Ponch

I guess he can use "administrator" in Safe Mode instead.

I think some early 8GB HDD were still limited to UDMA33, being sure you run UDMA66 like the MoBo allow would make a huge difference. It would need a 80wires IDE cable. Also make sure the disk is less than 80% full. Such a system cannot be that slow.

Wow, long post. The name is linked to the login. You can change the name, but you can't change the login. I wouldn't try anything else than creating a new profile, it's far easier and quicker than trying to edit directories names and reg keys, which will leave you in a mess with a corrupted profile.

I don't know why suddenly everybody posts about win98 boot disks in the XP forum. Anyway there was a thread last week about it here and the original poster found a link about them SATA drivers, it's at the end of his 1st reply ("to his 1st post", so it's the 3rd post in the thread). I think that's what you are looking for.

exactly.

Bios flash files are usually very small, could you not just copy them on the "A:" part of your CD and launch them from there instead ?

I don't get your problem, it it asking "by phone" as opposed to "through Internet" ? If that's the case, do you have an Internet connection (LAN) ? Or were you expecting it to not need activation ? Is it different behavior than with the original -non fake- CD you bought in 2000? Oh by the way, Windows XP came out in 2001.

Ola, esta una link "Unattended Guide" up this page, under the MSFN logo. Trying english will get you more replies.

1st I'd think of is -you have an antivirus, he has none ?

F.A.Q.

Have you tried the key or are you supposing ? It s not a question of SP, it is a question of version and activation.

Buying a HDD and shutting down your PC is really poor information. What about your setup, 1 or two HDDs, the drive being recognized or not in Bios before, been able to restart a few times etc... ?

The Wiki page states "two or more disks" for both but I don't see much point for raid1.

Unless you have a laptop, -open your computer -locate the Hard Disk (I guess you know what it looks like) -check the two cables it is attached with -signal-power -check that you have the same connectors somewhere on the drive you just opened, possibly you'll have to remove more stuffs. Hopefully it will be SATA connectors (small, 1 or 2 centimeters wide), so you won't have to bother about Master/Slave jumpers settings. -check that you have two of the same cables that you can attach from your motherboard to your external HDD, it is possible that you use the ones from your optical drive. -turn on the PC and see what BIOS detects, then what Windows sees. -copy your stuff anywhere you can. -Good luck.

Does the key workwith your original disk ?

Unless you have recent network cards (no 10/100), you don't connect two computers with a standard network cable. You need a "cross" cable. Also using your neighbour's Internet might be illegal. For them to allow it as well.

Check your antivirus settings, they might be loosened a bit.

... with a deep "CLOING!" noise

Sorry to disapoint you but this says it all. Your drive is dead. Hard drives don't like to be dropped down stairs. A bit like birthday cakes. If you hear lose parts only when the drive spins up, it's internal to the drive itself and there is absolutely no cure for it. Unless you are ready to pay thousands of dollars for a recoveryby a specialized company.

It displays fine for me. If the problem is not the site nor your computer, maybe ask your Internet Provider if they have a clue.

Make them admins "power users" instead ? (sorry for this low level answer )

There are two sizes of jumpers, the "big" ones are only used on 3'5 HDDs and optical drives. Smaller ones are used for portable's HDDs (or rather not used as almost all portables have only one HDD) and sometimes on 3'5ers as well. You'll see directly if it fits. All your devices can be set as master or slave, I don't really see your problem here. Next step to checkdisk is repair or "keep corrupt" which is not really an option. If I get it right, the message simply says that errors have been detected AND repaired.

The probability that both RAM fail at the same time is pretty small. Unless you had a very bad power problem (surge). Do you get anything on the screen ? Have you tried resetting the BIOS ? Was that computer working before ?

if the cd or the iso is bootable, I can't see why it would choke. Maybe your memory repartition is such that your host OS chokes and VirtualBox freezes.

By default (as you don't tell much about your achievements, I guess you're still there), VirtualBox will boot your physical CDRom. If no media is present or if it's not bootable, it will boot your virtual HDD (if you've created one). If not partitionned-formatted-bootable yet, it will stop or crash. What do you mean by "any of my boot disks", are they physical boot cdroms ? Do you get a "press any key to boot from CD" message ?