Greg S Trouw

Sorry, there are multiple servers here and it took time for the servers to update. I had done a chmod 744 from within my acct on the AIX servers to give you all read access.....but even though an ls -l showed the attributes as RWXR..R.. the web server didn't update. Try loading the page again, I was able to get it after a short delay.

It isn't sticky keys, and I didn't keep pressing it. I held it down while inserting CD. Ironically if done without inserting a CD it didn't do this.......but **** + insert CD has always been a Windows Explorer shortcut. BTW, I do not yet have image editing software installed on my computer (just reinstalled Windows XP), so for the time being, the screen capture is a bitmap. Sorry about that to any dialup users. As soon as I get more software installed, I'll convert it to a .jpg

OK, sometimes Microsoft software has a tendency to get a little "too smart for it's own good". AKA if MS Word goes to auto-correct the spelling of someone's last name; producing some documentation (this happened to me once), putting some pseudo code into the document, and it gripes about C++ not being English, etc...... Plug and Pray has also sometimes gotten a reputation for that. But now with this, there is one case. Unless Microsoft has changed the Explorer shortcut since previous versions, there is a short cut to disable autorun on a CD that is being inserted in the computer. It is to to hold down the shift key while inserting the CD. The thing is, it takes the CD drive a little time to recognize the disk, and if you let up on the shift key too soon, it might still auto-play (in the past, it has). But......with these new filter keys, it interupts this, thinking one is accidently holding down on the keyboard or something......but in reality one is using this shortcut while inserting a CD to tell it "Do not use autorun on this disk". To send this "feature" back to school, and inform it when one is using this shortcut to circumvent another auto-..... feature one doesn't want to use then?

I should also mention that I took my Prophet II GTS out last June and gave it to a friend. However.........I did have winXP since beta 1, and on the earlier builds did run in 3D mode and didn't see this prob. Now however, I'm using a Prophet 4500 (Kyro2) and the D2 3D performance not having been to my liking, I switched to 2D. In 2D mode, I do not see this problem with the released build. Needless to say, the lattest XP drivers for the Kyro2 are giving me other problems, such as general instability and some blue screens (more so in the 8.x series of drivers that immediately preceded the 9.0031 driver set).....has resulted in my deciding to buy a new gfx card. I can tollerate many things......but crashes, lockups, blue screens, and general instability, forget it. If I wanted to deal with them, I would not have gotten NT 4 in 1996 and said my good byes to win95 as much as possible back then. Because ATI is reportedly having many driver problems, that leaves a GeForce 3 or Titanium. Perhaps after I upgrade the video (and hopefuly say good bye to crashes) I'll have some more info. I do play Diablo II (xpack now) rather regularly.

OK, through the entire beta this has been, well rather annoying. How does one disable auto-insert notification and drive inventorying in Windows XP. In Windows 2000, there was an option to do this in the "Computer Management Council" under removable storage. The options to disable auto-insert notification and drive inventorying are gone. Needless to say, one of my CD drives is a 5 disk changer (Nakamichi MJ-5.16 si/SCSI internal) and it has ALWAYS taken rather poorly to all this auto-insert notification, drive inventorying, auto-play, etc.......) The problem is that the OS thinks it's 5 seperate CD-Rom drives, the OS thinks wrongly. It is 1 CD changer, and everytime it goes to inventory the drives, the changer starts cycling, and cycling. This is annoying. In Windows 2000 one could disable this drive inventorying and auto-insert notification stuff from here. In NT 4 there were registry entries which one could modify with regedt32, though don't remember if they worked in win2k anymore or not. In Windows XP, with Microsoft having removed the options, now what? Auto-insert notification is OK on the DVD and standard CD Rom drive, but on the changer I don't want it operable and cycling my changer a lot.

