packman

Both COM ports are ALREADY disabled but, as I've pointed out, that doesn't release their IRQs. And the LPT printer is USED, actually; it's a laser monochrome printer; it uses IRQ7. These are the IRQs that are unassigned at present, or are, in theory, available: IRQ3 IRQ4 IRQ5 IRQ10 IRQ11 but it seems that the BIOS has a will of its own, in that it won't allow any of these to replace the two shared interrupts that I now find, interrupts IRQ16 and IRQ19. I agree with you about Soundblaster soundcards, in that they've a reputation for being difficult IRQ-sharers. But, so far, I've not encountered a system freeze or other problem with my particular Soundblaster card, even though it's now sharing IRQ19. I suspect that a lot depends on the types of devices sharing any one IRQ and the likelihood of them being in use at exactly the same time and using maximal resources.

Yeh, I've been trying that sort of thing in the meantime. So far, I've not encountered any clashes or any visible or audible degradations. For instance, I tried a USB flash memory stick in each of the four new Belkin USB ports whilst I was playing an audio CD with the soundcard. All seemed fine. I've not tried quite the same with the graphics card but I have run some DVD films on the PC and there's been no problem, as far as I can see. Still, it might be different if and when I actually have something plugged into the appropriate USB port at the same time as running the video. I do still have a couple of spare PCI posittions, so I could certainly move the Belkin card to a different slot. However, I've a suspicion that it won't make any net difference, as I recall a similar exercise with another PCI card a few years ago had the same result. What I can't understand is why, in effect, two USB hubs - the one embedded in the PC and one on the Belkin card - should need to use so many resources and therefore so many IRQs. This, for instance, is the current resultant allocation: AGP slot: Graphics card IRQ16 Standard Enhanced Host Controller IRQ16 PCI slot 0: Spare PCI slot 1: Spare PCI slot 2: Belkin USB2.0 card PCI slot 3: Sound card IRQ19 NEC Open Host Controller IRQ19 PCI slot 4: Passive USB strip (PCI slot not actually used) PCI slot 5: Network card IRQ17 NEC Open Host Controller IRQ18 Standard Open Host Controller IRQ20 Standard Open Host Controller IRQ21 Standard Open Host Controller IRQ22 Standard Enhanced Host Controller IRQ23 Oh, and I'm assuming that "Enhanced" means USB2.0, whereas "Standard Open" means USB1.1, and that it's not permissible to disable any of their entries in Device Manager. COM Ports 1 and 2 are currently unused and disabled but their IRQs (3 and 4) aren't released for alternative usage, for some strange reason. Same with the Midi Port (IRQ10). Similarly, IRQ5 and IRQ11 remain reserved. So that's everything taken up - all 24 IRQs. On my machine (ACPI-compliant), all resources, and therefore IRQs, are handled by the BIOS. That said, my system BIOS does allow for manual allocation of about 10 of the IRQs to the PCI Bus. However, I've read that even if I were to stop the BIOS from having automatic control of IRQs and try manual, it wouldn't work. So, I don't know quite what to do at present. It looks as though, under Win2K (and assuming an ACPI system), the user has very little control indeed of the IRQs. On the other hand, it appears that sharing of IRQs does not necessarily result in resource clashes and therefore any problems. Does anyone know more about this subject area and can give some advice?

