Pikey

PR-Man, the answer you're after is yes, I use Panda Titanium, and I absolutely bloody love it. After Norton 2002 missed the ONLY virus i have ever had on my machine in four years, and then Symantec "losing" my one year subscription after a reinstallation and my "complimentary" 3 months free updates being used up again (what a bunch of skinflints!) I am very happy to be using Panda and be free of those Symantec schmucks forever. If your experience of ANY anti-virus is good, then fair play to you, but I will NEVER, ever resort to Norton again. Chalk up a happy Panda user here. It even catches virii still in memory. And phone support, considering most users haven't got a clue what to do with an "infected" file once they get one, and Norton seems to insist you delete it anyway...well. Course, i'm yet to download anything nasty... (That isn't an invitation BTW.) In concession, the myth of "resource hogging" Norton isn't true - by comparison, they're all pretty much the same. I WILL say that in their defence. Won't touch McAfee though. With a bargepole. Long, long story... Cheers

Hi, Never had a problem with Quicktime previously, but just installed a new AthlonXP 2000+ and new motherboard, reinstalled XP, downloaded SP1 and downloaded Quicktime 6 so I could watch my exclusive Who videos from the Ultimate Collection CDs... Problems! I keep getting this message when I try to start Quicktime: "The application or DLL C:\Windows\System32\Quicktime.qts is not a valid Windows image. Please check this against your installation diskette" Then this one straight after: "Quicktime failed to initialize. Error# -2903. Please make sure this Quicktime is properly installed in this computer" A disclaimer first, I have run a search and but i could find no conclusive follow ups. This is driving me nuts. I have repeatedly installed/reinstalled versions 5 and 6, always the same. Any ideas? I am dying to watch these vids!

Belated thanks to Xyphus. It was the Office SR1 MAPI32.DLL. in question after all. Sorry for not getting back here with an affirmative sooner, but that WAS the fault - not Norton Utilities at all! Many thanks for your feedback Xyphus, and Alien - that cat.scan site is very cool! Wouldn't want to risk my jugular putting my Ginger Tom under the scanner though, he likes it just fine on top. Anyway, Cheers Pikey

Absolutely right. Norton Speedisk, for instance, throws a wobbly if you try and run it from Windows 2000 with XP on a dual boot. Having said that, there were always problems running Check Disk from NT 4 when dual booting with 2000, so it's not always 3rd party software that causes problems with the many different shades of NTFS. (In fact, 3rd party stuff sometimes "corrects" these anomalies. I recall Sysinternals having a neat little freeware fix.) I wonder if chkdsk does the same with 2000/XP? I'd expect so, but I never tried it when I was dual booting. Cheers

Hi Thanks for the input. It looks as though you are all probably right. Norton Utilities, aside from SpeedDisk, just isn't worth it. It's now reporting false 'Security Descriptors' problems on the c drive. Running XP Check Disk reports no errors at all. Funny that. Perhaps Symantec stay in business by creating problems as fast as it supposedly fixes them? Surely with the benefit of an NT code base in 2000 and XP, such so called "Utilities" are now pretty much redundant anyway? I'm ditching 'em. Cheers

Hi Got a problem with Windows XP Pro. Or rather, Norton Utilities 2002 believes that I have a problem with it. Everytime I run WinDoctor it comes up with a missing file dialogue, and that it cannot repair a missing system file. The file in question is as follows: C:\WINDOWS\System32\MAPISRVR\.EXE That it can’t repair a missing file is fair enough, but I’ve run sfc.exe to scan and repair missing files and the problem persists with WinDoctor and/or there is no real problem. Suffice to say XP is still running like a champ, but Norton keeps giving this reported missing system file. I’ve got no idea what it is, so I’m calling on your expertise. Has anyone got any idea what this missing file is, and can I safely instruct Norton to ignore it? If sfc can’t pick up on it, then it can’t be that crucial, and XP file protection background scans would have picked it up long ago. I’m beginning to wonder why the hell I bother with Norton Utilities, as all it seems to do is clear up Active X files, but this is bothering me, for no good reason really. Any ideas? Um, by the way. I’ve had to disable 'Background Intelligent Transfer Service' due to it causing certain aspects of explorer to hang while it tries to load at startup. It loads, but it takes about 2 minutes repeated timeouts to do so. Can’t say I’ve missed it’s functionality, and it only occurred after an AutoUpdate (!). Any tips about that one while I’m here? So, XP is running like a champ apart from these two glitches! Oh, and my cat keeps sleeping on my scanner………. Pikey

Hmmmmmm Well, i've cracked my particular problem (with the CD that is!) and downloaded the latest XP compat version of Nero. Now everything is running sweetly. Curious that, why would something like that affect the CD-ROM? Anyway... Cheers

