Alien

True, but if 1 or more of the other partitions are just for storage & the contents don't change often then they need to be defragged less often.

Due to some weirdness the other week my PC suddenly decided that I only had 24MB of RAM [as opposed to the normal 320MB it actually has installed]. I don't think I've seen Windows run so slowly since I had 95 on a 486DX/33 with 8MB of RAM! [running a k6-2/500 @ the mo - getting an XP1800+ soon]. BTW - the above mentioned prob was temporary & a one-off occurrance that went away as soon as I shut down & then turned it back on again.

Why go to all that trouble? is easier to just sort them with the right-click & Sort-by-Name function. 's not like it takes more than a couple of seconds, & if you make sub-folders for the different categories of progs you use & tell the various install progs to make use of them then that helps to keep things tidy too. Whilst some install progs support making sub-folders on the start menu & then putting the prog's program group/folder in that, rather than in the main All Programs folder, not all do so is a good idea to create a bunch of new folders on your desktop with names like Graphics, Utils, System Tools, Net Progs, etc then highlight them alltogether & right-click & drag them to the Start Menu & then to the All Programs folder & let go of the mouse button & select Move Here from the little pop-up menu [followed by doing the Sort-by-Name thing of course]. As I said, sadly not all install progs will support putting their program/icon group in the sub-folder - even if you specifically tell it to - but most do nowadays. During the install process, when it asks you which program group you want to put it in & offers you a suggestion e.g Quick Shutdown & you decide you want to put it in a folder you've named System Tools, simply add the folder name followed by \ before the name it has given, so that in this example instead of just Quick Shutdown you would have System Tools\Quick Shutdown in that box & it should [hopefully] put it in the sub-folder instead of the main All Programs folder. If it doesn't you can just manually move it by right-clicking-&-dragging it to where you want it to go. If you do have to do it manually then it will most likely give you some tedious message saying that doing this will affect all users & are you sure you want to do it [wish I knew how to turn that off!].

I doubt that this is an original thought on this topic, but 342MB??? WTF??? I'm glad that my sound card isn't made by Creative Labs, having to download drivers that big could be a real pain...ok, so I'm on a 1/2 Mbit [actually it's slightly over that] connection but even so...that'd get really annoying if they brought them out fairly often [i have no idea how often, not being an owner of a CL card]. It just boggles the mind - what else are they including aside from drivers & the usual audio-ish progs? a couple of entire albums in MP3 format??? & I thought M$ were bad...!!!

Tried that - doesn't work.

I'm not 100% sure what you mean here - if you mean sorting the stuff that pops up when you move your cursor over All Programs, then it is done the same way as with win98 - right-click & Sort By Name, if you mean the list of recently used programs [bottom left section of XP's new style Start Menu] then the answer is you can't. If you mean items that you've put in the top left with the Pin To Start Menu function, then you simply drag them into the order you want. As for the right side of it - all you can do is choose [to an extent] what items you want to be shown & whether you want them to be shown as links or menus.

I read your post, then had a look in Regedit to see what mine was set to...except that mine doesn't have that setting. I wondered perhaps if you might have made some sort of error, so checked the KB article, but nope, you'd quoted it correctly - the problem is that according to the article I ought to have 8 entries in the Parameters key, but I only have 4 [not counting the Default entry], & Period isn't 1 of them.

Just out of curiosity, but what specifically does the word "dual" in the Logitech mouse's name refer to?

or you could just edit the file Sysoc.inf to remove the word "hide" from the relevant lines & then uninstall them via Add/Remove Programs.

LOL, & there I was just about to suggest that you leave it to wait a bit longer & go make a coffee & chat up a secretary or two - with mine & a few other ppl's systems that I've set up it pauses for a few mins when it gets to that point then [eventually] carries on. On my system it feels like about 10 mins, though in reality is probably closer to 5. Another thing you could try is copying the files to HDD before install, though as some of them have filenames longer than 8.3 you would have to do this under another version of windows or shove the drive in an already installed system. Installing from HDD is faster than from CD - 's why I always do it that way.

Using a Logitech USB Wheelmouse Optical here & love it - best mouse I've ever used, though dunno about gaming as I hardly ever play games, but is still a great mouse - cost £30

This does actually sound like something that happened to me recently. My board [TMC TI5VGA] has 3 RAM slots, but it didn't seem to like having all 3 filled with 128MB each, despite the fact that it's supposed to be able to do that. I tried a 64MB stick instead of 1 of the 128s & it worked ok [1x64 + 2x128], & after trying various combinations of the sticks I had it seemed like 1 in particular was to blame, so I sent it back for replacement. When I got the replacement I shut everything off, took the 64MB stick out, & replaced it with the 128MB - that's when my problems really began. I managed to get into XP, but then after a while ended up with a BSOD, then on reboot it ran checkdisk & everything seemed to be ok, but same happened again, so whole thing was repeated. I guessed that maybe a file might have gotten corrupted so tried running SFC from safe mode, but it didn't want to work, so decided to try last resort of using scandisk & FDISK /MBR from a 98SE boot disk - both of which I have done before when I've had probs with XP & it has either solved the prob or @ least not created any new ones. This time Scandisk said that 1 of the copies of the FAT table was corrupted so it replaced it with the backup copy - having done that before I didn't think anything was wrong with that so let it do it. After reboot I discovered that I know only had a few MB free out of a 5GB partition which should have had over 1GB free & I couldn't see what should be there & what was there was gibberish, so I just took the 128MB stick outm put the 64 back in & deleted the partition & reinstalled. Hopefully when I get my new mobo I'll be able to use all 3 128MB sticks. PS - I forgot to mention, I tried doing a repair from the install option thing before I tried the scandisk & FDISK /MBR things but that went weird as well.

