jaywallen

Quote: The incorrect part is that O&O's defragger will defragment the MFT and metadata. O&O defragments the $MFT only - it doesn't defragment the $Logfil, $Bitmap, $Upcase, etc... There is only 1 defragger available that will defragment these metadata files - PerfectDisk - it is also the only defragger that tells you how badly fragmented these metadata files are. Defraggers like O&O Defrag only tell you how badly fragmented the $MFT is. - Greg/Raxco Software Disclaimer: I work for Raxco Software, the maker of PerfectDisk - a competitor to O&O Defrag, as a systems engineer in the support department. Sorry, I should have been more careful / precise. Have you examined the "Select Additional Files" feature on the Boot Time Defragmentation dialog in O&O? Once you have performed one full defragmentation of a drive, you have the option to add the files that couldn't be defragged with the GUI online by using the Add Exclusive feature. I won't pretend to know whether or not that comprises all the metadata, but that is some or most of it, isn't it? I mentioned it because it's a feature that I've seen many users / evaluaters of O&O overlook. Anyway, once you add the exclusively locked files, they also get defragged at boot time. In addition to the manual Action | Boot-Time Defragmentation settings, the Executive Software Product does have FragGuard which can be set to run when fragmentation exceeds certain levels on the MFT or registry hives (but without mention of any other items), but I didn't see evidence that it could defrag the "unmovable" files on an NTFS partition. BTW, I tried out Perfect Disk about a year-and-a-half ago when I was evaluating defraggers for use with Win2K. (I've been using Windows only since a couple of months before the advent of Win2K.) I thought it was generally a good product, but I had some problems with the user interface on a notebook with an ATI graphics subsystem that I couldn't resolve with tech support and had to resort to O&O. Regards, Jim Edit: I asked you if the "additional files" comprised any significant portion of the metadata but didn't tell you what they were. DOH! I'd be glad to PM or e-mail the list to you.

Ron_Jeremy, Sorry for the unpleasantness. Regards, Jim

I don't really need confirmation of my opnions from others, but I've seen the comments about your "contributions", and they are far from unaniously slanted in your favor. Take a hint. You are presumptuous, and no one needs a doctorate in psychology to see that. I guess you're at least relatively safe with your puffery online. Hard to get away with it in real life, isn't it?

Quote: Did I say it was deleted by clearing it above? It can be deleted, by filesystem corruptions! That wasn't the topic under discussion. I was merely trying to be certain that it was understood that the security setting being discussed would NOT delete the pagefile itself, and therefore would not result in a file system fragmentation issue, in and of itself. Quote: (I gain speed by housing the pagefile/swapfile onto another disk... on EIDE a second one on another EIDE I/O channel, & on ScSi on another drive device on the chain. So, when one drive is seeking/reading/writing for me? The swapfile & temp. operations take place on another.. simultaneously! Makes for good performance sense!) * Understand now? APK P.S.=> You are bringing in the possibility of MFT$ defrags now? Diskeeper from Executive Software also does the same as well... not a freeware one, & not in their LITE versions either! I told folks abotu a FREEBIE they can use for PageFile & Reg file defrags above! apk I pointed out the differences in cost in my own post. For the information of anyone who's interested in the differences, the Executive Software product has to be set each time to perform the boot time defrag, whereas the O&O product can be set to perform it automatically at each boot. As for you, APK, you might want to have that ego checked. Your voluminous posts speak volumes about you but more, I think, about a presumptuous nature than about knowledge.

I'm not sure I see the point you're making. The pagefile is NOT deleted by this security setting. The contents are wiped. Fragmentation will not result from the use of this setting. That's all I was saying. The pagefile and registry hives are defragged by the Sysinternals utility, Pagedefrag. However it doesn't touch the MFT or metadata. O&O makes a decent defragger that performs a defragging operation of all of this stuff at boot time, and in very little more time than it takes for Pagedefrag to run. However, the versions that do boot time defragging are not freeware. Regards, Jim

That registry entry is controlled by the Local Security Policy named "Shutdown: Clear virtual memory pagefile". It doesn't remove the pagefile, but merely wipes it. So the pagefile doesn't have to be re-created at boot if the option is turned on. It might be worthwhile option to enable if you keep encrypted data on the system and don't want anyone to be able to snoop the pagefile. If you don't use encrypted data, I'm not sure why anyone would bother to use it. If the pagefile is big, this option can make shutdown take quite a while. Regards, Jim

Sweatus minimus. I hope you find something that works for you. Be careful when installing, believe the warnings, and remember that Safe Mode and an immediate uninstall can be your best friend if you experience troublees following an installation. Regards, Jim

Be safe, friend. Be safe, everybody!

