.5") and price. This motherboard supports Celeron and Pentium 4 processors that use the Socket 478 interface. The VIA P4M800 and the VIA VT8237 are the Northbridge and Southbridge, respectively. Two onboard slots for 184-pin DDR 400 SDRAM can support up to 2GB system memory. The onboard expansion slots include 1 AGP 4x/8x and 3 PCI slots which provide you with enough options to connect your needed devices. With the two SATA 1.5Gb/s connections, you can now store quite a considerable amount of data on your new SATA hard drives. The PM8M-V has a VIA UniChrome 2D/3D graphics core integrated onboard chipset that delivers enhanced video for gamers. The PM8M-V is also fitted with 6-channel Realtek ALC655, delivering high quality surround sound. The onboard Realtek 8201CL PHY LAN is handy for logging on to any network. All things considered, the motherboard is ideal for gaming and for multimedia. ********************************************* As I've highlighted in RED, that's only a SATA1 mobo. Most of the first mobo's that came out with just two SATA ports were SATA1. That's a good step up from IDE, but only half as fast as SATA2. The newer mobo's like my MSI K9N-Platinum, have six SATA2 ports on the mobo and only one IDE port, supporting two IDE devices. You not only have to get a HD that's compatible with that board, but then you have to clone the old IDE drive to the new SATA drive and reset the bios to boot from that drive and not the old IDE drive, which, by the way you can leave in the system as a storage drive once the new drive is running properly. If your computer expertise is minimal, at best, I'd suggest you get a professional computer tech to do the upgrade for you. For instance, if that new drive is a SATA2 drive, your mobo will not even see it, unless the drive is properly jumpered to only run at SATA1 speed. In my old computer, with a SATA1 only mobo, I have an IDE drive connected to my #2 SATA port with an IDE to SATA adapter. It transfers data at nearly SATA1 speed. (I use it for my Storage Drive.) I would have never believed it possible, to get such data transfer speeds from an IDE Drive, had I not seen it with my own two eyes. The OS drive on that PC is SATA2, but it's jumpered to run at the much lower SATA1 speed. It's still a good old computer and runs both XP-Pro and Vista Ultimate. Good luck to you, B)

"System Restore" is your best friend, when some program install or Windows Update goes horribly wrong. START > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > System Restore. Restore back to a time or day before you installed that torrent program. I have to use System Restore at least once a week because of some lame program or another that wasn't what it was supposed to be. I rely on it so much, that I run a little script in my Startup folder to Force a restore point, every time I boot up. I may get several restore points per day, but at least I have a fresh one when I need it. Good Luck, B)

That problem is made more difficult to troubleshoot because it's a laptop, but, the problem is NOT restricted to laptops. Anytime the bios cannot properly read a drive on the system, it will hang. If the drive is improperly specified in the bios settings, the boot will hang. On a desktop, I'd say just reach in and unplug the CD drive and try booting. On a laptop, that's not so easy. However you might try resetting the bios and let the bios reset itself to the drive. It may just be that the drive is Defective. On some laptops, removing the CD drive is as simple as pressing a little latch and pulling the drive out. If I had that PC here on the bench, I'd try removing the CD drive and then resetting the bios and then see if it boots up normally. It sure won't hurt to try. Good Luck, B)

Oh, the negative remarks about Black Viper. I would expect nothing less, here. In view of all the negativity, I won't post my own disable list or batch file here. If someone really, honestly, wants it, PM me and I'll send it to you. B)

I have to work on and install many laptops. It's amazing to me how many are actually running as little desktops, always on AC power and almost NEVER on battery power. But if you'll look in "Power Management" you'll see two separate settings,,, One for AC power and One for battery power. Having the little 'puter throttled down while on AC power makes NO sense at all. The only shut down setting I use is to shut down the hard drive after about 10 minutes of NO use. This reduces the amount of heat coming from the HD and lets the PC cool down between uses. As for an OS for a laptop with only two gigs of ram and a not-too-fast CPU, XP would be the OS of choice. If the little PC was made for XP, there probably would not be any hardware drivers for that PC that would be Vista compatible. Vista, if it would even install, would run dead slow on that PC. It's absolutely criminal, that so many Laptops are coming out with Vista installed and only minimal ram and cpu's. They would be better suited to run Windows ME. Since heat is the greatest foe of Laptops, I always tell my customers to NEVER set their laptop on a rug, bed or even their lap, since that will block the air intake ports on the bottom of the PC and inhibit cooling. Good Luck with that lappy,

I'm a working PC tech, and as such I have to set up new Vista PC's every week. I know from years of experience with XP, that redundant services can kill a system's performance. So after installing Vista Ult. on a test PC, I went straight to Black Vipers web site to find out what Services I could safely KILL. He gives several options that you can pick from. I went with the services in the SAFE column. Then I wrote a batch file to disable 22 services. I run that batch file now on every home PC I set up that runs Vista. For my own PC, I added two more services to that list, for a total of 24 services to either KILL or put into Manual mode. Regardless of what the 'Nay-Sayers' may want to tell you, reducing the workload on the CPU and ram cannot help but positively impact system performance. I also use a few Registry Tweaks, holdovers from XP, that improve Vista's performance even more. Also, putting every screen or menu into "Classic" mode helps too. Then to decrease your frustration level, shut down UAC! It has NO place on a home computer. Then help the poor overloaded HD, by uninstalling every trial and demo that came with the PC. And any other program that you don't need. There's more, but that's a good place to start, anyway. Cheers Mates! B)

