Drugwash

Heh, I was spot on with the chipset/controller: it indeed is an Intel 82371 (as the registry keys show)! And I bet you installed the IntelInf chipset utility enabling the IDE BusMaster driver that screws up the DMA. If I were you, I'd uninstall the Intel driver (if possible) and remove the Intel Bus Master PCI IDE Controller in Control Panel > System > Hard disk controllers (immediately followed by a Refresh!) and/or try to replace the driver with the Windows generic one. Alternatively (second opinion needed on all this), try the Intel Application Accelerator which should allow access to setting the DMA mode for all IDE channels. Somebody is trying hard to disallow my access to this board; I could only access it through a random proxy, while direct access at the same time would yield a Google 404 page!!!

Interesting topic you got here. Few months ago I bought the same burner make/model. Haven't yet tested it for a burning operation, just for reading. I'll reassemble the respective machine, have a look at the DMA settings and report back. In the mean time, I'd like to ask a question, since this already happened to me and other people: which IDE controller (or chipset) does your mobo employ? Some Intel controllers (can't remember chipset code now) have issues with the DMA when the Intel drivers are used so it's best to leave the generic Windows drivers in place; this may well be your problem. Oh and another thing that just occured to me: please have a look at the BIOS settings and make sure DMA is enabled for the respective IDE channel - some BIOS versions need manual settings or may just not be set to AUTO. Worth checking. Later edit: OK, I've checked the DMA settings on that machine and it says UDMA2 for the secondary IDE channel where the DVD burner resides (primary channel runs on UDMA5 for the HDD). However, that's XP-SP3 and a VIA chipset/controller ( 82C686B/VT8235A). So I guess you gotta fiddle around with BIOS/drivers and in desperation even try to replace the IDE cable since it can be defective forcing PIO mode. Oh but before that, please make sure the blue socket of the cable goes into the mobo socket, else it may not be recognized as an ATA66/100 cable. If for some reason the cable doesn't have a blue socket, just reverse the ends and see if this changes anything for the best.

It's pretty easy to build a sound control panel for 9x. Both those cards work in Win98SE. Currently I have a dual-boot Win95b + XP-SP2 on the Compaq with the ESS card and Win98SE on the 300MHz AMD K6-II that hosts Avance Logic ALS4000. Initially I had Win95b on it too but the two drivers I found for that soundcard wouldn't work - both install but on reboot I get conflicts in Device Manager under all soundcard elements. Works fine under 98SE though. Avance Logic has been taken by Realtek and drivers for their cards can be found at the Realtek site.

Controller, I'm afraid you are wrong in your assumption. For a long time, I myself wondered why there were checkboxes instead of radio buttons in the Recording panel. I recently stumbled into a couple soundcards that proved me why: there can be multiple inputs selected, where the hardware allows (built-in hardware mixer). One of the cards is Avance Logic ALS4000, the other is some ESS model built into a Compaq Deskpro EN400. Few days ago I built myself a software VU-meter based on the BASS library which offers certain related device info, among which is the capability of supporting multiple inputs. To my wonder, both the above-mentioned cards appeared as multi-input capable, unlike the newer CMI8738 on my main machine. So it appears - at least this time - MS have been on the right side. Although after the discovery, I modified my little toy to display radio buttons for single-input cards and checkboxes for multi-input ones, but that's just perfectionism and too much spare time on my hands. Come to think of it, I may even devise a completely new sound panel, when I get in the mood to. Only thing is to find out which Windows API exactly can be used since I previously failed at employing the SetupDi* functions in setupapi.dll. Or I may still rely on the BASS library. Dunno... time will tell.

Here is some info on display.sys: link.

Try AutoHotkey -> SoundBeep [, Frequency, Duration] Actually, AHK can do a lot of marvellous things. I'm playing with it a lot.

Personally I'd just buy (or borrow, for a one-timer) a Flash stick of 8GB or whatever suits the purpose. Dealing with external hard drives is just too cumbersome, IMHO.

