packman

Update Rollup 1 for Win2K has been available now for several months and I myself have been successfully using it for a month or two, having downloaded and installed it in one operation, from the Windows Update site. I've been wondering of late, though, whether I should obtain and keep a copy of the executable file, as I gather that if you're installing Win2K and various other service packs from scratch, the Rollup needs to be installed in a fairly strict order. In other words, it'd be handy to personally archive the Rollup executable and keep it for that probable eventual situation where the operating system, service packs and other software need to be reinstalled. With that in mind, I've searched the Microsoft site and found what's described as the Rollup file 'for deployment to multiple computers'. It's called Windows2000-KB891861-x86-ENU.exe. Is this equally suitable for installing to a single, standalone PC?

Is there a way of repairing Win2K? That's with SP4, incidentally. Is there some sort of repair function on the Win2K installation CD? I ask because I've hit a brick wall with a driver problem - an Epson flatbed scanner driver. The scanner operates on a USB connection. The USB 2.0 driver is there and works with other USB devices. All other device drivers install and work with no problem, but when I install the Epson driver and then connect up the scanner, all the correct things are found in Add/Remove Programs, Device Manager, Scanners & Cameras, etc but if I try to start the scanner program, nothing happens, it never opens. I've argued this out with Epson but they claim they've had no problem with their driver under Win2KSP4 (despite the fact they've produced four updates to the driver in the last two years, and a further one a week ago). I'd like to contact Microsoft about this but there's no mechanism for that, other than their extortionate pay-and-report system. Either there's something crucial missing from Win2KSP4 or Epson's driver is faulty. Thus, I'm wondering if I were to run a repair on Win2K whether that might help. Or could that screw up SP4. I've also got Update Rollup for Win2kSP4 installed. All of Epson's driver versions for this scanner (Epson 3200 Perfection) have been tried on a newly-formatted partition, with no other device drivers yet installed, and the Epson drivers consistently fail to work. There are no 'problem devices' or IRQ clashes, either.

Can somebody confirm whether Win2KSP4 (Windows 2000, with Service Pack 4 added) contains an embedded Twain application? In other words, look to see if there's a Twain_32 folder at C:\winnt\twain_32. If so, does this contain two subfolders, es0029 and escndv? If you've access to Win2KSP3, on the other hand, is there any such embedded Twain application in that?

Christian, I concur with what you say about SiS USB controllers but, when asked, SiS themselves were adamant that their USB 2.0 drivers were fully compliant. It's just that they produced theirs for Win2K well before Microsoft did. Frankly, I've had no problem with the SiS USB drivers over the three or more years I've been using that motherboard and, though investigated thoroughly by me of late, I still couldn't point to them as the source of the problem. I did, in fact, swop them for the Microsoft ones which are now provided within SP4, but it made no difference to the problem. As I said earlier, the problem with the Epson driver seems to be that, under Win2KSP4, the reference screen point for opening the Epson Scan application starts off as something sensible but then, when the application is opened, the X and Y values get changed by the Epson exec file to enormously large values. Thus, you get nothing on the screen. This behaviour is puzzling Epson. There's a suspicion that Windows is playing a part in this. Certainly, the Epson driver installed and worked fine under SP3, but fails to allow the application to open under SP4. That's why I was wondering whether it was possible to repair Windows, if it came to the crunch.

But pmistry, you missed what I said earlier, that I'd already re-formatted a number of times and it'd made no difference to the problem. Re-formatting is nearly always a terribly crucial thing to do and something not to be taken lightly, as even with having made decent backups, you'll still lose a certain amount of your personal files and you'll still be involved in a lot of work to restore things, especially if you're looking to change things after the re-format, in order to nail down a bug. Anyway, in this instance, it looks like the problem's been caused by SP4 in conjunction with the Epson driver. Epson and I are still trying to pin it down, precisely. We've been right inside the Registry, monitoring things as the Epson program is initiated. They're having problems figuring out the results.

gntlman, I'm a fairly experienced PC-builder and Windows user, and a retired IT engineer. I don't claim to be a total expert in Windows, though. Your mentioning Belarc reminded me that, about 7 or 8 years ago, I used their free analyser program and found a serious bug in it. On occasions, instead of the Belarc program opening, some other application on my machine would open. Belarc refuted that there was ever any problem with the program but, in the end, I discovered that the problem was that they used an executable they'd simply named "setup.exe" and that this happened to correspond with the exact same executable for a different application on my PC. "Setup.exe" is hardly unique, after all. I informed Belarc of this but they never made any changes at that time. As with so many organisations, they just went into denial over it. The moral of the story is to treat all software with caution, especially third-party software. The mere fact that certain software, or combinations of software, work perfectly well on some systems doesn't mean that that software is bugless and will work on all systems. The trouble is that there's so much third-party uncertified software out there in the big wide world.

