Bursar

Quote: 98 to win2k upgrade but programs can't find their sublinks ie .dll etc. Should I FDISK the HD for a clean install? No need to FDISK, just get the Win2K setup to reformat the hard disk for you. Quote: Is this lack of upgrade success a MS feature? ;( Yup You're always better off starting from a clean install if possible.

You should see a fair increase in speed. I'm in the same boat with an original GF3 card, but I'm gonna wait for the GF FX to be released. The GF4 prices should then take quite a tumble, and I'll get a 4600 then

I think LG is part of Samsung, but I'm not 100% sure. I've just bought a Plextor combo CD-RW/DVD drive, and I'm well chuffed. It's not the fastest drive available, but you said that wasn't of prime importance to you. It comes with Nero and WinDVD, so once setup, you're god to go

It sounds like you have not configured your BIOS properly to allow for booting from floppy disks. If the boot disk has been created properly, then you shouldn't have any problems booting to a DOS prompt. If there was a problem with the boot disk, you should get an 'invalid system disk' type message. You should be able to delete most of the files on the floppy disk without any problem. Here's a list of the ones you should leave: Autoexec.bat Command.com Config.sys Himem.sys IO.sys MSDOS.sys A few of those files are kiond of optional if you're just flashing your BIOS, but you might as well leve 'em all. That should take around 340KB of your disk, leaving you about 1MB for your BIOS flashing util and the data file. In your BIOS, you should have a section that will let you define the boot priorities. You want the Floppy drive to be listed as the first boot device. Doesn't matter what comes after it, as long as it is first. With this set, you should be able to boot to a DOS prompt using the boot disk. You can then remove the boot disk, insert the second floppy disk that has the BIOS flashing files on it and flash the PC. Once done, remove flopy disks and reboot

Yes, providing you have a product to upgrade from (Win9x/NT/2K). You'll need to insert the CD during installation to prove you have an older version of Windows.

I think pmistry was more surprised that you listed Deus Ex as an RPG. I'd say it was more of a thinking shooter than an RPG. The choices you could make in the game were fairly limited, and although some of them did influence events later on, I still wouldn't class it as an RPG. As for suggestions on what to play, then I'm out of ideas, sorry.

And how is the memory configured? Is it 1 x 512, 2x256 or 2x128 + 1x256? It can make a difference, as not all boards will run all configurations.

I doubt it. More speed = more heat. I shouldn't think there'll be much in it, but the 2200+ certainly won't be any cooler.

There is an article on the MS Knowledgebase that deals with WindowsUpdate not showing the correct items. Have a search around it and you'll probably turn up the answer. You need to delete a few files, and then when you connect to WindowsUpdate again it should work properly.

This has probably been asked before, but I can't seem to figure out the right phrases to use to search the forums for it. I currently have 2 IDE HDDs, and a CD drive. I'm going to be adding an additional CD-RW/DVD combo drive to the system, and was curious about the best way to hook it up. I only have 2 IDE channels on my mobo, and currently I have the 2 disks chained together and the CD is on its own. My C drive has WinXP and my applications, the D drive has all my games on. I will also want to do CD-CD copying. So, should I hook up the C drive with the CD on one channel, and the D drive and the CD-RW on the other? Or is there a better solution? Sorry for being dense, but it's been ages since I've had to think about this stuff and can't for the life of me remember the best solution

Well, you'll pleased to know I hooked everything up, and initial tests are good. I have the 2 hard disks on the primary channel, and the two CD drives on the secondary channel. The CD-RW/DVD combo drive is the master. I wrote a couple of 260MB files to a CD last night, and they worked flawlessly. Both files wrote at 20x (the max for my drive). DVD watching is also hassle free. The only thing I haven't tried is a CD to CD copy, but if I get a chance I'll try this tonight. I used the latest version of Nero to directly write one file, and the LiUtilities WinBackup software to write the other. Hoorah.

Quote: Is it possible? Yes Quote: If it is, then how? Generally you boot from a floppy and install the new BIOS. Different motherboards work in different ways though. Quote: and can i do it without the use of my diskette drive? Yes. Intel boards have a flash util that will run from inside Windows. You should check on the website of the motherboard manufacturer to see what options are available to you. If there isn't one that runs under Windows, you will need to hook up a floppy drive and do it the old fashioned way.

