Sampson

Go to Gigabyte and download this utility: http://ftp.gigabyte.com.tw/support/driver/biosflash108q.exe . This will allow you to upgrade your Bios over the net. Next, while your OxygenVX1 is still in your machine - go to your Control Panel and Add/Remove Software and Remove any Nvidia software. Use Windows Explorer and find any Nv*.* files and delete them. Go to your My Computer icon and Right Click, choose Properties, Device Manager, then go to your Video Card and "Update the Driver" only choose Standard VGA. Nvidia insists the before installing its software that you start with Standard VGA. It will probably ask you to reboot so let it do so. After it does, shut down the machine, put your mx400 in the machine. Boot it up, then install the software that came with the Asus card. You don't necessarily have to upgrade your bios, but often Gigabyte will improve its bios in light of a new operating system particularly when the board was produced before that operating system was on the market.

Run Windows Update and get the Windows 2000 driver.

It all depends on how you installed the gf4. Nvidia seems to insist on having you change the video driver to Standard VGA first before installing their software. So, change the video driver to Standard VGA. You will possibly be prompted to reboot. Go ahead. Then, go into Control Panel and Click on Add/Remove Software and remove all Nvidia, Gainward software. Using Windows Explorer do a find on Nv*.* to find any old drivers used previously by the gf2 card and delete them. Since you are using ME, most of them will be in \windows\system . Then, put your CD that came with the gf4 and install the new software for the gf4. This will at least get the right drivers working with the board. The only way to check out the board is to put it into another computer using these same procedure and see if it will run for longer than 5 minutes.

Try the easy thing. Go to Windows Update from your IE browser (it's found under Tools). Possibly, because W2K has only just gotten a USB driver from Microsoft, up[censored] it may take care of the problem.

There is no certainty that this will work. Sysinternals has a utility called ntfsdos. It is a free download. http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/NTFSDOS.shtml You will have to get to a Win98 machine and create a bootable dos disk. Put the nftsdos file on the disk. Boot your machine from the disk in your A drive. Run nftsdos. It is supposed to be able to read your hard drive. You would maneuver as in Dos to the file you want to delete. If you're lucky, and the your drive indexing is not messed up, you may be able to delete the file. Otherwise, you may have to reinstall XP over itself to get to the file since CHKDSK has not fixed the problem.

It may be that this file is "protected" by the Event Log service. Disable it, then restart XP. See if you can then delete the file.

Sometimes using the form: DEL \\.\ drive letter :\ path \ file name in the console will do it.

Try this site: http://www.micro-solutions.com/

P4's in theory are supposed to "step down" if they overheat. It is possibly overheating but unlikely. Who makes your GForce card? Nvidia has a variety of drivers, through trial and error, like many of us, you may have to find the ones that work best with your system.

Perhaps, it is time to defrag that hard drive.

As I was browsing ActiveWin I came across this: "Microsoft has quietly issued a notice about problems with the registry that can cause users of XP, both Home and Professional edition to see the dreaded blue screen of death on their PCs. The company says that when "registry hives" get damaged, people may see the message "Unexpected Shutdown" or the far more friendly and informative message "Stop: 0cx0000135", resulting in PCs possibly being a little hard to boot. The explanation, says MS, is that programs which use the registry don't "cleanly" remove temporary items stored in the registry but the problem also can happen if a program is "terminated" (ended) or "experiences a user-mode fault", whatever that is. Microsoft has a hotfix that repairs the registry but it is obvious that it's not a complete fix. The firm recommends that people wait for the next service pack containing the fix if they're not "severely affected". So the fix may not be a fix, and Microsoft is even prepared to suspend charging you for a support call if it's convinced it's not your fault. And when's the service pack out? Well, you'd better ask Microsoft that question... "

MSHTML.dll is an IE library file. It was what was replaced in the browser some time back because of a Y2k problem. Its replacement suffered from a buffer overrun and is susceptible to virus attachments. You might want to run an anti-virus scan or ad-aware to see if you have components on your machine that are not supposed to be there.

While I still think that this is caused by heat; you might look at the DMA support for your CD-RW drive. I've seen machines where the CD-RW needed DMA and only had PIO support knock a machine out for no reason even when they weren't be accessed.

No. Generally, you need to have a bootable diskette. If you have a windows98 machine around create a bootable diskette and put that in the A drive of your Tecra with the Bios upgrade on it. However, as a Toshiba owner there is a toll free number for support to help walk you through this: (800) 457-7777. It may be possible to hold down F8 and force W2K into console mode and install it from the hard drive, but I'd check it out with Toshiba to be on the safe side.

Perhaps, Alien, you need to remove your cloaking device.

gogeta4194 You may have some ram incompatibility issues.

If, as the Admiral surmises, you have one Nic for your Cable/DSL connection and one for your network, you might think about a Linksys router. You would then need only the one Nic in your computer going to the Linksys with the Cable/Modem and rest of the Network going to the other inputs in the router. It would actually make your system more secure, and it would put all the work of monitoring activity on the network on the router rather than your computer.

Sounds very much like a heat problem. The GeForce should have a very large fan on it. It should run when it hits a certain temperature. If it isn't, there's your problem. However, despite the fact that these newer graphic cards take a lot off of the processor they actually only do so at higher resolutions and most people play games at lower resolutions which means the processor still takes on most of the load. You have four hard disks plus ram that is highly tuned. That makes for a lot of heat not to mention that Athlon's just plain run hot. You may need a better heatsink/fan combo. Asus generally supplies a temperature measuring program. Monitor your CPU temps under load.

Strange. Looking at your hardware it does not seem to be that old. First thing I would suggest is the cmos battery may be giving out. Second thing may be crud in the keyboard that caused the letter k to think it was depressed. Third, would be the PSU depending on its age and if you have been overclocking this unit. Fourth, is the USB 2.0 driver under W2K since only yesterday did Microsoft deign to anoint what a driver officially under W2k update. Fifth, with so many drives spinning up simultaneously, one of them because of heat or age is not getting enough juice to turn it over. My best guess - cmos battery needs replacing.

Did you flash the Bios on your notebook before you installed W2k? This is the bios that supports it - W2K04M0.

-cont from above, then you choose enabled and go to mode and change it to bi-directional. That ought to let it communicate better.

The parallel port can be configured for ECP or bi-directional on most Toshiba's. I think that iomega wants bi-directional. You will have to get into Toshiba's bios setup. On my old Satellite you hit F2 when you first started it up. When you get in go to Advanced, then to peripheral, then to parallel port,

Couldn't help noticing that you have Norton's running on your machine. On some machines Norton's acts like a 500lb gorilla interfering and thus slowing things down. With two NIC's and Norton's you have more than enough reason to have delays. Why two Nic's by the way?

This is a pretty good article, even though a little dated, about the many flavors of Linux: http://www.extremetech.com/article/0,3396,s=1027&a=19911,00.asp

Since the machine is running just fine and it is the speed you are concerned with, try this - http://www.pcpitstop.com/ . This website is free. What it does is go through your system and evaluate it and sometimes tells you what you can do to improve performance. It isn't a site that can examine the machine to the nth degree, but it can hit a few things you haven't thought of.