ByronT

The MS CD player is somewhat of a pain. You see Microsoft, in all of its infinite wisdom decided not to sign onto the CDDB developers pact [something to do with the fact that CDDB was not implicitly recommending SQL server for the CDDB database.] So Microsoft uses two independent CD information databases to give you the CD information. The only problem is that there are so many incorrect entries in the database of the two SQL server databases that Microsoft's CD player information is worthless - maybe more than worthless since it will give you the incorrect information. IMHO, I would recommend any of a number of true "CDDB" capable players - many of which are known to work with Windows 2000. I currently use Real Jukebox and have no complaints. For others, just visit http://www.cddb.org/winplayer.html Regards...

I actually laughed out loud after reading the first post... Surely he wasn't serious... I mean creating a RAM disk to place a SWAP file on?!?! No WAY!! Maybe an explanation is in order: The SWAP file with Win9X, WinNT, and Win2K is for the OS to use when the memory space needed to run programs/services is larger than the physical RAM available. When this happens, the OS will copy the least used processes in memory and copy them to disk, placing whatever is currently requesting the memory into the newly freed memory. (At least this is the theory...) In practice, there are many that question if the OS moves the "least" used processes to HD. So when whoever, creates a RAM disk for a SWAP file, they just made less RAM available to the OS, and created an extra wait state for times when the lesser amount of memory is not enough (the OS has to start using the RAM disk SWAP file, when it might have had enough memory to run without any swapping otherwise.) That said, there are several ways to manage your SWAP file: - set the Min and the Max the same size: this creates a SWAP file that is contiguous and should minimize the overhead that the OS needs to manage it. - on placement on partitions and channels, Yuppie's points are well taken. - personally, I would NEVER set my swap file to 0. If you do this, if the situation ever arises that the OS needs to use a SWAP file, you'll get a message that the system is out of memory, and that you'll need to increase SWAP file size and REBOOT (I absolutely hate rebooting!!) - and finally: According to what I have read, MS recommends a SWAP file size of 2.5X the size of your existing RAM. Granted that if you have very little RAM, you'll want to increase that factor, and if you have gobs of RAM, you'll probably want to decrease that factor. My current setup is a 256MB RAM machine with a SWAP file min and max set to 384MB. At one time, I had 128MB RAM with a 256MB SWAP file - and I got that ugly not enough memory message above. (UT uses an ungodly amount of RAM, as well as the other programs I had running at the time...) Regards... ------------------ J. Byron Todd Computer Consultant byron@toddcomp.com Todd Computer Solutions

Actually adding RAM for me did decrease load times in a surprising fashion. But then I was noticing that on my 128MB machine that Task Manager showed 120+MB in usage BEFORE I started UT. I added a 128MB module - giving me 256MB RAM and noticed an immediate improvement - not just in load times, but also in game play. Everything seems a heck of a lot smoother, and now any hickups in game play are usually the result of a horribly lagged server. Just my $0.02 (if it's even worth that!) Regards...

I'm running Build 2183 - Professional (not server) and started using Publisher 2000 yesterday - to setup a product brochure. All was well - until today when I started browsing through the design templates. So far, I've had two hard lock ups of my computer. After rebooting, I checked the event viewer and can find nothing related to an application or hardware failure. I'm a computer consultant and I troubleshoot/consult for a living, so I know what to do most of the time. But does anyone have an idea about how to troubleshoot Win2K - with a failure that leaves no traces of a problem? As for me... no more Publisher 2000... and lot's of head scratching... TIA! ------------------ J. Byron Todd Computer Consultant byron@toddcomp.com Todd Computer Solutions

You say that you have nothing running in the background? I'll say that before I run UT, I kill the Plextor Manager 2000, Stop IIS services, and Disable NAV 2000 - primarily to give UT as many processor cycles as possible. It's possible that you have something running as a service that's causing the problem. You can check with Task Manager to see all of the processes running and to see if there is something in conflict on your machine. Hope this helps...

Yes. I applied the patch and it works fine on my system: Celeron 466 OC'd to 525 256MB RAM Viper V770 Ultra MX300 No problems and it seems to be a touch faster than it was with the 402 patch. Regards...

