clutch

I was hoping for a more creative response, but alas, nothing. Come on guys, let's see more shots at the Americans! You can do it! Heaven forbid Americans make fun of other nations, or else there's some bull$hit racist comment that comes with it. Or, better yet, I can just make fun of other countries because that's acceptable, right? Something like: News flash: Backfire from Humvee in Southern Iraq, France surrenders... How's that? Do you think that's acceptable behavior?

Yeah, utterly hilarious. Hmm, no, wait, it isn't. But hey, for a country with few exports worth a damn (wood, maple syrup, snow, etc) it's nice to know that comedy is now, officially, not one of them. <disclaimer> Now please Canadians, don't take this personally, we really like having you guys build cars and such for much cheaper than we would pay our own people (well, except for us moving plants to Mexico where the work is better and cheaper still, but who's counting?). I mean, your labor is great, and we have lots of fun using, er, I mean "visiting" your country for cheap vacations. Remember, this is all in jest, right? </disclaimer>

Quote: Cotten BUD? heh..i dunno. hmm..i didn't void the warrenty..oh btw..its a friendly...ahah..is there some protection on XP? =p So, it's a copy of the original game that you "bought", correct? If a game has some sort of copy protection, and the master wasn't copied correctly then the copy will have issues when it's used for the installation. Also, some copy protection schemes cause major issues with a large percentage of drives on the market. I remember Aquanox having a lot of issues with about half of its customers, and these were people that actually paid for a legal version of the game. If you are trying to get w4rez copies to install on your system(s), then I sincerely hope that it's a miserable failure. Oh, and the mysterious cotton-based device referenced is called a cotton swab (or the trade name of "Q-Tip" by Johnson brand) in the US.

You could just use something like Debian or Gentoo Linux, and run an app called "MPlayer" (www.mplayerhq.hu) to watch your movies. You can even launch the app from the command line with all of your parameters or use gmplayer with the GUI. Then you wouldn't be sacrificing a license just for a glorified DVD player. But then again, this would be Linux.

APK, mostly I was directing the comment at anything that could be in his generation of hardware. Even a 486 that I had could swing supporting of my 5GB disk (my earlier systems never even saw 500MB disks on the horizon, so it wasn't an issue). Now, I'm sure if you dig back far enough you will find all kinds of limitations, but I was referring the hardware only a few generations old, not back in the stone age...

Quote: My 2c about the two OS's (I have both at home and use Win2K Pro and Server at the office) Win2k: overall better for corporate/enterprise use -keeps the feel of WinNT4 and Win9x (good for the office where tons of PC's with legacy OS's and software are everywhere) -legacy hardware support -better in network/security management; tasks of doing so are more familiar -absense of the Product Activation feature makes reinstalling and restoration much less of a hassle (remember that recovering and restoring a trashed PC in the office must be done in record time) While your XP comments seemed to make sense (although there was a leak issue with XP SP1 that introduced a new memory mgmt issue, there is a fix that you can get for it) I do have a few comments on the Win2K side: -The interface can be subdued for the most part and returned to the "classic" (as termed in XP) look. The Luna interface can be completely canned, or portions of it can be retained (I keep the new start menu myself while sometimes removing everything else). -I haven't seen a piece of hardware yet that only works in Win2K and not XP, so an example would be nice. -You get more registry functions that can be managed through Active Directory, and these workstations will be able to manage Windows 2003 Server via MMC while Win2K will not. You also get Remote Desktop built-in using the Terminal Services tech from Win2K Server, which is much faster than using something like VNC or PCAnywhere, plus it doesn't require the permission from the user (another registry/policy selection). -If you are in a corporate environment, then you probably have volume licenses anyway and can get the corporate version of the CD which does not have product activation. In some cases, you can modify a file on the image, reburn it, and not even need to enter a serial number (this last part has been around for a while). As for me, I have found XP to be kind of a wash in performance. It's faster in some things (3D, CAD/CAM, etc.) while slower in other things (having more than 15 windows open at once, it might bog sometimes). However, I love having ClearType for my LCDs, and I really like Remote Desktop. Plus, I can still manage Windows 2003 server (.NET Betas) without issue and I have more options with AD management using XP on workstations. So, it's XP for me when using Windows, while I use Gentoo for Linux on servers.

