ConQueso

Hmm... First I'm going to answer generally... Then post specifics after I get to them... The error on the SOL link has a much more specific reference to specifics. Mind just had I think just 4 lines to the effect of Windows has started chkdsk (something like that) Cannot open volume for direct access. The type of the file system is NTFS. Windows has finished checking the disk. Perhaps out of order There's no IFSUTIL or status return. not sure if that matters... Anyway, don't worry about breaking my heart, I'd already found a similar link http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;823439 (think I reffered to it above) before I decided I needed to post here. Also, yes, I have thought about the virus protection in the bios. I've tried disabling it before for the reboot chkdsk and other scans, but it didn't appear to help. Then again, if the BIOS is buggy, it might not have went through... Perhaps now I'll see if I can fully update it and repeat the error with and/or without the bios virus protection enabled. Will try to post other Will try to respond to your other quotes specifically soon.

Oh, I wouldn't think the HD would have any oldschool MBR stuff on it, as it was a brand new drive and has only had XP home installed on it.

Originally posted by AlecStaar: Quote: Since you could boot up, but still showed a messed up bootsector? Recommendation DO A VIRUS SCAN, with GOOD antivirus (recommend AntiVir, free & is right up there with Norton AntiVirus in tests) that is up to date! before (or possibly after) I even did the chkdsk after the first reinstall, NAV2004 was completely installed, completely updated (ran liveupdate repeatedly until it actually said all was up to date), and did a complete system scan showing no detected viruses/viri? as far as the tools go, it's a samsung. I'll check their site for HD tools when I get back from picking up the battery... shouldn't take long.

Once again, thank you so much for all your help. Still don't have the problem solved. Will buy a battery sometime today. First, I'll say what I've done thus far, then I'll respond to your previous quote. Reinstalled windows (each time with a standard reformat). Did errorcheck immediately after install, and it ran after reboot fine. Figured maybe the reinstall made things OK. Wrong. Updated everything, installed office and NAV2004 updated NAV (glad I have DSL). Tried scndsk upon reboot (not RC) and it couldn't access the drive. "Cannot open volume for direct access" with other text not showing any alphanumeric stuff, and not really saying much else. Can get exact quote if you need. Decided to format 2 partitions, one © 2gb, the second 34 gb (D) for the XP install, this on a 38 GB drive. Standard format on C and D (NTFS) then windows install finished. Tried error check in windows on C drive, it ran through fine. Repair console chkdsk said one or more errors. fixmbr said mbr was funky or invalid, so I had it fix it, it said it did. Rebooted to windows. Rebooted, fixmbr said MBR was funky or invalid again. Rebooted to windows, prompted chkdsk on boot chkdsk on boot ran fine. A note before I forget, some windows screens (black windows XP logo on bootup (in earler install) and some screens that are mostly light blue (XP setup screen (not dark blue one), chkdsk on bootup screen) show one or two one-pixel width lines running horizontally and normally if there are two, they are close to eachother. usually randomly well saturated collors. Question: In my mobo manual, it shows a CLRTC with 3 pins and a jumper on 1 and 2 with short being 2 amd 3. I'm not seeing these pins, though I do see CLRTC lettering on the mobo, though it is not readily apparent (to me anyway) where there supposed to be. (manual mobo revision pictured is 1.00 mine is 1.03 Asus A7N266-VM if that rings any bells) Need I clear the CMOS before replacing the battery? or should I just try the battery first and not bother to see if it helps? I ask this because once with a new mobo I was having system instability, and a CMOS clear resolved the issue, though prior saves of changes or saves of non-changes did not resolve the issue. Quote: Originally posted by AlecStaar:Ok, it's getting 'interesting': Does it issue ANY errors along the lines of "Disk is locked by another process" type errs? Nope, just boring old "Cannot open volume for direct access" Quote: Originally posted by AlecStaar:AHA! Ok, BOOTTIME chkdsks' fail on you... this can be looked over & fixed in one area in the registry: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager (Look over the right-hand side pane entry of BootExecute - this is where it runs from! If you have to? Set it for boottime checkdisk via DOS prompt command chkdsk /f C: for instance if it fails again & rightclick on it via regedit.exe & use the export command to send what is in it to a .reg textfile you can copy & paste the content of it for us to look over here) Currently chkdsk is running on bootup. Should I do this anyway, or should I try to upgrade everthing to see if it will prevent bootup chkdsk? Or should I try my best to get things working and only do this if it should happen (LOL) to occur that bootup chkdsk cannot access volume? Quote: Originally posted by AlecStaar:It is... perhaps replacing the CMOS battery is in order. Cheap & easy to do! Will do. Quote: Originally posted by AlecStaar:P.S.=> On your second post I missed - (had to sleep), yes, any logs you have? Look them over... EventViewer logs too, never hurts to check those for errors the system might post! apk Ok, here's one for you. The last scan of the HD (D) drive (keep in mind the current D drive does not span the first or last 2 GB of the drive) Code: Event Type: InformationEvent Source: WinlogonEvent Category: NoneEvent ID: 1001Date: 6/19/2004Time: 12:50:53 PMUser: N/AComputer: COMPUTERDescription:Checking file system on D:The type of the file system is NTFS.A disk check has been scheduled.Windows will now check the disk. Cleaning up minor inconsistencies on the drive.Cleaning up 19 unused index entries from index $SII of file 0x9.Cleaning up 19 unused index entries from index $SDH of file 0x9.Cleaning up 19 unused security descriptors.CHKDSK is verifying file data (stage 4 of 5)...File data verification completed.CHKDSK is verifying free space (stage 5 of 5)...Free space verification is complete. 35005603 KB total disk space. 929104 KB in 8606 files. 2116 KB in 551 indexes. 0 KB in bad sectors. 76231 KB in use by the system. 65536 KB occupied by the log file. 33998152 KB available on disk. 4096 bytes in each allocation unit. 8751400 total allocation units on disk. 8499538 allocation units available on disk.Internal Info:e0 23 00 00 d0 23 00 00 64 28 00 00 00 00 00 00 .#...#..d(......38 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 72 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 8.......r.......48 fa 7b 00 00 00 00 00 b6 dc 52 06 00 00 00 00 H.{.......R.....8e bd 9f 00 00 00 00 00 4a 96 a1 1e 00 00 00 00 ........J.......68 8c 1f 4e 02 00 00 00 a6 4e 60 7b 02 00 00 00 h..N.....N`{....99 9e 36 00 00 00 00 00 9e 21 00 00 00 00 00 00 ..6......!......00 40 b5 38 00 00 00 00 27 02 00 00 00 00 00 00 .@.8....'.......Windows has finished checking your disk.Please wait while your computer restarts.For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp. Any other logs that might help? Thanks again for you're help. I'm off to get the battery.

