thymios

This guy is definatelly getting money from companies after he writes his articles.I mean you can tell that in this particular one, he didn't know what he was talking about did he?! It sounds like "I'll say in my website that you've got the best CPU/mobo/gfx card or whatever, and you'll give me one for free since i am advertising you." Sounds quite real to me.I never trust articles from only one source. If you want an overall info about a product, try forums first where people are not going to lie to you because they won't have any benefit from it, and also try to locate many articles/reviews about it, where statistically you will have a better idea of what's going on.

Hey in what kind of store did you buy the CPU?Did you buy it of a stranger on the street?!?!I mean you can still take it back to them, boxed and all, and get your money back can't you?

Price?

You should be allright since you're running win2k now. The boards chipset might be a problem, like DosFreak said but don't expect much bigger problems than the ones you have in win2k with it. Also do NOT try to upgrade from win2k to XP, it's usually a bad choise.The system is always better with a clean install, unless you really can't be asked to do that. P.S. If i understood well from your Name in the forums, you are a game fan, so that's good news for you: Installing XP will give you a significant boost in multimedia apps (mainly games)-just hope that Nvidia has made some good work with the drivers.

Hey SneakX that's a really interesting site.And i was giving up on the idea of fixing the damn mobo(my friend got a new one already, he seems happy that the other got ****ed cause his computer is kicking now!), but i think it's a matter of me being stuborn and i won't let it like this.I'll give it a shot it think. Thanks again.

After installing SP2 there were not that much of hotfixes and patches that would complete a SP3.So i guess that we're far from it yet.I would say around late april or may.

In order to disable the scanning of ALL compressed files, you just need to go to options-->manual scan, and then deselect the "scan within compressed files". But i am not sure if this is going to solve your problem since you tried excluding the java folder already. I assume that you installed the latest patches with liveupdate... Try also setting Bloodhound Heuristics to default level rather than highest level of protection.

I've got the original version (400). Thanks for the tip though, i'll take a look at it there. Take care.

Yep i have 436 patch installed. The ngstats were working fine with IE 5. When i upgraded to 5.5 and 6 they stopped.A friend of mine that has WinXP and hence IE 6 installed has exactly the same problem. Even launching local ngstats from UT, does not make a difference. I tried to find an answer to the website of ng but i found nothing. Anyways, thanks for the reply.

It all depends on what you're indending to do with the new machine. You have to decide mainly between the three memory types(SDRAM, DDR, RDRAM) where there's a big difference in price. I can't really advice you on a Athlon mobo since i never had one and i really don't know what to tell you, but if you're looking for a P4 CPU/mobo then you should really go for DDR or RDRAM solution. Gigabyte's GA-8IDX and Intel's D850GB (both uses RDRAM) are mobo's that i tested and they are perfect.Stable and fast, they really worth their money. I haven't tested a DDR memory based mobo for P4, but i am sure that other people that have already tried them will let you know of the good ones.

Probably the firewall won't allow you to get through any program like kazaa, but you can try the following: Mopheus(same interface with kazaa) BearShare e-donkey I don't remember their home pages but if your run a search on google or similar search engine you'll get there.Or even try www.download.com and get it from there.

Quote: When he logs on with his userid, he cannot get at it. How do I make it so he can use Word on his PC? Can you be a bit more specific about this?You mean he can't find it in the start menu, or it's not on the hard drive. I can imagine that it's the first problem, so you have to do the following: Win2k sorts the start menu programs into two categories. A Start menu for all users of the computer(common programs) and a start menu that is only for a specific user(admin, and any other userID). The program is probably on the start menu of the admin user and it's not in your sons one. Login as admin on your sons comp. Right click on the start menu and choose open all users. Then right click again and click on open(that opens only the personalised start menu of the user that is logged on. Word etc. should be on your personal start menu.All you have to do is move it to "all users" one.That way, all accounts that will be created from now on will have access to the program. If i'm confusing you, note here that even if there are two start menus, virtually there's only one, that has both the personal user's start menu and the common one, when you click on the start menu.

The best thing you can actually do now is what Dirty Harry suggested.Re-install win2k(you don't need to format just insert your CD boot from CD-ROM and choose install-not repair because i am not sure if repair procedure asks you again for passwords etc.) It's wise to have the Administrator account with a password that you will always remember(choose something easy but NOT obvious!), for situations like this one. Take care.

If you are logging in as administrator(I don't mean having administrative proviledges but loggin in as Administrator-user name), then there'e not much you can do.Otherwise if you specified a different user name in the setup then try: user:Administrator Pass:<none>(leave this black i mean). Then logged as Admin go to users in control panel and change the pass to whatever you want

Yes i am definatelly using the right BIOS.What i am trying to find out is what the hell does this message means(Unknown Flash Type). I'll try later on to contact SOYO and ask them. I mean it's so strange, i am using the awdflash that soyo gives out and i have tried lots of other BIOS versions(the current that my friend has is quite old and about 6-7 new ones are out). Example the BIOS name that his machine is using is VBA-2ba3. There are 2ba5, 2ba6, 2ba7, 2ba8, 2ba9, 2baa, 2bab out from soyo.NONE IS WORKING I DON'T BELIEVE IT!

