GTwannabe

Well, considering how badly they did on Return to Castle Wolfenstein, I don't have high hopes for Doom III. They let you run around at 300mph, the implementation of weapons sucked, every area was set up to be an ambush, the AI sucked, you couldn't even think about trying to be stealthy, etc etc etc. Medal of Honor shows how a WWII shooter can be done right; I kept wanting to play it. I lost interest in RTCW during the hokey "monsters in the crypt" spiel... The original Doom was cool because of the various environments. Doom II started that stupid "everything brown" trend at ID. It will however, push current graphics to their limits and replace Quake III as the "my $599 graphics card gets me 193.43 fps in the QIII bench!"

Creative's Audigy drivers work fine, but only if you install things in the right order. 1. Install O/S 2. Install Audigy software/drivers from CD 3. Reboot 4. Apply official Audigy patch 5. Reboot Sound card now works. If you try installing creative drivers on top of other updates such as DirectX 8.x and such, it'll crap out during install.

Definately go with NTFS. It's far superior to FAT32; faster and can self-correct errors (don't need to scandisk if the computer doesn't shut down correctly) Testing has shown that WD drives are optimized for this file system. NTFS does require more RAM to work well, but you shouldn't have any problems in a system w/ a 120 gig drive. The only "downside" to NTFS is that it tends to fragment a tiny bit faster than other file systems. Not a big deal though. You can buy the JB model retail, it's sold under the "Special Edition" label.

There isn't much (if any) speed advantage to only scanning certain file extensions. Yes, it will be a night and day difference on a 200mhz 32mb machine, but on a faster computer, you won't notice.

Why would you need to scan outgoing emails if your computer is virus-free? NAV Corp 7.61 has snap-ins for both Lotus Notes and MS Outlook.

The machine I installed XP on was an IBM 92U (very pissy, tempermental system) With XP, I had software incompatability problems, random lockups and reboots involving the screensaver, and a slew of other things I don't remember right now. With 2k tho, I haven't had one hickup from that computer. I'm sure XP will mature, but until 64-bit processors become mainstream (fondles 64-bit beta CD) I'm 2k all-the-way

At work, I maintain a mix of standalone Windows 2000 Pro and Server boxes for our office. We received a site-license for XP Pro, so I gave it a shot and did a clean install on one of the systems. What a pain! Even when fully patched, it couldn't run any brand-name anti-virus software; even versions specifically for XP. It had so many quirks and issues that it not only pissed me off, but everyone else that had to sit in front of it for any period of time. Got formatted and a clean 2k installation shortly after The thing I don't like about 2000 however, is that you need to install SO many updates/patches/drivers after install. I make my own integrated SP2 + most commonly used apps discs, but it still takes about 15 trips to Windows Update and dozens of reboots.

Ok, after adding my 120gig hard disk, I've maxed out my IDE controllers. Currently have the Orb drive disabled, and I have a Zip drive laying around which I can put in the system. If I get a PCI IDE controller card, will I be able to use 6 or 8 IDE devices?

My 30gig 7200rpm maxtor drive is having issues; every so often, it will hang with no disk activity with the HD access led lit as W2k loads tasbar items. It trashed my FAT32 filesystem and installation last year. Now with NTFS, it lasts a few months before it buggers up. Leaving the computer on 24/7 has helped significantly, but it's buggering itself up again. I think I'll buy a bigger hard disk, copy my files over, and have the 30 gig replaced under warranty. What brands do you recommend for a 60+ gig disk? I'd much prefer a 7200rpm drive. Will not consider an IBM hard drive because I see how frequently they fail at work ;(

I ordered a WD1200BB drive. 120 gigs, 7200rpm. I'll save my data from the 30, format it, and use it as a slave. Works fine as long as you don't try to boot off it ;(

My hard drive is having issues; Direct CD stopped loading on startup. Tried patching to v5.1, but that didn't help. Uninstalled Roxio, and on reboot, I couldn't access either of my CD drives. They don't even show up in My Computer. I have exclamation marks next to the drives in the device manager. Tried reinstalling the drivers normally and in safe mode; no luck. Any idea how to get them back?

Ok, sounds good. I'll try that as soon as I write my 3 papers that are due monday. I sorta got off easy... when I uninstalled it from my dad's machine, it blue screen o' deathed his copy of 2000 on the following bootup. What do you recommend instead of Roxio? I tried Ahead InCD, but that only works w/ CD-RW's, and doesn't let me eject my old directCD discs.