Well, reinstalled the OS after a format, and it ran the scandisk all the way through. Should I check for a log, or does it stay on the scandisk screen if there is an error? I'll run scandisk again once all the drivers and updates are installed, just in case.

That's the weird thing. It has always booted up fine, at least to windows. The problem only showed it's ugly head after I happened to do a chkdsk (glad I did) and it wouldn't do it. Still boots fine to XP, still fails the chkdsk, still continues to load XP afterword. Still glad, though, because now I know the MBR was (maybe still is)? messed up, and possibly the BIOS as well. I haven't yet seen this bios type vary on slow/quick bootup except on this particular system... Very strange. Am considering flashing a new bios, the old one is about 2 years old, and there is a new (a few actually) bios versions only about a year old... Think I should put off any bios flashing until I reformat and checkdisk?

Hmmm... Fixmbr and fixboot combined seemed to do what they were supposed to do, but the the regular chkdsk would still not scan the drive. Strange thing is, I even decided to do a slow POST, but noticed that sometimes it would quickpost. Seems to only want to do a slow post when changes are freshly saved to the bios (even though they were not changed since last time)... Does anyone know if the above symptom is the result of a failing BIOS battery, a corrupt bios, neither, or both? Am going to check what version it is, and see if there is an update. Should post soon. Oh, yeah, and the RC chkdsk showed errors on the drive. So it's looking like I'll try to reformat and chkdsk asap afterward to see what becomes of it. Still need to decide what to do about bios before bothering though...

First of all, you rock! That was one quick response, and so far, an accurate one. The fixmbr said the MBR was messed up, then said it fixed it after i said to try. Still trying to figure it out, but I figured I'd update as quick as I could and thank you for your help thus far as quick as I could, seeing as your response was so fast and helpful. Thanks! I should post more soon.

Try my FAQ.

Can't manage to get Civilization 2 to play multiplayer on a WinXP and Win95 system. Both computers see eachother and can transfer files back and forth, and both play the Age of Empires 2 demo in multiplayer just fine. The XP system will get the multiplayer game ready, and the 95 system will see the game, but upon trying to connect to the game on the 95 system, a box comes up that says something to the effect of "unable to join/connect yadda yadda ya." Both games have been patched to the latest version. The XP machine is running DX9.0b and the 95 is running DX8.0a. The result was the same when attempting to run the XP game in 95 compatibility (shortcut) mode. Might QFixApp help out? I haven't needed to use it to network a game that ran fine by itself yet.

Cool. Thanks for the info!

Fair Strike was released not to long ago. There is a demo you can download on the page linked to.

