AndyFair

I've been trying to get TrainSim to work for the last couple of days, and everything works fine, apart from the sound - the speech in the intro rides is echoing, and general sound throughout the game keeps stuttering and clicking, and slows the game down. And before you ask, no, I'm not using a SoundBlaster card - I'm using a Santa Cruz with the latest drivers. Sound in all other games works perfectly, just not in this one... Suggestions welcome! TIA AndyF System details: Asus A7V Athlon 1GHz 640Mb PC133 RAM Turtle Beach Santa Cruz GeForce 2 GTS (Creative GB0010?) IBM ATA100 30Gb HDD LG 52X CD-ROM Phillips 10X DVD Memorex 12-Maxx CD-RW Alcatel USB ADSL Modem

Hmmm...it'll be interesting to see what they do with the 64-bit Itanium version of XP (due to beta at the same that XP will be published I think) - will they include a 32-bit compatibility mode...? I agree with you about emulation, and can't really see the point of MS including compatibility mode if it doesn't do its job very well - but that's been a common theme with so many MS products!! All the way from Windows 3 and beyond... I can't help but think that an awful lot of home (read "non-technical") users will see compatibility mode as a panacea to get all their games working - and they'll get annoyed when it doesn't work. AndyF

Latest update: Quote: Dear Andy Thank you for contacting the Microsoft® U.K. Beta Programme regarding Microsoft® Preview Programme® software. We currently anticipate that fulfillment of all pre-orders for Windows XP Proffessional RC 1 will begin shippment at the end of July. However, this issue regarding shippment times has been flagged to the Preview Product Managers involved. Based on customer feedback already received, this is now currently under investigation If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact us. Yours sincerely, David Treanor Beta Contact Executive Microsoft Connection E-mail: Ask_Preview@microsoft-contact.co.uk So, no further forward then AndyF

If it's a winsock error, you could try uninstalling then reinstalling the TCP/IP drivers, and see whether that solves the problem... AndyF

You're not using a VIA-based motherboard by any chance? AndyF

Still no sign here either - I sent an e-mail to Microsoft at the beginning of July, and this is the response that I got: Quote: Dear Mr. Fair Thank you for contacting the Microsoft® U.K. Beta Programme regarding Microsoft® Preview Programme® software. I can confirm that we have recieved the Microsoft® Windows® XP Beta order that you placed on the 15th June. We are currently awaiting stock to arrive for this product and until such a time no payment will be taken from your credit card. We currentlty anticipate that fulfillment of all pre-orders will be around end of July, although,as yet, we do not have a final confirmation on an exact date. In order to evaluate Microsoft® Windows® XP within the UK, it will require you waiting for the Beta CD to be sent to you. If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact us. Yours sincerely, David Treanor Beta Contact Executive Microsoft Connection E-mail: Ask_Preview@microsoft-contact.co.uk I thought that the idea was that we would be sent the latest beta versions, and then RC1 as and when it ships; apparently this is not what Microsoft thinks. Maybe they're waiting for RC2? I think it's time for another e-mail to Microsoft - I'll keep you updated. Rgds AndyF

According to the Norton/Symantec website, the latest AV updates contain definitions for the Sircam worm - these updates were released on July 19. See Norton website for more info. If you update Norton Antivirus to download the latest virus defs, you should be protected. AndyF

You could try disabling some of the non-essential services, but that would only shave off a couple of seconds off the boot time. Like rgodart says, there's nothing you can do about it - just learn to live with it. On the upside, I find that the bootup time is just long enough to pour a beer (unless I'm at work, in which case it's just long enough to go and get a cup of coffee ) AndyF

Quote: Sigh. I can see it now. People are gonna think compatibility mode will fix most or all of their problems when it won't. Then they'll get when it doesn't do what it's supposed to.....when it has nothing to do with the prob. ;( I don't think that at all. In fact, I never use Compatibility Mode because it's an MS kludge, and not a very good on at that. I made the suggestions because I thought that maybe it works better in XP than in Win2k, but from the tone of your reply, I would guess not. Unless MS are going to do some serious work to make Compatibility mode worth using, they might as well just drop it - 6 months from now, I can see lots of XP Personal users getting mad with CM because it won't run their favourite DOS games from 1987... Win2k was never supposed to play games, so I can see why MS haven't spent much time on it - but XPP is designed for gaming, so I kind of assumed that MS would have put some effort into it...my bad! So the bottom line has to be: is XP any better for gaming than Win2k, or are we still going to see the same kind of problems we do now with games in Win2k? AndyF

I've had this problem before - it was due to a bad RAM stick - swapped it out, and the install went fine. You may want to check your RAM - maybe only use 1 stick until Windows is installed. Rgds AndyF

And the advantage about using a slot is the noise - they are *sooo* much quieter than tray-based drives! AndyF

