thekourier

I'd recommend you install either the latest Xircom drivers or IBM, whoever makes the card, instead of using the 2000 default drivers. Windows 2000 is probably using the wrong driver.

I had a problem with Explorer crashing due to spyware. If you don't already have something for it, run AdAware and Spybot S&D. Update the definitions and run full scans with both. You might also try a chkdsk /f and see if you've got a problem with file corruption. Check your Event Log, look for any hardware problems.

Click Start, Settings, Control Panel, Sounds, choose the Sounds tab and under the Windows Explorer section turn off the sound for "Start Navigation". It was really annoying for me too.

Anyone else started having this problem recently? In the last week I keeping getting "page not found" errors with common websites like MSN, Yahoo, CNN, etc. Works for a while and then IE will tell me the site cannot be found. If I do a DNS lookup from DOS it will return an IP properly. If I flush the DNS cache with ipconfig /flushdns the pages will work again, for a while. It's very random and sporadic, very frustrating. Only started happening in the last 2 weeks or so, after installing TurboTax and the latest MS patches. I'm running XP SP1 all patches, SBC DSL. Maybe a bug in the latest IE patch?

I haven't been able to figure this one out yet. I recently upgraded my CPU from a Duron 750 (OC'd to 900) to an Athlon XP 2000 (Palamino). I've got a generic BT878 PCI TV tuner/recorder card. I like to record a lot of my favorite programs to DIVX. Anyway, I was having no problems before upgrading my processor, but now the TV picture will flicker randomly and quite often, to the point at which the recording is unusable. I thought it might be a problem with interrupts so I isolated the card so it has it's own IRQ, but the problem still exists. Never had a single problem before. Any suggestions? EPOX 8k3a+ motherboard Athlon XP 2000 CPU not overclocked 512 MB Samsung RAM 2 x 40 GB WD drives on HPT 372 RAID GeForce 256 SDR AGP card

Thanks for the suggestion. The PCI bus is running at 66Mhz, the same under both the Duron and the Athlon. I tried overclocking the bus and it actually seemed to improve things a tiny bit. I'm wondering now if it might be RFI noise interference coming off the CPU. Whenever I do something complicated with the CPU, like a stress test or something, the video gets much worse. The CPU is also running pretty hot, 55 degrees, I'm going to set up watercooling soon, so maybe that might fix it. Just a very strange problem. Never had this happen before. Quote: What speed is your PCI bus running at? I had a TV card (LifeView '98 FM) that would clap out when I upped the clock speed to 83mHz but would run fine at 66, 75, 100, 133 etc. Not only would it not work, it's media codecs would lock all video-playback function. Check that the card can handle your PCI bus speeds. Even though you aren't overclocking, your bus speed could be outside its spec.

Yea, no one likes the fact that Microsoft forces you to upgrade your OS every so often to get access to the latest and greatest (ie NT only supports DirectX 3 etc). But think about it, when Ford comes out with a new car they don't upgrade your old one. If Sony comes out with a new DVD player that plays MP3's they don't send out new firmware for the old systems. Your PlayStation 1 isn't upgradable either. Sony is forcing you to buy a new Playstation by releasing games that are not PS1 compatible. Microsoft is certainly not the greatest company in the world, but if you want new features and functionality you gotta pay for it. Or you can always put Linux on your home PVR box like I did and spend 2 weeks adding drivers and rebuilding the kernel to make it work (somewhat). It's free, but you get what you pay for IMHO.

Geez, never thought I'd see so many people touting XP. I can't speak for XP since I've never used it, but I'm running 2k Server and haven't had any problems. I can play anything that's out, except for older DOS stuff. Sure wish someone would rewrite Crusader: No Remorse for Windows. 2k is rock solid for me. Lately I've played: Counter Strike, MechWarrior 4, Crimson Skies, Commanche 4, BG2, Descent Freespace 2, Silent Hunter 2, IL-2 Sturmovik, and Jedi Knight 2 (awesome game). I hesitate to use XP since I've heard there's some equipment you can't yet get drivers for, and heck, 2k works great.