Right, I've fitted the card. I used a spare PCI slot next to my soundcard, furthest away from the PSU. All seems to have gone well. When I booted up, various controllers and hubs were automatically detected, but there was no "Found New Hardware" message (thank goodness). When I now look in Device Manager, besides the original Microsoft USB entries that I had, there's now in addition: NEC PCI to USB Open Host Controller NEC PCI to USB Open Host Controller Standard Enhanced PCI to USB Host Controller USB2.0 Root hub USB Root hub USB Root hub I've checked the Properties of these and they're now using exactly the same Microsoft driver files as the PC's embedded USB ports. So, it does look as though you don't need to install the Belkin drivers that come on the CD. I've tried out all the four Belkin ports that are on the PCI backstrip, using a USB flash memory stick, and they all appear to be working. Curiously, all four ports work despite me having made no changes in the System BIOS. All USB2.0 ports on my PC are still configured to EDB Bus. I was definitely expecting to have to configure to PCI Bus (in the same way that, for instance, my soundcard is allocated to PCI Bus; it won't work if allocated to EDB Bus and indeed would then clashes with the onboard soundchip). The above additional entries are what the Belkin user's guide states will be installed for Windows 2000, except that the above are the Microsoft drivers rather than the Belkin/NEC drivers, even though a couple of them are called "NEC PCI to USB ....". Also, the Belkin user's guide omits to mention an additional "USB2.0 Root hub". Conceivably, the Belkin versions of these drivers - those on the CD and those contained in the update file U2v241.exe available from Belkin's website - are more refined and more compatible with the NEC chip on the card. But, who knows? Maybe I'll discover some differences in due course. I'll report back here soon. In the meantime, the watchword is that, if you're definitely using Microsoft USB2.0 drivers that are updated from SP4, you DON'T need to install the Belkin drivers on the CD. I hope this helps anyone else who's about to use this Belkin PCI card on a Windows 2000 machine. Addendum: Hmm, well, I thought I'd check out the position now as regards IRQs and I now see that one of the Standard Enhanced Controllers is sharing an IRQ with my graphics card. Also, one of the NEC Open Host Controllers is sharing an IRQ with my soundcard. Eh, is that desirable? Perhaps I should try moving the Belkin card to a different PCI slot? What d'ya think?

So what exactly does Extended Data Bus mean, then? Yeh, I'll fit the card shortly and see what happens when I boot up. I'm anticipating, however, that it'll invite me to install drivers - and that's my dilemma. Re updated drivers, yes, I've already done a lengthy search around Belkin's website and finally found what appears to be the latest USB drivers for the card. Having downloaded it, it turns out to be a file called U2v241.exe, which implies that the drivers are v2.41. They're dated 26th Aug 2005. However, when I've run the Belkin CD in Windows Explorer, I've been unable to find a software version no., so I can't tell whether I'd need to run U2v241.exe or not. For all we know, anyway, U2v241 might just simply be bringing the Belkin drivers into line with Microsoft's.

I'm afraid you're way off beam, Dosfreak and I do wonder about the premise of your arguments against Norton Ghost. As I pointed out before, Ghost is absolutely nothing to do with MS-DOS (unless you especially install MS-DOS, which most people don't). So, please eradicate this idea that I and other Ghost users are using an old, primitive DOS. Ghost uses a simple 'semi-graphical environment' that Symantec calls 'PC-DOS' - and, for imaging and restoring and the like, it works quite well. I've used other backup programs in the past, like Drive Image, and that too uses a similar form of DOS. But, again, it's nothing to do with MS-DOS. In the case of Drive Image, it was Caldera DOS. These forms of DOS were developed and adapted in recent years for backup programs. My guess is that, if you look carefully at how Acronis backup functions, it too will use its own proprietary form of DOS when it performs the imaging. But again, it's nothing to do with MS-DOS. Programs like Ghost 2003 were a new departure, in that they allowed the user to start the backups/restores from either Windows or from the 'semi-graphical' PC-DOS environment, returning automatically to Windows when the function had completed. In other words, the program gave you the option. There's nothing old or retrograde about recent editions of Ghost, therefore. That said, there have been some problems with Ghost, especially with its use with external devices and, in particular USB storage devices. But Symantec have addressed most (but not necessarily all) of those. Comparing Ghost 2003 with the Drive Image 5 that I had before, Ghost is infinitely better.

Success! It's worked! Danleff and Felix, I tried it instead from PC-DOS, using the Ghost Bootdisk. Once into the menu, I chose 'Partition > Image File'. From thereon, it was quite straightforward. It nicely recognised and displayed the NTFS partitions on the USB drive. It took just over 5 mins to image my 6GB root partition contents (that's using no compression). After Quitting in PC-DOS, I was still left in the Ghost directory of A: and wasn't sure how to then boot back into Windows, but I typed "cd\", thus: A:>GHOST\cd\ which got me to A:> I then removed the bootdisk from the drive and hit Cntrl/Alt/Delt and, hey presto, my machine booted back into Windows. Did I use the correct procedure for getting out of Ghost's PC-DOS and back into Windows? It's Win2K, BTW. I've checked that the image was successfully written to the destination partition on the ext USB drive. Many thanks for your indulgence in this matter. It rather looks like this is another case of imaging not working from the Windows environment, only the PC-DOS environment. DosFreak, You've a very appropriate forum username. Heh, heh, heh, just joking. You're clearly not a Ghost fan, especially with using its DOS domain. Whilst Norton Ghost has undoubtedly been a bit of a pig for a lot of people, Ghost 2003 has arguably been one of the best versions issued and isn't quite as bad as you make out. The unfortunate thing is that it's pretty old now and official support for it from Symantec has long since expired. I don't doubt that there are much better backup programs around now, Acronis being one of them, but Ghost 2003 still seems to work well enough for my own purposes. I'm not exactly overflowing with cash these days and that's an incentive to make do with what I've got (providing it works). Thanks for your input, anyway.

