Bursar

I'm with you dcomo. If MS broke it, they should fix it, but it's probably one of those bugs that's difficult to track down. There doesn't seem to be any consistant reason for it, and some mods for HalfLife give the error and some don't. This would say that the HL engine itself isn't responsible, but maybe the mod authors are. Maybe they're doing something that is perfectly valid, but the OS throws a fit and crashes. Who knows?

I get this error on a fairly regular basis on my Windows 2000 machine at home, and have done since about Christmas. I've had it once or twice on my work Windows 2000 machine, but strangely enough I get it regularly on a Windows Nt 4 Workstation at work. None of the machines have any applications in common really (just the usual utilities like WinZip, Acrobat Reader and so-on). This kind of leads to me to thinking that the problem is with an update that MS have supplied from the Windows Update site. You're right in saying that it should have been fixed in SP1, but I have reapplied SP1 and have checked that all the fixes I have downloaded are installed properly. The problem still happens though.

I've also read in a number of places that the ATi drivers for Windows 2000 are really bad. They are miles behind the Win98 drivers in terms of performance. The card you mention (SBLiv3-16) sounds like it should read SB Live, in which case, that is your sound card, not your video card. As a rule, Matrox have stunning 2D, but 3D performance is currently lacking in the G450 series. ATi cards have decent 2D and good 3D but are generally let down by drivers. nVidia based cards probably have the worst 2D apperance (but to be honest, it isn't *that* bad, unless you do lots of graphics stuff) and stunning 3D. Drivers can be hit or miss though. The Kyro II cards have great 3D, but I don't know about their 2D quality or their drivers yet. At the end of the day it depends where your priorities lie. Your more likely to find that some the games will give you more trouble running under Windows 2000 than the graphics card (not slating the 2K game performance, as it is my sole OS, just don't know if the listed games will run or not though).

So you're basically moaning because your PC is underpowered and new games with great engines are simply too complex to run on it? HalfLife is built on the Quake I engine, so it's pretty obvious that it is going to run quickly on most PCs. They did some fancy pants additions to the engine, but it's old technology (not knocking the game, it's still great). Serious Sam renders huge out door areas, can handle hundreds of bad guys on screen at once, and has more effects than you can shake a stick at (lens flares, particle systems, physics and so-on). It's always going to be the case that the latest games with tons of eye-candy will require a fairly hefty system in order to run at decent frame rates. Serious Sam isn't out in the UK yet, and I'm playing through an 'eval' version that I downloaded. What are the minimum specs for the game? I would guess that your CPU speed is probably right on the limit, and your graphics card isn't going to be helping things out much either. I know not everyone can afford top end systems (like my 1GHz P3, 512MB CAS2 RAM and GeForce 2 Ultra) but if you haven't got the hardware to run the game, it's hardly the programmers fault. Maybe you think they should stop all these advances in graphics and AI technology and go back to text adventures?

Windows 2000 doesn't support ATA/100 speed. It will only run at ATA/66. Benchmarking should confirm this. SP2 will fix this oversight. You could regularly defrag the drive, that should help. If the two drives are chained together, and you have a spare ID port, then seperate them and make them both master drives. This should also help.

Yeah, sorry. Slip of the fingers, but was probably worth you pointing out.

I would suspect (as I haven't had a chance to use XP yet) that it uses packet writing rather than the method used when Nero (or whatever) burns a CD. With packet writing you can treat the CD-R like a floppy drive just adding and deleting files at will.

I've been patiently for this game, and still have about 2 weeks left to wait before it's released in the UK! I played the tech demos that were released and they were great fun. Multi-player was a laff as well.

If your friends company have an AUP (Acceptable Use Policy) that details what is and is not allowed, then he is likely to be out of luck. Although adult sites will be a definate no-go area, there are bound to be some clauses about personal use of the Internet (such as chatting to friends, booking holidays and so-on). If he has broken these rules, then he is likely to get the book thrown at him. The rules are there for good reason. Not just because adult sites might offend someone, but because bandwidth is expensive, and to have it wasted as he wanders around checking this site and that isn't a good thing. It also means that he isn't doing the work that he is actually paid to be doing. Most companies allow a limited amount of personal surfing (in the same way that people make personal phone calls from work), but Internet access from work is generally a privilage, not a right. Abuse of that privilage will land you in trouble.

There isn't an easy solution. You will need to map the keys to Back/Forward when you want to surf and Page Up/Down when you want to play. The other solution is to leave them on Page Up/Down and get an Internet keyboard that has these buttons on it. I got the MS Internet Keyboard Pro a while ago, and the Back/Forward buttons work just fine.

You are correct. If you have a monitor on each machine, then you can just use the switch for the keyboard and mouse. The Belkin cable packs are basically two long PS/2 extension leads and a monitor extension lead cable tied together. If you are only going to be using the keyboard and mouse through the switch, then you could just get 4 PS/2 extension leads and save yourself a few bob.

