Sampson

It also might be time to install BHODemon to make sure that you don't have some browser helpers gumming up your IE. It also would not hurt to run your anti-virus and spyware programs to see if something is amiss. The standard operating procedure for things like this is to delete your history files, cache, temp and cookies from IE. Finally, there is a file called Hosts in your system. If you are using XP it would be located here: C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC Examine it to see whether a trojan has rewritten it in an attempt to redirect your machine to their website and only managed to redirect you to a blank page.

When most video drivers are installed they default to something generic for the monitor - like plug and play monitor or in your case Default monitor. It may be that by supplying the monitor driver for your specific monitor may correct the difficulty.

What kind of video card are you using? Given the subdirectory it is looking for Kyro drivers for a w2k system not XP

You'll want to look at what kind of USB devices you have connected. Would you have a camera connected? Also, Semantec has some issues with USB ports (its Anti-Virus and Ghost) as well as Aluria SpyEliminator.

You could install RealPopup (www.realpopup.it) on those computers that you want to communicate with one another and use the net stop command to disable messenger on everybody so that only those using Realpopup could communicate. By the way, it is free.

You might want to look at this: http://www.videolan.org/

Look at this article to see if Microsoft has a fix for it: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;817589

Have you tried this site: http://www.qhimm.com/ ?

Forgot to mention the famous chocobo patch found here: http://www.qhimm.com/ You'll have to page down a ways to see it.

Ok. What video card are you using and what set of drivers for that card?

I do believe that sharing experiences about software is not only helpful, but often times consoling. It is good to know that when something goes on the blink, there is someone out there that can help or can let you know that you are not alone. That being said, wholesale trashing of products is not something I believe we should do. Clearly, we all get frustrated and pop our corks, but that doesn't mean that a product is necessarily bad. Clearly, both Symantec and McAfee have produced software that is far too controlling for some people's tastes. However, they were early out of the chute in producing Anti-viruses, and yes, they were "experimental." But, I believe that Microsoft did not make their jobs any easier for them, and it seems that Microsoft's own interest in producing its firewalls, spyware, and anti-virus applications forced them to create work arounds that were not the best of all solutions as strategies to get their product to work in a Microsoft environment. Just look at all the keys in the registry that are now used by these two applications just to pass what seems to be OS road blocks. The anti-virus application spells big bucks today. While there are really good freeware applications, these are usually funded by for-pay applications by the same company. Applications seem to live by Darwinian rules - the best will survive; the worst (and sometimes it is just a lack of funding and not the product) will fall away. Only time will tell. I think we ought not to make pontifical pronouncements about software as if what we have to say is an objective, absolute truth. Lots of computers are running Norton's and McAfee flawlessly and have been for a long time. There is no point in insulting people's choices for running that software just because it left a bad taste in our mouth. I run neither of them on my machines, but I do respect their software. When asked I will present the pro's and con's and their shortcomings and their strengths, but I do not see how anyone is helped by simply writing off products wholesale.

I am presuming that you are using XP. Patch the game with this: http://www.sofotex.com/Final-Fantasy-VII-XP-Patch-download_L5052.html in order to get it to run with XP.

Since the mouse works. The first and easiest thing to do is to see if you have picked up a virus or trojan that may have caused it. Whatever program you have for anti-virus, run it. Then, if you have Ad-aware, spybot search and destroy or even microsoft's anti-spyware, run them. Do that first, then we will try other remedies. Ad-aware: http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=506 spybot: http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=2471 If you don't have these you can click on the url's above to get them. Then install them.

The MX will work with your AGP then if it is 1X/2X. AGP cards will only fit into the AGP slot. If yours is a Pre-P4 machine (and I suspect it is) your machine given that it can only support 2X will only power a 2X card no matter what the voltage it may be capable of. Put a 4X in there and welcome a black screen. the FX5200 AGP is 4X and won't work. Be realistic, just how many more PCI devices are you going to put into that machine? If you have a PCI slot free, slap a PCI card in it. The FX5200 PCI will run like a dream (well, it will be a solid card that will run your applications trouble free). Keep in mind that your motherboard included the AGP slot because when it came out AGP was the "wave of the future" and you would have had it as an expandable option. But, the fact was, that your motherboard was meant to really run a PCI card. Tell you what. Look at the placement of the AGP slot and its proximity to your RAM. Depending on the amount of RAM you have installed (and you should max it out since Windows is RAM hungry) the real weakness of the MX is the fan. It is an intermittant fan that is supposed to cycle on and off. If your slot it close to the RAM, it is going to run hot and the fan will run constantly, which it is not supposed to do, nor was the AGP 1.0 designed to sustain. I like the MX and ran it in a PIII machine with W2K. It ran just fine - right up to the day the fan failed (six months later). I put a PCI card in four years ago - it is still running.

It ought to work. It's the right size. The only reservations I would have are 1) if your computer supports USB 2.0 and 2) the amount of draw on your USB port. While the Sabrent is backwards compatible with USB1.1, the speed difference will be very noticeable. Perhaps, as a backup disk, you might not really care. My second reservation is more of a concern. USB ports are flakey. Personally, I think that they are a pain in the neck. If you have any other USB devices connected, the USB ports are infamous about being unable to sustain the current to keep them going. Then, they quit on you for no reason. So, if you have a printer, for example, that can run as either USB or through the parallel port, switch it to the parallel port. If you have a DSL or cable modem, use the ethernet connection. In other words, don't overload USB.

