Bursar

Gee thanks, that makes me feel a whole lot better! I would imagine that most of it is swap file related. The Windows suggested settings for a swap file with 512MB RAM are min of 768MB, and a max of 1536MB. I'm gonna mess with performance monitor this weekend to see just how much actual RAM is being used. I'll then tweak my swap file settings a bit.

Also, NTFS has a massive overhead compared to FAT. When you format a disk using FAT, a few KB are reserved for File Allocation Tables and stuff like that. With NTFS, you need around 5MB to store that information. That's the main reason you can't format floppy disks using NTFS. The basic file structure is just too big to fit.

I think it's quite important that your shell has as little overhead as possible. I have 512MB RAM in my PC, and last night when I ran Task Manager, it was showing that I was using approximately 1GB of memory. Obviously some of this is swap file, but bloody hell!! With that amount of RAM it shouldn't really need to touch the swap file. Especially as the machine had only just booted up! ------------------ PIII 650 Coppermine Intel 440BX-2 Motherboard 2x256MB PC 100 RAM Maxtor 92049U6 20.4GB 7200RPM UDMA66 Maxtor 52049U4 20.4GB 7200RPM UDMA66 Matrox Millenium G400 MAX AOpen 52x IDE CD-ROM Yamaha CRW4416S SCSI CD-RW Microsoft IntelliMouse Explorer USB Microsoft SideWinder Force Feedback Pro US Robotics Sportster Flash v90 External modem Iiyama Vision Master Pro 17 3Com EtherLink XL PCI (3c900B Combo) Adaptec 2940 Ultra Wide SCSI controller Sound Blaster Live! Value Windows 2000 Professional

It should be able to read it no problem. The main thing to check is that you have jumpered the hard disks correctly. Tour original drive needs to be Master with Slave Present (not always the same as Master Only). Also double check the new drive is set for Slave. Go into the BIOS and detect the drive in their. This will make sure the PC knows what the geometry of the drive is. If your IDE channels are set to Auto-Detect you shouldn't need the above step. Windows should then see the drive properly.

Yeah, the AWE was a top card. I've got an ISA version in the P200MMX I use as a spare machine. Great sound and, in my opinion, MIDI files just don't sound the same on any other card, even with the Live. Pity they don't make 'em any more.

Win2k has no problems playing sounds in games. As for sound cards, it depends what you want it for. If it's just gaming, then an SB Live! Value would probably do. If you need more features, try one of the other SB Live! cards (like the Platinum). The main thing to check is that there are Windows 2000 drivers available for it. The SB Live! cards are fine, as you can download LiveWare 3 for Windows 2000 from the Creative Labs website.

Try using the APCOMPAT program to fool the applicaiton into thinking it is running under Win9x. It's not certain to work, but it's worth a try.

It shouldn't make any difference. File System calls are handled by the O/S rather than the application, so everything should continue to work fine. I have both my drives configured to run NTFS under Win2k, and all my games install and run perfectly. I don't have Asheron's call, but Half-Life and all the various mods I've tried (not CS though, as I'm not a fan of it) runs flawlessly. I can't say as I've noticed any performance differences either way (which is probably a good thing), but with 512MB RAM, most of my games don't do a huge amount of disk thrashing anyway ------------------ PIII 650 Coppermine Intel 440BX-2 Motherboard 2x256MB PC 100 RAM Maxtor 92049U6 20.4GB 7200RPM UDMA66 Maxtor 52049U4 20.4GB 7200RPM UDMA66 Matrox Millenium G400 MAX AOpen 52x IDE CD-ROM Yamaha CRW4416S SCSI CD-RW Microsoft IntelliMouse Explorer USB Microsoft SideWinder Force Feedback Pro US Robotics Sportster Flash v90 External modem Iiyama Vision Master Pro 17 3Com EtherLink XL PCI (3c900B Combo) Adaptec 2940 Ultra Wide SCSI controller Sound Blaster Live! Value Windows 2000 Professional

Have you tried using APCompat? It's on the Win2k CD, and you can use it to try and fool the game into thinking it is running under Windows95. It doesn't work for everything though, so it isn't a gauranteed success, but it's worth a try.

I'm not familiar with AtGuard, dut it is probably similar to ZoneAlert and BlackIce Defender. If so, then both of these programs required a patch in order to work properly after SP1 was installed. As AtGuard is now owned by Symantec, you may want to check their web site for any updates.

The memory.dmp file is created when NT/2000 crashes with a BSOD. It basically contains the contents of your RAM at the time the crash happened. It could be useful for debugging, but in most cases, it just takes up an amount of diskspace equal to the amount of RAM you have installed.

The easiesy way is to disable the Guest account on the Win2k machine, and create a new user account for the person who uses the Win98 machine. That way, you can assign specific rights to files and folders just for that user. Oh, you have to be running NTFS for all the security stuff to work properly, so you will need to convert your partitions if they are running in FAT32.

If you don't have an LMHosts file already (there is normally a bsaic 'template' file in \winnt\system32\drivers\etc ), just use notepad to create one (remember, you don't want the .txt extension after the file name). All you need to do then is add the lines: 192.168.0.1 A 192.168.0.2 B Then save the file. Place a copy of the file on each machine, and away you go.