Hi, ofelas! I suppose I'm cranky today. Thank you for posting that link. I had forgot about them. Regards, Jim

I repeat the question. Are you official thread police or something? It's not like this forum is exactly overrun with posts. And it's not as though there was any definitive information about freeware programs in any of the other threads pertaining to this issue. While it may be true that there's nothing wrong with looking around and / or searching before posting, there's also nothing wrong with a little civility. I imagine the forum moderators can handle the task of dealing with duplicate threads, thread drift and the other slightly irksome minor details of netiquette without help from self-appointed forum marshalls. We're talking about a few lines of text here. Not bandwidth hogging. In the grand scheme of things, your point is Lilliputian. Is it the type of thing you would bring up when face-to-face with people? If not, then I don't see the need to bring it up in a message base. And if you do make a point of correcting people in this manner when face-to-face with them, I'd be surprised if you have all of your teeth. Regards, Jim

Beg your pardon. Are you official thread police or something? Give the guy some slack. No one was answering.

Hi, Yeah, that's the same canned response I got AFTER I reported the problem to them!!! I hope they pull their heads out soon! Regards, Jim

Yes, be careful with the Grisoft product. I've had some conversations with tech support over both their commercial and freeware versions. Although they claim that the latest freeware version works properly under WinXP I have not been able to get it to do so. Installing an older version under RC2 caused system failures on one test machine from which I had to recover by booting in Safe Mode, uninstalling the AVG software, and then STILL having to resort to a restore to a previous configuration. No real harm since the OS does an admirable job of protecting itself, but it was pretty annoying. I had one notebook running a 2600 (legitimate) which appeared to take the AVG installation just fine, and there were no immediate problems on reboot. But system behavioral problems did start cropping up, and they all traced back to the anti-virus. I removed it, and the problems went away. I'm using the old InoculateIT PE (withOUT the on access scanner running since it isn't compatible) on my personal machines and am being very careful about my handling of files, attachments, etc. CA's replacement product for InoculateIT PE, the commercial EZ Armor thing, still isn't compatible with WinXP, though they say they will have a compatible system out by the end of October. I think most AV software, commercial or otherwise, is having a problem with WinXP's method of loading drivers in parallel since they may require a specific order of loading in order to get their on access scanners to work properly. This is probably also the problem with much of the firewall software like Zone Alarm. At least that's the way it looks from my chair. Regards, Jim

Xteq's X-Setup also has this ability, among many others.

Hi, Chris. I'm sorry to hear of the disappointment. I'm sure you'll fare better later on with updated hardware. W2K actually uses less total power than Win9X on any given machine that supports ACPI, but it really "works" the video subsystem and memory. An older system with a mixture of various levels of hardware could be expected to have some issues. All of the systems upon which I've installed W2K have been less than two years old. Even then I've had to be very careful, in a couple of cases, to get the very latest drivers. (Though the APIs for this OS were out for plenty enough time for the vendors to have got their drivers right, I suspect that a lot of them held back to see how well the new OS did in the market before deciding to committ the resources to the development of new drivers.) Nothing will bring W2K down faster than a badly written kernel mode driver or hardware that just doesn't cut the mustard. But I expect that you'll really like it once you get to try it on hardware that supports it. Actually, I suppose that WinXP may be out by the time you upgrade the hardware. Should I duck when I say that??? Sorry I couldn't be of some help. I wish you better luck in the future. Regards, Jim