CharlotteTheHarlot is right in that you need to dump the HDD if the bad sectors surfaced in the file system. Restoring system files can be a tedious task because you need to take them one by one: check the version number, find an untampered file of the same version and do a binary comparison on them. Incidentally, I'm doing the exact same operation currently, since a machine that has been working fine until yesterday and had been only used sporadically, bailed out on me just when I needed it to fix the registry in my main machine; the 20GB HDD developed a bad sector in... the Windows\System folder. Anyway, for the operation I'm using Total Commander with the FileInfo plug-in (amongst various others) and for comparison I got its built-in 'Compare by content' function. I perform the comparison with the system files in a third machine that now temporarily hosts the bad HDD, as well as the system files on my main machine via local network connection (router), also using TotCmd and its very handy dual-panel. This comes out fairly well, considering I got dozens of Filexxx.chk saved by Scandisk. Some of them were perfectly integer and only needed renaming; others had garbage appended as Scandisk filled the last cluster with blank space - those just got replaced with the integer versions from either of the two good machines. Those that were not exe/dll/tlb and had no version info, could be identified by copying some relevant text from the contents shown by the Lister and performing a text search inside the system files of either of the two good machines. All in all, you're in for a time-eating operation but if you wanna save your current installation that's the way you should go. Good luck!

I've only got the mpr hang once or twice. Here's the two subkeys under MPRServices (no keys under the main MPRServices key): KernelEx: DLLName: C:\Windows\KernelEx\KernelEx.dll EntryPoint: _MprStart@4 Stack size: 0x00001000 RP8: DLLName: rp8.dll EntryPoint: InitAsync StackSize: 0x00002000 RP 9.1.0 and KernelEx 4.0 RC2.

You didn't have to make all those registry changes in the first place - KernelEx takes care of the version reporting itself. But thanks for the detailed report, I might have fixed my issue with wrong version detection posted previously that nobody endeavoured to reply to. Best thing to do is revert the registry settings to the Windows 98SE default, uninstall KernelEx, reboot, reinstall KernelEx, go to the offending application's executable or desktop shortcut, right-click it and find the Compatibility tab that you couldn't find previously and select Windows XP (or Windows 2000, by trial and error) from the dropdown list. Then try running that application. Please note that in case of an installer that unpacks further executables, you may have to navigate to the unpacked folder (usually some weird name in the temporary directory - default is C:\Windows\Temp) and set compatibility to Windows XP for the unpacked exe too. Good luck!

Thank you so much! Best wishes and keep up the good work!

• Make sure the driver you installed for the camera is exactly for your model • Does the camera have separate jack for the microphone? It usually does. If so, plug it out and check if it still sounds weird. •• If the noises stop, get a separate microphone and plug it in, see if the noises reappear - if so, it's not the camera but the driver/settings; check the sound panel advanced options for 'Microphone boost' and if enabled, disable it. • Does the camera have a 'mute' switch somewhere? Try switching it on and off a few times. • Check the camera settings panel for any extra features; some cameras have video effects like frame, zoom, etc - this one may also have sound effects and they may be enabled One last thing I almost overlooked: since you say it used to work fine until now, is it possible that you installed some application that does voice alteration or maybe a plug-in/patch for the MSN Messenger? If so, check any such application/plug-in/patch's settings, see if any of them can produce such effects and disable them.

Try downloading generic nForce2 drivers from the nVidia site, maybe those will work. See if you can get older versions too (check the beta/archived link).

I had to disable KernelEx in "InCD.exe" and "InCDL.exe" to make Nero 6's "add/drag files" work in 98SE. 1. I am using Nero 7.0.0.0, not 6.x2. I have not installed InCD 3. The issue occured before installing KernelEx and long after the registry changes. It also crashes if I try to add files/folders through the Add files button. (I'm only using Nero Express)

Recently I've messed with my registry (User Agent and others) in an attempt to help someone with a denied access on a website. No ill effects noticed since; however, today Nero started to behave: everytime I tried to add/drag files to an already added folder, it would crash GDI.EXE, making it impossible to start a decent burning operation. I wouldn't blame this on my registry fiddling. But... in desperation, I left Nero alone and tried to install another burning application, which - surprise - popped up a notification stating I needed Win98SE or Win2000 to install it. But I already have Win98SE!!! To the point, I readily installed KernelEx (on top of RP9.1.0, assuming any risk) and on setting the compatibility to Win98SE, I managed to install and succesfully run that application. So my question is: what exactly does KernelEx change, to report the fake information to the application? Because whatever the problem is on my system, I intend to fix it, but I have no idea where to search - the registry seems to be OK after I reverted the changes done at the time, but I'm not 100% sure. And if it's some file version at fault, I'd like to know so I could replace it. Thank you in advance.

Some applications require it in their main folder. Actually that's the path the application searches for dependencies first of all, then the %system% folder. Some may not even go there and instead return an error if it's not in their folder. AFAIK, unicows.dll does not need registration since it has no such entry point. NT-designed applications may be searching for dependencies in System32 if they're badly coded. Some drivers also get installed in a System32 folder (I have a lot of them there in 98SE).

Look at the actual driver dependencies with Dependency Walker - if it shows ntoskrnl.exe and ntdll.dll with red icons, you know it's designed for NT-based OS only and will never work in 9x, with or without KernelEx.