This is dead easy to do. All you need to do is give the Win2k machine a static IP address of 192.168.0.1 with a subnet of 255.255.255.0. Don't worry about DNS servers. Set your Windows 98 machine to get an IP address automatically. You can then right click My Network Places and choose Properties. Right click the DUN Connection you wish to share and click Properties. On the Sharing tab, click 'Enable Connection Sharing' and click OK. That should be about it. The Win2k PC will then act as a DHCP server and assign an IP address to teh Win98 machine. Now, when you go onto the net with the Win2k machine, the Win98 PC will also be able to access the Internet. If you run into problems, check the Win2k help files for ICS. They are quite useful.

Have tried running your CPU at it's normal speed? It could be that the timing is getting thrown out by the overclocking. If it still doesn't work at the normal CPU speed, replace your case! Seriously - My G400 MAX causes my machine to lock as soon as I try to up it to 2x. When I put it in another machine (with the same motherboard), it runs fine at 2x. The card isn't sitting quite snuggly enough in the AGP slot for 2x to work reliably. Hope this helps.

Have you thought that it could be your memory modules? If you have two, take one out and run the system for a while. Then do the same with the other one. If you only have problems with one, then it's faulty and you need to replace it. If you only have one module, can you borrow one from someone, or do a temporary swap to try and find out if the other person gets the same problems. If this doesn't help, it could be motherboard related. On the other hand, it might be swapfile memory, so you may have some bad blocks or other sorrupt areas on your hard disk. Hope this helps.

Before you go on too much about the dual-strike, I've read some things where people have had problems with it. Some games just don't work properly with, and other people have had a hard time installing it. I don't own one, and haven't used one, but reading that put me off getting one. If I was after a pad, I think I'd stick with something more traditional (but it would still be an MS pad).

I ran a dual boot with 98/2000 for a month or so until I had tried everything under 2000. Once I'd proved to myself that everything would be ifne, I wiped everything and did a clean install. ------------------ PIII 650 Coppermine Intel 440BX-2 Motherboard 2x128MB PC 100 RAM Maxtor 92049U6 20.4GB 7200RPM UDMA66 Maxtor 52049U4 20.4GB 7200RPM UDMA66 Matrox Millenium G400 MAX Sony DDU220E IDE DVD-ROM Yamaha CRW4416S SCSI CD-RW Microsoft IntelliMouse Explorer USB Microsoft SideWinder Force Feedback Pro US Robotics Sportster Flash v90 External modem Iiyama Vision Master Pro 17 3Com EtherLink XL PCI (3c900B Combo) Adaptec 2940 Ultra Wide SCSI controller Sound Blaster Live! Value Windows 2000 Professional

One of the reasons this was canned in the UK was that it turned all of the street lights into large antennas which then broadcast the data signlas out into the airwaves. It caused interference with the emergency services, and so the idea was dropped. However, you have to look at the security problems also associated with a power line based network. Everyone in your area that gets power from the same sub-station is basically on the same network as you. This means you are going to need additional firewall protection on your PC's in order to keep them safe from your neighbours.

jdulmage: I don't know about the Tiger OS thing, but Whistler is not going to turn into Blackcomb. They are seperate products. Whistler is expected late next year, and Blackcomb will be about a year after that.

Ghost does support NTFS 5, but you need the latest version. Older verison only support upto NTFS 4. You could also try Drive Image Pro as that does a very similar job. I guess the key question is 'how do you intend to get the image onto the 30GB drive?'. If it is going to be in the machine that you want to image that's fine. If it is going to be attached to a new machine, you're going to need a boot disk of some description so that you can run the imaging application and pull the image off from the network or CD.

I can't confirm or deny anything, but one to add is: Avery now and then Diablo II saves the game state, so it could just be that that is what's happening when your machine pauses. My machine also pauses briefly every now and then. ------------------ PIII 650 Coppermine Intel 440BX-2 Motherboard 2x128MB PC 100 RAM Maxtor 92049U6 20.4GB 7200RPM UDMA66 Maxtor 52049U4 20.4GB 7200RPM UDMA66 Matrox Millenium G400 MAX Sony DDU220E IDE DVD-ROM Yamaha CRW4416S SCSI CD-RW Microsoft IntelliMouse Explorer USB Microsoft SideWinder Force Feedback Pro US Robotics Sportster Flash v90 External modem Iiyama Vision Master Pro 17 3Com EtherLink XL PCI (3c900B Combo) Adaptec 2940 Ultra Wide SCSI controller Sound Blaster Live! Value Windows 2000 Professional

You can downlaod IE5.5 by starting the download on a machine that doesn't have a recent version of IE installed. For example, we removed IE5.5 from a PC here at work, and just used IE3 (could have been 2, not sure now). When you visit the IE download site, it give you the option of the active setup stuff, or to download and install later. When you choose to download and install later, you can choose the O/S versions you wish to download. The options are 95/98, NT, 2000, and Millenium. Check the O/S's you want and the download will start. If you can hang on for a little while, I'm sure IE5.5 will start showing up on cover CD's soon enough.

Have tried using APCompat on it?

First up, 64MB RAM is not tons. It's the recommended minimum to run Windows 2000. Ideally, you want to up it to at least 128MB. Have you tried not overclocking the V3 to see if that helps? It might be speed related. I've had a few problems with HL, but they all seem fine when I patched to the last release (prior to 1.0.1.0 or whatever it was). Have you tried removing Half-Life, reinstalling, and then applying all of the patches again? It could be that something got screwed during patching and that's what's causing the prob.