I wasn't sure if I should post this here or in the Networking forum. I'm sure someone will move it if it's in the wrong place. I have a Motorola SurfBoard 3100 cable modem hooked up to a 3c905b-tx NIC on my PC running XP Pro with all patches installed. I use NTL as my provider. Recently I've noticed that the cable modem is receiving data almost constantly. If I watch the stats for the NIC, I can see the data going up. The size of the increase varies. Sometimes it's just a few bytes, and other times it's 500 or so bytes. The modem also seems to be receiving data when the PC is off, so I don't suspect it's a Windows process that is grabbing data from somewhere. It's not any other machine on my home LAN, as they are currently switched off and the data is still coming in. What I really need to be able to do is monitor the data as it's coming into the cable modem so I can see where it's coming from and what it is. I've tried a couple of utilities and they don't really seem to have the right functionality. Can you guys suggest any free utilities (or ones that are available as fully functioning demos) that I could use? Or failing that, do you have any ideas what could be happening? I don't want to call NTL just yet as I suspect their tech support will be more or less useless on this matter unless I have a few facts and figures of my own. Any advice would be appreciated, as this is really starting to hack me off as it's affecting my ability to surf the web. Cheers.

I think I more or less sorted it. I had used Kazaa Lite about a week or so before noticing the problem. I had noticed with a different version of Kazaa that I was getting lots of incoming traffic. I flushed my IE cache and my DNS cache, updated my hosts file with a huge list of ad sites (all pointing to 127.0.0.1) and that seems to have done the trick. It also gives me the benefit of almost completely ad-free browsing now

I could, but I'm not sure how many PCI ports I have left. I also have a FireWire card I need to bung in for my digi-camcorder. I'll see how I get on. If things start getting bogged down, then I'll consider it.

Okily dokily, that's what I'll do then. I knew I could count on you guys to point me in the right direction

I've lost count of the number of times I have told people that this thing is a hoax. But users being users don't often bother remembering what they've been told, or reading their emails, and they delete the file. We just laugh and point at them. That starts getting the message over that they hsould pay more attention

I'm not sending data. Only receiving. I can see basically what's going on just by looking at the stats for the network card. I'm having real trouble browsing at times, and I just have a feeling that it's partly related to the constantly incoming data stream.

I think it's just you. I get plenty of spam emails, but haven't had one with a virus attachment for quite a while. The last one I got was to my wifes address. She'd been in touch with a recruitment company on behalf of her son, and BugBear had gotten into the companys system. She got an infected email, but Norton stopped it in its tracks. I sent them a reply informing them them of the situation, and they got things fixed. So other than that, I seem to be getting away with it at the moment. Maybe your email address is listed on websites that are prone to being harvested by spammers?

They were being discussed on another forum that I visit, and a guy that owns one says that although it's a pretty nifty feature, you do pay through the nose for it. As mentioned, it sticks the etching in the unused part of the CD and effectively fills it up. You also need to have CDs with a dark blue dye in them in order to see the etch properly. If you use the cheap CDs, it can be very difficult to see the etch unless the light hits it at just the right angle.

They're no more the same than any other game is similar to all the others in the same genre. RTS, simulation, 'empire games'. They all follow each other fairly closely. They kind of have to to fit into the genre. It's the extra bits that get bunged in that make it different. JK2 is essentially a FPS with lightsabres, yet you liked that game

Quote: Quote: HL - QUAKE1 engine Actually Half-Life used a heavily-modded Quake 2 engine, FYI. FYI, it was the Quake I engine. They may have added some bits from Q2, but it started out as the Q1 engine

Quote: I am yet to have any kind of success with the 40.xx drivers. Every single set I've installed have caused hard locks on my system, so I refuse to use them for a few builds yet. Strange. I've used the previous release and the current release of the 40 drivers with my GF3 and they've been fine. Having said that though, I am currently running the latest 30 drivers at the moment just to see if there is any real difference between them.

Why go to the extreme lengths of changing your OS to Linux? Why not just use an older version of Office? We still use Office97 in our company, with a few machines having Access 2000 for compatibility with others that they swap databases with. There is no real benefit to us to move to Office 2000, XP, or 11 when it comes out. I was reading that the Office XP take up was fairly small due to there being almost no 'must-have' features in it. Is Office 11 really likely to be any different? Just resist the urge to go and buy (or acquire) the latest software, and you shouldn't have any problems.

Ah right. I obviously haven't been keeping up with current affairs then