Thanks pmistry, but I always make an Emergency Repair Disk. I also install Win2K's Repair Console. However, these are not designed for curing specific bugs in Win2K, they're primarily for enabling you to boot into Windows in the situation where the problem has prevented that.

I'm liaising again with Epson and this time we appear to be getting somewhere. The basic application that goes with the scanner driver (Epson Scan) never opens and we've tracked down the problem to an Epson/Environment section of the Windows Registry. The values in that part of the Registry represent the pixelar origin of the application when it opens on the Desktop and at present they're so enormously high that they're way, way off the screen. Thus, the GUI of the scanner application never opens (is never visible), even though Windows shows it as running in Task Manager. Altering the values to something sensible didn't work because as soon as you try to open the application, the old enormous values get immediately put back into the Registry. So, we need to find out why this is happening and how to put it right. It's most likely to be a bug in Win2KSP4 (caused by the service pack itself) but there's also a possibility that it's a fault in the Epson driver. In either case, it should be possible for Microsoft or Epson to provide a remedy, but it could take quite a while.

But just because you managed to successfully repair your situation with an HP printer doesn't mean to say it's a universal panacea. With the drastic changes you're advising, I could well end up with bigger problems than I already have. At the risk of appearing ungrateful, I think I would rather re-format and reinstall everything from a clean slate, but unfortunately that would involve me in about a week's solid work - and there'd still be no guarantee that the problem would be solved. I've been analysing what happens during the setup process of this Epson driver, on my machine, and I'm convinced that there's a problem with the Windows installer. Actually, Microsoft issued a patch for their Windows installer last year (which I've installed). It was included in the many updates for Win2KSP4 at the WU website. I remember it as being "an improved installer for various third-party device drivers". Clearly, some people had reported problems with certain third-party drivers. Perhaps that patch still isn't good enough?

gntlman, It might have escaped you that I already have SP4 installed. I also have all pre-SP4 updates installed. Furthermore, I also now have 'Update Rollup 1 for Win2KSP4' installed, so nobody could accuse me of not having my Win2K fully up to date. The problem with this Epson driver began at a stage where I'd re-formatted my hard disk and had reinstalled Windows, plus SP4. I've retried that and other Epson drivers (updates to the driver) as I've added all my various updates to Win2K and no difference has been made to the problem. At present, my hard disk doesn't require defragging. There is no such thing as an SP5, BTW, even though one or two of Microsoft's Win2K updates call themselves 'pre-SP5'. Microsoft stopped their service packs at SP4. They will, however, issue 'update rollups' from time to time, the first having been issued about a month ago. The USB drivers are an interesting point, one which I've explored in considerable detail. Before ever using SP4, I used the USB 2.0 drivers supplied with my motherboard (QDI Superb 4E). These were always installed by me at the correct juncture and always worked fine under Win2KSP2 and Win2KSP3. These were SiS USB 2.0 drivers, of the 7100 type. When I first couldn't get the Epson driver to install, I searched for the official Microsoft 2.0 drivers and discovered they were provided inside SP4. Thus, I wondered whether installing them might do the trick. In fact, I was able to swop the SiS drivers for the Microsoft ones (simple and straighforward to do, and legitimate). However, this made no difference whatever to the problem. As I say, my other USB devices have installed perfectly. I use no add-on USB cards or external hubs. The existing USB ports are all motherboard-embedded. Six such ports, of which two are permanently in use, with a third occasionally used.