No, I've not yet tried to do the backup directly from PC-DOS because I've not had this scenario before, with backing up to an external drive. But I'm about to give it a go. Actually, with Ghost 2003, it's normally no more difficult to start backups in Windows, rather than from PC-DOS. In fact, because of having full mouse control in Windows, it's less awkward. Also, doing it from Windows means you don't have to mess around with a bootdisk and having to change the BIOS setting for that each time. My Ghost 2003 is fully updated and in the time that I've owned and used it, I've always been able to perform backups of my root partition solely within the PC, ie I've kept a reserved partition on the PC for various versions of root images. Making the backups from Windows, and restoring, has always worked like a dream. I've had to call on a backup a number of times over the years and it's been a godsend. However, my current setup is hardly secure, because I'd still have a catastrophe if the hard drive on the PC completely and permanently failed. So, it's important for me to have removeable backup as well. I've successfully backed up to CDs with Ghost 2003 but, despite Symantec stating that it can successfully write to DVDs, it never did to mine. As my root partition continues to expand in used size, a bigger destination storage size is required; CDs are too small a capacity and you quickly end up with at least half a dozen CDs. Thus, it's made sense to get an external hard drive. Curiously, cloning the PC's hard drive, which I do from time to time, only works when done directly from PC-DOS, never from Windows. I spent a long time finding that out the hard way, as well. So maybe backing up a partition to an external USB drive will also only work when started from PC-DOS?

I'm afraid not, danleff. I've followed through all the nested links on that Symantec webpage but have found nothing that explains why the imaging aborts at the very start and why I'm getting the error message I've described. If you read that webpage carefully - and I do mean carefully - it confirms that not only is Ghost 2003 compatible with USB1.1 and USB2.0 but also that it can write to NTFS partitions on external USB drives (not peer-to-peer arrangements, though). So, certainly all of my hardware and their connections are compatible. It's just that, as soon as the Ghost PC-DOS screen appears, the action just aborts and I then get the error message on a black screen. Ghost is recognising the destination partition and indeed it seems to even write the first file to it which formulates the succeeding imagefile, but it won't then start to write the imagefile across.

I've read and re-read the Ghost 2003 user's guide and it is definitely capable of making images on external NTFS partitions. I already make and restore NTFS images on the PC. You seem to be deriding the fact that Ghost 2003 uses its own pseudo-DOS environment for cloning disks and imaging partitions. Well, as far as I know, that's pretty common with a lot of backup applications that are around these days. Perhaps you misunderstood and thought I meant MS-DOS. Shudder the thought! I don't doubt that Acronis is good.

Does anyone know if Norton Ghost and Ahead's Nero support dual-layer DVD-R discs, in read and write modes? The version of Ghost that I'm interested in, for this context, is Ghost 2003. Where Nero's concerned, I'm using Nero 6 OEM Suite 3, where the version of Nero 6 is the Express version. When writing to a dual-layer DVD, are either of these applications aware of this (if you see what I mean)?

Is there still a 135GB hard drive size limitation, under Windows 2000, or has that now been overcome somehow? The reason I ask is that, for backup purposes, I'm thinking of possibly getting a 250GB external USB-connected hard drive, in order to make an image, from time to time, of the root partition of the hard drive that's in my PC. (That's an image, ie an imagefile, not a clone). I'm also wondering whether Ghost 2003 can successfully write and restore such an image. In Ghost 2003's 'Options', the inference is that Ghost can image to external USB memory devices. Before imaging to the external drive, I would partition it. Again, any idea how you'd do that?