Does it make any difference if you run the games in compatibility mode? AndyF

Or if you're using the original WIn2k disk, it already is bootable! AndyF

I would say that, if you have the drive backed up, reinstalling Win2k couldn't do much harm. VIA's 3-in-1 drivers are notoriously buggy, and installing the newest version isn't always the best idea - new versions seem to introduce more bugs than they fix...having said that, the latest drivers do seem to be fairly stable. Does your mobo have ATA100 channels? If so, the VIA drivers don't touch these, they're controlled by Promise/Highpoint drivers (depending on your mobo make). In summary: reinstall Win2k, see how you go, and keep running chkdsk! Rgds Andy

Can you run chkdsk c: /f from the recovery console? It could be that the Everquest crash caused some damage to the hard drive? Give it a go, and see what happens. Rgds AndyF

Pulled from Avault - seems there's a much easier way to get around activation problems... Quote: [size:9]Tuesday, July 17, 2001 - 1:09 pm CT[/color] [size:18]Windows Product Activation Compromised[/color] [size:9]Sources: Tecchannel and The Register [/color] The Windows Product Activation implemented in the current RC1 of WindowsXP contains serious bugs that will open the way for hackers to avoid the whole system, Tecchannel, a German-based online computing magazine, reports. Several interesting shortcomings were revealed during the course of Tecchannel’s experiments with several hardware components, product keys, and a critical central file. Together with peculiarities in generating the ID of the hardware, this will open the way for hackers to avoid activation completely. WPA can be compromised via numerous hardware-related routes, all centered on a file named wpa.dbl, which WinXP keeps in the System32 directory. Summarizing Tecchannel’s detailed findings, UK-based The Register reports that this file stores information on the nature of the hardware at the time of activation, and when WindowsXP notices more than three items of hardware have changed, it deletes it. The user then needs to activate again. Tecchannel first saved the file then started changing hardware. Two items were changed without incident, but replacing a third component -- the CPU -- triggered the deletion. Tecchannel then copied the saved file back and avoided having to reactivate. Next, Tecchannel tried a completely new installation using the same product key. This produces a new product ID, but nevertheless copying the wpa.dbl file back again works. Additional investigation showed that users can use the same wpa.dbl file to activate multiple computers, provided the RAM size is the same. The question is whether Microsoft's programmers can close these gaps before RC2 is released. AndyF

It might not also like the newer versions of the drivers - see if you can get a couple of versions back - they might work. Rgds AndyF

Well, I've done it - found a bit of extra cash in my wallet, and I've ordered the Iiyama - £600-ish from dabs.com - I've gone for the 4311, which is (as far as I can see) the same as the 4331 but without the extras like USB hub and speakers - which aren't worth an extra £300! I'll be keeping my 17" CRT so that I can run a dual screen setup at some point in the future... BladeRunner - did you ever make a decision in the end? If so, what did you buy, and are you happy with it? Rgds AndyF

Have you done anything else, like upgrade IE? Sounds like more of a problem with Explorer rather than hardware. You could download SiSoft Sandra and run the test to make sure that your hardware is working OK, but I don't think that's the problem. Rgds AndyF

Have you tried checking msdn.microsoft.com? IIRC the MSDN libraries come with MS programming apps, so you could see if you can pick up a cheap second-hand copy of VB or VC++ AndyF

And just when I was about to bemoan the lack of deals in the UK - my savious! And at £15 for 128Mb PC133, that's not bad!! Thanks for the link AndyF

Press CTRL-SHIFT-ESC to bring up the task manager, click on the processes tab, then click at the top of the CPU column. This will sort all the processes by the % of processor time they are using. Which processes appear at the top? Those are your culprits - especially if the "System Idle Processes" line appears way down the list! Rgds AndyF

You might be able to do this in two lines: 1. Pipe the output of dir into a file (use the /b switch to get just the filenames - it also lists the full path as well) 2. Pipe this file into zip i.e. dir /b/s *.class > file zip < file Just a thought... AndyF

Glad you've got it working! Yes, for stuff to work on different PCs, you will need to have apps installed in the same place - I usually set up one PC, and then clone that to every other workstation using Norton Ghost - it makes sure that each workstation is absolutely identical to every other, and causes no problems with orphan shortcuts. I don't think there is an option to select the profile type at login, but if your workstation can't contact the server, it uses the local copy. You should also beware that each user profile is also stored locally on each workstation that they log on to, and if you have many different users logging on to the same machine, it will contain a copy profile for each of them - which can eat up disk space fast! Glad to have been of help (for possibly the first time in my life!!) Rgds AndyF

OK. Here goes. The logon screen is when you first turn the computer on - when you installed Win2k, you may have chosen to log on automatically. Not being at home (and my work PC is not set up like this), I can't tell you how to take it off, but it probably comes off when you add your workstation to the workgroup/domain. This has nothing to do with locking the computer or dial-up networking. It is when you log on to the computer at start up (or you can choose log off from the start menu) In the user profiles section, you need to set the profiles path to \\server\profiles\user1 where server is the machine name of your server, profiles is the name of the share you have set up, and user1 is a subdirectory within that share. You're almost there - keep on trying! Rgds AndyF