deckard

In Win9x there was a simple but very useful utility called Net Watcher which showed you who was accessing your shares and what files they were transferring. What equivalent utility is there for Win2k?

Has anyone found a way to increase the sample rate of a PS/2 mouse in XP? This worked great under Win9x with PS2rate but I never had any luck getting this working in Win2k (using the Win2k-enabled version). Since I'll likely upgrade, has anyone done this in XP with any type of utility and verified that it works (using a rate checker)?

Thanks, just wanted to be sure XP was up to snuff. My Win2k problem turns out to be the Kensington drivers as I suspected. Soon as I uninstalled them, PS2RATE and MEMPS2 both worked a trick. Of course no driver equals greatly decreased mouse support (at least in Kensington's case). I've opened a trouble report with Kensington but I'm not holding my breath for a fix. You'd think a big peripheral supplier like Kensington would learn from the competition (Logitech) and provide a custom PS/2 rate adjuster WITHIN the driver functionality.

OK I have another question. Can someone verify that setting the PS/2 sample rate in XP to 200 works using this rate checker? http://tscherwitschke.de/download.html I have had no luck at all getting the sample rate above 80 in Win2k using my Kensington Expert Mouse along with their latest 5.60 drivers. I dunno if these drivers somehow block the ability to tweak the sample rate or what but I cannot get anything to work. I tried PS2RATE, MEMPS2, and the mouse settings in Control Panel mentioned above (which go to 100 in Win2k). All 3 act like they are doing their job but upon checking, it's always at 80. Anyway, never mind about that but if someone with XP could crank up their PS/2 sample rate all the way to 200 and verify it works, I would really appreciate it.

No I didn't look because I couldn't look. I stated above I want to upgrade to XP from Win2k, meaning I don't have XP at this time. I can state as fact that the same option in Win2k goes only to 100, but you have stated that it goes all the way to 200 in XP and this answers my question completely. Thanks.

True but in Win2k the maximum value from that option is 100 when it should be 200. Logitech Mouseware software overrides this and allows you the full range up to 200 but I have and prefer the Kensington Expert Mouse, whose drivers have no such override. So I would need some 3rd party utility to get it over 100.

I have noticed that when running some apps and games they will hang every several mins for about 5 seconds, then resume as normal. 2 immediate examples are watching large movies streamed off the CDROM and playing the game XCOM Enforcer. In each example, every several mins the entire app exhibits the exact symptoms described above. I have 2 CDROM drives and it happens on both. A couple other people have told me they are experiencing this but I cannot find any info on the web about this problem or how to fix it. Has anyone seen it? I have used gpedit.msc to disable autoplay and I have tried the 'Enable digital CD audio' feature in device manager both on and off with no change in the problem. I have all the latest fixes from Windows Update and I have the latest Media Player also. Thanks in advance for any help. Relevant System info: Win2k Pro SP2 Adaptec 2940U2W SCSI Plextor PX-40TSi CDROM Plextor PX-R820Ti CDR

A fine suggestion. I posted this issue over on Tweak3D and someone responded right away and appears to have hit the nail on the head. I still need to test a little more but right now it seems like the problem is burned CD's. After the guy responded I realized that all the recent issues I've had were from apps run off burned media. I dug out my purchased copy of Half-Life, which streams redbook audio off the CD while you play (just like XCOM Enforcer), and sure enough played for over an hour with no freezes. I'm wondering if my new Pioneer DVDROM will be any better at reading / streaming from burned media. Guess I'll find it later this week when it arrives. So anyway thanks for your suggestion about Tweak3D.

Hmm so it would seem SP2 isn't the cause either. I don't use IDE at all, everything is SCSI. Both my CDROM drives are on the same narrow channel but recently I did indeed take the CDROM offline to test exactly what you said, having only 1 drive (the CDR) on the channel. The problem did not go away for me after that though, unfortunately. Before I heard that other people were having this problem I just figured my CDROM drive was going bad and ordered a Pioneer DVD drive, which should be here in a couple days. I have no confidence now that this will fix the problem but hey at least I'll be able to watch DVD movies on the PC now wheeeee.

In fact, that is exactly what happens to me. Nothing crashes or freezes, just hangs for about 5 seconds while the CDROM spins up, then returns to normal operation. So the problem seems not to be related to the data bus, since you have an IDE drive and both of mine are SCSI. So the question is what causes the CDROM to spin down in the first place? My roommate does not see this problem at all and has similar specs, about the only thing I have that he doesn't is SP2. Do you have SP2 installed?

Thanks for the suggestion. I can try increasing the buffer (depends on the viewer application I guess) in the case of watching a video streaming off the CDROM but what about the situation with games? I forgot to mention (pretty important point actually) that this has only recently become a problem. I want to say maybe around the time I installed SP2 and the new Media Player but I'm a bit foggy on exactly when. It's not a show-stopper but certainly an annoyance to have things freeze for 5 seconds every several mins.