The school network that I use has banned "Napster and Napster-like programs." Networking monitors the ports that those programs use. Basically, no download utility programs for me or I'll get kicked off the network. I work with someone that has a cable modem that's idle during the day. Is there some tunnelling program that could allow me to set up a secure connection to the cable modem and then out thru the internet?

Unfortunately, I don't have any say in what software is installed on the computers here. The school has been using Mcafee since before I started working here. The older systems were rolled out w/ 4.0, the newer ones have 5.0 in the image, and the new lab machines are all corporate ed. I agree with your statement about mixing consumer and business software. Bad idea!

Actually, I have used AVP. My last boss was a huge fan of it. We had it running on a few machines in the office. Did a decent job, but the interface was kinda clunky IMO. 25% of the computer problems we deal with at work have to do w/ Mcafee in some form...

Quote: You protect the AV your using, mostly. Actually, I've got access to every virus scanner in this thread. Tried em out on the comps at work, and Norton AV corp came away the winner

The McAfee Corp edition is halfway decent. It is configured to scan everything out of the box. The problem w/ the 4.x and 5.x is that ppl that don't know what they're doing roll out the software w/ just the bare minimum scanning and heuristics disabled. The corp edition is going on all the new machines, but there are still literally hundreds of desktops with effectively 0 virus protection (and users that see the shield and think they are). 5.0 does a decent job detecting and catching stuff IF it's set up right. It's a system hog though... I have a 486-66 20mb ram win95 POS computer at home. W/ mcafee 5.0, it didn't have enough free RAM to start IE 4.0 and bogged the system. Uninstalled it and put trusty Norton AV Corp 7.5, and runs just as fast as w/o a virus shield.

Mcafee IS a virus! Worst POS software I've ever encountered. The college I work at uses Mcafee for some god-awful reason. Reasons I hate Mcafee: 1. Does nothing to stop 99% of viruses out of the box (scans only .exe, .com, and .dll files) 2. Some Mcafee superdats tend to randomly break AV installations 3. Requires users to go to the web page, download, and install (which they of course never do)... which only worsens #1 4. Older versions (4.x) DO NOT uninstall properly. They leave registry keys and cues to start files that it deletes. Have to manually delete these before installing 5.x 5. System hog 6. My work bought a $60,000 license so we'll be dealing w/ this crap for a LONG time Norton AV corporate is by far the best AV software! It scans aggressively out of the box, can easily be configured for automatic updates, automatic scanning, can be rolled out via the web, uses very little memory and resources, etc.

You really shouldn't be having IRQ conflict problems. Each PCI device is assigned it's own ID, so IRQ sharing is possible. Are you running an old-school TNT? I had massive problems w/ a PCI TNT on my dad's 2k system. Had to use old 3.x drivers to get working D3D.

Try booting into safe mode and uninstalling the MS pre-SP3 hotfixes. Usually fixes it for me. If that don't fix it, you'll probably need to do a clean install of windows. Trust me, it sucks, but you should only have to do that once

I put a diamond viper 550 (PCI) in my dad's computer. Windows2k found drivers for it and I thought I was all good, but they didn't have any D3D support. I downloaded some Detonators (23.11 and 21.89), and they work fine in 2D and say they have D3D support, but when you try to test D3D in Dxdiag, it crashes out. Anybody know where I can get working drivers for this clunker? Diamond got bought out by SonicBlue, and they only show win9x drivers for download.

I've got a pair of Windows 2000 Advanced servers at work. Need to know how to do this active directory stuff to access the hard drives of the other computers in the office. Already tried the FAQ, but the links to the Microsoft FAQ's didn't work.

I have a 1212u at home. It's a nice little scanner, but yeah, AGFA product support is non-existent. They're almost as bad as ATI when it comes to drivers/support.

Back in the days when I used FAT32, if Win2k would bluescreen and crash, it would automatically schedule a disk check. With NTFS, it never does a startup disk check. Is there any way to force the system to do disk checks if it isn't shutdown properly? I ask because if I startup with a "dirty" disk, the system hangs for 10-20 seconds with the HDD light lit while loading items in the taskbar.

That happens when you have auto-insert notification turned off, but there's a simpler work-around than ejecting: Pop the disc in and if it's not recognized, open "My Computer" and push F5 to refresh. It'll see the disc then.