BladeRunner

.....oh I agree, please don't allow them!! We do not want to become Madonion, sorry Futuremark2!

I'm sure the poster has probably tried it without any compatability mode set but you can never be sure That reminds me when we first had WinXP released and we got a whole load of people posting here "Can't get game x to run, I've tried all the compatability modes". The reply being it works without the need for any! People do tend to jump into troubleshooting before a problem has actually been found! Anyway, fingers crossed the original poster had already tried that.

Well personally I'd like to see a "generic" graphics driver on server OS's that display any resolution you like, 256 or 16bit colour and that is it. That way there is no chance of polluting your server with "dodgy" video drivers - one less thing to worry about.

I thought about that. I've never actually used Remote Assistance over dial-up and unforunately we are both still in the world of 56k - is it actually useable at that kind of speed? Aye the games are pretty old. I'm hoping that setting them to Win95 in compatability mode might be enough to get them running - it was just a long shot that somebody else here might have used them under WinXP and knew exactly what needed to be done.

OK, silly question time. If I go into my PM's I have both an "Outbox" and "Sentbox". What is the difference? I notice that some of the messages I've sent appear in the outbox and others in the sentbox. What is the difference?

Ah, well that all makes perfect sense! OK, well at least I now know why a PM I sent about six months ago was never replied to LOL Ta

If you are not sure which 9700Pro to get, seriously consider the Crucial one. They follow ATI's spec to the letter and at £232 inc VAT I think it is also the cheapest one out there. Not an AIW but really is a nice card - well will be once it is 100% compatible with Granite Bay based motherboards (only about 95% compatability between the two right now).

In the numerous years I've been online AOL has been the butt of many jokes. I think it is also very safe to say that I have probably attacked them as much as the next person. So it was a major surprise to me today when I could be found with not only an AOL "Completely Free" 120hr trial CD in my hand, but also seeing it fed into my computer!! To give a little background behind what would appear on the surface as madness I am not in a broadband area. BT ADSL will never be available in my area, simple as that. Cable have missed us out too and until BT get Midband sorted out I've really got no other option than dial-up. ISDN is an option but I'm afraid that it is too expensive for what it is, 64k for the same price as broadband I'm sorry I cannot consider this fair. When flat-rate came out I of course jumped to that option, using Virgin.net I could have unlimited hours online every month all for a healthy £14. The drawback? Every 2hrs you'd be disconnected, you could dial straight back on but when playing MMORPG's 2hrs simply is not always enough. AOL give you flat rate too, unlimited hours of connection every month and most importantly no 2hr disconnection, in fact they never disconnect you. This feature alone was enough for me to install that trial and give it a go. As a "convert" I feel I should give people the truth behind AOL 1. Yes you are forced to use the AOL software to connect to the Internet. It is family orientated and horrible. However you can happily connect and then minimise the software, you do not need to use it at all after connection. 2. You can happily use IE or any browser of your choice. You are not forced to use the AOL browser and they add NO customization to your existing IE/Netscape etc. 3. E-Mail is terrible. You cannot use Outlook or any other e-mail program to send & recieve, you are forced to use their software. I'm fine as I have my own virtual POP & SMTP servers with my domain name hosting account so I can use Outlook for all my e-mail needs when connected through AOL. Those without their own domain names will find AOL e-mail horrible. 4. Connection is actually very good, they have a lot of users yes but they also have a lot of phone numbers too. The software will try some six different numbers to get you connected and all of them fall under your "flat-rate" connection. Little chance they will all be engaged. AOL is far too family orientated however I feel this is the market they are aiming for and the one that has made them as popular as they are. I would love to see an "Expert" version of their software what allows you to use standard dial-up networking connections and the ability to use any 3rd party e-mail program and who knows, maybe in the future they will. However, if you are seeking a dial-up or ISDN ISP that offers you no restriction on number of hours a month or how long you stay connected for at a time then AOL could well be for you. Don't fear those trial CD's and the stigma associated with AOL, register your own domain and nobody need even know you use them!!

For the GF FX Vs ATI 9700 question I made my choice. Been running a 9700Pro for about 25hrs now and love it to bits!

Oh don't get me wrong, it is nice to see the odd screen shot now and again (so long as they are properly sized!!) It's just this is a very professional site, we don't talk warez and other thieving scum activities and I'd hate to see MS come knocking on the door of the admins demanding the removal of the images - far easier and safer to link to them

