Dirty Harry

You don't give too much info, do you ? Here a few tricks to trim down windows: Move the SWAP file, like iks said, thats a biggie Turn off hibernation, delete hiberfil.sys, it takes as much space as you have RAM Delete all *.tmp files Run the Programs /Accessories/System Tools /Disk Cleanup with everyhting enabled. Go through all *.bmp files, which ones do you really need ? Open the Add/remove applet in control Panel- which programs & parts of windows do you really need? Make a search in google on "trim down windwows" and similar.. Apart from this, Partition Magic works very well if you don't wan't to do any cleaning... H.

Lets do just a little bit of trolling here...among friends Quote: I've got no idea mate, the UK decided to take the sensible option and not join up, so we still use money that actually looks and feels like money and not an extra printing run for Monopoly Sensible option like sticking to those very practical measurements like fathoms and furlongs per fortnight.... Sensible option like not having any central fuses in the house but having the fuse on the cord for every appliance... Sensible option like driving on the wrong side of the road... Sensible option like having all-floor carpets in the bathroom... With money you guys already gave in once when you stopped counting 8 Shillings on every Pound and 3,5 Pounds on everey Guinea or however it was done when you had the Real Brittish Currency. BTW, when was that changed, in the 70' s ? Anybody know how that system worked ? H.

Quote: So notice any difference in speed? I don't. Yep, for me the first connection is now almost instant (on cable) previously it took about 10 precious secs to start the internet (first time only) after a reboot. Also, the constant LAN traffic of 5,5 kB/sec disappears. Small but annoying. H.

WHOOOO-AAAAAAAA That did it. And stupid me who was tinkering with the windoze UpnP stettings and services. Thanks, H.

The tracks are leading me towards the Linksys too. With newer firmware they are UPnP devices, and I think that this is what is causing the problem. But why does it not occur in W2K? I guess disabling the UPnP is next on the list. BTW, did another reinstall leaving the network cable unplugged, but it didn't help either. Clutch (or soemone else w one connection only) what firmware are you running on that Linksys ? H

I've had mine vertically for ages, and never had any trouble with it. I'd guess think pretty much all current HD's are spec'd to work both ways, 10 and 20 MB HD's from the 80's might be different In my Lian Li PC-60 the cage is built so that you have them standing vertically, but if you put the HDs in a bay (beneath the CD, for example) they lay down. H.

Don't know what a "DSL over Shaw cable modem" is, but I doubt that this problem has anything to do with whatever comes after the Linksys box. With W2K we only see one connection, and I didn't change a thing except OS when this first happened. I have a strong sence its also causing a slower internet connection and lots of package loss so I just have to get rid of it. Sixpac, are you using static IP's ? Just wonder because I do and were asked first by the XP installation to put them in and later also by the Windows wizard. Something is not right there... but on the other hand I had this problem when running DHCP also. H.

Nothing that looks suspicious in the device manager, hidden or not. Or, perhaps...maybe... what is this "3COM Etherlink blabla NIC (3C905C-TX)-Packet Scheduler Miniport" that has surfaced as a hidden device beneath the real thing? Don't think I ever saw it before, the W2K PC doesn't have it. Other hidden devices here are five WAN miniports (IP, IP packet scheduler, L2TP, PPOE, PPTP) but they are normal, aren't they ? The W2K machine does not have the PPOE or the IP packet scheduler miniports, only the three others. No firewall installed, I'm trying to fix this on a PC with a fresh install. In fact, I just wiped everything and did a re-install of XP (with the cable modem unplugged) but the problem persists. Could it be that I'm missing a setting in the Linksys device ? Running with static IP's now. If I wipe the needless "internet connection" from the registry a reboot brings it back. Annoying. Grateful for all help, I'm at my wits end. H.

Thanks guys, at least I know its wrong ! ICS is not enabled, and I have not removed the NIC. Device manager is showing up OK. No, I haven't figured it out, and worst of all I can't really get rid of it either. Thanks to your posts I now know its wrong. I've also switched to static IP's on the LAN, and still the damned thing is there. The delete option is unavailable. Apart from the internal LAN traffic the internet connection is operational only after 10-20 seconds after boot. Any ideas how to fix this thing? H.

-Bump- Surely someone must know the answer ? Please....

They must be on different cables, otherwise the master will let the conf info from the slave through ! Are they ?

Heh, you were answering while I edited the post. Once you have the drives on separate channels and use that to choose where you boot from you can set the "secondary master" to NONE in the CMOS setup screen. Normally this is on AUTO. Have you tried that ? H.

No, if you don't put them on different channels/cables and your bios lets you select boot channel. The setting is in your bios, believe me, go to Advanced Bios Features and there you'll see First boot device, Second boot device etc. There you'll be able to choose between booting from HDD-0 or HDD-1 among other things. Another idea; if you set the other harddrive to NONE in the bios (as opposed to auto) it is in under IDE primary master etc) then it shouldn't be visible to Windows. You still must have the disks on separate cables though. Third option, as you have used the switch route before, why don't you solder a switch on the power cord to the drive ? H.