APK, I agree with mezron on this. I remember PC makers sending out PCs with 4GB+ HDDs and still using Fat16 even when FAT32 was already out. Every BIOS I had ever seen would work up to 8GB (at least in theory) with the advent of the Pentium processor. Although there might have been some firmware incompatibilities, the BIOS would still have been able to address that much space. I had a 5GB WD HDD with a 486/133 (yeah, it was an "overdrive" type proc) and it worked fine with that harddrive. I think I used the EZ BIOS software from WD first, and later stopped using it with FAT32 in Win95 OSR2.

If using something like WinDVD, the application needs to use the primary video display to show the movie. I found this out last week when I got my spiffy new flat panel and wanted to watch DVDs on my DVI input, which at the time the nVidia drivers had considered to be the secondary display. I switched it to primary, and it worked great. However, when I would watch movies and videos using media player, I can see the feed on my secondary monitor (I now have a 17" CRT using the analog connection) without any issues. I would suggest trying a different video player (such as media player) or seeing if the media application has a setting for which display it works with.

Odd, I was just thinking of getting one of those for the last few days. I have an old AIW Pro that worked really well (outside of the 3D perfomance, oddly enough ) and I am looking to add really nice TV/Video capture functionality to my PC. However, some of the Add-In cards don't seem so hot, and I am still a bit gun-shy when dealing with ATI stuff (many a driver issue in the past with a lot of workstations). When do you think you'll be able to use it? I would like to hear your opinion of it.

Dredd, just scope out the link that DS3 provided and you should be fine. Occasionally, I have had to reinstall IIS because of some odd issue that simply would not correct itself. However, this is probably giving you the issue. As DS3 mentioned earlier, when you use a modern version of IE, OWA gives you more options and functionality than with Netscape or any other browser. These added functions mean more calls between the client and the server, and URLScan disable a great deal of them by default.

Welp, I have used McAfee for the last 5 and haven't had anything come in on my systems, and there are people that love Panda and the other scanners out there. But, if it *wasn't* up to date initially and you get hit, then trying to update it afterward will usually be of little to no help since most virus/worm writers make sure that the scanner will not find their stupid little app. I have seen some worms actually disable virus scanners altogether until you mount the partition and edit the registry from outside the hosting OS (in some extreme cases when you can't fix it while booted in normally). Now, I would suggest checking out some of the other vendors' websites and see if they have any info on this issue, as if there is they might have a fix as well.

Are you by chance using URLScan or the IIS Lockdown utility? URLScan in its default configuration can severly limit what is sent to the client, and what verb are allowed to be used by the client to get information. I had to host OWA on a different port with a different URLScan setup to keep it from blocking OWA usage with IE.

Yeah, I haven't tried UT2003 or Q3 on it yet, and I might install them tonight. I don't play games very often, but I am interested in seeing how they will turn out on this thing.

Quote: Besides exchange 2000, I have yet to experience a need for such crucial uptime to warrant clustering. As long as you have the proper hardware to setup and run cluster services, I cannt see a reason why RRAS would be an issue for that setup. An active/cluster should be adequate for your needs. SQL and IIS could be other reasons , but if you are serving from home then chances are your home broadband connection will die before your hardware will. No amount of clustering will protect you from a failed connection.

Yeah, I wasn't getting any DVD playback on it while using the DVI connector, and then I flipped the "primary" output from VGA to DVI on my Ti4600 and now that works. It claims to be running at 72Hz now (I am not very familiar with the DVI spec, as I haven't had much use for it until very recently) with the newer drivers from MS Update, and I have a 17" CRT running off the VGA connection for media player and other stuff.

Picked up a Samsung SyncMaster 191T today to replace my dying Radius 19" monitor. It is running 1280x1024x32bit@75Hz and is awesome with ClearType enabled. http://www.bestbuy.com/detail.asp?e=11182391&m=488&cat=497&scat=501

Sweet, great info!

Quote: They will disolve the linsys brand. You can count on that. I'm not so sure about that, since there's a lot of money in that name brand for residential and SOHO equipment. But they can (and will) do what they want with it.

CLIs are stupid for domestic applications (I am assuming that DS3 was being sarcastic, or at least I hope so ). I can't stand them. I had to fiddle around with one for my Eicon ISDN router that I used a long time ago, and that got old, especially since you would control some stuff via CLI, and other stuff via HTML/WWW. Another problem with this is that it means Cisco is going on another shopping spree. So many people pointed and b1tched about MS doing this, but Cisco was just as bad for a long time, and then quietly stepped back when MS got hauled into court. Oh well, I guess all the IOS exploits will now have more hardware to make it to...