Good news(well better at least)! I gave it a try after reseting the CMOS once again and the computer started.Still not recovered obviously but at least i can do something now.It starts on bootlock and asks to boot from a disk.So we are back in time, before the stupidity #2. I tried to upgrade the BIOS with the awdflash that came from SOYO's site and it gave me the same error(Unknown flash).What on earth is that mean?Why can't i upgrade the BIOS?what's the problem of the mobo anyway?(hope nothing personal!). Is there anything else i can try now?Things are a bit better but still bad. Thanks for replying.

The main reason i asked you for the motherboard is that sometimes win2k installation fails on certain motherboards and it is resolvd by up[censored] the BIOS, but since you have the latest BIOS it shouldn't be the case. Your problem is definatelly related to hardware, and since the motherboard is out of the list try and focus on the memory.Like Dirty Harry said you have to check first of all if it's a 133MHz. You can check it by installing it on another system and running Motherboard Monitor 5 (it has memory analyser and it actually tells you the speed as well).Then set the appropriate setting in the BIOS(DRAM frequency) and you'll be sure about that as well. Finally, ACPI should be enabled for win2k to work, otherwise you'll be getting BSOD.

Hi all. I've got a friend with a Celeron-500 CPU on a SOYO motherboard based on the discusting chip Apollo Pro of VIA. The specific motherboard was actully discontinued because as you already know the chipset was a nightmare for all users. The multimedia benchmarks on Sisoft Sandra are amazingly poor and this causes his games to run very slowly dispite his upgrade to a Ge-Force 2 MX 400 Video card. I'm talking about a 150%-200% lower values than of other similar systems. I have a feeling that the motherboard is really bad and it's causing all the trouble.Does anybody else have any other idea on what might be happening to his system? For your reference, the system is running win2k pro (installed a week ago) with all final drivers+the latest 4in1 package of VIA(hate that stupid company, thank god i never made a mistake to put it on any of my systems) and he also has 128 PC100 memory.Thanks for reading. Regards

I also have a personal painfull experience with SOYO, although the main problem of the mainboard was the HPT UDMA-66 controller(you probably know which one i am talking about, i don't want to flame yet another product!). 4in1 are installed(the latest) and didn't do much of a difference.I tweaked the BIOS and i think it's the right values(i use them for lots of systems that run fine).As i said it's going to take a lot of experimenting before i actually get somewhere(if i ever do!). You have to be very carefull though when choosing a motherboard because i understand after some years of PC building that it's the most crucial part for a healthy stable and fast system. Anyways, enough of blabling.Will post if there's any news.

What is your motherboard you're using?

It sounds quite strange your problem. The only thing i can think of right now is right-click on MyComputer-->Properties and then go to Advanced tab.Click Performance options and check the details of the page file there. If you have 256MB memory then the page file should be around 380MB size.Once you're there, click also the "Change" button and see if it's assigned on the correct drive(should be C or you can change it to whatever you want, altough C is recommended since you use the other partitions for other stuff).In my system the minimum and maximum value of PF is 384-768(I also have 256MB mem). I know that what i told you here is the obvious but give it a try you never know, something might be screwed suddently.

http://www.directron.com/monitordrivers.html Download the win9x driver, it should work fine for win2k.

Wakkawakka you are trying to work out a very lethal combination. Max Payne is a quite hungry game, and Voodoo 2 is not (and never will be) supported on winXP.I had a friend with a voodoo 2 card and i founf lots of drivers made by coders around the internet, but trust me none worked. The guys are right.Either upgrade to another gfx card or install win98(yuck) and you'll be fine(for the game only of course, after you install 98 you'll be running around forums in order to find answers to hundreds of ananswered questions about this OS!)

Thanks for your reply. I don't think that memory is going to make the problems disappear, but i'll give it a try and i will take one of mine 128 bank to install it to his and see. It's not sandra that gives these actual results but in general when the computer runs games, movies, and mainly multimedia stuff it's slow as hell and you can hear it struggling. BTW no means to offend VIA, i am talking of personal experience that i've seen in other systems, and i am not trying to say to any user here what's good or what's bad.I know that 133A is better than the original Apollo, but I'm trying to find a solution without having to upgrade since my friend has no money available for his system at the time being. For a start i'll take my memory to his and i'll also try my CPU(P-III) to see if the motherboard has any issues with Celeron(doubt it but there's nothing to loose). Once again thanks for replying.Take care.

Quote: I have several BX-based systems that run awesome with WinXP Pro, and one is running .NET Server B3 right now quite well. What kind of "controller" problems did you have? I am not sure if it's a problem with the controllers, but i experienced a lot of crashes(not responding) when running windows explorer, especially when accessing my DVD and CD-RW.While win2k never caused me any problems like this, i can be almost sure that it is XP's problem. Also standby didn't work. In general, I am not saying that XP is bad, all i am saying that for me win2k works perfectly and flowless.