I have not dealt with the 80-pin SCSI hard drives........I always ordered the 68-pin variety. For my hard drives currently, I have an Adaptec SCSI card 29160 which is an upgrade from the Adaptec 2940u2w SCSI card I had. Basically, when I needed more HD space, I was looking on adding a second 37.6 GB HD (my first Cheetah a 9.1 GB). The cost of an Ultra 160 37.6 GB Seagate Cheetah was about $560 (and on Pricewatch the adapter was less then $200).....and of course ordered online, no sales tax. A 37.6 GB Ultra2 Seagate Cheetah was over $800.....I wasn't about to pay more to keep my current SCSI adapter, so bought both the adapter and the Ultra160 drive. (Latter on I found that the U160 drive could run on a u2w adapter, but oh well.) My 2 HDs are a 9.1 GB Seagate Cheetah (mine's actually an engineering sample, from the second batch of 1,000.....as my old computer was built just before these drives went to the general market), model# ST39102LW. The new HD is a 37.6 GB Seagate Cheetah for Ultra160 SCSI, model# ST 336704LW. In the case with these, and to my knowledge with any internal LVD SCSI drive, there is no termination jumper on the drive itself. The termination is provided using a special LVD SCSI cable (the active terminator is on the end of the cable). Now, these cables are rather pricey (I needed a longer one when I added the second HD, and the cable was $70. One either neads a twisted or laminated SCSI cable. If one uses a SE SCSI cable, the drive will be forced back into SE "legacy" SCSI mode (detecting this), and won't use LVD signaling anymore. If you get a proper LVD SCSI cable, the terminator is on the end of the cable. You are talking an internal drive, right?

Hmm.......this is odd then My start menu does not have it Well, this install has had some problems due to them gfx drivers.....and, bad enough to convince me to buy a new gfx card.....and I do not want a hardware config with bad drivers counting. Quite frankly I do NOT want to have to deal with activation anyway, and am extremely opposed to this entire system. But definitely, I will not activate any system with device driver probs. As a win2k user, and a winNT 4.0 user, I'm not used to having to deal with regular blue screens, and I don't think any user should ever have to get accustomed to it. With 3 days left to activation, I'm toasting this install soon anyway. Maybe after I get a new gfx card, and rid of these drivers and their probs, but even then I really, really do NOT WANT to have to activate. Perhaps something did get royally screwed up during one of these blue screens then.

MSDN subscribers get both the Pro and the Home CDs shipped via UPS, and the subscription cost (before anyone says bah, you got it for free....the yearly MSDN subscription cost is not free, and now.....is actually going up again) doesn't change regardless of which we use. Ironically however (or perhaps there is no XP server) with win2k we got both Server and Advanced Server, but now, there's just Home and Pro. We did get win64 (yes even in beta 1, there was winXP for Itanium), but it's of little use to me, unless they come out with a version for the AMD Hammer next year (as a Hammer I would upgrade to, but an Itanium, to run all my software in x86 emulation mode, no thx).

But it is not there. Under Start/All Programs/ Accessories, there is NO command prompt listing, hehe...... There was in all the betas and release candidates, though under the final........ (which I had since beta 1 as an MSDN subscriber), was there in win2k final, and all the way back to, I had win2k since beta 3, and it was there in NT 4, but now......it's gone, hehe Either it wasn't there from the final build (did Microsoft hide this or something), or something got jacked up during one of the crashes, where, well.......to make a long story short....... I got a Hercules Prophet 4500 back in the days of Release Candidate 1, did a fresh install with the then lattest win2k drivers for the Kyro2 and all was fine. Now, I got the final retail build almost a month ago (via MSDN subscription), do a fresh install with it, and the then lattest winXP drivers, and constant crashes, lockups, blue screen STOPs, etc 5-6 times a day. Even with the lattest drivers (the 9.x drivers) from either Hercules's site or from PVR's site, it's not so frequent, but...... One easy blue screen to replicate with these, go to run chkdsk during boot time (aka do a chkdsk /f on the boot partition) and let it schedule it for next boot, reboot, let it run, and after it will bluescreen complaining about pvr.sys. How things went from no crashes on the Release Candidate with pre-XP specific drivers (older win2k drivers) to blue screens with Power VRs XP specific drivers on the final build.....well that's kinda backwards. Did Microsoft remove this from the start menu (thx Microsoft, hehe), or did it get goofed up when the new XP gfx drivers were going into lala land, with XP saying the computer is being shut down to prevent further damage to the computer, and then invariably every time complaining about PVR's XP gfx drivers?

What has Microsoft done with the command prompt? I STILL like to use a command line interface at times for things, and though MS is merging both Windows families in winXP (though even 9x had a DOS prompt), the entry on my start menu for the command prompt present in win2k, and winXP up through RC1 seems gone. It's no longer in the start menu under all programs/ Accessories, and I can't seem to get it somewhere else. How is one to launch the command prompt in winXP Pro final build? Don't tell me MS removed the command prompt, some people still use it for some things. I want access to the command prompt window again.

