boggen

rubs chin... i bought a couple 25foot, rca style cables and a couple female to female rca connectors. to run video and L plus Right from pc in basement to tv upstairs. i had slight quailty degradation in video. but audio was fine. 50foot pressed the limits of the cheapo rca cables. for video. needless to say winter came. and being in a farm house. a mouse decided to come in and snake on cable (have creavite audigy platium, that has the remote) just setup a standard remote extender and it worked for what was wanted.) ---------------------- find a cheap used / referbished computer. that has motherboard, cpu, some ram, sound card, network card and set it up as media server (old pc perhaps laying around?) --------------------- get a tivo, and do a little hacking to turn them into home network media server. --------------------- do a google search for "HTPC" aka "home theater pc" might bring up some results ----------------- www.x10.com has extenders stero, video, camera etenders. www.radioshack.com has some speaker extenders. that may work for need. -------------

sadly with every OS make it dos5.0 to win3.1 to win95a,b win98, win98se, winme, winxp home/pro, winnt3.x, winnt,4.x, win2003 and now vista and longhorn on the way. vista will be winxp/2003 with all its updates with extra featers added to vista and vista will have its own set of new bugs plus some old bugs from xp / 2003. i just hope they auto include more advance features that may be found in a server os compared to a current standard home os. from secuirty to applications to feature wise.

others had good points power supply not being enough --strip the system down to. cpu, ram, video card, hard drive, new dvd see what happens. --check other types of discs, cdr, cdrw, dvd, dvd-r, dvd+r, dvd-rw, dvd+rw, normal cd. try other manfactor cd/dvd's that are recoardables / rewritables. --with win98. make sure you have latest updates. windowsupdate.microsoft.com --goto manufactor and look up drivers for chipsets / motherboard and make sure they are latest. --try when pc starts, press F8 key to get boot menu select safe mode goto control panel goto system ? device manager remove everything under cdrom's reboot and let pc boot normally check device manager make sure everything loaded ok without RED X"s or YELLOW exclmation marks !'s If no X or ! reboot machine when pc gets back up you should be running for driver wise. ((quick tip you may need to remove ide controlers if you have to update your controler drivers)) --check autoexec.bat and confige.sys file in C drive make sure there's no pritory cdrom drivers loading burrning applications, nero, ez cd creator, etc.... with this running win98, id bet you have a couple burning apps on pc. for a few years late 1990's some burning apps would make the burner not burn and cause a few other problems. might suggest backup of your data, format hard drive and reinstall everything. other notes... aspi layer, and only installing one burning app, like nero.

besides the cpu itself being faster. other things also come into play. ram speeds. (examaple pc 2700 to pc 4400 or 133 to 266mhz comparsion) motherboard chipset, or front bus speed in relation ship to cpu and ram improvements video card connection types (agp to pci-E) hard drive (pata or ata compared to new sata) in laman terms. over all improvements in technology within the computer can have dramatic speed improvements comparing older technolgy. make it hardware baser, software base, driver base, firmwares.

had to help aunt get laptop for her daugther this christmas. paid around $600 to $700 us it was one of the cheapo's listed in the regular local adds. same specs than what you posted exception had 512mb ram and 80gig drive and B/G wireless, 128 dedicated video memory. was told i had to install and setup up software. more like a couple weeks of play time but for most bang for your buck type doing. it was a solid system. 6months down road. yada yada yada... about technolgy... if me id be more concerned about warrenty or how well it was made, who is providing techsupport and if worth a dime or not. if you be shelling out 1/3 to half the price of laptop for warrenty. save your cash get a one year warrenty and spend the extra cash getting a good bag to hold latop in. a good desk, some other things that would help protect laptop. instead relying on warrenty to cover your accidents. in a couple years time. a new laptop with same specs will be half the price it is now. (in reference to warrenty remark)

first question. with out attempting to get drivers into nlite. can you install winxp and then install the keyboard drivers and they do work? if not. get yourself some new drivers or a $5 cheopa keyboard and attach to laptop till you get drivers figured out. if drivers do install.... all i can say is misc and match till you find right drivers and right proccess for nlite if you wish for them to auto install. if keyboard works but the extra's buttons do not work and drivers fail to install. get the right drivers.

take a look at winxp cd support\tools\deploy.cab sysprep app some of your answers may be found there. support\tools\deploy.cab setupmgr app to create an unntendded.txt file then do some searching through help menus using unttended.txt file on a floppy disk and winxp cd installation.