Hey, thanks for that. That's good news, as I'm using Win2K with SP4. In fact, using that Microsoft KB article, I've confirmed that 48-bit LBA support is currently set in my Registry. I still need to find out about the reliability of Ghost 2003, to write and read from an external USB drive, and also how to partition that drive in the first place. Anyone?

Does anyone know if Norton Ghost 2003 is compatible with the NEC DVD writer, model ND3550A? Operating system is Win2KSP4. The NEC ND3550A is a dual-layer +/- format DVD writer. Symantec do publish a list of compatible DVD and CD drives for Ghost 2003 but the DVD list doesn't include any NEC drives. I currently use Ghost 2003 with an NEC ND1100A, a single-layer + format DVD writer and whilst Ghost 2003 happily writes my partition backups to CDs on the 1100A drive, it doesn't write to DVDs (although everyday drag n' drop works fine with DVDs on the 1100A). Instead, the + format writeable DVDs I use in the drive are interpreted by Ghost 2003 as writeable CDs. Thus, I'm wondering if an ND3550A will also fail to be written to, when it comes to using DVDs for partition backups. Does anyone know if Ghost 2003 is particularly sensitive to the drive's writing polarity, ie. whether + or - discs are used? Needless to say, Symantec no longer supports Ghost 2003 and they've long since stopped up[censored] the drive compatibility list of theirs.

Hi Christian. Thanks for the prompt reply. It's good to learn that partition imaging to DVD-Rs works on the ND3520. Have you tried that with DVD+Rs (if the 3520 supports DVD+Rs) or with DVD-RWs, though? It was about two or three years ago when I first tried using Ghost 2003 to backup a partition to my existing ND1100A. After much soul-searching and many repeated attempts, I finally gave up trying to use DVD+RWs (or indeed any DVDs) in that particular situation and have since relied instead on periodically making the partition image to a reserved partition on the same physical hard drive. Not ideal, but it has come in handy once or twice! But now my root partition's that big that I can only fit two images of it in that particular partition of the hard drive, and very soon there'll only be room for just one. Thus, I'm looking once again at the possibility of imaging my root partition to a DVD of some sort. I keep wondering whether, way back, I was using the wrong technique for imaging to the DVD+RW. I did it from the Windows environment. With the ND3520, how have YOU used Ghost to do it? From the Windows environment, or from the Ghost DOS environment, or some other method? I'd be interested to hear. What I recall is that Ghost would treat my DVD+RWs (and DVD+Rs, for that matter) as CD+RWs. Ghost would write a 600MB image on to the first DVD but that's all. The actual total image size would be around 4GB. Ghost would then ask for the second disc to be put in the drive. And so on. At the time, I tried all sorts of things to fool Ghost into working properly but without success. So, if I do now get an ND3550A, I'll want to be pretty certain that imaging on to DVD with Ghost 2003 will work. Over the last few years, I've applied all the Ghost 2003 updates, BTW.

Because of recent electricity supply outages, I'm thinking of getting an uninterruptible power supply on which to run my PC and monitor. I understand in principle the characteristics of UPSs but one thing that I'm unsure of is the following. When a UPS is in use and the system is idling, ie. normal conditions, is the UPS supplying the power to the load (in my case, the PC and the monitor), or is some sort of bypass supplying the power? I ask because it seems to me you could design a UPS to work in two different ways: 1. The UPS permanently takes over the supply of power to the load, being permanently charged from the supply side. When an outage occurs, the UPS merely continues to supply power to the load, for as long as it's capable. 2. The UPS is constantly on charge but a bypass around the UPS allows the normal electricity supply to directly power the load. When an outage occurs, the UPS cuts in and supplies the necessary power, again for as long as it can. Which of these two scenarios do UPSs normally implement?

Anyone experiencing any problems with the size of e-mail text, when it's printed out (File/Print)? I'm referring to Outlook Express 6 v.6.00.2800.1123, and working under Win2KSP4. At the moment, whenever I print out an e-mail message, the body text gets printed out at the absolute maximum size, a size which is totally crazy. I've searched through all my Fonts settings in OE6's Tools/Options but can't find anything amiss. And this has only just started to happen. The only changes I've made recently have been some further security updates from the WU website. Word documents and pdf documents all print out okay, at the correct text sizes, so it's obviously being caused by something in OE6. Anybody got any ideas? Have I inadvertently nudged a keyboard key(s) which has set this large font? If so, can somebody give me some guidance on correcting it, please?

