Christianb

Hi Jimmijo, I think one of these OEMs was a branded Yamaha. That'd be good enough for me. Currently I have a Plextor 16x10x40, but that just takes too damn long to burn and the Mode4 DMA practically uses all of my CPU I hate that. Also the RW on it doesn't seem to be very reliable. Cheers, Christian

Hi Mr Guv, I don't know when the last time you installed Winzip was, but both Winrar and WinZip are installed and it's not any more difficult to do it in Winzip vs. WinRar. Although WinZip does have more Context menu options which some might consider a good thing and of course others might not. In general though WinRar has quite a bit more options for just about everything which is both a feature and cumbersome. Alec I'm with you I've been using WinZip since 1993. What an investment 30 dollars that my dad and I split when I was about 14 or 15. Course that was in 1994 or 5 that we actually registered . Cheers, Christian

Hi Bobbi Brisco, That can be a lot of different things. Some motherboards automatically reboot if the power gets to low or the system too hot. In Windows 2000/XP there is an option to reboot after a crash. Turn that off and you might see a blue screen rather than the system rebooting without explantation of why. You can simply read the error on the blue screen which will list the crashing file's name and probably figure out what's crashing. Steps to get there: 1. Press Windows (Key on your keyboard) + Pause 2. Click |Advanced| 3. Click [startup and Recovery] 4. Un Check [X] Automatically reboot Good Luck, Christian

Hi Guys, I have VB 6 which means I'm forced to use MSDN which a lot of the time it's really helpful, but an even greater percentage of the time it's just a useless pain in the ass. I was wondering if someone would post the VB5 help file or e-mail it to me so that I can use it with VB6. I hardly consider this piracy, because not only did I own VB5 in the past, but I am a legal owner of VB6 which if they hadn't screwed it up, it would still contain this useful file. In my opinion the only reason microsoft pulled this file is so they can extort 100+ dollars a year from programmers for an MSDN Library subscription. If you know how to upload the file to a server and link to it here please do so. If not just e-mail (Christian_Blackburn@Hotmail.com) it to me and I'll post it for everyone. Thanks for your help -> My Hero! -Christian Blackburn

Hi Jimbo, I have the files now. Thanks all the same. My brother-in-law gave me VB5 as a gift so I'm set. Christian

Hi Avalanche, I wish I'd seen your reply sooner, but YahooPops has been down for a while now. I guess Yahoo Must have changed something, but in any case I have to check my Yahoo account manually (on the web, gasp 8) ). Your menu program does seem to have better icons and more features. I wound up buying Xara Menu-Maker instead. However I do think I did wind up making a great looking menu: http://12.246.77.42/rawcities/. I'm still moving the content over from www.RawSeattle.org, but it'll be a whole new website soon enough. I do like the icons and APP Menu 1 is bad ass. Can you use icons with that one? I also think the ability to have a form appear over a particular menu item is especially boss. I may have to try your app out just for kicks and giggles. I think it's obvious that more technical poeple worked on Sothink's product whereas Xara had better artistry. Does anyone else have a contender? ;( Cheers, Christian

Hi Prum, Actually there are NTFS supporting Boot Floppies however the only freeware solution I'm aware of at this time is read-only and you have to pay for Write access . Well I'm glad you got it removed. Happy 4oJ, Christian

Hi Alec, How's it going buddy? Are you re-employed these days? I am presuming so since you're upgrading, but you probably can afford to do that anyways. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you're focussing on minutia. You can't upgrade your RAM without upgrading your CPU, and your IDE interface, and possibly other busses like USB, AGP, and the like. So documenting individual performance increases from any of those factors would be somewhat silly. Why not just take a look a performance comparison of a P3 class system vs. that of 2-3GHZ P4 system. This will give you a more general and overall comparison of your system vs. what today has to offer. Here's a Tom's hardware comparison from everything from a P100 to a P4 3GHZ system. That should be a good way to tell what you stand to gain. There are D3D, audio/video, and application benchmarks. Check it: http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030217/index.html. By the way before I forget have a wonderful 4th of july. So did you see T3 yet and if so how did you like it? Hope that helps amigo, Christian

Hi Atreyu, I'm not an artist and won't be making a graphic for you, but really you'll have to do a better job of asking than that. Artists need to know what they'd be making a graphic for and what theme the graphic should have. You must have a better idea of what you want. Secondly, you should have some sort of agreement the artist whose banner you choose and use will get... 30 dollars, a new logitech mouse, a copy of Unreal Tourney, something. Cheers, Christian