Yes. However, I wouldn't recommend you taking the battery out of your working machine since that would completely erase any changes made to the BIOS settings and could cause current system to malfunction or at best change settings for certain devices (usually IRQs, DMAs and such). That would be quite odd since that's the only way of indicating the board initializes or not. Well actually MSI used to have a 4 LED indicator system to the back of the case but that's just a particular situation. Please refer to page 9 of the manual, you'll notice item 15 as Chassis Speaker Header (SPEAKER 1) - that one is supposed to connect to a case speaker through a 4 pin conector just as I mentioned in my previous post (the connectors are mostly standardized). Again something I wouldn't recommend; in case the new PSU is damaged, it could theoretically damage your working machine. Instead, use the old PSU on the new board. If anything, the old PSU will fry, but that's easily replaceable at low cost as opposed to having a whole working computer fried by a bad PSU. Unfortunately I can't recommend any new hardware since I'm strongly convinced old hardware is much more solid and enduring; moreover, I don't have access to such hardware due to financial problems but that's off-topic. Hopefully other members here could recommend alternatives but try not to give up hope until you run out of options. EDIT: just to make sure: look at jumper 17, there should be no cap on it. If there is any, remove it (that one is for CMOS clear and should be OPEN for normal operation). May sound childish but I actually stumbled upon this situation once and had no idea until I found a manual for that board. EDIT2: Also make sure you connected the additional 4-pin power plug to connector 2 (refer to same page 9 for details).

I've had issues with Diskeeper myself and ditched it before having anything corrupt. Regarding hardware, it's no simple task to explain how to assembly/check a computer as I don't know your hardware knowledge level. First thing to do is to make sure the BIOS battery is in good shape. It should yield ~3V on measurement, if you have a multimeter. But safest thing would probably be to buy and install a new one - if you're lucky, the system may "light up". But, if you say you had mechanical issues when mobo was mounted in the case, it's possible a short-circuit might have damaged part of it. The PSU outputs many voltages (-5V, -12V, +3.3V, +5V, +12V) so the fans may start spinning but something else (like chipset, CPU voltage regulator or even CPU itself - god forbid!) may be damaged. Modern boards may have a buzzer directly attached to them or an external one connected through a four-pin connector. If you are sure there is one and it's correctly connected, a working mobo should produce one or more sounds, indicating either succesful boot (one short beep) or hardware malfunctioning (a long beep or a series of assorted beeps). Your board does not produce any sound whatsoever so the BIOS does not initialize at all (unless the speaker/buzzer is not properly connected). Best piece of advice if all the above fails, is to thoroughly check all wiring and seating against the manual, make sure jumpers/switches are in correct position (if any) and that there is no visible damage to the board or other parts (like a twisted pin in the CPU socket, for example) - use a magnifying glass, if needed. Also, if possible, check the PSU output voltage while disconnected from the mobo; you'll have to strap the PowerOn pin (usually Green, near the key) to one of the Ground (Black) pins to turn it on and then use a multimeter to check all voltages. Please refer to the manual for the PSU pin layout or take it to a hardware technician if unsure. I used to be an electronics hobbyist for about 25 years so I kinda know what I'm talking about but will not be taken responsible for any liabilties resulted as a use or misuse of this information. Anyhow, good luck and hopefully you'll manage to get the stubborn guy up and running!

Have you ever thought of a failure in the network card itself? One other possiblity - although unlikely - would be wrong BIOS settings, somewhere related either to the network features or to IRQ assignment. Also, if the NIC is seated in a PCI slot, try a different slot and/or make sure it's firmly seated.

IE - based ones, for sure. Unlikely for others. Is there browsing scenario which eats a lot of USER (except opening lots and lots of pages)? SlimBrowser eats about 30-40% of resources, sometimes more. It does release most of them (save for 2-3% maybe) but only on exit, not on page close.I could test your "baby" here since SB is open about all the time.

Start button -> RPConfig.

That's an idea! Dunno exactly what it does, but go to Start > Run, type winipcfg, select the appropriate adapter in the dropdown and click Release: the IP becomes 0.0.0.0 and I guess there's no more internet connection afterwards. Clicking Renew will restore the IP (and supposedly the connection). Maybe OE (or whatever else that is the culprit here) does something similar, programmatically.

There's a Windows ME service pack here. If you get no better suggestion, you may try it, hopefully it will solve the problem.

Someone please mirror most recent version to a decent host (preferrably european). 21kB/s download at usaupload is a joke - I had better speed back on dial-up.