I'm running an IDE RAID-0 array with Western Digital 400BB drives (40GB/7200RPM). Works great and very quiet. From my first-hand experience and what I've read from others, if you're expecting RAID-0 to double your disk read speed forget about it. My RAID array is extremely fast for writing, but I don't notice a heck of a lot of improvement in reading. Windows doesn't load 2x faster and Counterstrike doesn't load 2x faster either. There's some small improvement, but nothing extreme. Writing on the other hand is really quick. I do some video work, and that array will slurp data as fast as I can send it. I've heard really bad things about the IBM 60GXP series. A whole lot of dead drives being reported. I just bought one of the new 120GXP series, the 120GB model. It runs cool, and extremely quiet, seems pretty fast too. But every so often it will make a little screetching noise. I was reading about someone else who called IBM on this and they said it's the drive up[censored] some internal statistics. Personally I'd stick with WD drives. This IBM seems good, but with all the failures of the 60GXP series, I'm not betting the farm on it.

I've got a wierd problem with my LiteOn DVD-163 drive. It will read CDs/CDR's etc just fine. But if I put in any DVD (Matrix, etc.) it can't read it. Acts like there's nothing in the drive. However, if I leave the DVD in the drive and reboot the system it will read it just fine and I can swap DVDs in or out. I can't figure this one out, I'm not sure if it's a bad drive or what. Anyone else had this problem? Some specs: Windows 2000 Server SP2 ASUS A7V mobo + Duron 800 O/C to 900 Mhz, latest BIOS 1011 HiPoint 370 IDE RAID PCI Card, 2 x 40 drives for O/S Onboard IDE Primary: Liteon 24x CDRW Master Onboard IDE Secondary: IBM 20 GB Master, Liteon DVD-163 Slave I've got the latest firmware for the DVD drive. Windows shows DMA running for all IDE devices. I haven't tried moving the Liteon to it's own IDE channel as master yet. Doesn't seem like that would be the problem, seems more like the drive is only reading media properly on boot. Very strange. If I put in a DVD with the system running it won't read it. Also, it won't read any CDs afterwards either. I have to reboot the system to get it back to reading things. Any suggestions?

Problem solved - It appears this was due to an older version of McAfee Netshield that I was running (v4.0.3). I noticed a message in the Event log that complained that NAIfltr was unable to read some UDFS file. Removing Netshield solved the problem. Supposedly there's a new version 4.5.1 of Netshield out, and I guess this would solve the problem, but naturally McAfee makes it a pain in the *** to get it. McAfee is the only company I know that makes it a big deal to get patches. I used to like McAfee but I think I'll find a different vendor now. Thanks to everyone who helped!

The problem is reading DVD movies. I don't have any DVD-ROM (data) disks. The region is set to 1, which is correct. But putting a DVD movie disk in the drive shows nothing, acts like the disk isn't even there. Reboot with the disk in the drive and it'll work perfectly.

NTFS on NT 4.0 can create and access partitions and filesystems of up to 2TB in size. It has nothing to do with NTFS. I should know. I ran a 300 GB file server on NT 4.0 Server with one filesystem. Took me 1 hour to backup with AIT-1 tape drives. Compaq arrays are sweet. NT's disk administrator (DA) should always show the correct disk size. If NT had a partition size limit, DA would only allow you to create a partition of size X, but you could then create a 2nd partition Y on the leftover space. His problem is that NT is reporting the physical disk size is only 132GB. Admiral LSD, you need to get a life. Calling someone an idiot just because they run a particular O/S. So you hate Microsoft. Big hairy deal. Get over it. People should run the OS that they're comfortable with and that makes business sense for them. He is comfortable with NT and is having a problem. That's what the Internet community is for, not for zealots that argue that their OS is the only solution to the world's problem. I run Linux on a 2nd system, and believe you me, it's no picnic. Installing apache is easy? Try downloading and installing GCC, and automake, then compiling perl and apache, then getting PHP and editing a bunch of text config files. Golly gee, sounds way easier than Add/Remove Programs and choosing IIS. Granted IIS isn't perfect, but run what makes sense for you, not degrade others for their choice. It's still a free world. [/$.02]

I haven't used that tool specifically, but I have used another called CD check and SiSoft Sandra's CD benchmark. Both work just fine with a CD in the drive. But if I put in a DVD NT reports no disk in the drive and both utilities complain there's nothing in there to test with. If I leave the DVD in the drive and reboot everything will work fine.

