pbuckne

Maximum port speed under modems? I am not sure if that helps. I am curious if they have sampled your phone line, dedicating two of the four wires to another line or another house altogether?

I am really curious about this one. If you delete the enum key under the registry in win98, it will remove all the driver info from the registry. If you lost all of your programs links, that sounds like something restored an old copy of your registry. I worked at a company where a guy did this to a coworker for revenge, and the results looked exactly the same. What you end up with is all the info put into the registry AFTER the initial copy is made is removed, and working programs and drivers are eliminated. Any data you had on the drive would be intact, but all programs would need to be reinstalled before you can use it again. Interesting problem.

What version of win98 and what version of IE?

Follow that same path in the registry that he gave and check out the run once. Also, what programs are running at startup? I know you mentioned that you couldn't find it, but I once had a Microsoft Works updater link (found in the registry or under msconfig). Uncheck anything under startup in msconfig that looks suspicious, like something with a /update or similar. You can actually uncheck everything, and then add the options back one by one. I would recommend using msconfig first, then once you isolate the little pest, use the options mentioned above to remove it from the registry. Hope it helps.

Just some random thoughts, hopefully useful. Are you using FAT, FAT16, or FAT32. If you are running anything but FAT32, using the Convert utility to move to FAT32, as it is stable by comparison. I would also recommend running a scandisk (without the autofix option selected), if there is mention of any files that are lost, etc, delete them and skip the undo option. Then follow up with a defrag, and definitely that scanreg /fix suggestion. If the scanreg doesn't do it, I would invest in a free registry scanner, I've seen some good ones. Go into safe mode and check for any devices that are listed as unknown or other (the scanreg might take care of that). If so, identify them and install them. Also update your other drivers if nothing else seems to work. Also, are you running a current antivirus? If so, is it up to date and are you scanning regularly? There are some interesting viruses that can lend to this problem. Hopefully some of this will prove useful, and I have seen all of them contribute to what you are seeing, albeit working on many different machines.

You've got questions, we've got answers, or the commercial goes. I have a (wait for it) Dell PII 266 with 256 Meg of RAM and (count 'em) 2 WD Caviar 2.1 Gig harddrives. I have been playing with booting multiple operating systems off of it, and have succeeded in getting no more than two off the ground at a time. I am working on DOS 6.+, Win95b, WinNT, 98se, and 2k advanced server. Later additions might include BEos, a linux distribution or two, then 3x and possibly XP. The last OS'es would require better hardware, but that stuff grows overseas, or something like that. Now, what would be the best boot loader/os loader for the job? At best I would hope to achieve a total of ten. Am I reaching, or is this do-able?

I have a kid sister who chats. A lot. She used to use yahoo and msn and icq and all the rest, and this was killing her PII 400. Anyway, we tripped across www.trillian.cc. and it is some of the best lying (emulating, whatever) software I have seen, since it emulates all of the above (as I recall) plus a couple. There are a couple of bugs, however. Anyone know of a better source? They update pretty regular, but I wouldn't mind something else.

test...? Test the environment? ;(

Good idea, I was planning to name the partitions, DOS, win95, win98, etc... Glad to know I am on the right track.

I am putting Dos and win95 first, that is good to know I was on the right track. Also, I am adding more harddrives via controller card later...

Unfortunately this gentleman is frightened of the format, but I have had customers come in with 9x problems on 98se, and then go home and overlay 98fe along with the rest of their software. I know a guy who started at dos, and made every upgrade from there to milennium... You think your friends machine is bad off...

We had a customer order two systems with ati 9000, a gig of RAM, and two 120 gig harddrives per machine. They do graphic art and design, and even went so far as to get 17' flat panel monitors. An interesting twist was that they wanted to run some very nasty DOS programs that they refused to upgrade. After a lot of struggle, we opted to dual boot. Was sad, Dos 6.1 on one 500 meg partition, and 2k on the rest. Works fine, but I wonder how if this other solution might have worked?

I have a couple of Dell GX1 towers that I am wanting to part with. They have integrated video, sound, nic, 128 meg of ram and a 10 gb hdd. Been good business pc's, selling without software for about 225, buyer would pay shipping. I am in the midwest of the US.

Y'all might as well close this one out, we have nearly cleared our stock.

Talked with a guy about this the other day, he uses all the same email clients, he stated that he went sp2, then upgraded to sp3, has been having no problems...

Who moved the sofa? Came home and things were rearranged. Must say I dig the changes.

Interested. Whereabouts are you located?

http://www.tomshardware.com/mainboard/02q3/020716/index.html What'cha'all think of this?

Different note: Grasped the nettle? Odd saying, British? (United States here) I have an interest in foreign lingo, what exactly does it mean?

You have two options, Nvidia makes a pretty decent PCI video card that can be obtained at many retail locations, as do they makes good motherboards of late. If you are looking for a good, solid, cheap motherboard solution, try Nvidias Nfoce board, the K7Npro from MSI. Minus shipping averages around 126 American, and comes with NIC, Dolby 5.1 audio, 6 USB 1.1 and a GEForce 2 card on a DDR board. Not too shabby. I have two, nuff said.

I have been wondering about this for awhile, and wanted to see who would 'fess up. 'We all do dumb things', or so goes the Geico commercial goes. I've made a couple of technology oriented blunders, and wondered what everyone else had done. #1 Rookie on the job, I took down a unix box that just happened to run a stores registers, and cost them about 200,000 in sales (remember, I was a new) while it was coming back up. #2 Used Nortons Ghost utility to format the blank drive OVER the drive with the data on it. Needless to say, the former was of greater consequence, but it was important data. Guess we can see who's who of blunderville...

I have to admit that I have put the floppy on backwards more than a few times. I always look around to make sure none of my techs saw it, and quickly reverse it...

Hmm. Stellar deal. We are adding software and selling them to customers, works great with 9x, 2k or XP (wid a little more ram). Been grabbing a lot of attention with a 56k modem added.

Thought I would pose a question about how spyware-aware everyone was. I have been using ad-aware (www.ad-aware.com or www.download.com) for some time to clean those pesky little nuisances. What do ya'll use?

Gotta tell somebody... I just built an XP2100 system with 512 meg micron DDR on a K7Npro board for a customer... the whole thing moved like lightning on XP pro, they even opted for Office XP professional. It was just beautiful. A weaker man would have kissed it... There, glad I could get that off my chest. P.S. They are going to use it to check their email... 8)