Ummm...THC... InCD was causing me grief when I was trying to read normal CD-ROMs, never mind CDRs that I had written or CD-RWs.

Quote: By the way, I donot have an "administrator" account. I renamed the administrator account tomy own name, so there is only ONE administrator called "Samer Hassouneh"which is my name. How the hell did you manage that? I've looked for options to do it, but haven't had any success. PS the auto login thing is done with TweakUI as someone else mentioned earlier in the thread

I like Trend too - I use PC-Cillin, due to the fact that my building society gives it away to anyone who signs up for their online banking service [also free]. The only things I don't like about it are: 1. That I have to turn off realtime file scanning because otherwise it dramatically increases the time taken for file operations, such as doing searches & waiting for the right-click menu to appear when you click on a file in Explorer. 2. If it can't connect to it's update server when it's scheduled to do so [usually because the server is momentarily busy] it insists on popping a dialog box saying so - I think it ought to have an option to retry it X number of times before displaying the little fault box, because usually if you check manually straight after it has done that then it works just fine. Aside from those things I think it's great. As for the real time thing being disabled, it's no biggie - I check EVERYTHING I download manually anyway.

Klark - LOL - I always have that turned off, but yet earlier today it tried logging in automatically when I opened OE. I've only just done a complete reinstall [due to a very weird prob that I'm sure nobody's interested in], & I made sure that both the option in OE to log in & the option in MSN/WM itself for running @ startup were turned off, but yet earlier today it still logged itself in when I opened OE. I've noticed this usually happens after a fresh install & also after updates to MSN - & it doesn't seem to make any difference how many times I double check that the options are set the way I want them, it still does it from time to time. When it is in the mood to do this I simply leave Zone Alarm set to ask me before it gives MSN access to the net & when it asks me I just say no.

Just a thought SilverWulf, but when you installed XP did you have all the cards in, or did you just have graphics card in & then install the others 1 @ a time after install? Sometimes Windows install will work fine with all your cards physically installed before you install windows itself, but sometimes it causes probs, in which case it often helps to remove everything but the bare essentials, install windows, then add stuff 1 @ a time.

Hi guys, I'm surprised none of you have sussed this 1 out yet, especially as I mentioned something about it previously in another thread - if you have InCD installed then odds are that that's the culprit - on mine it did exactly the same thing as SparcV described. As soon as I uninstalled InCD the problem disappeared. PS - I still use Nero & it works great.

Quote: In Outlook, go to Tools>Options>Other..... Dunno what version of OE you're using dude, but it's not the same 1 as me - there is no Other section under Tools > Options in mine. ...about 30 seconds later... D'oh! I just realised that you meant Outlook, as in the full blown whatsit that comes with Office, not OE. Oh well.

Just thought I'd mention, for those that don't already know about it, that there is a facility in XP whereby you can force XP to use whichever drive letter you choose [as long as it's not already taken] for a drive. Just right-click on My Computer & select Manage, then under Storage select Disk Management.

yeah - I wonder what the current record for an Athlon is?

Hmmm - this kinda reminds me of something that happened with a m8's PC, altho slightly different. I realise you may well have done this already, though not as a diagnostic measure, but try turning off the switch on the PSU, unplugging the power cord, plugging it back in again & turn on. With his PC it conked out & refused to come back to life if you happened to tilt it more than a few degrees whilst powered up, but I discovered the above solution through much trial & error. I think his PSU had some sort of anti-tilt thing in it. I know there's the possibility of it just being a loose connection, but it always required the exact same amount of tilt [in any direction] to cause it to happen & didn't matter what position you started it off in. Oh, & just incase you're wondering - his PSU's a Macron MPT-301.

Seeing as you guys are having a nice chinwag about CPUs, performance, & overclocking, I wondered if you'd seen this article: 3GHz barrier broken!!! Kinda makes me feel a bit inadequate with my machine only running @ 500Mhz

My windows & progs partition is only 5GB & the 2nd [of 6] partition [where I keep my pagefile] is only about 4.3GB, so it's not right @ the end of the [30GB] drive, & if a defragger can do it in 98 it should be able to do it in XP.

Ah, well then, in that case you're forgiven. Norton's versions of stuff for NT-based versions of windows do tend to be somewhat on the sucky side.