Know of that 5 or 6 wire wide plug coming out of many power supplies that isn't used often? I was wondering where I could get a PS that has 2 of those that would work with an incredibly old school motherboard that has only two of these for a power attachment to the PS. Or for info if I could splice wires from the standard ATX mobo power plug to the remaining plug.

Hmm... The computer's pretty old, wasn't looking to put money into it really. (except for the cost of some splices or a simple adaptor). I've got an old 300W power supply sitting around doing nothing I could use... Thanks for the advice. I'll check the local shops for the adaptor.

Wondering if I can add space to my existing System drive without reinstalling windows. Can I just configure the new drive as part of a span of the c drive, or is this not possible without a reformat/OS install?

Tried ACT? Check my FAQ.

Try Unreal Tournament 2004. And do try to wait patiently for mods with vehicles to come out for it.

Excellent suggestion. Unfortuately, the box was unchecked. Any other ideas? FTR, the last patch was released 4/15/99 if that helps at all.

http://www.ntcompatible.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=136681 Wasn't sure if this topic belonged here or in games, so please follow the link and not post in this thread to avoid cross-threading. Thank you.

Quote: it is because games and televions use different settings to go between frames - television uses aa "blur" effect i beleive while games dont TV simply records real footage, and if not captured at very high shutter speeds (not framerate), then it will naturally blur if there is a high level of camera/subject movement. If "aa" was not a typo for "a" and it is a reference for anti-aliasing, that is just due to the fact that in real life things have curves, and capturing those curves in a real environment will naturally lead to edges having AA looking "smoothness". This doesn't boil down to the TV set, but rather the fact that live recording isn't rendered to try to look real, but actually is real. TV does 30 frames per second, but 60 feilds per second. That is at it's 720x480 resolution or so it scans lines 0 then 2, then 4 etc then a 60th of a second later "fills in the blanks" by scanning 1,3,5, etc. So a complete picture or frame takes 1/30th a second yet each "half image" or feild takes a 60th of a second. Probably why TV looks better at it's 30 FPS than a monitor at 30 FPS (fill wise, not resolution). Movies can go down to 24 FPS because they are not scanning lines that linger in our sight to make a full image apear as though it's showing up at one instant. Movies actually show the full image of the frame all at once. But a movie your not controlling the view. Your the audience. In a game, your controlling the view, so more framerate is needed. Adequate framerate is critical when it is representative of a fast motion first person point of view. Surely any tennis pro would play better in a strobe light that flashed 90 times per second than one that flashed 30. The difference would probably be huge. So saying a movie looks good and therefore 24 FPS is adequate for games just doesn't hold any weight. DISCLAIMER: DON'T PLAY SPORTS WITH A STROBE LIGHT ON. THIS IS DANGEROUS!

There is some info about it in my FAQ. There is also some info about it after you install it.

Quote: -All this thanks to ConQueso for suggesting OpenGlide. Thank you, but I really must pass that thanks along to DOSFreak, who was the one that made me aware of OpenGLide in getting Carmageddon 2 to work with hardware acceleration and joystick support (an apparent USB joystick bug in D3D i guess). So, thanks again, DOSFreak!

Have you tried running Longbow2 in Glide? OpenGLide (v.08f) runs Carmageddon 2 just fine in Glide with a GF3/4MX. Does it offer higher than 640x480 in glide? If not, you can at least enable antialiasing and anisotropic filtering to make the screen seem higher res than it is. With dated polygon counts, the game would likely still run smoothly. AA and AF would need to be enabled in your cards OpenGL section, and the "OpenGLide" needs to be copied on top of the same file of it's name in the game's directory. Let me know how well OpenGLide works, and if you now where to get a copy of LongBow 2 if you wouldn't mind. Can you have two players in one helo in LB2? I tried Apache vs. Havok and, IIRC, the main problem was having the first person feild of view constantly jerking up and down... I think there might have been a speed/framerate problem as well, but I'm not certain. It's been a while.

Team Apache and Gunship! both run fine in XP. I haven't played longbow, though I'd guess TA and G are slightly more on the arcady side. I got Gunship as it was the only Helicopter Sim I'd read about that included the ability to play multiplayer games with one player pilot and the other gunner in the same craft. Sadly, the arrow that's supposed to indicate which direction the LAN gamed gunner is looking doesn't function correctly. If anyone knows how to get this to work, please let me know. Thing I really like about Gunship is the trees. Ya, they're intersecting 2D textures with collision radii, but because this lets the game show so many individual trees, flying NOE through a forrest or wooded area looking for tanks is increadibly cool.

After doing a decent amount of reading and comparing charts, I'd have to recommend the Radeon 9000 Pro if your looking to spend $15-20 over a GF4MX. It seems to give the most bang per buck.