Ken, I empathize, sympathize, and any other 'ize you can think of. But, I have to say, as an old time PC tech that managed to live thru Windows 3.0, 95, 98, 98/SE, ME, XP and now Vista that the success is always in the details. The worse thing you can do is try to install Vista on a PC that was never designed for it and doesn't have the horsepower to run it. It takes about four times the resources to run Vista as to run XP, for instance. I've done a cold install of Vista Ultimate on two PC's so far, for testing purposes. One PC was built with Vista in mind and the install went off without any problems at all. The second PC (if you can really call it that), was a Dell XPS-400 with only 512 megs of ram and a mediocre processor. Dell won't release the SATA2 drivers for that PC so I couldn't install XP. So I tried Vista Ultimate and you could have knocked me over with a feather,,,,,the dang thing loaded just fine. Vista does come with it's own SATA drivers....not so with XP. I stuck in another gig of ram and Vista is humming along just fine on that PC. It's for OS testing only and not for gaming or Video Editing. I'm sure it would fall on its butt if I tried to do any of those things. I'm having great success in beating Vista down to size and making it run a lot more efficiently than it does 'out of the box'. Sorry for the long post......now what was the topic?

Those idiots!!!! They have done the same thing that they did with XP.....gave the bare minimum hardware requirements to just load the OS. It doesn't really RUN, it sort of walks, like a man on crutches. I wish MS would get their stuff together and tell people what they really NEED to effectively run Vista (any version). If you think of Vista as taking 4 times the resources as XP, you'll be close to the truth. Cheers Mates!

Vista is one heck of a system resource HOG! Just the size of Vista on the HD is several times greater than XP. Three to four gig's of FAST ram is recommended. Where PC makers used to release XP pc's with 512megs of ram, I've not seen one Vista PC with less than 2 gigs. Three gigs is better and four gigs is best. So I'd have to agree with other posters, don't even think about installing any version of Vista on that old PC. Cheers Mate!

The greatest advantage to having a bootable Flash Drive, is to boot up a system and run things, like Memtest or HD utilities that you don't want to run, or Can't Run in Windows. It boots much faster than a CD, is physically much smaller and is much less subject to physical damage. I have one that I use with my Windows ME Utilities and another one I use to boot into Norton's Ghost 2003, 8.3 or 11. I also have one with "NTFS4DOS" so I can boot up a system that won't boot on its own and access any file on the NTFS hard drive, from a DOS prompt. A good knowledge of DOS is required here. HP puts out a nice little utility for making a Flash Drive bootable, but you must have a source for the three DOS system files for the HP Utility to use. The utility DOES NOT supply those files. (legally, it can't! ) You can use a bootable floppy disk for the source, or you can take the files from a folder that you've already prepared on your HD. I've done it both ways. Cheers Mates! Andromeda43 B)

The external drive will only show up as A: if.... 1. You don't already have a floppy drive installed in the system. It wants to be drive A: and you can only have one drive A: on any one system. If you already have an A: drive.....your USB drive may show up as B: This depends a lot on how your motherboard is seeing it. 2. You have a formatted floppy disk installed in the drive. That may or may not be required. On my system, it is NOT required. If you have an internal floppy drive installed, then unplug it. The external USB floppy drive should only be used on systems that have NO internal floppy drive installed. Again, that depends a lot on the mobo. It's a USB device.....Windows XP contains universal drivers for USB devices, not so for earlier versions of windows, like Windows 98. On my own system with an MSI mobo, I have support on the mobo for only one Floppy Drive (FD) and I have one installed, which comes up as drive A:. When I plug in my USB FD, I get it coming up as Drive B:. It's visible in "My Computer" as drive B: whether I have a disk in the drive, or not. I'd have to say, first thing is to check your BIOS to see if USB devices are enabled. At least, that's a place to start, since there are NO drivers to add for a USB Floppy Drive on windows XP. It's just not needed and NOT THERE! Stop looking.....you're NOT going to find it. Cheers! Andromeda43 B)

I really got sick and tired of having to download a new player or plug-in every time I got something new from the internet. Then my Software Guru put me on to the K-Lite Codec Pack. Since then, I've updated it on a regular basis and I've deleted Real Player, Quick Time and all the other bloatware off of my computer. http://www.codecguide.com/download_kl.htm Try it.... I think you'll like it. Cheers Mate! Andromeda43 B)

After fussing with screen capture/print programs for years, I finally found the simplest method of all. When there is a screen I want to capture, I just press the "Print Scrn" key at the top right of my keyboard. That puts the entire screen on the Windows Clipboard. Then I pop open my favorite Graphics program, (Photo Filter) and paste the screen there. I can then crop, resize or otherwise edit the screen before saving it to my HD. I use that technique at least once a day to grab something of interest, to share with others. Cheers Mates! Andromeda B)