Hi Azygos, I like Microsoft's GamePad and GamePad USB they are good, because the hand size is clearly for adults. If you have a smaller hand size and want DOS compatiblity a Gravis Game Pad Pro (GamePort Edition vs USB) would be an excellent choice. The MS gamepad is about 19.99 and the gravis one might run you 20-35 dollars. Cheers, Christian

Hi I would like to start by pointing out that you may be missing some new security fix and perhaps you should install whatever updates it recommends. On the other hand it could just be screwed up. Since nobody else is experiencing that you may fix things by re-installing anyways since a non-corrupt version of the code would be put in place. That being said you can also just turn of the check for updates feature: I know you have IE6 so it may be a little bit different since I'm using 5.5 SP2 like a smart SOB (I let Microsoft test their own products, I used to work there and they paid me to test, now I refuse to do it for free ), but you can try this anyways: 1. Start IE 6 SP1 2. Click "Tools" --> "Internet Options" 3. Click the |Advanced| tab 4. Uncheck (deselect for those of you who like lingo) "Automatically check for Internet Explorer Updates". 5. Click [OK] Good Luck, Christian

Hi Prum555, You should just be able to delete the sucker. If for some reason windows has protected the file just reboot on a floppy disk and delete it from dos. If you don't have a bootable floppy then I suggest you go to www.BootDisk.com. Also what the heck is Perfect Disk? Who makes it? Super-Glue Inc.? (only kidding for all I know it's a core util of Windows 2003 Server ) Cheers, Christian

Hi Guys, I won't be going to the debut and might not see it at the theatre, but I'll definetly be catching that one. Perhaps I'll download it off of KaZaA or something. Did anyone see Charlies Angels 2? Demi Moore is 40 years old and more recently a raw foodist. She's also one of the new Angels. I look forward to checking that out since I'm a raw foodist and prefer to drool over my own kind: Article: http://www.accesshollywood.com/insidestory/0624_deminewbody.asp Video Clip: http://www.msnbc.com/m/mw/mw.asp?0mw=xh6...e=cover&pl= Cheers, Christian Blackburn

The reason Windows 2000's dos emulation is slower is that it's using Win2K unoptimized DOS virtual machine. That is Windows 2000 all it's many layers are running underneath your DOS application. That is everything else is getting more direct access to your CPU and memory. Windows 95 on the other hand runs on DOS so it's not emulating DOS, because DOS is actually running. Therefore DOS is the closest and most actively used element by your CPU. Here's something most people don't know: Windows 95 is a DOS GUI just like Windows 3.1. In fact the only version of the Windows 9X platform that doesn't run on dos is Windows Millenium which nobody uses anyways since Win2K was better and came out first to boot. You could try the virtual machine, but I doubt that will help. Have you tried just using DOS? Do the workstations require Windows functionality as well like e-mail, web browsing, and the like? While FreeDos might support all of your system's memory I don't think most DOS apps were written to see anything over 64 so that probably won't do you a bit of good in terms of memory gains. On the other hand FreeDos would have the most recent optmizations. YOu may however run into problems getting your real mode drivers working since FreeDos uses a different Kernel than MS-DOS. I think giving freedos a try would be an excellent idea though. Also I think there are 100Mbit drivers for dos and I'm pretty sure I observed performance gains related to them while working with a DOS/Ghost based imaging system in 1999.