Does task manager show a second graph for the "second" processor?

We warmed up to 70 over the weekend, but we're back down into the 30s today with some rain. I am moving back to Tucson, AZ. to get away from these long, miserable winters in Wisconsin.

Is there some problem with earlier versions of Mandrake that restrict those drivers? Because I was able to get my GF4s working in RedHat 7.3 and 8.0 (along with Debian Woody, its derivitives, and Gentoo) with the drivers from the nvidia website. Just use the source code and you shouldn't have any issues. Now, with being dropped back to the desktop, did you go through the readme on it and comment the "dri" and "GLcore" lines in it? Also, did you change the "vesa" or "nv" line to "nvidia" (it would be the "driver" line")? These are in your X config file, which should be at /etc/X11/XF86Config or possibly /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 (if you have a "-4" one, that's the one that you will be probably using). Here is what my XF86Config-4 file looked like on one of my systems with a GF2 MX and a 17" monitor (this file was generated by DEBCONF in Debian, and worked pretty well but is still very basic). Pay special attention to the lines that are in bold, as those were the lines I had to change: ### BEGIN DEBCONF SECTION # XF86Config-4 (XFree86 server configuration file) generated by dexconf, the # Debian X Configuration tool, using values from the debconf database. # # Edit this file with caution, and see the XF86Config-4 manual page. # (Type "man XF86Config-4" at the shell prompt.) # # If you want your changes to this file preserved by dexconf, only make changes # before the "### BEGIN DEBCONF SECTION" line above, and/or after the # "### END DEBCONF SECTION" line below. # # To change things within the debconf section, run the command: # dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86 # as root. Also see "How do I add custom sections to a dexconf-generated # XF86Config or XF86Config-4 file?" in /usr/share/doc/xfree86-common/FAQ.gz. Section "Files" FontPath "unix/:7100" # local font server # if the local font server has problems, we can fall back on these FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/misc" FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/cyrillic" FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/:unscaled" FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/:unscaled" FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/Type1" FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo" FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi" FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi" EndSection Section "Module" # Load "GLcore" Load "bitmap" Load "dbe" Load "ddc" # Load "dri" Load "extmod" Load "freetype" Load "glx" Load "int10" Load "pex5" Load "record" Load "speedo" Load "type1" Load "vbe" Load "xie" EndSection Section "InputDevice" Identifier "Generic Keyboard" Driver "keyboard" Option "CoreKeyboard" Option "XkbRules" "xfree86" Option "XkbModel" "pc104" Option "XkbLayout" "us" EndSection Section "InputDevice" Identifier "Configured Mouse" Driver "mouse" Option "CorePointer" Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice" Option "Protocol" "ImPS/2" Option "Emulate3Buttons" "true" Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5" EndSection Section "Device" Identifier "Generic Video Card" Driver "nvidia" EndSection Section "Monitor" Identifier "Generic Monitor" HorizSync 30-85 VertRefresh 48-120 Option "DPMS" EndSection Section "Screen" Identifier "Default Screen" Device "Generic Video Card" Monitor "Generic Monitor" DefaultDepth 24 SubSection "Display" Depth 16 Modes "1024x768" "800x600" EndSubSection SubSection "Display" Depth 24 Modes "1024x768" "800x600" EndSubSection EndSection Section "ServerLayout" Identifier "Default Layout" Screen "Default Screen" InputDevice "Generic Keyboard" InputDevice "Configured Mouse" EndSection Section "DRI" Mode 0666 EndSection ### END DEBCONF SECTION Next, make sure that you're nvidia modules are available for loading (I think the RPMs take care of that, but usually it will deal with a module-loading file (modules.autoload for example). Try this file first, as it's usually the one that hangs everyone up. One more thing: make sure that your refresh rates are correct, as that can cause the same problem (although you usually see flashes of it trying to load, and can hear the gun in the monitor clicking away as it tries different refresh rate/resolution combos).

I had so many issues with RPMs and dependencies that I eventually gave up and moved to Debian (and onward to Gentoo, which is along the same vein). So, what happened with MPlayer? I had pretty good luck with it myself, but couldn't really tell what your problem was. It *seemed* like it was kind of working for you, but you had some issues while the others didn't work or even make it beyond installation.

For a server? Debian or a BSD variant. Both are solid, and mature.

I have read that it is a fairly nice distro indeed, with good support and a nice installer/admin utility (YaST). Good luck with your choice.