Yeh, I know what you mean by the sugars in the beer drying out. Potentially, a spillage like this could be very damaging and, as you say, could write the keyboard off. But, with mine, so far, so good - it's been nearly 24 hrs since it happened and I've just tested the two righthand clusters of keys and they all seem to be working fine. Whether fluids and dust can easily enter the key contacts area of a keyboard will, I presume, depend on the design and, judging by the quality of my Cherry keyboard and the price I paid for it, I would hope that, in this regard, the design was good. If doubt remains with me, I might e-mail Cherry and get their comments.

Actually, it's Win2K that I'm using. I'll assume, then, that both Num Lock and Scroll Lock should be OFF, on my machine. Okay? Yes, it was a small quantity of beer that got spilt. I could kick myself for letting it happen but you know how it is - I was just retrieving output from my printer, over to the right, and my hand just caught the glass, a glass with a thin stem. A chunkier glass wouldn't have knocked over. Some of the fluid got into the number-pad on the RHS of the keyboard. I quickly upturned the keyboard to shake as much out as possible, then swept some paper towel between the respective keys, to soak up what'd got in. It'd only been a few droplets. Being a good Cherry keyboard that I'd especially bought only about a year ago, I can only hope that the surround of the keys has stopped the fluid getting to the key contacts. It's a soft-feel membrane type of key contact, BTW. I've thought of taking the keyboard apart, to have a good look inside, but haven't done so yet. I might just keep my fingers crossed and hope for the best. Trouble is, beer is acidic and so, longterm, could corrode contacts, resistors, pcb tracking, etc.

Fixed! Many thanks, Sampson. The View/Text Size, in Internet Explorer, was set to a much larger size than normal and putting it back to the default size cured the printing problem in Outlook Express. A bit odd, that, though. There are quite separate Text Size settings in Internet Explorer and Outlook Express (View/Text Size) and so one wouldn't normally expect that changing the text size in the browser would change the size of printout text from the e-mail client. Ah well, I guess it's just another Microsoft foible. Incidentally, on the keyboard, should Num Lock be normally ON (once the PC has booted into Windows), or OFF? Or doesn't it matter? And what about Scroll Lock? I use a standard keyboard (no frills) and, earlier today, I'd had a small accident and spilt some fluid over the righthand side of it. In quickly cleaning it off (with the PC still on), several of the keys on the righthand side obviously got pressed randomly, and so that's why I wondered whether some of the keys were now left in non-default positions or that I'd perhaps activated some obscure function via a combination of keys.

I'm fairly convinced that Firefox 1.5 is responsible. I didn't have the problem with former versions of Firefox. The day after I upgraded to 1.5, I started finding that, randomly, I couldn't get certain of my frequently-visited websites at all and Firefox just kept displaying the message "Can't access www.xxxx. Check ...., etc". It seems that once access to a particular website becomes impossible, you can't reach it with either Firefox or IE, unless you restart the computer. I checked with the editors of the affected websites and they said they knew of no such issues. Then suddenly on one occasion, I couldn't access ANY websites. Firefox would open but no websites at all were resolved. Also, my e-mail client (OE6) became completely inoperative, with it unable to reach the ISP's servers. I checked the functioning of my router/nmodem and it was definitely communicating fine with the exchange and beyond. About 30 mins later, accessibility suddenly returned. I immediately contacted my ISP about it but my ISP confirmed that there'd been no problem at their end. I'm now getting various websites inaccessible. It changes from time to time. Also, if I click on a particular website in the address box, I'll often get a completely different website. Still one that's in the box but not the one I clicked on. I've no current issues with my software firewall or with my antivirus client. The event that changed and which produced the problem was up[censored] to 1.5. I'm still running Firefox with two profiles available, the original and a new one I created post-1.5. The problem exhibits with either one. Yes, I realise the profiles are not part of the core Firefox software. As for themes and extensions, I don't use any. I'm encountering increasing numbers of people who are having similar problems to me. I'm personally convinced it's due to Firefox and that the Mozilla team need to tackle it as a priority.