In Windows 2000's favor I have gotta say that Windows XP is still a rapidly evolving code base. Windows 2000 is now on Service Pack 4 and just about all the major issues have been fixed. Windows XP on the other hand has been plagued by hardware specific and UI feature specific problems that caused considerable slowdowns, memory leaks, or the inability to boot. I don't recall Windows 2000 having such an epic level of these problems during it's infancy. Not to say that it didn't have similar problems, but they weren't nearly as widespread. I'm sure this is both the fault of Microsoft, hardware manufacturers and their drivers, and of course the ever increasing chaos related to computers. Did anyone ever own a nintendo entertainment system it was a perfect example of an almost foolproof system. Sure mine froze every now and again, but for the most part it just worked. There was only one MAJOR joystick/controller, one CPU, one drive type, and one monitor type (well signal anyways). This meant that developers could focus on functionality rather than supporting a plethora of hardware and software options. In the computer world however things aren't nearly so squeaky clean there are literally 1,000 of version combinations that simply comprise a given operating system. That is to say due to all the updates, versions, and security hotfixes users can find themselves with a Windows 2000 operating system with a different core code base than 99.9% percent of everyone else out there. Then you have to take into consideration all the different motherboards, CPUs, RAM quantities, hard drive capacities, and an almost infinitely variable combination of drives and other internal and external expansion hardware. Okay now things are sounding pretty ugly and chaotic, so let's make it worse. Every piece of hardware may be of one revision or another, have one bios version or another, one driver version or another, and one IRQ address or other hardware addressing location or another. Okay so the OS, and the hardware are crazy, but that's just the tip of the iceberg, now let's take a varied line of software of variable versions, updates, and configurations, and run them in variable simultaneous quantity and combination. Now let's see what breaks . That being said Windows 2000 has been out for some time now about 3 years. During that time it has been widely adopted by users, hardware manufacturers, and software development companies alike. If it's really important to have the software you download and or buy off the shelf work when you get home I strongly encourage you to buy Windows 2000 now since it's had more time to be supported by hardware and software vendors alike and in the future when the same is true of XP then that would be a prudent time to switch. Not only will more 3rd parties support XP, but Microsoft will have improved the stability and functional quality of the operating system considerably. Why be bleeding edge when no-one enjoys even the slightest cut or scrape?

The guy just said he had a non intel CPU there isn't any hyperthreading. I know AMD has something similar, but an 1800MHZ (Class) CPU probably isn't going to feature that anyways. Furthermore Win2K does hyperthreading I think it would just less stable since it's not "supported".

Hi Gang, For a commercial product I'd say WinRar for features and winzip for simplicity. However almost all the time I find myself using a wonderful free option 7-zip. It's the best compression algorithym out there right now it blows the doors off of everything else. Other programs support the 7z format however 7-Zip is the main freeware app. Check it out and see if you like it: www.7-zip.org. Also the best way to compress is to select files and folders and then use the shell context menu to add to 7-zip. When extracting double click on a file. Think of the interace as working with an FTP site on one pane you have the zip file and on the other you have the extraction destination so you copy files from the .7z to the extract point like you would uploading to an FTP site. Cheers, Christian

The Xara app isn't half bad, but the problem is you can't use icons with your menu items. Other than that I'd say it's a pretty darn good tool. Cheers, Christian

Hi Andy, Thanks for your input. Actually making the menus by hand is just about the last thing I want to do. That's the whole problem with web development it's to complicated. There's about 5 languages you have to know instead of one and then on top of it all you have to be graphics expert since there aren't enough HTML objects. PhotoImpact actually has some decent web features. I would agree that it's trying to be too many things, but the main problem with it is that it is probably the most difficult to use out of all the graphics programs out there. Cheers, Christian

It's a lot like a dingle berry . No seriously I have no idea either .

Hi Gang, I think I read that i845 chipsets won't support hyperthreading. However it seems like there are a whole sleu of 845 chipsets with different revisions. Perhaps I'm just mistaking all the motherboard flavors with varying features, but then again I could be right. Does anyone know if my D845BG board will support a hyperthreading CPU or not? Thanks in Advance, Christian Blackburn

Thanks Tomay and Eeades, It looks like I'm SOL. Oh well I don't have Windows XP anyways. Course I'm downloading Windows 2003 Server trial for free to check it out, but I know I'll repartition that drive in a day or two since it's a server OS. Cheers, Christian

I could be wrong, but I imagine that the command syntax was "%1" and not "%1%". Cheers, Christian

Hi Alec, Thanks for the info, and yes you're right I should have tried to use google. Sometimes the best advice is the not the advice at all, but the directions on how to get it when you need it. The clearing of the Page File was turned off I shall try that out and see how I like it. Cheers, Christian

Hi Alec, Quote: The last one sounds like your system has been possibly tweaked to clear the pagefile @ shutdown... a good security measure, but takes time to close down, especially if pagefile is diskbound/placed on a slow disk & you have alot of memory that was paged to it & pagefile itself is large. How would someone enable/disable that? My system takes forever to shutdown, but I don't think I ever consciously set it to clear my pagefile on shutdown? -Christian