Curley_Boy

I'm already a fairly regular visitor to your tuneup/security site, although I don't think I will use many of the tweaks listed until I get a broadband connection.... still on 56k here As for your tools package, I'm impressed. I mainly use the registry cleaner and RAM Charge tool (Sooo useful). Ah talking of which, how do I get it to remember it's settings? I set it up and minimize it, but on next boot it is back to defaults. I took a look at the file finder too... now you mention it, its alot like file manager (I grew up on that one too ) let me know if you develop it any futher and I'll give it the File Manager test.

Dynamic NTFS volumes on Windows XP Pro SP1 File Manager taken from NT4 Wks PC SP6a (I don't know whether they updated it in later SP releases). WINFILE.INI -> %SYSTEMROOT% WINFILE.EXE -> %SYSTEM32% WINFILE.HLP -> %SYSTEMROOT%\HELP WINFILE.CNT -> %SYSTEMROOT%\HELP I've applied most of the NTFS tweaks that came with your 'APKWIN2KTOOLS' package aswell, and I don't use any unusual security settings on files or folders.

A correction of my last post the file names are fine... i was looking in the 'msdos name' column... fool ;( functionality wise everything else seems to be ok, im still using the IE/Folders view for setting security and file associatiions becuase its far more intuative, and of course the thumbnail view for my large picture folders. Since it works fine on my machine, I wonder why you are having problems?

APK, my quote of '50Mb on boot' was referring to the 'Commit Charge' value at the bottom of the NT Taskmanger. I use the Internet Explorer's folder functionality because I am used to the layout... plus fast as it is winfile doesn't seem to support long filenames.

Explorer is dead... long live Program Manager! ...No really! Using the standard Explorer.exe on my XP PC took about 24mb of RAM on boot and countinued to bloat from then on, having to restart your shell multiple times a day to recover memory is no fun... so thats when I switched to Progman.exe and re-discovered this wonderous blast from the past! Now my system boots and shuts down at the MS boasted levels (30 and 10secs respectively) and runs lightening quick. On boot task mananger shows 50Mb memory usage... nice n slim. With program manger set up how I like it I have one click access to every program I'll ever need and at peak usage it takes up less than 5Mb of virtual & page file memory combined! (less than 1Mb atm). A definate improvement over Explorer's 30Mb and then perhaps that much again for PF space. With all that free RAM I can still enjoy the XP Metallic theme, with full effects without the bloat, slowdown or continuous memory loss. PLUS Program Manger (and File Manager, nicked from my NT4 PC) never forget their window positions or file viewing preferences and allow you resume your next session at the same folder you were in last time, how on earth did we manage without 'save settings on exit' and 'save settings now'?? invaluable. File management is done via 'iexplore.exe -nohome' -using the folders pane (like the classic 2k look and about the same memory usage) and winfile.exe... so small and suprisingly useful. NT Taskmanger covers the rest. It takes some time to get used to and set up... but if you want a lightening fast desktop experience that still looks good with minimal memory usage, try it... its more than worth the effort.

System: Athlon T-Bird 1.1GHz 512Mb PC-133 CAS2 RAM GeForce 3 Ti200 OS: Windows XP Pro I might give the new version of VPC a try... I have had some sucess with Worms, by selecting 'Sound Blaster' instead of the 16/AWE32 and reducing the sound quality in game.

I have an Epson C70 Plus printer and I want to force the default settings to always use an A4 paper size (currently it keeps defaulting to letter size and i have to resize it in the printer settings each time I want to print). Any idea how this is done? Using Windows XP Home and Epson driver version 5.3d

Thanks m8

Ok please don't laugh.... How do I force IE6 to open links in the same window as the one I clicked the link in? I've tried Tools>Internet Options>Advanced>'Re-use windows for launching shortcuts' but that didn't help.

Just a few thoughts... 1. Since both cards no longer have upto date offcial drivers, the ones you are having to use are likely to be very hit and miss afairs, hence the rather unpredicatable stability/performance of your games. 2. The only NT based OS that supports SLI mode is NT4 (since you are still using such old gfx hardware and the games you mentioned support NT have you considered using that?)

