Christianb

Hi Marktait - Hey Adam we meet again Adam You're absolutely right. MarkTait I'm not familiar with your particular model of GeForce card, but unless the design of your card is significantly different from the GeForce reference design you should just use NVidia's drivers. Typically OEMs will add useless or next to useless enhancements and modifications to the drivers. An example might be a tray application for changing resolutions. I don't know about you, but I dont' change my resolution more than about once a week so for me I dont' mind just right click on the desktop. The tray application will however slow down system start up times and steal CPU cycles the whole timie your using your computer. Another and in my opinion far worse thing that OEMs do to the drivers is they will try to inflate benchmarks by either cutting visual quality corners or by hogging the CPU. While taking a disproportionate share of CPU time gives better Video scores in a benchmark, it will cause things like sound stutters in your games, because only your video card is getting enough CPU time (attention). The reason that OEMs will do such stupid things with their drivers is that they really don't care about their customers just sales. So they put an add in a magazine that shows that their GeForce is faster than everybody elses which is for the most part bullshit. Even if a particular model has faster ram if it's based off the same chipset and has the same ammount of ram there will only be about a 0-20% increase in performance. Simply put faster ram isn't everything. When I buy video cards I just choose a chipset. The last one I chose was a GeForce MX. What I look for is a good software bundle, like cool games, because if you're video card is about 130 bucks and it comes with 3 cool games, you got a pretty good deal . However if you saved 10-15 bucks and got a model without a software bundle you chose poorly. Anyways enough about that. Get the generic drivers unless you have some special add-on like a proprietary video capture card, TV tuner, 3D eyeglasses or something like that. Although I think the latest GeForce models do have a chipset that sports TV tuner and Video capture functionality (usually one and the same, but occasionally not). Also right after installing new drivers make sure you pay attention to how your games play: is it slower? is it faster? does it crash? is there any new visual garbage that wasn't there in the last driver version? If things don't work as well just uninstall the new drivers and re-install the old ones. Good Luck Amigo, Christian

Hello friends. Hey I'm having trouble with Front Page 2002 and was hoping someone had already gone through this problem and knows the solution. I think this feature was working correctly when I tried the demo, but now that I have the full version and have used it a little it would seem that the left hand menu has disapeared. How do I get that to omnipresent while viewing a web? Look at this screenshot. I currently have my web open, how do I get Front page to display that left hand column on that lists all the files and folders at the same time(well in branches)? Click here for my screenshot, because it's large and I didn't want to screw up the Messageboard's formatting

Him Jim, Thanks for replying. Actually I did have a web open, I even tried different ones, but it would seem I just overlooked a very simple menu option: "Views" ---> "Folder View" Which changes This ---------------------------------------------------------------------> To This -------------> Hopefully someone else will make the same silly mistake and benefit from this post . Which I'm now somewhat embarassed to have my name on. Cheers, Christian

I know how to get Front Page into page view and folder view, but I want the view that looks like folder view, but lists files as well, and puts the page to the right of that listing.

Okay well it looks like Netbios isn't terribly necessary. This description makes it sound like it's left from Dos networking days where the computer names had to be really short. Of course there wasn't any mention there about the net MSG stuff. So this will disable the messenger functionality altogether. Is there a way I can just trust a few computer names (not necessarily in my network or workgroup? I would trust IP addresses, but my friends and I are all on DHCP. Cheers, Christian

Why don't you just undo what you did: Add the driver back to device manager. Rather than trying to decipher the registry. -Christian

Thanks Admiral LSD. I think Clutch is wrong though. There must be some additional functionality penalty for disabling netbios like there is for removing file and printer sharing (obvious penalties). Since I don't know what features Netbios provides would some Admin like elaborate on what would be missing. Thanks, Christian