Hi, Chris. Looks like you're well on your way to fixing this issue, well as much as it can be fixed, anyway. If I were you I'd check directly with ATI tech support on that PIII requirement. I don't know what to make of that, but I'd take it seriously enough to ask them. Windows 2000 is pretty strict in the way it uses devices. As you've seen it will go down like a stack of wet cardboard if you hit it with a driver it doesn't like. I presume that you'll be able to get all your hardware to work, but there are some combinations (of apparently "W2K-compatible" hardware) that just don't seem to work in W2K -- yet. It's undoubtedly just a matter of time before most of these issues are sorted out by driver updates. W2K loads a "standard" driver for use with all graphics subsystems when it's launched into Safe Mode. So, if you run the ATI install procedure while in Safe Mode, I suspect that it won't "take" until you boot into standard mode anyway. I would think that it would work just as well to install it from the standard desktop, as long as all superfluous processes were stopped first. (If I'm mistaken about this, I hope someone will be kind enough to correct me.) In any case you're going about this in a scientific manner. You'll want to test the system after each device / driver is added. (I'd suggest looking in the Event Viewer after each install / reboot cycle, too.) I think you'll get this sorted out pretty quickly now if you continue along this path. I hope to hear that you've got the system up and running happily. Regards, Jim PS: Oh yeah, almost forgot about the Sony CD-RW drive. Is it IDE or SCSI or USB? What CD writing software are you running? I'm sure you're aware that this stuff can be pretty cantankerous, and it can interfere with the proper functioning of the drive -- or the whole blooming system for that matter. But it sounds as though the failure you're talking about happens before the CD-writing software loads, right? Did the drive fail to show up, or show up compromised, in Device Manager? That's something I'd definitely watch. You might want to try to get it sorted out before proceeding with other matters. One device's failure to load / initialize properly can cause problems with other devices on the system. No sense in having this be more complicated than it has to be. Good luck!

Hi, Chris. I'm glad you're making some progress. Please do let us know what happens. If error messages are presented, please give them to us. I was a bit confused by something in your message. You said that you saw a lot of DHCP, DNS, and TCP/IP errors. Then you said that you "disabled them". It might be helpful to us to know what you disabled, and how you disabled it. I'll be keeping my fingers crossed for you! Regards, Jim

Hi, Chris. That's really weird. If the BIOS setup lets you set the system to boot from the CD-ROM drive in which you're inserting the W2K setup CD, then you should see a brief message saying you have to hit the space bar to boot from the CD. Otherwise, it continues from the hard drive. There's no difference for this behavior between the full and upgrade versions. I have only used retail versions, so I'm not sure about OEM or academic versions that might be floating around out there. Another thing you could do, assuming this feature is intact on the CD, is to use the MAKEBOOT.EXE utility in the \BOOTDISK directory of the W2K setup CD to make the four startup floppies for W2K. If you boot with those they should let you get access to do what you wish with the partitions on the hard drive -- assuming no special non-Microsoft partitions are present. Was a third party partition or boot manager ever used with this system? If so, that could be what's getting in your way. If that's the case, and if these other ideas don't work, let us know the make and mode of the controller and hard drive. Someone should know if any special disk utilities exist for it. If the partition table of the drive has been manipulated by proprietary software, or if it's corrupted, sometimes you have to go back to that software, or another special utility, to get things straightened out. Regards, Jim

Hi, Chris. This should be easy to fix. Sounds like the version of fdisk on your boot diskette isn't able to deal with the NTFS partition. If you can boot from your Windows 2000 setup CD, just start off in the "clean install" setup procedure. It will show you a list of partitioned and unpartitioned spaces on the hard drive(s) on your system. Just delete the NTFS partitions (all partitions, if you want to start over clean on the whole hard drive), then exit the install procedure. Any standard Windows 98 boot diskette should be able to deal with the hard drive now. It would also be possible that the hard drive / controller / BIOS combination on your machine is difficult for the Win98SE fdisk version to deal with, but I wouldn't expect that to be the case. I'd suggest trying the above procedure to see if it works first. Then we'll deal with other eventualities if they pop up. Regards, Jim

My $.02. If your data means something to you, and you want to make the most of W2K (security-wise and reliability-wise), go with NTFS. It is not harder to recover data on an NTFS partition than on a FAT or FAT32 partition. You just use different techniques. And NTFS is much less susceptible to data corruption. The only thing is that I've never seen NetBEUI used with W2K or WinXP. W2K / NT is a LOT better at networking than Win98SE. People who have trouble connecting the two types just aren't following some rather basic steps. Learning to use these operating systems properly involves learning how to network with them and how to use their recovery procedures. Your system and your data will be safer if you go with NTFS and deal with the learning curve. Regards, Jim

The full version will not provide a different clean install than the upgrade version. The only difference is the install process, where the upgrade version asks you to place the "qualifying product" CD in the CD-ROM drive. I suggest carefully checking the Windows Hardware Compatibility List,http://www.microsoft.com/hcl/default.asp. Sounds like you have some hardware that isn't happy under W2K. That could be because it's not compatible with the OS, OR it could be because it's faulty. I hope you find a solution. Regards, Jim