They work just fine. However, your best getting one of the electronic ones rather than a mechanical one. I use the Belkin 4 port KVM switches at work which run for about £100 for the switch and £12 for a set of cables (which you'll need 2 of). The electronic switches maintain a connection between the box and the machine whilst you are switched away from it. The mechanical ones don't which can cause Windows to think the keyboard and mouse have been disconnected. This can cause problems when you switch between machines as you'll probably that although the keyboard will respond again, the mouse probably won't without a reboot.

I think the problems with IBM disks are probably in proportion with other manufacturers, but because they are so popular at the moment, more people are likely to complain about them. Personally I have 2 Maxtor disks which run flawlessly. If they were as popular as the IBM disks, then the boards would be filled with complaints when they failed.

You will need to remap the buttons in order for them to work. By default they are for Forward and Backward in a browser. For games, the best bet is to map them to Page Up and Page Down. You can then configure the game to assign functions to these keys. Pressing the relevant mpuse button will then activate that function.

It's not just about your own security. I run ZoneAlarm on my home machine. Not because I think that I have anything worth stealing, and as has been mentioned, if the worst happens, I spend a few hours with a pile of CDs. The reason I run a firewall is to prevent my mahcine from becoming a stepping stone as some tries to hack something else. Many hackers will infiltrate half a dozen or so machines on the way to the target. This makes tracing the hacker a harder. I could do without the hassle of someone turning up and saying that my machine was used as a launch point for a hack attempt. You also make a large assumption about users when you say that people won't run a 'clickme.exe' file. How do you think the Anna Kornikove (sp?) virus and the naked wife virus spread around? People clicked them. Knowledgable people (such as most of the people who frequent these types of boards) would probably know better, but there are those who don't know this, and if there's the chance of seeing a naked girl, they'll probably click without thinking twice. In terms of performance, I can't say that I notice any problems. With that and my anti-virus software running (and Genome@home running), my pings are still around 30-60 for most online servers. For single player games, it makes no odds as the firewall won't be doing anything anyway.

The big problem with the Kyro II is that it is not DX8 optimised, and doesn't have a TnL engine. Apparently they have a TnL engine ready, but it won;t be part of the Kyro II. It's also likely that as games start chucking more polygons around, the Kyro II could get bogged sorting out what should and should not be seen.

I raised this an MS engineer as well, and he wasn't actually aware that Hearts was wa missing from Win2k. When I explained the problem (that wasn't the real reason I called) he said he didn't know. I guess as it's not an essential part of the OS they're not too worried. Let's hope that XP has some more exciting games to play!

If you're running in a networked environment, and use predominantly Novell Netware servers, then having the CLient for Microsoft Networks installed on your machine can cause these problems. We have the same problem at work with our Windows 2000 machines. If we remove the Microsoft client, then the machines behave normally. This only affects the Win2k machines though. The 95 and NT machines all seem fine with both clients installed.

As has been briefly mentioned, NT 4 doesn't officially support USB, but a few manufacturers have written NT 4 USB drivers for their hardware. Off hand I can't think of any, but I know they are out there (cue X Files music...)

I've seen the SB Live Platinum 5.1 Retail at most websites for about £123 UK. However, one site has it for £58 inc VAT. Now I reckon this is a bargain, and I want to order it before they realise and put the price up. Before I order it though, I'm curious if it was made available in different flavours and that I might be getting a cut down card with out all the goodies for this price. Can anyone confirm if the card was/is sold as a more value oriented package?

I would expect that this feature is unlikely to be fully available on the release versions of WinXP. The amount of time and money MS would have to invest to ensure that the place is fully manned 24 hours a day, and that the technicians can speak all languages for those foreign language versions of the OS is going to be huge. I would imagine that it's likekly to be available as a subscription option for rich/less technical users and large companies. Anything else really doesn't make much businees sense.

Microsoft recommends that during the install, you only create the boot partition. In this case, remove all partitions from your disk, and during the setup only create the 1GB partition that you want for your boot drive. Once NT is installed, you can then mess about with the other partitions.

You should have stuff installed onto seperate partitions, so you can defrag the partitions as you see fit. This shouldn't cause any problems between OSs. If you have both OSs on one partitiion, then you could run into the problems mentioned by Wolf. The other main problem is that each OS will keep a track of which application is used most, so each will require a different file layout for optimal performance. This will cause each OS to keep thinking that it needs defragging.

You can't have a boot partition larger than 4GB with Windows NT. Depending on how you want to configure your PC, you're probably better off going for the 4GB partition and then using the rest as a D drive, or even splitting it into a number of other smaller partitions.

I would suspect that it is a video card/driver problem as the game runs flawlessly for me. Make sure you have the latest drivers, and for any reasonable performance on a system of that spec, I'm afraid you are going to have to turn down most of the detail. Do things look normal if you launch the Giants Safe-Mode shortcut?