Its Live Ware you are downloading, not the drivers. A bit like downloading all of MS office just because you want to add a new printer driver. Apparently this is a customized version for Compaq or for a specific Compaq machine. Just because the number is 3.0 I wouldn't bet that it is a different or better version that the one that came with the card. The SBLive XP Driver Update is 9.03MB and Rev 2 acc to soundblaster.com, where it can be downloaded from... H.

There is also an excellent piece of trialware from Famatech, Remote Administrator, that lets you do that and much more. You can operate the other PC in a window just like the one you are sitting at. H.

I’ve spent three nights now trying to figure this out, to no avail. Now I’m getting desperate… All and any ideas are welcome! Here’s what happens: I boot the XP machine (on a LAN with 3 PC’s – one XP, one W2K and one W98, see end of post for more tech details), internet works fine, the LAN connection seems working and OK. So, I go to “My Network Places”. I use the wizard to add a network place i.e. one of the hard drives in one of the two other PC’s. Everything rolling along, last the wiz asks if I want to open this place when it finishes. Yes I do, and it opens just fine, I can browse it, close it and reopen it. Good, now I close it, and can go back and open it again. So, I’ve created a icon for a network share… Not quite. When I reboot the XP-PC, the network share I just created is still there. Now if I open it, the window just goes kind of blank and I look at the hourglass. So after 3 minutes I get tired of the hourglass and click the close window box and Explorer crashes, “not responding”, but I can’t close it, not by the end now button that pops up, and not from the Task Manager. This leaves me no other option than to reboot the XP-pc. The W98-PC is still OK and apparently unaffected. The exact same thing happens if I try to create a share (from the XP) on the W2K machine, and it happens every time. I’ve also tried to connect thru the Run command ( //PC/share) but it just clicks OK and disappears. When I try to connect through Win Commander it crashes too and doesn’t let me close down itself either. What the hell can I do about this ? It is a bit like the problem BanditX was posting about a few threads back, but no attempt to solve the problem was posted (except reinstall, the easy way out). H. Setup: A LAN with 3 PC’s, one XP, one W2K, one W98 connected through a Linksys Cable/DSL router (BEFSR41). Static routing used and all 3 PC’s are members of the same workgroup. All machines can ping each other. XP's firewall not running. The same hardware worked just perfectly before upgrading one W2K PC to XP (fresh install) and the W2K browses the W98 just fine. The only change since then is really installing XP on one PC and that I’ve dumped DHCP (after XP install), and go for static IP’s now.

Is there a way to add cascading folders (submenus) to the new XP style start menu ? Preferrably to the top left area, "pinned down" What am I missing here ? It's so easy with the classice style, can't believe its impossible with the XP style ? H.

Hey guys, can somebody please confirm if XP is supposed to have both an "Internet Connection" and one "Local Area Connection" when a LAN is connected through a router (Linksys Cable/DSL BFSR41) Is this normal ? Or should I just see the LAN connection as I did with W2K ? H. H.

You have tried the obvious; right click and "Arrange Icons by" "Name" have you ? H.

Hmm, I've been dual booting thru bios for years and only once did I have a problem, I think it was a Linux distro or some other crap that wrote to the wrong HD. As I do take frequent images of the system drive (especially before toying with crap) it was five minutes to restore. Honestly, I can't imagine a bios that doesn't let you choose channel to boot from. My Abit and Asus boards have all had this option and they use the award bios too. But who knows, please confirm if your mobo doesn't have it. The bios is not made by MS you know, maybe other OS's let you hide drives. H.

Interesting approach, never thought of using the master-slave switch to switch boot order. Yes, I have a Highpoint controller (onboard Abit KG7), but it worked just as well before. The bios lets you choose were to boot from (IDE 1 or 2, for example). As long as you have the HD's on different controllers = cables this works fine. You cannot hide a drive from bios, windows overrides this setting (a bit like the power saving settings in bios/windows). I don't know for sure, but maybe you could put in wrong info for heads/cyls etc in bios and the drive would perhaps be unreadable. Try it if you want, but its not that good an idea to mess with the physical drive properties. Why do you need to hide a disk? In the rare cases when you really need to be that sure that nothing can touch a drive I'd suggest you just pull the power or IDE cable. I can't think of any other situation than when you are installing a new and unknown OS, that might have its own idea on where to write what. H.

What are you referring to? Switching the master slave setting doesn't change the boot drive, does it ? Personally I use the bios as a boot manager, switching IDE channel there switches the boot drive as they are on separate cables. Most of the time I have W2K on both drives and this works just fine. H.

There are viruses that "flash" your bios (the CIH virus for example- at least a few years old) That could explain why this happened on a previous board also... Did you try to shortcut the CMOS jumper ? Anyhow, no beep sounds like a dead bios. H.

Go for the real thing; an Abit board(KG7 or KR7) Dual CPU's don't give you much more than a ego boost unless you do a lot of some rather CPU intensive tasks with apps that support dual processors. Mostly that money is better spent on more RAM, beer and women. H. KG7 running very stable here with an Athlon 1400@1550 for 10 months now.

If your mobo doesn't run with two different wotking PSU's chances are your mobo has had a stroke and is now in mobo-heaven. Adopt a new one. H.