I shall have to class myself as "one of the lucky ones". In response to the problems you've either experienced or heard about: for one - most of our customers who use AOL on our site - get disconnected often, seems either: ever 45mins , 60 mins, or 2 hrs To begin with I was having a few issues with this, unexpected disconnects and this annoyed me as the ONLY reason I've gone AOL is because they are the only flat-rate ISP I can find that don't disconnect you every 2hrs. I used AOL's own troubleshooting guide and they suggested changing the modem initilization string to a "default" one they had created. This has done the trick, to confirm I had a marathon 4hr Anarchy Online session last night without a single disconnect. Ping times from players on AOL are always a joke - upon doing a report almost ALL AOL users on our site (often around 100 +) all have ridiculously high pings - as opposed to anyone else I don't play FPS's on line because I know that over half the skill there is based on your connection speed. My current MMORPG of choice is Anarchy Online and my connection to their servers is no slower than when I was using Virgin.net Certainly Ping rates have not gone through the roof. Email: I think this is simply people do now kno whow to use a "reply" so they never include the previous email (for support) Yup, I've already touched their e-mail system. If only you could interface Outlook or Outlook Express into AOL I'd be happy, but alas you cannot. Major failing there. Connection speed - for the many that i have asked what speed they are conneceted at - i would say average is probably about 37-40kb. - Sorry, but unless u got crappy old phone lines, u should not get anyless then 45k I am on terrible lines, but that is what you get from being "out in the sticks" here in the UK. I used to mainly connect at 42.6k. When I changed my modem from an external USR to an internal true hardware Diamond my connect speeds went up to anything from 46k - 50k. These are exactly the same connect speeds I get through AOL. I've never connected at anything less than 42.6k since I started using them and as that is the speed I always used to connect at this hasn't proved to be a problem. U can use IE after..LOL - i spent almost 2 horus with a person tryihng to get IE to work - it would not work! it would not display ANy pages and evr time u started it up, it would ask to dial up and connect with AOL - even though they were alreadyt connected. Here is how my first ever connection to AOL went. I installed the CD and it then dialled into a free phone number so that I could get my free trial up and running. After this was all installed it checked to make sure I was using the best phone numbers and then asked me to disconnect and reconnect, which I did. AOL launched and connected me. I then opened up IE6 (built into WinXP) and attempted to hit this very site. First time it worked. No settings changes, no AOL customization within IE. It simply just worked, no problems at all. I've never been asked to dial-up when already connected via AOL. Also, another person - had AOL and a DSL with another company - The person who try to connect with the dsl - AOL would pop up! - check setting - set it to "never dial a connection" - guess what AOL would still pop up. Cannot comment on that as I do not have access to ADSL nor is it likely while I live at this address. Sounds like a configuration problem though as I've seen similar on a work laptop which can get it's connection via either the local LAN or dial-up when at home. Just need to check those settings. Someone else - removed ALL aol software from add/ remove - got new dial up account - tried to connect - window pops up - Connection via AOL It is funny you should mention this as one of my worst fears was AOL getting integrated into the OS and you not being able to remove it. I created a System Restore Point before installation for that very reason. After I'd been using AOL for a while I decided to remove it to see what exactly it left behind. It was actually pretty amazing, many uninstallations fail so badly, this one worked without a single hitch. No sign of AOL left on my system, no program folder, no nothing. Attempted to connect via my virgin.net connection and it did so fine. Even using RegClean and there was still no trace of AOL. A very good uninstallation process. U are right - AOL has gone for the "family" market, but they are not so frendly to me, if they work, great, you are one of the FEW lucky ones! They are family orientated and that is why they have such a massive user base. I literally followed all of the instructions that came with the trial CD and it all worked without a hitch. I didn't need to do anything else and with the exception of the modem string change (which had very easy to follow step-by-step instructions) it has been extremely flawless. so yeah enough AOl bashing for me - check out: Didn't check the link, I see enough "MS Bashers" links to know what this will be about. Me thinks it is the usual trend of "bashing da big boys cause its cool to do so".

Symantec virus defs are updated on a daily basis. The easy to install .exe file is updated weekly - every Wednesday.

Have you checked your alpha/beta agreement? I am guessing that you are not allowed to post screen shots from this OS until it hits late beta.

Oh don't you know it "Will this upgrade increase my 3DMark score" is an absolutely classic post over at FutureMark and it so makes me laugh. Lets be honest, if you are building a new machine that has SATA ports on the mainboard and this new WD 10,000rpm drive isn't that much more than a standard 7200 IDE drive then you'd probably be crazy not to go for it. However if you've got anything ATA100 or higher at 7200rpm and of a good capacity you really would be crazy to fork out just to "have the best". But people will - I can only assume that once these people get some kind of responsabilities (partners, houses, etc) they will realise that throwing money at a PC every three months is a little bit silly.

Basically speaking yes. With Granite Bay motherboards you need two memory modules and ideally they should be exactly the same as one another - same make, speed etc. It is a bit like RDRAM in that you fill the first two banks and they operate in a dual-channel mode. Although the board only officially supports PC2100 DDR you can obviously use faster stuff, this aids if you want to overclock or plan on using the memory in future systems. DDR333 seems to offer the best price at the moment, DDR400 stuff is still rather expensive. In my ASUS P4G8X (Granite Bay) board I have 2x 512MB Crucial PC2700 modules. I'm not really an overclocker and am happy with my 2.53Ghz CPU, however I did test on 150Mhz FSB and it was very stable.