The setup is basically a Win2KSP4 machine, with Ghost 2003 as the backup application. Normally, just one 80GB HDD is installed (HDD0), but I now wish to clone that to an identical HDD (HDD1), which will then be removed and put into safekeeping as a backup drive. Is it feasible to do this with both drives on the same (Primary) IDE channel, ie. HDD0 set to master and HDD1 set to slave? For the cloning process, can both drives operate at UDMA (as opposed to PIO)? At present, Windows recognises both drives, HDD1 being an 'unallocated' single space. But Ghost 2003 doesn't recognise this second drive at all. Ghost 2003 is supposed to be capable of formatting, partitioning and cloning a drive, all in one operation. I've done all the obvious things, like jumpering the drives accordingly, setting up Device 0 and Device 1 in Device Manager, and reconfiguring the system BIOS but when I start the clone process in Ghost, only HDD0 and its partitions show. Thus, I can't set a destination drive and proceed. My Ghost 2003 is also completely up to date, I having downloaded the latest updates a few weeks ago.

Looks useful but unfortunately doesn't discuss this problem. But it doesn't matter, as I've discovered the cause and have now corrected it. Under Win2KSP3 and Win2KSP4, Microsoft have recently introduced a new feature when additional disk drives are added. This is known as the "Write Signature and Upgrade Disk" wizard and it pops up in Disk Management, if you physically add a new, unformatted disk drive. This feature is principally for turning basic disks into dynamic disks, something that the majority of users would NOT want. However, in order for the new disk to be recognised by any application, it's now necessary to at least partly run this wizard and to set the write signature for the new disk. Unfortunately, the wizard is poorly designed and it's all too easy to opt for "upgrading" the disk instead. "Upgrading" is a Microsoft euphomism for making the disk into a dynamic type and is NOT reversible. So, when setting the write signature, you must do it with great care and then bypass the upgrade stage. Once that's done, the wizard completes and you then find that Ghost recognises the new (still unformatted, unpartitioned) disk. You can then proceed with the cloning. Ghost 2003 does all the partitioning and formatting for you, besides copying across all the files, partition tables, MBR, etc. I believe that, instead of using the wizard, you can just right-click on the unallocated band in Disk Managemment and then choose Set Disk Signature from the menu.

Hmm, well I've been looking into this further but still not found the answer. Symantec articles that I've downloaded state emphatically that Ghost 2003 can clone to a hard disk that's a bare one; it doesn't require pre-formatting, as Ghost does it as part of the cloning operation. What I HAVE noticed, however, is a Microsoft "Write Signature and Upgrade Disk Wizard" that pops up when I look in Disk Management. Since that seems to relate to the use of dynamic disks, I've not bothered with it. But maybe I do have to partly use it, for the disk to be recognised by applications? What d'ya think? Anyone know what 'writing a disk signature' actually does?

Has any Win2KSP4 user on these forums installed Microsoft's new Update Rollup package? Given that it's automatically available when you go to the Windows Update webpages and the Rollup package comprises a whole bundle of updates (including a lot of bug fixes, I gather) rather than giving you the choice of downloading and installing specific fixes, I was wondering whether anyone's had any problems with it and what their general opinion of it was.

It certainly used to be the case that if you already had a number of Win2K security updates or bug-fixes installed and you then installed SP3 or SP4 on the top, it really screwed up your system. And there was no going back. So, why is this Rollup any different? It seems to me that you need to be extremely careful that, by choosing the Rollup, you don't end up installing a number of updates that you've already got. Fine if each person gets a customised Rollup but MS haven't said that that's the case.

Those are just the security patches, Ross. At the Windows Update site you can view a description of the Rollup, if you're offered the Rollup. In that description, you can find a link to a very long list of bug fixes in the Rollup. That list is a quite separate one to the one you've shown, which is only of the security fixes.

Ross, I scrolled right through the long list of bug fixes in the Rollup but couldn't spot those particular ones. Perhaps I couldn't see the wood for the trees? Or perhaps they simply don't appear in my particular list because they're already installed on my machine? You infer that having those particular fixes has not impaired the functioning of your system in any way (presumably, a Win2KSP4 system). True?

I've checked again. 893066 is still a separate update that I can download and install; it's not contained in the Rollup. 893066 is a fix which returns the default size of the TCP Receive Window in Win2K to 17,520 bytes. According to some experiments I did with the utility DrTCP a month or two ago, the optimum TRW on my Win2K machine is 32,767 bytes. Okay then, so that's not a problem. MS have at least given the option of downloading that separately. Somehow, 839643 has already got installed on my machine. Ah well, never mind. As for 329170 and 835732, I can find no reference to them now, either on my machine or in the Rollup. They might have got installed on my machine in some indirect way some time ago and perhaps are uninstallable fixes.