I already use Phoenix 90% of the time (and a mighty fine browser it is too) However some pages (MS site and those created with Frontpage etc) refuse to display correctly or at all if you don't use a version of IE, hence my original post.

If you want to try the old drive again that tip is 99% effective (unless the hardware is faulty). As for the firmware patch, since thats not my field so to speak I have no idea.. I only patched the firmware on my drive to enable region free decoding.

Start>Run>Regedit.exe HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E96A-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318} You should see a set of subkeys 0000,0001,0002 etc Find the subkey that corrisponds to your 2nd IDE channel, the string value 'MatchingDeviceId' will tell you which this is. (on my machine it was subkey 0002). Backup the above key incase of a mistake Now find the dword values called 'SlaveDeviceTimingMode' and 'SlaveDeviceTimingModeAllowed' Delete the 'SlaveDeviceTimingMode' and set the 'SlaveDeviceTimingModeAllowed' to a hex value of 'ffffffff' Close regedit and reboot!

I find the hibernate function very useful, but a tad slow. It usually takes a full minute to resume from power on. Although I have noticed a speed increase from 2000 and I have quite a bit of memory installed (512) I think it should be a bit quicker than this. I have the Bootvis util... would that help at all, and if so how do I use it to best effect? thanks

Can anyone explain why I can't record sound with this card plz? I've tried recording from Winamp, WMP9, Realplayer, Quicktime etc... I generally use Sound Recorder to capture sound in .wav format (but I've tried other programs too). But no matter what I use to play or capture sound, nothing gets recorded. Eg: I open winamp play an mp3 and at the same time have sound recorder try and capture the audio as a .wav The mixer sliders are set to the correct volumes, and I've tried recording with and without the use of DirectSound... but it makes no difference. The result is either, no audio recorded (at a detectable level at least) or very distorted stratchy audio when all volume settings are cranked up to max... full of static and completely useless. Now I used to have a SB Live! Value (original) card in this PC but took it out because I kept getting BSODs under Windows 2000. The audio recording / playback with that card was fine. Now I have a PCI 128 (CT4700), Windows XP and no ability to record. (Although the same prob occured under 2000 with the 128). I also had the 'scream and lockup' problem and sound still crackles and pops in some games. But the VIA PCI Latency patch solved it for the most part. Since I've tried everything I can think of on the software side and tested it under many different recording apps and 2 OSes, the problem must be hardware related. Although I've tried altering PCI timings in the BIOS and tried the card in different PCI slots on the board many times during its lifetime. *sigh* the fact is I'm no expert I would apriciate ideas anyone may have. Thanks System: ABIT KT7E System Board (VIA Apollo KT133E Chipset, VT8363E Northbridge, VT82C686B Southbridge) ABIT BIOS: 3R AWARD BIOS: 6.00PG ACPI Enabled VIA 4in1 Driver 4.43 VIA PCI Latency Patch 0.19 Sound Card: Creative SoundBlaster PCI 128 (CT4700) **NOT sharing resorces with any other cards** PCI Slot #3 I/O Range: E400-E43F IRQ 3 Standard XP WDM Drivers 5.1.2535.0 (no updates avaliable from Creative) Windows XP Pro SP1 (Also tested under Windows 2000 Pro SP2)

When I select the recording option on the volume tab I get the following options: Phone Line, Aux Volume, Mic Volume, Line In and CD Audio and the tick boxes below still say mute rather than select. (I know what duhmez is saying though, I had the other layout with my old sound card the Live!). On the recording section I must have the Mic Volume unchecked and on Playback section Master Volume and Wave. I need to select 20dB boost on the mic aswell for it to pick up any sound. But the sound I record is too distorted (because of the high volume settings), and the recording is full of crackling and 'background noise'.