This is a known Tiberian Sun bug and was corrected in the first patch. It happened in Win 9X also. Did you even check westwood's site???? http://www.westwood.com Regards... ------------------ J. Byron Todd Computer Consultant byron@toddcomp.com Todd Computer Solutions

I'm a Microsoft OEM System Builder program member - so I can speak with some authority on this. OEMs (true OEMs who buy real, non-pirated, Microsoft authorized product) have never shipped "full" product. Instead, a CD of the product is included, but it can't be used to just install on a computer. For example, Windows 9X OEM can only be installed on a blank hard drive. If the hard drive is formatted, then its setup will not function correctly. Now with Windows 2000, I believe that MS is going a step further, where the OEM must do a pre-install of the product. This does not mean that someone who purchases a new comp with Windows 2000 does not get a CD, rather it means that the CD given cannot be used to install on any machine or used to upgrade a computer. You'll still get a CD with all the needed cab files - you just can't use it to upgrade all the other computers around you. Regards... ------------------ J. Byron Todd Computer Consultant byron@toddcomp.com Todd Computer Solutions

One easy way to tell how much YOU might need is to watch Task Manager (right-click on the task bar and choose task manager.) Click on the Performance tab, and you will see an area labeled MEM Usage. If the amount of memory shown in use is more than your physical memory, you're using your HD and slowing Win2K. (Like me... I've got 128MB of RAM and currently show 167MB in usage. Thankfully, a 128MB SIMM that I ordered last Friday came in today...) Regards... ------------------ J. Byron Todd Computer Consultant byron@toddcomp.com Todd Computer Solutions

Has anybody tried IomegaWare 2.1 out yet? I found it today at: http://www.iomega.com/software/index.html Regards... ------------------ J. Byron Todd Computer Consultant byron@toddcomp.com Todd Computer Solutions

Personally, I have found that NTFS performs a little snappier than FAT32 on a win2k system. As for the official differences (from MS): http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/partbook/win98dh/fatfat32ntfsfilesystems.htm http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q211/2/49.asp and FAT32 info: http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q154/9/97.ASP Hope this helps. ------------------ J. Byron Todd Computer Consultant byron@toddcomp.com Todd Computer Solutions [This message has been edited by ByronT (edited 12 January 2000).]

I don't know if you're going to like this but... I'm a Microsoft OEM System Builder and at the Windows 2000 preview seminar for OEMs, MS announced that all drivers for 3Com cards for Windows 2000 would have to come from 3Com. When I asked for clarification on this, MS said that basically you should forget about using the 3C905 adapters and find "something better." This announcement generated quite a groan from the crowd, but I think it's not totally unexpected. If you've worked a great deal with network, 3Com and SMC seem to have adapters that behave funny at times. And getting drivers to load for them can sometimes be a nightmare. I've since started replacing my 3Com NICs with Intel NICs - and MS Win2K has built in drivers (surprise...) Hope this helps... ------------------ J. Byron Todd Computer Consultant byron@toddcomp.com Todd Computer Solutions

In Device Manager, remove the Unknown Device reference, unplug the scanner from the computer, shutdown and restart. After the machine is completely running, plug the scanner back in. This should cause Windows 2000 to load the correct drivers - if it can see my 4100C, it should be able to address your 4200C. If the scanner is still not showing as installed, go into Settings, Control Panel, Scanners and Camera and see if you can add it manually ("Have Disk".) I installed everything first and then plugged in my add ons one at a time to ge them installed correctly (for some reason, all MS products seem to work better, if you add additional hardware a single piece at a time.) Hope this helps.

I'm definitely NOT agreeing that the Search link is hard to see, but... Maybe if Search were given an icon next to the "Post New Topic" and "Post Reply" icons? Just an idea...

First a question: Why would you want to use W2K's registry in W98? After you answer that, let me tell you why you don't want to do that. Although similar in outline form, Windows 98 and Windows 2000 registry are not close enough for just a copy or an import. The only way that even Microsoft thinks about both at the same time is when upgrading W98 to W2K and then only the application information is pulled over. Almost all other items in the registries are quite unique and you certainly don't want to mix them. By messing with the registry - you can easily render a Windows 98 machine unbootable. By messing with the registry of Win2K, you can render it a paperweight. All that said, I "mess" around with the registry fairly often - but I've had over three years of experience doing it, and I recognize the dangers of having an unbootable machine. ------------------ J. Byron Todd Computer Consultant byron@toddcomp.com Todd Computer Solutions

You miss their point, THC... DirectCD allows you to treat a CDR or CDReWriteable as a disk - like a HD - (by allowing bit by bit CD burns). For CDRs, this isn't a great feature, but for those with CD ReWrite drives, this can be a pretty powerful tool. And Adaptec does have a Direct CD upgrade for those of you with EZ CD4 at http://www.adaptec.com/support/files/dcd.html Hope this helps... ------------------ J. Byron Todd Computer Consultant byron@toddcomp.com Todd Computer Solutions

SHS, could you turn those "NO"s into "NO"s? Maybe that would help to get the point across.... Of course, half the problem is that 90% of the posters never search for previous posts on their problem. They might look at the first page of the forum - but sometimes they don't even do that. I would like to give kudos to Chameleon for http://win2kbox.8m.com and the link for the TNT drivers. I've pointed three different friends to that site and they've had great success with the Detonator 3.56 drivers found there.... Kudos to SHS for the work put into this site... Regards! ------------------ J. Byron Todd Computer Consultant byron@toddcomp.com Todd Computer Solutions