The P4 doesn't need or use Dual-DDR of that spped. The GB boards support dual-channel PC2100 DDR because that give the P4 the 4.2GB/Sec that it can use on a 133mhz FSB. The memory is locked to the FSB, so if you increase your FSB you will also increase your memory speeds on a 1:1 ratio. This has been shown with the latest SIS chipset, even when using DDR333 memory the increase in performance in basically non-existant as the P4 doesn't need that amount of bandwidth.

It's a nice enough idea and I think it is safe to assume that WD will sell a fair few of these units. However there are still flaws in the plan, generation 1 SATA still has bandwidth limitations, the 150mb/sec is purely theortetical as anything ATA100 up is. Then the two issues surrounding IDE drives that WD must have magically sorted out before the release of this drive. 1. Heat - One of the only reasons we haven't had 10k IDE drives before was because of heat. IBM released a paper on it ages ago and heat combined with the other IDE limitations made 10k IDE non viable. 2. Sound - I could afford SCSI if I really wanted to. If I wanted the best possible performance then SCSI still is the way to go, but even if I demanded that kind of performance SCSI would put me off because of the noise of the drives. 10k drives are simply not quiet and over the past year, year and a half a lot of people have been concentrating on silent or very quiet running machines. This is certainly not the end of SCSI, seek times with this unit are comparible but sustained transfer is not. I'll be giving this one a miss and see what kind of performance is available from generation 2 SATA in about 8-12 months time.

Oh AOL e-mail is terrible!!! Don't get me started on that - you have to use their software to send e-mail, you cannot use Outlook, Outlook Express or any other 3rd party software to gain access to your e-mail. However this doesn't effect me at all. I have my own domain names and the company who host my website also provide POP3 & SMTP servers, so I just log into mail.prawlings.net (my primary domain name) to send & receive all of my e-mail thus bypassing AOL's system. My connection to AOL goes something like this: Open AOL client Connect Minimise Do everything I always used to do online through all my favourite programs, IE, Outlook etc and don't click the AOL client again until it is time to disconnect!

Well I'm still here :-P AOL for over 24hrs now and no problems. In fact I've just logged into AO (My current MMORPG of choice) and the ping to the server is excellent, certainly no slower than my old ISP and now I have the luxuary of never getting disconnected! I'll never tell the rest of the world that I use them though and I'll never actually use my AOL e-mail address, but as a pure access to the Internet provider they are proving to be rather good.

You are getting confused with the Live update updates and the Intelligent updaters. We use NAV Corporate and our signatures are updated on a daily basis at midday without fail. My local server goes off to get the updates daily at midday and then distributes them around the network over the next ten minutes - these are daily without fail. That was the reason behind my original statement in the ongoing thread - as they are updated daily there seemed little point telling people this.

A far easier solution would be so simply pass the e-mail on to abuse@microsoft.com Now when Mr. I'll make some money gets a knock on the door at 7:00am and finds five Microsoft lawyers stood there he might think twice about running such a scam again.

There has always been the option of purchasing a new PC with any OS still supported by MS. The last time I cheked over at Dell I could order my servers with NT4 pre-installed. It is for backwards compatability. I have an AD domain at work and I have made the standard workstation either Win2k SP3 or Redhat Linux 7.3 (8.0 for the advanced users who can support themselves). For that reason any new workstation/desktop I purchase will have Win2k on. Servers have Win2k Server. Laptop's are slightly different, I personally feel that battery life and other features work better under WinXP, so I've made that the standard for any new laptop. My work PC is also WinXP however that is my prefered OS and as I'm the Sys Admin that is my call. Contact the PC company in question and ask them what the percentage is on the OS's installed on new systems. Even though the older OS's are available I think you'll find that 80%+ of customers will chose the latest and certainly the greatest. Personally I'll never go back to Win2k either at home or at work - that is an old OS (2.5yrs) and WinXP excels in every area.

As I've been saying for a while - First generation SATA devices are not worth upgrading to. If you are building a new machine and the motherboard has SATA onboard then go for it as the SATA HD is not that much more expensive. If you've already got a fast HD then I'd say don't bother. I have a WD1200JB drive attached via a converter/bridge to my Silicon Image SATA controller. I guess I get the best of both worlds, great performance and I also get to use the small cable.

So, SP1a does the following things, according to the knowledgebase entry: Add/Remove programs entry now reads Windows XP SP1a Microsoft VM no longer included in the SP I have this feeling that people are not going to be rushing out to get this one.

*Shrugs* I don't know why anybody would want to beta test a new OS on their main machine. I have machines set aside at work in their own AD domain that are there just for beta OS's and the like. Installing a beta on a main machine is asking for trouble. As for product activation. I can live with it because it doesn't get in my way. 30 days before activation required, a major amount of hardware changes until reactivation and even if all that comes true activation takes 10 seconds online. Now if I was a thieving bastard then maybe I'd find it a problem, but as I am not then I say MS should not only continue to develop it but they should make it a lot more advanced. I'm thinking along the lines of every single "hot fix" and post release/post sp patch contining the code to search and destroy known compromised versions of the OS.