Hmmm. I'm no genius, but I can tell you how I might try to handle the issue. I would set the compatibility mode for the shortcut for the apps / games while logged in as an Administrator. Note: I'd set the compatibility mode for the particular shortcut used by whichever users I wanted to benefit from it. (Might be under the start menus in their profiles or might be in the all users profile.) If I wanted a user to have the ability to actually set compatibility mode, I'd make her/him an Administrator and tighten permissions as needed to limit her/his authority to the level I desired. (I think it's easier to tighten NT and W2K permissions from a given user group level than to loosen them.) Hope this is helpful. Regards, Jim

Was the system at SP1 before SP2 was installed? The reason I ask is that, since the service packs are cumulative, your friend might be experiencing a W2K SP1 bugaboo that whacked a lot of Maxtor drive users. You might want to check out this MSKB article. Since the article is written primarily from the perspective of a single drive user, the exact presentation of the problem is different. I suspect that the two drives are configured differently on your friend's system and that the second drive is being affected by the syndrome described in the article. Fix is easy enough, so I hope that this is it. Whatever the proble is, I hope your friend finds a solution. Regards, Jim

Just as an experiment for any system (not on a domain) suffering this problem, I might be tempted to suggest an experiment. What I have in mind is going into the Local Security Policy applet and, in the User Rights Assignment section of Local Policies, enabling the "Act as part of the operating system" item. (For anyone who's unfamiliar with this, just highlight the above-mentioned item, open the right-click context menu, select Security, and use the ensuing dialog to add the appropriate user (an Admin user, of course) to the item. Then right-click on the Security Settings item in the left pane of the Local Security Settings applet and select Reload from the context menu. (You'll lose the User Rights Assignment listing in the right pane, so you'll have to go back to it to confirm that the chosen user account is showing in the Effective Setting column.) After doing this, I'd attempt to go back to the Windows Update site to see if anything has changed. I don't think I'd recommend leaving this setting intact, of course. Well, at least not unless the user concerned is the knowledgeable and cautious type. I just thought it might be worth trying to see if it would make a difference if the user was acting in this capacity with respect to permissions. On the other hand, does anyone think that this could be a malfunction of some sort with the Windows Update communication process, and that the message about the administrator denying permissions is a red herring? Regards, Jim

Hmmm. That's the first time I've seen the "terminated unexpectedly" message refer to WMI itself -- EXCEPT for a case that I'm sure that doesn't apply to you. (This machine isn't a domain controller, is it?) So, I guess we have to look for other errors (Is that the ONLY error message in the Event Viewer? No other errors listed in either the Applications or the System log in the Event Viewer?), OR we need to consider the possibility of configuration problems. Any information regarding text format (blue screen) errors or services that fail to start or any unusual devices or services you have running on the system might be helpful to us. Also, any indications of problems with devices in the Device Manager could be helpful. Like many people running W2K I've seen some error messages regarding WMI before on SOME systems, but they all referred, as I said before, to specific extensible counters or the performance processing library (perfproc.dll). The errors on the test machines here seemed to have been reduced in scope by SP1, and they seem to have been eradicated by SP2. Let me explain that by saying that there were two machines here, a desktop and a notebook, that gave a variety of WMI-related errors when they were first given clean installations of the original W2K in February of last year. The fix for these issues was easy. I either disabled the culprit counters or I changed collect times from the defaults, and the messages went away. The behavior of the WMI features improved enough after SP1 that I was able to return some of the disabled counters to functionality and also to re-instate default collect timeouts on others. When I installed SP2 on them I noticed a real improvement in the responsiveness and general behavior of both of these systems, even though neither was a slouch to begin with. I decided to try a clean install of W2K with SP2 and a total system rebuild for each of the machines. The result? Absolutely no WMI errors on these systems have occurred, and this is with no change whatsoever from the original device driver complement. (I wanted to eliminate an improvement in device drivers as the possible explanation for the improved behavior of the systems.) No disabling of counters or registry editing has been neceessary on either machine. So, if you're not updated to SP2, I'd suggest considering up[censored] the OS. And another consideration would be the possibility of running a repair installation of W2K. However, I think you should try to figure out just what is going on with the system first, in case there's a configuration or device problem that might occur again at some point. Regards, Jim