Hi Alexiz, Once you have the two computers communicating properly over your network you would then want to set up internet connection sharing. That is assuming you have Windows 98SE or higher otherwise you'll want to set up a proxy. You can find help on setting up internet connenction sharing in Windows Help (I've read the windows 2000 help on it. I don't know if the Millenium or 98SE help is any good, but I'm sure the XP version is about the same). Adam you da man . Cheers, Christian

Hi Curley Boy, How about some pertinent information. What is your current driver distribution (IE NVIDIA direct or from some OEM) and version? If it's not NVIDIA direct that could be part of your problem as OEMs tend to try to do stupid things with the drivers to impress customers with useless features and inflate benchmark peformance. Start by up[censored] your drivers. Sure it could be caused by something else you've done like up[censored] DirectX or installing a game that came bundled with an updated version of DirectX or OpenGL. Basically just update your drivers, who cares if it's caused by an updated DirectX just install the updated drivers and maybe the newer ones will support the change. If you still have the same problem you're no worse off, if things get worse, well then you can uninstall the updated drivers and install the old ones, even then it wasn't a loss, because then you can rule out the most obvious culprit. Good Luck, Christian Blackburn

Hi Guys, I thought I'd change the subject a little and ask if anyone else has started to notice Net MSG (aka WinPopUp) messages popping up on their computers displaying ads? I absolutely hate it, but I think it would be hard to block, because anyone can spoof any unocupied IP address. So in essence I could block an IP address that one day I might try to access legitemately and wouldn't be able to load it.

Hi I don't even have Windows XP, but how do you know ParPort.sys isn't loading or that it needs to be? Is there an exclamation by that device in Device Manager and when you read more about it that's what it says? It just seems to me that Windows XP might not use that file anymore. Also why don't remove it again and then let windows auto-detect it. If it isn't autodetecting your Pritner Port make sure it's set to Auto in your BIOS. Also make sure you have PNP enabled in your BIOS (I doubt XP will let you install without this option enabled, but who knows). Can you be more specific as to what your problem is. IE I go here and this is bad..... Also I've had power supplys go bad on me and my serial ports would stop functioning properly. It's possible that your Parrallel port could stop functioning for the same reason. Also what kind of Motherboard Chipset do you have? What parrallel mode are you trying to use? SPP, EPP, ECP, BIDR? etc.. Good Luck, Christian

Quote: I'm not trying to offend anyone either but when I upgraded to Win2K pro, I had 512 meg memory and my once speedy system turned into a dog. Okay well that could be for a lot of reasons. First off I can't infer whether you are describing one or two separate upgrades. 1. from some lesser quantity of Ram, 2. an upgrade to Win2K Pro, or 3. Both. If the answer is both you really are comparing apples to oranges. Adding more RAM can slow a system down, think about it, it has to address more memory therefore it has to search more "mailboxes" before it finds the right one. However most programs fit into 256 Megs of RAM (not to say that 512 isn't better for complex games and graphics) therefore an upgrade from 256 to 512 would probably slow down the execution of say MSpaint, but I can guarantee you that if you start running complex applications and several of them simulataneously you should notice an improvement with 512 megs vs 256 or any value below that. Now on the other hand if you originally had 64 megs of ram and upgraded to 512MB there should be a 100% chance that everything will be faster, because Windows 2000 Pro takes up about 100 megs beneath the OS and drivers. As for upgrading to Win2K and having your system perform more slowly that could be due to a myriad of reasons: 1. You have a Sub Pentium II class system 2. You have more applications and or more bloated versions thereof running simultaneously (in your system tray for example) 3. The drivers your hardware vendors wrote for Win2K reflect a half ass quickie job and aren't as optmized as the drivers they wrote for prior OS's 4. You need a benchmark, because you still don't believe me Quote: Disable the pagefile. You speed will increase. Okay that's a particularly bad idea for anyone with less than about 1.2 gigs of RAM. If you disable your pagefile, and try to edit some complex graphics or run a whole bunch of programs at once you'll run out of memory. Not to mention that Windows will be less stable, because you're running a nonstandard memory configuration. Nonetheless I may try this just to see how things go, but really if you do this and start getting out of memory errors use your brain and re-enable your pagefile.sys.