Hi This is getting absolutely maddening! My Promise ATA100 TX2 controller arrived this morning. I immediately set it up and switched both ATA100 hard disks in my system on to it. No probs. Now, both CD and CD-RW drives are running off their own IDE ports, set as CD: Primary master, and CD-RW: Secondary master. I can read a CD in the CD-ROM immediately after bootup, such as installing a program or running a game. But, immediately after that action, stick another disc in, and it won't recognise it! I didn't "upgrade" to XP so I would have to repeatedly reboot the system to read CDs! Thank god Wolfenstein runs off the hard drive! Any input here folks? My housemates are beginning to complain about my temper tantrums! How about switching the master settings of the CD drives? Cheers (In anticipation)

Yup, i'm having exactly the same problem. What burning software are you using? I suspect this could be a conflict with native XP burning and your burning software, but thats just a wild guess. Any answers out there? Cheers

Hi Thanks for the feedback. Despite numerous assurances that the PowerMan can handle the load (on this site and others) i've decided to err on the side of caution and installed a Macron 300w that a friend kindly donated, and slapped the IBM in there as well. Everything seems a little cooler in the case suprisingly, and although i'm not sure that i'll be sticking with the Macron, MBM 5 is reporting a clean bill of system health. I'll see how it goes. Thanks for the input. Pikey

Hi I guess that what I am about to ask amounts to common sense really, but I thought I would canvas a few opinions anyway. Essentially, I have a PowerMan (Sparkle) 250W PSU powering my system, and a very good PSU it is too. Problem is, I’ve been making a few additions recently and I am mildly concerned about possible overload. Ok, my system isn’t exactly overwhelmed with gadgets, so this is the essential setup: 1GHZ Athlon T-Bird Gigabyte GA-7ZX Motherboard with onboard sound 60GB Maxtor 7200 HDD Lite-On 16/12/40 CD-RW LG 48X CD-ROM Asus Geforce 2 MX400 Pro 32MB AGP Video Diamond SupraSST 56K PCI Modem 1024MB PC-133 SDRAM (It’s so darn cheap now, why not?) Floppy, 1 exhaust fan etc etc Running Windows XP Professional At present the system seems perfectly stable and isn’t showing any signs of strain and/or overheating. It’s been in this current state for about a month. Thing is, I have the option of plugging in a 30GB IBM 75GXP 7200rpm HDD that’s just sitting idle. I suspect that this would be the straw that breaks the camels back and that its time for a 300w PSU at minimum. However, what are the symptoms of PSU overload? How would I be able to tell that my system is approaching critical mass, or worse, imminent meltdown? (Apart from it blowing up, of course.) BTW, the monitor is running off it’s own power supply. Any opinions would be appreciated. Am I within safe parameters at the moment, and would I be asking for serious trouble if I plugged that IBM in? Pikey

Well, thanks for the reply Alecstaar, but i'd really like to hear from people who have got the darned thing running happily under XP, i'm looking for a more battle-hardened/diagnostic approach really. I don't see why it shouldn't work now, particularily with the pre-install update from Microsoft so i'd like to canvas a few more opinions before taking the plunge. This may seem horribly trivial when I can go out and get the latest and greatest for about £30, but I will not be defeated so easily! Anymore input folks? Pikey

Hi I suspect the issues with AV 2001 and XP have been flogged to death here recently, but i've not seen this particular hiccup covered before. I installed AV 2001 onto XP Professional 2600 and then installed the sym.event patch after AV 2001's repeated failures to start. So far so good, and everything including liveupdate ran smoothly for a day or so, downloading and installing updates etc. Then, AV "started" failing to run at startup, with a message that it had been disabled. Ok fine, but weirdly it would kick in after about 2 mins uptime. Losing patience fast I "uninstalled" AV, ran disk cleanup and regcleaner and reinstalled. Same thing was happening. After removing "all traces" (ha!) again, I found that explorer.exe was having problems such as, I couldn't get right-click on System Properties or Local Disk, at least not instantly. The system would hang and then display the properties box after about the same time as it would take AV 2001 to kick in after a startup. I'm a tad annoyed as I have a good six months of updates left on my registration, and although it's no biggy to go out and get AV 2002, I wonder had anyone experienced issues like this with AV 2001? I understand there could be problems installing the sym.event patch AFTER installing AV 2001. I have no AV on my system at the moment having resorted to a clean reinstall, but I note that the recent XP compatibilty patch (which i've downloaded) has AV 2001 support built in. Can I safely reinstall AV 2001 with this in mind, or is it not worth the risk given the previous problems? I can't face another reformat. Any opinions? Cheers Pikey

Thanks isaacg, those drivers work great! I was pulling my hair out over the default XP Voodoo 3 drivers - just like going back in time to Windows 2000 - but these work great! Thanks man! Pikey

Hi all This is a weird one... I've just installed XP RC2 on my system, and I can no longer right click on 'all programs' to sort by name or access properties. In fact I can't do **** with right click on the program menu. When my housemate logs on to her limited account she can do this, but I, as admin, can't. It DID work, and as i'm still finding my way with this glorious OS, I can't recall messing with any defaults. Any ideas as to what's up and/or how to sort this? It's pissing me off! Cheers