Since I set up several new PC's with Vista every month, I'm always looking for tweaks to make Vista run better without all the fluff, glitz and glitter. I already have several that I use including some of the above.....but I'm curious about the "NO THANK YOU!". What are you saying there? Would you please explain that in a bit more detail, for the nubies. Thanks in advance, Andromeda43

For years, I've been setting up PC's and then making a "Ghost" image of the HD to CD's or DVD. I've been using "Norton's Ghost 2003" for years now. Still works great on XP. That's the simplest way to make a restore disk. That's how Toshiba makes their Factory Restore CD's. It can also be done to a USB drive or a second internal Hard Drive. The options are many but the Program is still just as simple to use. Never install it on a HD, but always run it from a DOS boot disk. Lately, I've found that the "Sea Tools" disk from Seagate and the "Max Blast" disk from Maxtor do a real good job of backing up a HD. Either will make a bootable copy of Vista on a second HD. Good Luck, Andromeda

My roll in life, this one anyway, is to make things work better. It's what I've done for 44 years now. I'm running Vista Ultimate 32 on a freebie PC that was given to me. There are many ways to simplify Vista and make it run better and use less resources. There are even some registry tweaks to enhance performance. But I've found nothing to eliminate the HD bloat. Vista is just HUGE! It definitely requires MORE HD space and even more RAM than XP. On my test machine, it runs pretty well. I'm still looking for new ways to eeeek out another percent or two of performance. I havn't even started shutting down Services yet, but I'll bet there are a bunch. On XP I shut down about a dozen, without crippling XP. Vista will never be my favorite OS, but it can be made to work a lot better than it does, right out of the box. Good luck, Andromeda

A 3.5" hard drive requires both +5vdc and +12vdc to operate.....NO usb port can drive that HD. It must have an external power supply. The fact that he's had it working on another PC eliminates that problem. Only the little 2.5" drives will run on just +5vdc as is supplied by most USB ports, but not all. Windows will see only what the motherboard sees. If the drive is not being seen by the motherboard, for whatever reason, then Windows will not see it either. An older mobo that is USB 1 only, may not be able to see that USB2 drive. just a thought...... B)

Sp3 is a humongous download and it gives you Nothing of real value, not at all like SP2. If your existing install of Xp is running well for you, forget about SP3. OK? I installed it, and it took only six minutes to install on my PC, but it did absolutely NOTHING for me. YES....the further you can stay away from WGA, the better off you'll be. Sounds like you've got your PC pretty well under control. Keep it that way. Cheers mate! Andromeda B)

The minute you install Vista you start making changes and installing things that are listed in the registry. I seriously doubt that any two PC's are going to have the same size of registry. Add Sp1 and your registry will take another HIKE! I know that this and many forums don't suggest using Registry Cleaners, but I use "Easy Cleaner 2", which is both SAFE and Efficient for eliminating old and out of date entries. It keeps my own registry clean, neat and running efficiently. Then, after cleaning up the registry, I always run "NTREGOPT", to re-compress the registry and keep it as small as possible. It's kind of like running Defrag on a hard drive. NTREGOPT will also tell you exactly how large the registry is. I just checked my Vista test machine, where I've received ALL the microsoft updates and installed SP1. NTREGOPT reports the size of the registry as 53,764,096 before compression, and 47,456,256 after compression, for a net decrease in size of 12%. That's a great savings! 200 megs for a registry? I think I'll have to say that's excessive. I'd be running Easy Cleaner and NTREGOPT on that one immediately. Good Luck, Andromeda

Probably the worse thing you can have on a laptop, is Norton. Remove it at once. It's a huge system resource hog and can bring many PC's right down to their knees. And, it's not even a good Anti-Virus program. Whew.....that felt good. Nothing like a good rant on a Sunday morning. FWIW: You never need to install the software that comes with a camera. In fact, some of it is so poorly written that it's crashed many a PC. Kodak Easyshare is my prime example. I've had to recover many a PC that it's screwed up. Windows has all the software you need to input pictures and view them. For more detailed work on pictures, I use "PhotoFiltre". But, NEVER, do I EVER install the software that comes with a camera. Yes, remove Norton and replace it with AVG 8.0 FREE. Did I mention, it's FREE ? ANTI-VIRUS PROTECTION: World famous AVG 8.0 FREE (Completely NEW Version) will keep your computer free of viruses, trojans, dialers, etc. By default, it updates and scans for viruses on a daily basis. AVG 8.0 FREE, can be downloaded from: http://free.grisoft.com/ww.download?prd=afe Scroll down the page to "Download AVG FREE 8.0" and then click on the Download button: Save the file to your desktop and run the install from there. If you have an older version of AVG free already installed, the new version will un-install it for you. (This is NOT an update...it's a completely NEW Version) Immediately get updates. More than one may be required. Good Luck, Andromeda