Quote: Re: "thekourier" I currently speculate that the solution lies in how the O/S is accessing the information in the MBR, and whether the solution becomes yet another overlay file (like for the older, 'NORMAL' drive limit of 528 MB), creating a driver that translates the MBR information into a form that the O/S can use to access all the way to 2 terabytes, or even toying with the BIOS settings manually (like I just tried, but have not attained a solution -- yet) ... or some-such.... Master Boot Record (MBR) should have nothing to do with it. The MBR simply stores the boot code that allows the O/S to find the NT kernel. Now if you've loaded Ontrack or something else into the MBR that might cause a problem. Personally I still think the issue lies in the BIOS. There should be a new Disk Geometry mode other than LBA, Normal, and Large. My personal speculation is that the "query the drive" mode you've chosen simply asks the disk what it's CHS parameters are. The disk reports 160GB, and the BIOS happily displays it, but can only access 132GB due to it's internal CHS limits. Pure speculation on my part. What I'd suggest is a trip to the local Fry's and a purchase of a Maxtor ATA/133 PCI card with onboard BIOS. If it solves the problem great, if not, just return it. Actually, I just took a look at ASUS' site, http://usa.asus.com/inside/Techref/48bithdd.htm, which says that most of the ASUS boards support 48 bit addressing. Maxtor's site has an article here about the 137 GB limit: http://www.maxtor.com/Maxtorhome.htm. So you *should* be ok. I'm very suspiscious though that this is the problem since what NT is reporting is right around 137 GB, 137,000,000,000 / 1024 =~ 133 GB. I know NT 4.0 can deal with disks greater than 137 GB since I used to do that with Compaq SCSI arrarys all the time.

I was thinking about doing the same thing, replacing my KT133 motherboard with a new KT333 one. I've got the latest VIA 4n1 drivers installed and I figured it shouldn't be too much of a problem since the chipset is the same line. Anyone gone from KT133 to KT333 without reinstalling?

There are several different reasons why a filesystem might be limited to a certain size. The old 500 MB partition size problem was caused by MS' FAT16 partition, because of the hard limits in the FAT table it would only recognise 500 MB of disk space, irrespective of the size of the disk. Microsoft removed that limitation with the release of FAT32 and later NTFS. FAT32 and NTFS will recognise much larger partitions, at least 2TB. So that is not your problem. I think you're running into the IDE LBA limitations. The *IDE* BIOS stores disk sector information. With the old IDE CHS method you were limited to 2GB drives. Ontrack (and others) came up with software that faked things out. They ran in the disk's boot sector, and "patched" the BIOS before the O/S ran, allowing you to use disks >2GB with older IDE firmware. IDE manufacturers later came out with LBA, a newer method of addressing disk sector information, which is 32 bits if I remember correctly and will allow you to access disks of up to 132 GB. The method of accessing physical sectors on the disk (CHS, LBA, etc.) has NOTHING to do with ATA 33/66/100/133. Those are bus standards for communicating from an IDE controller to and IDE drive. Sometimes manufacturers can upgrade the IDE firmware or BIOS to handle a new sector allocation scheme, mostly though, they just wait for the next rev of their controllers to implement it. When Maxtor created the new ATA/133 spec they also came up with a new sector method, I don't remember what it's called now, but it's larger than the 32 bit LBA, I think it's 36 bits or something like that. In order to access the full 160 GB per disk you have to be using a controller that supports the new larger sector addressing scheme, which is why Maxtor was shipping their 160GB disks with a Maxtor ATA/133 controller with onboard BIOS. Obviously you didn't get that combo. You've got a new KT333 mobo, which I think you said has ATA/133 support. You need to check and see if the BIOS supports (or has newer firmware) for the sector addressing scheme. Check the BIOS, you will usually see Large, LBA, and something else. If you can't do that then you need to get a controller that supports it. As I mentioned, Maxtor has one. Changing the sector addressing WILL MAKE ALL EXISTING DATA INACCESSABLE. So in conclusion, it's not NT or the driver's fault IMHO. And for my last $.02, NT 4.0 is a great OS. Not as compatible as 2k or PnP support, but still, if installed right, it makes a damn good OS.

It's a 400 watt model, Motherboard Monitor shows all the voltages are within spec. Case temp is 30*C and proc is heavily cooled. Interesting idea though, I never thought that DVD playback might need more juice than CD. I emailed LiteOn's tech support 2 months ago, but never heard squat back. Their 24x CDRW drive is great, never had a problem, but this DVD thing has me baffled.