Anyone have any luck at all getting the Kensington Mouseworks beta Win2k drivers to work? After I installed them I got a blue screen upon reboot. Same thing happened to my roommate. No choice but to boot into safe mode and delete them. We both run Abit BE6-II mobo's with Kensington Expert Mouse trackballs. Also, I have every critical update / service pack / compatibility patch that is available on the Windows Update site.

Well what an old thread but anyway, Kensington finally released the Win2k drivers and are up to 5.6 beta 8. Thankfully, after the completely worthless beta 1, since beta 6 I have had total stability and full support for all functions of my Kensington Expert Mouse. I just picked up an Expert Mouse Pro USB today since Kensington tech support told me it would work just fine. We shall see.

For Win2k users, try this too. It's not gonna solve all your problems but it DOES help give you a better gaming environment in general. I've been very happy with it since I started using it. http://www.gameroffice.com/

Yes I have experienced this too with 32-bit color and the Det3 drivers on a Geforce2. I have no clue how to fix it but wanted to at least mention that you are not alone.

Quick question about the D3 drivers...is the 'full-screen-gaming refresh-rate problem' finally resolved under Win2k or do we once again have to hack an INF file? Thanks in advance.

Thanks for the suggestion DosFreak but apparently the Media Encoder is only for working with Windows-specific formats. I took the plunge and installed WMP7 and it is so far working properly with MPEG4 files.

Say can someone report on whether this new version of Media Player finally works with MPEG-4 video playback? Every time I try to view one, the standard Media Player goes out to Microsoft to get the MP4 codec, attempts to install it, fails, and I get the audio track playback only. Ad Infinitum. Thanks in advance.

I agree and am not going to worry about it. The only reason I wanted them to power down is heat. I have 4 high-rpm UW and/or U2W scsi drives and they are hot, hot, HOT. What I will do instead is just get some big-ass cooling fans and let the drives run happily.

I have this problem too. I use APM since I can't even install Win2k with ACPI enabled. My drives won't power down when I try it with Adaptec EZ-SCSI either. I can force them down but not long after Win2k will spin them right back up again. Anyone know the answer to this one?

That should work for DirectX games but that won't help OpenGL games at all. The only 2 ways I know of that TRULY fix this problem right now for ALL games is to hack the NV4_DISP.INF file or use PowerStrip.

I have the 3.81 Nvidia drivers and while UT and Q3 run very smooth and stable, Quake 2 will crash and exit to the desktop after about 10 or so mins of play. I still play Q2 mods extensively so this is a real bummer. I would really like to know if anyone else is having any problems running Quake 2 under Win2k with a Geforce. I have some suspicion that it's a driver issue since I've seen multiple posts about random crashes playing Half-Life, which I do believe uses the Quake 2 engine. Thanks in advance for any input. System: Abit BX6 2.0, 384 meg PC100, p3-800@897, Creative DDR, SB Live, Adaptec 2940 U2W, 2 3COM 3C595 NIC's

Well apparently noone had this problem but me but I'll post the solution to my problem anyway just in case it helps anyone else in the future. My original problem was random crashes back to the desktop running Quake2 or any mod based on its engine (Halflife, Action Quake, SOF, etc). To make a very long story short the fix was to enable Vsync for OpenGL. Prior to the 5.13 Detonators there was no obvious way to do this, hence the solution to my problem being so evasive. I get the feeling the problem was not so much the act of enabling Vsync as it was the reduced load on the Quake2 engine. I say this because I have a Creative DDR Geforce at AGP 2x with SBA enabled and a P3-800 @ 896. With Vsync disabled, this combination can hit 270+ fps in Quake2 at 800x600 32-bit color. I suspect that the Quake2 engine can't handle operating this fast and just quits. Adding some credence to my theory is that the more complicated and tasking Quake2-based games like Halflife and SOF run much much longer before crashing than the simple ones like Action Quake. Anyone have any other speculations? Abit BX6 2.0, P3-800 @ 896, 512 meg PC100, CLAP, 5.13 Detonator

Wow these 5.13 drivers are wicked fast. Everything is working great for me now except for one thing. Since I've been running Win2k (starting with 3.66 drivers) Quake2 will only run for about 10-15 mins before crashing back to the desktop with a generic application error. Anyone else having this problem? Sorry a bit off-topic but no one will respond to my post in the games forum. Abit BX6 r2, P3-800 OC 897, 384 PC100, CLAP

Does Win2k use vcache like Win9x? If so, is there a tweak utility for Win2k as cool as Cacheman is for Win9x?