Actually I just found Norton SystemWorks for 5.75 on TechDeals.net: Get Your System Works Posted 11/19/02 by david Gemini Computers are offering Symantec Norton System Works 2002 Pro (OEM, CD only) for only $5.75+S/H. Click here for the techdeal. Granted shipping could be 10 dollars or something so I don't know what it comes out to, but if you're in the market for SystemWorks it's definetly worth looking into. Good Luck, Christian

Hi Mr. Guvernment, Actually they're not that desperate to get rid of them DirectDeals specializes in selling bulk and slightly outdated software. However yah the price is right: Ghost + NAV for 12 bucks is not to be missed. -Christian

We already held a poll and there were like 11 positive votes for Sp3 and one negative. So most people were better off after installing it. If you search for posts made by ChristianB you ought to be able to find it. -Christian

Hi cazzman, Just for the record nobody runs Windows 2000 Pro just fine on a P200 w/ only 128MB ram. I presume it's a RAM issue, but having used a system with such little specs I can tell you with considerable confidence that this is definetly not an ideal system/ OS combination. The keyboard and mouse response will be ungodly slow on your system. You might try windows 98 (I know it's unstable, but it will be a lot faster), or upgrading your RAM and or CPU. 128MB just doesn't cut it on Win2K you need at least 256 and really it requires a decent Pentium II Proc or better. -Christian

I should also note that I've never used SystemSuite 4.0 and currenlty have SystemSuite 3.0 and before that I had SystemSuite 2000, and before that Fix-It. This suite also has a file manager called power desk which has a freeware Light version you can try out. Size manager is also excellent and lists folders on all your drives by their respective size, and then what files are inside of it. This is really helpful if you're trying to consolidate. You can see where all your disk space is going: giant evil black hole!.

I will agree with that Ghost and NAV are the only two components worth a damn. I like VCOM (Formerly Ontrack, Formerly Mijenix) SystemSuite's utilties better. SystemSuite 4.0. Their virus scanner signatures are always free indefinetly (well okay maybe one day, but I've used 3+ year old versions with out issue). You can Virus Scan, ScanDisk, and Degrag all your drives in about 3 steps, you just check a few boxes click go and it'll do all three without stopping! Actually it can do more than that at once, but those are typically what I use. Their undeleter is also more thorough than Norton's. You can also turn of the recycle bin protection and it'll physically restore a file your FAT Table. -Christian

First off let me say thanks to whomever started this thread. I don't know if I was on crack for the last month or what, but I completely missed the SP3 release announcement after looking at Microsoft's website it lists the release date as 10-21-2002 (I suppose it could be the file date). For those of you who don't already know this Office 2000 was essentially the Windows Installer's Maiden voyage. Perhaps WMI came out first for IE or something, but to my knowledge this was the first notable Microsoft product to utilize the tool. The windows installer still has a long was to go on the development side considering you need to a PHD in their program to disable the auto-repair feature. This is of great annoyance to me, because often after I install Windows Installer Apps I'll move a program group (start menu folder, for the newbies) to some sub-folder like Image Editing, Utils, or Internet and then the Windows Installer will rebuild the icons in the orginal location. This is a wonderful feature, but it should really only happen on demand and or ignore the shortcuts. It's great that it fixes things, but at the same time it needs to take user-preferences into account. That brings me back to Office 2000 (the maiden voyage). Patching office 2000 has been for me anyways a living hell. It seems like no matter how you do it it's fails to install without error messages, notifying that such and such file is newer. However it fails to do this in a friendly fashion. Instead it gives cyrptic error codes that make me worry. The other problem with Microsoft's Office 2000 patches (Sp2 and lower anyways) has been that once it's installed you can't re-install it. I find that majorly frustrating, because what if when you installed the service you didn't have one of the office programs installed and then later you decide to do so. Now you can't service pack it, because the installers all report "I'm already installed have an unpleasant day!". However I suppose that all the .msi files are copied to the some auto-repair folder and perhaps new applications are service packed once a user choose to repair their installation. I was excited when I saw SP3 I thought now that the windows installer has been out for almost 3 years perhaps things will be different, but I was sorely mistaken. More cryptic up[censored] error messages: ScreenShot 1/4 ScreenShot 2/4 ScreenShot 3/4 ScreenShot 4/4 By the way was Office SP3 announced publicy on any news sites? I didn't see it on BetaNews, The Register, Windrivers, NT Compat, or Slashdot all of which typically list this type of release.