dvd multi boot 1. win98se 2. winme 3 winxp pro 4. winxp pro slipstreamed updates (nlite addon's, driverpacks) actuall apps 1. damen tools 2. nero 5 and 7 3. norton system works 4. spybotsearch and destroy 5. ms antispy blocker 6. adaware 7. MS general updates ...A directX ...B dotnet 1.1 and 2 8. sun java runtime 9. ms old java runtime with update 10. admin 11. ip / port scanner 12. MSofficeXP 13. codecs if not a pack then varying codecs. 14. winrar 15. flashget 16. getright 17. tripmaker (don't remeber coorect name for progy) 18. adobe reader 19. pending on time and projects..... ....A macromedia dreamwaver, FTP appy ....B alliswavefront maya or generic cad appy. 20. video capture software. 21. winamp 22. hijackthis 23. firewall app 24.... and more dreaded updates that just show up in an endless stream. from above apps.

the LONG filenames are a problem with FEDIT when using the base package of ryanvm slipstream and the monitor addonon package it seems using version DriverPack_Monitor_v1[1].3.7z fedit is unable to find path. or path becomes to long on final step of slipstreaming. during oempnp???.cmd (oempnp something file don't remeber right off) from looking over other packages it seems SINGLE letter or SINGLE NUMBER directories are allowed trying to use more than that to name a directory kicks out errors with copying files. ------------------------------------------------------------- I may be wrong with filenameing, but then i some more info in debugging me all in one cd..... -------------------------------------------------- one of steps in attempting find out why i was getting "to long of path" or "path could not found" errors..... if i put extra apps into oem folder before slipstream drivers i get error with path to long and ryanvm base will not finish. to get everything workig minus monitor package. Nlite os without sp os sp2 intragrate some addons (hotfixes mainly) finish out nlite with basic settings. no iso creation slip stream ryanvm package plus addon packages minus monitor package add all extra apps to $oem# directory. add personal batch for apps install and regtweeks nlite iso and burn cd. ---------------------------------------------------- its the long filename or directory structure going past what ever the limit is 255 or 128 or what ever the given limit is now adays with given OS or Fedit methinks. due to naming convention i was using (long file names for apps in the OEM folder i would get errors that went back to Fedit and the oemPNP???.cmd copying.

if the machine going to cost over 1000 bucks. its more than likely going to be doing something specfic. -gaming -server (needing reduency) -video from ram, cpu, hard drive, video, sound, motherboard, powersupply, battery back up. each compent can be bought oem style online or through some friend that has a deal with some dealer somewere. can be boiught less and get more / better than what is currently on market in big boy manufactors. if the machine is less than 1000, its not worth building. by the time you count time put in, shipping / sales tax, finding and ordering. you will find yourself over the cost of a web browsering, emailing, spreadsheet, computer from a manufactor that has installed other misc software that would give the average joe something to learn by.

would suggest leaving them as seprate drives and not joining them together in raid 0. small drive make it your OS driver and the new drive your apps or media or move or music drive etc... it is so much better able to format OS drive without worry of loosing all your due to being on other drive. if you setup raid 0. formating means total loose of data on both drives. if one drive fails = total loss of data on both drives. if ya go route of raid 1. 40 gigs on old drive and 40 gigs on new drive will be mirrored. if one drive fails you still have data on one of them that you can retrieve using other pc if nessary. the extra 40gig on the new drive you could use as OS drive

i wish they would disappear and never return!!! its the stinking old folks!!!, every time i go to help someone its almost mandatory they have a floppy drive because the still don't know how to use a cdr cdrw dvdr dvdrw and the pc is prolly not new enough to have usb ports.

never had good luck with hardware raid 0 or 1 or 0+1 that is built into motherboard!!!!! if you go hardware raid an elcheapo for just 2 drives could be had for around 10 to 20 bucks. personally been using raid 5 software hack for xppro / duel boot 2003 server. main complaint for me. raid 5 for winxp i must reactivate the raid each time pc restarts through disk manager. more or less file server and rarly gets a restart. --------------------------- answer your quetion xppro has native support for 0 / 1 / 0+1 software raid. be carefull of encryption. from ntfs to encrypted files. if you just pull drives from 2003 and place them into xppro. you may loose access without importing given users / passwords / policies / etc...