What you are looking at is the AGP spec. When a board says that its AGP is 1.0, it really depends. Some will run a 2X card; others won't. An MX card as you are considering ought to run on AGP 1.0 that has support for 2X. However, I wouldn't waste my time trying to mate an AGP card to an old motherboard; your choices are too limited. If you have a free PCI slot, buy a PCI card (do not confuse this with PCI-e). nVidia and ATI still make the PCI cards that run just as fast as the equivalent AGP card, even those that are 4X, and there are quite a few to choose from. If your bias is toward nVidia and you don't intend to play games (at least you have no expectation of high framerates) but would like DirectX 9.0c support, you can get an FX5200 in a PCI version. Any PCI based card will run in that old machine so you don't have to worry if it will work or not.

Formatting your hard drive will destroy or eradicate all of the files on your hard drive. So the answer is that you would not retain anything unless your saved your files to some other media like a CD or another hard drive. I take it that your machine is slower than it used to be. Clean installing Windows is one of the ways that many recommend in order to speed up their machines. When you have a lot of data, you will have to save it first before doing this procedure. It is a pretty time consuming task. And, keep in mind that you will have to re-apply all of Microsoft's security patches. You might try defragging your hard drive first. I would purchase either O&O or Perfect disk. O&O would allow you to defrag it according to several ways of sorting. And you if you use O&O you might want to download a free program like SysInternals PageDefrag to resort the hives of your registry. Perfect Disk will also Page Defrag as part of its method of defragging your hard drive. You might also want to use a registry cleaner and get it to remove entries in the registry from programs that have left behind residue after you have uninstalled them. Personally, when a machine seems to be slower than I remember it, it is usually time to get a faster machine. Depends on your budget.

Since you are using Linux as your operating system, you should probably go to Ntcompatible's sister site - http://www.linuxcompatible.org/ to have this question answered.

Sometimes in trying to make something easy for others we so complicate them that we make it twice as hard. They apparently used the subst command to make a folder a letter or they assigned a drive letter to a folder. Anyway, glad you got it all straight. Now, if you can just educate your boss ...

As usual, Relic, you are right that he didn't say that he had tried to boot it through safe mode. Presumptive on my part. When I see him say that he's tried everything, I assumeed that he went through the standard operating procedures. Always best to do the easiest first.

I have no doubt that someone somewhere has such a program. I don't know of one, and like you I would be afraid to use it without some kind of backup. What I will propose is probably not what you were hoping for since it will require purchasing a new hard drive and Norton's Ghost. This will be a little tedious: If it were me, I would get a new hard drive and slave it to your existing hard drive. I would then Ghost an image of your present hard drive onto the new drive. I would then disconnect the old hard drive and make the new one the master and boot up the computer on it to make sure everything was running well. I would then reconnect the old hard drive as the master and make the new hard drive a slave again. Then, run the software that will return your old hard drive to its previous state. If your software works, you will have access to your files. If these files are just data files, you can copy them to your new hard drive. If the software doesn't work, at least you have your new hard drive to keep your machine running, and as you research the recovery of the old partition you will have the old drive to experiment on. Finally, if you are successful, make your new hard drive the master and your old hard drive the slave. Since you don't know how compromised the old hard drive is, it would be best to format it, and make it into a backup data drive.

Yes, your discription is confusing. First, you said that "you got the computer all ready." What exactly do you mean? Were you building a new computer? Did it boot into windows before it went black? What kind of motherboard are you using now? Does the machine actually bring windows up? How long before the screen goes black again?

You are not clear as to what you are doing. Are you trying to install an new card in your machine? If this is what you are doing, what was the old card? Did you uninstall the drivers for that card before putting in your new card? Try to give us the context in which this occured. Normally, the Error code 10 means that a value in registry is expecting the card to signal back that "yes" the card is there, and it is not getting that response. You will need to put in the proper drivers for that card - after you get rid of the old drivers. Now if your motherboard was using onboard video, you will need to remove the new card, bring up windows, remove the graphics from your Device Manager, when it reboots, bring up the Bios, and disble the onboard graphics. Save the change. Power down, put your new card in and power it up.

The original problem was probably the nVidia drivers. Some nVidia drivers work perfectly fine with games, but when it comes to running movies, they come up short. I sometimes has to do with the color connection. Now, however, those drivers are probably blitzed or you have some pieces of your previous drivers interfering with your new drivers. At this point it would be best to have XP repair itself. Start the machine up, go into your Bios - hit DEL, F2 or F9 (whatever flashes on your screen for getting into your Bios) and change the Boot order to make your CD boot first. Save this setting. Put your XP disk into your CD and follow the prompts to repair your installation.

You can do as kzhtij has suggested, but since you clean installed the system, I suspect that there is nothhing there. Answer to one question: What is VIA? If your board uses a chipset with the Via4-in-1 drivers, you may have to re-install a newer version. I suspect that you do not have a VIA board. Just go to Google and type in your motherboard's manufacturer and number and it will tell you. What seems to be happening because your keyboard and mouse are not coming up normally is that your network card and the drivers are being loaded first blocking access to your USB ports. When you bring it up in safe mode, the USB device is loaded first and that's why you have access to the USB controlled devices. You could remove your NIC and remove it as a device from your Device Manager. Bring up the system and see if your keyboard and mouse will work in normal Windows bootup. If it does. You could then power it down, put in your NIC again and then go to your BIOS to see whether your keyboard and mouse are disabled (that is they are not useing the PS/2 ports). If your keyboard and mouse return to their functionality, let it boot into Windows, and when Windows finds your new Hardware, I would use the device driver supplied for the NIC by the manufacturer. As to Fat32 - even if you were to install 98 on that machine, you would not want to install it on the same partition as XP. You should create a second partition and install 98 to it. Then, make the XP partition NTFS.