This is their suggested scheme. They'll allow 4 upgrades (CPU counts as 2 however) within an as of yet unspecified amount of time....based on 10 IDs they follow. A snapshot is taken at time of activation and compared. This whole scheme is a bunch of BS and uneeded. 1. If they wanted to see whether it was the same computer or different, then forget taking a snapshot at time of activation, forget comparing to a snapshot taken at this time....and forget taking the rather dictatorial approach which ends up controlling how many upgrades a person is allowed to make within a given amount of time. I can only hope that 2 things result: a. Customers get perturbed when inability to upgrade due to activation restrictions ticks them off because they demand better levels of performance with new next gen programs. The burden then is placed on Microsoft to provide miraculous levels of software optomization to make old hardware one can't currently upgrade (too many already) deliver next gen performance. People start becoming extremely voicterous about the amount of bloatware MS provides, and starts counting wasted CPU cycles to the extreme....and if MS doesn't give satisfaction....they get some seriously negative PR and a new unshackeable reputation as a result. This, how much additional memory, disk space, and every other computer resource this and that new feature takes is scrutinized....because new restrictions don't allow one to make the upgrades that would make these insignificant. If MS releases bloatware (all the former jokes about Wintel...and how one releases new faster hardware to run all next gen software, and the other releases software to make one have to upgrade, etc) and then puts any restrictions on allowed upgrades.....getting some negative feedback and reputation is well deserved. b. Hardware companies feel the pressure as people can't, under liscence sell as much hardware. This results in a slump in PC sales among Microsoft's partners, who get together and decide to put pressure on Microsoft to cease activities which could have some negative consequences on hardware sales. Perhaps, if feasible, stop putting hardware IDs in their products, and making it impossible for an OS to ID them, so as to make any kind of hardware profile at all. Perhaps also tell Microsoft, they will only return to putting identifiers in their hardware, only after any system such as WPA has been removed....with the incidental negative effects it could have on hardware sales. ---------------------------------- Anyway, if all that was really involved was seeing if it was the same machine or not...the following would work. 1. Each time the machine boots, take get the hardware profile info 2. Compare it to the info retreived at the time of the *last* boot, not time of activation. 3. At shutdown, save the config retrieved from hardware at time of boot, so that it can be used for the next comparison. It is the number of upgrades BETWEEN reboots that is significant, not that from some time of activation, however far back.

Actually, I hate to tell ya, but with RH7 as opposed to other distros of Linux (and also RH 6.2 and earlier) there is a slight issue (potentially) if you need to recompile some stuff, such as the kernel, XF, etc.... You see they use a newer version of gcc (I think it is), and much of the Linux code out there isn't exactly compatible with it....won't compile. That might be one slight problem for you. I used Red Hat to version 6.2, and well now am using Mandrake 7.2 (multi-boot here)...it's largely based off the RH distro, but well doesn't pose this issue.

Practically every file I have downloaded from Microsoft's servers in the past are not bootable. There is one exception to this (well haven't downloaded it, but it's there). You see, with MSDN shipments this year, they stopped shipping bootable CD Roms. This years included non-bootable winNT 4 and win2k CDs (and I don't think the Whistler beta 1 CDs they shipped us are bootable eother). People complained, so there is a bootable win2k ISO image they uploaded..... Your download, if it's consistent with about 99.9% of them I've seen on their servers is *not* bootable.

Exactly! Thank you very much Microsoft for comming up with a scheme that burns your legit/paying customers more then the people you allegedly want to go against!!!! (That said, you get the CD at the end of the beta test period, don't ya? You've payed, in other ways. The time to debug, track down porbs, and report back to them, hehe) But on accounts of both being a user, as well as someone who has had to manage networks before (more then 1 or 2 computers on them, hehe).... Well with the network, can you imagine the poor sap who has a corporate liscence (there are a few options such as liscence packs or a universal liscence....that allows one to install their MS software onto up to any number of comptuers they have, but costs around $8 million/year), who might have to manage/be responsible for 30,000-60,000 computers in some companies.... Umm....if some hardware in one of these things goes down, and a company can not afford downtime (costing businesses like $1,000/hour in lost productivity....), one has got to be able to just replace failing hardware. They can't wait for Microsoft to approve of things....with the bosses breathing down one's neck...and if it's bad for the company continually....the possibility of getting fired for it. An hour or so on the phone to Microsoft, waiting in the wait queue is a big deal if one of the corporations critical servers goes down (remember winXP server as well as pro and home user edition...) and now lots and lots of employees can't do their jobs and complains to their bosses, because.....

Well if it isn't a bootable image, you should make the boot floppies, insert them into the floppy and begin install. I would recommend backing up your data also and what can not be reinstalled, just in case for whatever reason the beta doesn't work out on your computer, and also....because personally I would do a fresh install. If you format the drive for that, you got to be able to recover.