That's reassuring, Ross. Hitherto, when I've added Windows updates, I've avoided the following ones, because they've been accused by some Win2K users of being implicated in new Win2K bugs: KB893066 KB839643 Q329170 KB835732 However, if you now install the Rollup, those four are automatically included. Are any or all of those four updates now listed in your Windows directory, Ross? Only the uninstallable ones will show, of course. Look in either Add/Remove Programs or in the first part of the WINNT folder.

I'm trying to correct a USB 2.0 problem on my newly-formatted Win2KSP4 machine and, to help me decide how best to tackle it, I need to know which installed USB 2.0 driver files should sit in Windows' system directory, in Win2KSP4. So, can one of you kind souls with Win2KSP4 and USB 2.0 installed assist me by looking in the following locations?: C:\winnt\inf\oem2.inf C:\winnt\system32\drivers\usbehci.sys C:\winnt\system32\drivers\usbhub20.sys C:\winnt\system32\drivers\usbport.sys C:\winnt\system32\hccoin.dll For each of these, I need to have the file version, the file size (not the size on disk), and the modification date (should go back to various months in 2002 and 2003). I found that, when I tried to install my USB-based scanner, it failed to do so and bombed out. It never did that with SP3. But curiously, my USB-based printer installed with no problem. It appears that I installed the Windows USB 2.0 driver (available from my motherboard's installation CD) in the wrong way. I installed it straight on top of SP4, whereas it seems I was supposed to use the 'Update file' method, available in the Properties of the USB Controller, in Device Manager. I strongly suspect that, as a result of doing it the wrong way, the usbhub20.sys file has not updated properly.

Relevant: Internet Explorer6 SP1/Outlook Express 6 SP1, Windows 2K SP4, Nero 5.5. I've just encountered a strange occurrence in the functioning of the Address Book in Outlook Express and am wondering if anyone can throw some light on it. As a precaution for backing up, I've exported the contents of my Address Book to several places: to a DVD-RW, to a DVD+R, and to a folder in a separate partition on the hard disk. To write the file to the DVDs, I first exported the Address Book to the partition. I then copied the file to the DVD-RW using drag n' drop but, of course, had to use Nero to copy it to the DVD+R. Naturally, I've wanted to read the contents of these written copies, to check that they have indeed written properly. However, I find that I can open the versions that I put on the partition and on the DVD-RW (ie. the addresses.WAB files will open in Address Book by just clicking on the file) but I can't open the file that was put on the DVD+R. Instead, I get a Windows error message, saying "The Address Book has been locked by another application. Please close the other application and try again later". Well, there is no other application open, so what's going on here? I've tried changing the read-only attributes of the file on the DVD+R but that has no effect on the problem. There's nothing wrong with the DVD+R disc itself, as I've successfully written plenty of other files on to it. I could, of course, go to the Address Book and try importing the file from there, but I don't want to risk importing nothing. Is there something about write-once media that makes it completely unsuitable for storing the contents of the Address Book?

Yes, but in this case the Address Book was not in the middle of being changed by me or anyone else, so why should it be perceived at all as being 'locked out'? It simply doesn't explain why it is that, with the addresses.wab file stored in a write-read medium, you can open the Address Book from the file, but with it stored in a write-only medium, you can't (unless you drag the file to the Desktop first).

I just tried that and you're right, it does work. But why should removing the Read-Only attribute make it openable (readable)? It doesn't seem to follow any particular logic.

Now, here's a serious afterthought. In the front of the handbook I've found a note I'd made which says that this motherboard supports Pentium IIIs only up to 866MHz. This speed CPU appears to be the maximum to use with a 133MHz FSB, therefore. I used to run mine with a 600MHz Pentium III (4.5 x 133MHz FSB = 600MHz). The CPU speed must be one of the listed allowed multiply-factors. I can make no comments on this motherboard regarding overclocking. Note that the maximum IDE transfer rate on this motherboard is 66Mbits/sec (ATA66), so you'd need to set the hard drive accordingly, which will probably require you to run an ATA speed-change utility for that drive.

Actually, I've already tried that, Wilhemus, (ie. dragging on to the Desktop and executing from there) and that too refused to work, giving the error message again "The Address Book has been locked......try again later".