Thank you very much for your help Lotus and Adamjackson. -Christian

Hi Thanks for trying, I'm sorry that key wasn't there I really had no idea where it would be. It could be at HKLM\Software\Micorosoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup, but actually if I could probably get the info I need by just writing down the version info Windows + Pause reveals. I've marked in red the information I'm trying to find out. What is Windows 95A called? What is the 4.X.X verison? and What does it list the service pack as, Service Release 1? Thanks again for checking, Christian

Personally I don't think performance is the number one feature of any Raid controller. I mean sure maybe one is 1-10% faster than another, but who cares? The two most important things are stability and compatiblity, because all Raid controllers are fast and of course faster than a single drive solution. The fact that promise raid controllers won't work with Norton Ghost is enough of a reason alone for me to look elsewhere. However, come to think of it the two problems I had with my Promise Raid card were stability and compatibility. The stability issue I believe was the raid controller, simply because things seemed to get better when the card wasn't present. However I came to find out later that I had a bad motherboard, but to my knowledge the only thing that didn't work on it was USB, everything else worked fine (to my knowledge) for 3 years. The other problem is only partially promise's fault, yes they should pay Symantec to have native support for their controllers in Norton Ghost which is pretty much the number one backup title out there. The half of this compatiblity problem that isn't promise's fault is that you have to re-install windows just to have your Raid system bootable. That's microsoft's fault, because unlike their support for virtually every other piece of hardware they haven't created a mechanism to change the IDE controller of your boot device. I think it would be relatively simple they'd just need to create a boot disk/Cd or add to their Install CD and allow users to install a diferent IDE controller via drivers on a floppy disk. Seeing how most of these IDE/raid controllers fit on a floppy disk I don't see why this wouldnt' work provided the user propagates the data over. In fact this boot CD should do that for you. Suppose you have one 20GB HD and you want to switch to a RAID Controller. You should be able to set up a RAID array, leave the 20GB on the current IDE controller (presumably the motherboard), install your RAID Controller's drivers, and then Windows should move the data from the old drive to the new, end of story. However for some reason Microsoft in their monopolistic laziness has failed to add this feature, saying screw you re-install to all their users which I don't appreciate. I would probably have a RAID system today if I didn't have to re-install to truly enjoy the performance gain. Now I know I could re-install or move all my apps to a RAID partition, but I think I'll pass for now. The 100% software based RAID solution built into Windows 2000 sucks too, you can't boot of it. However it is better than nothing and the price is right. Did they fix that in WinXP can you create a bootable software raid array? -Christian

Thanks Adam, I have heard of this Partitioner. I will follow your link and give it a go. FDISK just isn't user friendly enough. I'm glad people out there are making an effort to create something more along the lines of Disk Management in Win2K. Cheers, Christian

Hi CUViper, Thanks for the reply. I assume this guy is getting a bigger hard drive right? So he'd probably want to fork over the dough and get Ghost. Although there are freeware partition sizing apps, but that scares me . Does anyone know of one that works okay? I think UNIX has some that while buggy work most of the time . You could always back up before resizing . -Christian

You have a point there. For a one time drive cloning there are other solutions. Does this application resize partions correctly regardless of FAT and or NTFS format? Because if he's getting a new drive it will most likely be a bigger, newer drive.