Arin, I've been having exactly the same problem, but it's occasionally been happening to one or two other sites as well. Do you use Firefox 1.5? I think that, in my case, it's being caused by a serious bug in Firefox 1.5. I'm using Win2KSP4.

I've been a Firefox user for nearly a year now, but I have grave reservations about it. I recently upgraded to v1.5 but 1.5 seems to have a serious bug whereby Internet access, by either browser or e-mail client, can become impossible on occasions. Individual websites also suddenly become temporarily inaccessible. Initial loading of Firefox is still horrendously slow, even after creating a new profile. I've been sorely tempted to return to IE6. Unfortunately, this latest Firefox bug has corrupted IE6 as well.

Do you use Firefox 1.5, by any chance? There seems to be a serious bug in Firefox 1.5, which sometimes can not only stop Firefox or Internet Explorer from working but which can also stop Outlook Express 6 from functioning too.

Are Windows Media Player 9 and Nero 5.5 compatible? I ask because WMP9 now has Roxio CD burner embedded in it and there's no means to remove it. I want to continue using Nero as my principal CD/DVD burner. Note that I use Win2K, not WinXP.

Thanks for all of your replies, especially you, Sampson. Sampson, it appears that you misunderstood my situation. I'm simply wanting to leave Nero 5.5 on my PC as my singular CD/DVD burner that I use. But I do also want to use WMP - not for its CD-burning feature but actually for its radio-listening. I've no desire whatsoever to burn any CDs or DVDs with WMP or to transfer any files from WMP to burn with Nero. However, the mere fact that I upgraded from WMP7 to WMP9 recently and suddenly discovered that WMP9 now includes Roxio CD Burner, embedded in it, gave me cause for alarm, as everybody knows from way back that you should never have any additional burners installed on your machine if you want to use Nero, as otherwise there'll be conflicts. In WMP7, you were given the option of disabling the Adaptec burner in it and that dealt with the matter entirely. I contacted Ahead (nero.com support) some weeks ago about this and, after some delay where they were looking into the matter, they sent me instructions for removing the Roxio program from WMP9 and for cleaning up the Registry entries, etc. Their instructions started by saying 'Remove Roxio burner plug-in', using Preferences. Well, that's not possible because Roxio in WMP9 is not a plug-in and it's not normally removeable. Also, there's no Preferences feature. I've replied to Ahead about this but have heard nothing from them since. American Zombie, how certain are you that Roxio does not, in fact, interfere with Nero? If they can now sit side-by-side without any problem then that's certainly news to me, and it also seems to be news to Ahead as well. I've searched for discussion on this elsewhere but have found absolutely nothing. Can you point me to something that'll convince me that they ARE compatible? Sampson and American Zombie, do bear in mind that the version of Nero I use is v5.5. There may well be differences with newer versions of Nero. Perhaps that's why Ahead sent me specific instructions? Further addendum: Initially, Ahead sent me their InfoTool program, so that they could see what I'm already running. As a result of that, they sent me the following instructions, saying in a separate e-mail that I needed to 'remove the plug-in separately, as it might reinstall the drivers': Dear valued customer, thank you for your email and your interest in our software. A review of your computer system has revealed that drivers from another burning software, which conflict with Nero performance, are left on your computer system. Please disable the Roxio plugin and use the “Driver CleanTool” to disable these drivers. Download driver-cleantool.zip from ftp://ftp6.nero.com/tools/Driver-CleanTool.zip Extract the zipped files to your hard drive using WinZip or WinRar. You should now have two unzipped files: Driver-CleanTool.exe, and RegistryChecker.exe First step: run Driver-CleanTool.exe This file will deactivate drivers that have caused problems with Nero in the past. Confirm the deactivation of the displayed drivers to prevent known driver conflicts from reoccurring in the future. These drivers also include Values in the Registry under Windows NT, 2000, and XP. To ensure that these values are also deactivated you will need to run the RegistryChecker file. The RegistryChecker will run very quickly. It is likely that you won't see any activity after double-clicking on the file. Note: Running the RegistryChecker will not be necessary for Windows ME, 98SE, 98, or 95. [Edited by packman on 2005-12-11 14:21:07]