I'm not doubting you, SHS. I was just trying to figure out why Abit calls the board ACPI compliant and it's (obviously) not. Truthfully, the Power Management stuff of ACPI doesn't light my fire... I leave this machine on 24 hours a day x 365 days a year - with no screen saver BS, no powering down stuff. But I have found the auto configuration to be nice (as opposed to the Plug and Pray that I've had to deal with for 4 years....) Is it possible that Abit is a 1.1 ACPI compliant board and Win2K is looking for a 1.X compliant or later board for the Hibernate and other ACPI stuff? Hmmm... I just had another thought. On my Tyan board, I had to change another item in the BIOS for the ACPI to start working... I had to enable the "ACPI Control Register" in the Tyan BIOS. Oh well.. I'm checking out the ACPI spec at http://www.teleport.com/~acpi/acpihtml/home.htm to try to find out... Edited info below... PS. I checked my Power Options in the Control Panel, and I _don't_ have APM enabled... yet I am able to shutdown and the computer turns itself off. So why does my machine turn itself off after a shutdown when APM is not enabled in Win2K?!?! [This message has been edited by ByronT (edited 06 January 2000).]

In the Applications forum, SHS (the moderator) mentions that the BP6 and BE6 don't have "real" ACPI. To me, that forces two questions: What is "real ACPI"? How do Abit boards differ in their ACPI implementation? (And for you, is your board similar to the BP6 and BE6 such that your BH6 does not have "real" ACPI...) Regards... ------------------ J. Byron Todd Computer Consultant byron@toddcomp.com Todd Computer Solutions

SHS, could you be more specific when you say that the "BP6 & BH6 don't support real ACPI?" The reason that I ask is that I am interested in replacing my Tyan S1856 mthrbd with Celeron 466 OC'd to 525MHz with a dual CPU setup. But I have full ACPI support with this Tyan - meaning zero configuration problems to this point. What is "real" ACPI and how do the ABit boards differ in their ACPI setup (Abit's website say that both boards are "ACPI compliant"? ------------------ J. Byron Todd Computer Consultant byron@toddcomp.com Todd Computer Solutions

Oh yeah... As for the official HP statement, check out http://www.hp.com/cgi-bin/cposupport/csp...=hpscanjet47299 Basically, it looks as if HP is not going to support any USB scanners unders Windows 2000 (JERKS!!!)

I've got the 4100C USB working under Win2K Release 2183. All I had to do was plug it in and Win2K recognized it and installed some MS drivers for it. As for the resolution, it sucks - but that's because MS's drivers uses the native resolution of the scanner and has nothing to enhance it's capabilities. Since the 4200C was the replacement for the 4100C, I would expect that it would work the same. Simply fire up the computer without the scanner plugged into the USB port, and then when the machine is fully up and running, plug in the scanner and Windows should recognize that a new USB device has been installed and then should install new drivers. If the computer does not even acknowledge that the scanner has been plugged in, then the USB ports might have something wrong. Hope this helps. ------------------ J. Byron Todd Computer Consultant byron@toddcomp.com Todd Computer Solutions

Simply click on the Start Button, choose Programs, Accessories, and then RIGHT-CLICK on Windows Explorer. Click on Properties. In the Target: entry area, click at the end of the text that should read %SystemRoot%\explorer.exe. Add a space and then the path of where you want the explorer to open to. Note: This will actually turn the explorer into the Open command. Add "/e," before the path of where you want explorer to open to to force Windows Explorer into explore mode. Example: ...\explorer.exe /e,c:\winnt will force explorer to open a window starting at c:\winnt in explore mode. Hope this helps! ------------------ J. Byron Todd Computer Consultant byron@toddcomp.com Todd Computer Solutions

In the Event Log, what is listed under the Source column? Knowing what is the source of the "bugcheck" should allow you to determine which driver/service/program is killing your W2K box. Hope this helps. ------------------ J. Byron Todd Computer Consultant byron@toddcomp.com Todd Computer Solutions

Well, now you have me looking.... I hadn't looked at my Event log in ages! I got adventurous yesterday and overclocked my Celery466 to 525MHz. I've got a CPU eater (a Prime number generator) running that keeps the CPU pegged at 100% and it should finish on Jan 23, 2000. (heh) I've also got a temp monitor that shows the CPU temp hovering around 39 degrees C. (Intel says these suckers can handle up to 85 degrees C). Anyway, I hadn't seen any bad things happen and actually have seen a slight performance boost. That is... until you got me to look at my Event log. OOOOOHHHH! The Atapi ide0 port is timing out every 30 seconds for 5 minutes after I boot. So what does it mean? Heck if I know. The machine still runs and no spurious reboots. So concerning your message... Do you have any idea what the NBT device is? What's under "Source" for the error (mine was atapi)? Just my thoughts.... ------------------ J. Byron Todd Computer Consultant byron@toddcomp.com Todd Computer Solutions