1. In the main I'm trying to convert mp3's on my PC to .wav 2. As stated in my original post I *have* to use the default XP WDM drivers are there are non from creative for the model of my card (CT4700). 3. I have tried every combination of volume adjustments mute and un-mute to no effect. It's the 128 thats the problem with the Live! I could record sound like I described perfectly (but had BSODs). So I put the 128 in and I can't record sound. What I was trying to work out was whether it's a limitation of the hardware or drivers, or the hardware is faulty itself, because as you can see from my first post, I've tried everything I can think of to solve this.

I tried your TCP/IP tune up guide... and after some testing decided to revert back to my original configuration (I had made a restore point for this). However for reasons known only to itself Windows has removed my restore point (and all the others I had) *%$@ ;( knows why!! since I haven't installed or tweaked anything else today... Anyhow at the end of the guide you have a list of guidelines on repairing a machine if something goes wrong. Now I'm perfectly capable of following them.... it just seems a very long winded way of doing it. Since I only applied the contents of APK1.reg and APK2.reg to the registry. (and didn't change anything else) would it therefore be possible to simply delete the following keys: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters] [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\AFD\Parameters] and hope they regenerate on the next reboot? If not do you know the defaults for these off hand... so I don't have to re-install ALL the TCP/IP stuff from scratch... and all the patching it will entail afterwards? Thanks

Thankyou I know have my original settings restored I'll give your guide another go when I have broadband... my dial up is pretty crappy speedwise whatever I tweak it with.

This is one for Dosfreak... (But I'd love to hear from anyone else with expertise in this area) I've downloaded your NTGames spreadsheet, and from it's contents it seems you have managed to get some games working that I cannot even get to load. If you've addressed one of my problems below in the spreadsheet I'm sorry for asking again, but the cell labels for certain entries weren't big enough for thier content, and I couldn't find any way of enlarging them in Excel Viewer. Here are a few examples that I want to query: Blood, (I'm using Shareware v1.11) I can't get SFX to work properly (there are periodic slowdowns making it very difficult to play) I currently use VDMSound and Nolfb with this game. Lemmings 2 the Tribes CD-ROM, I can't get this game to load at all (it just complains about it trying to access the hardware directly and this being not allowed). Is there anyway around this? Tyrian2k, Music plays fine when set to MIDI 330 or FM Sound, but SFX simply locks the game when a level loads (it didn't used to though, I used to be able to get a level to load with stuttery SFX but it used to lock up fairly often even then). I use VDMsound for this also. Worms and Worms: Re-enforcements (DOS CD-ROM), On your spreadsheet you say it just works. I've tried it in VPC,VDMSound and Native NT dos box, but I can only get either game to load to the main screen. If I try and launch a match the game locks up. CD-ROM Audio tracks in DOS games: I've found a workaround for this (use WMPlayer to loop the correct track) but is there any way to get cd audio to work properly again, and without the long waits when accessing the drive? Some Basic Config information: I have WinXP Pro SP1 VDMSound Dosbox (I'm using 0.56 atm) VPC 4.36 ** I also appear to have the expanded memory (lack of) problem in XP too, How do I workout which driver is taking up the area of memory needed? I've tried a DOS 7.0 boot disk and I could access expanded memory with that, (no device drivers loaded) so it must be one of my add-in cards.

Ok update: *I have fixed the Expanded memory prob under XP *Got Blood working properly *Improved sound quality in T2k a bit (but nothing to jump about at) Here is a more specific description of the L2 problem: When you insert the CD and run Install.exe in the L2 dir an error message appears with the title '16bit MS-DOS Subsystem': An application has attempted to directly access the hard disk, which cannot be supported. 'Close' or 'Ignore'. I can choose Ignore and the install program continues but doesn't complete fully (it hangs during the file copy process). I also get the same error when trying to run the L2.EXE file directly from the CD-ROM. It makes no difference whether I use VDMSound or native NT dos box with no additions. **Christianb I've just tried to install L2 on my NT4 PC (which has a FAT16 partition and everything worked ok) Is it just the file system then that causes L2 the difficulties? Worms / Worms Re-inforcements: Install the game in a native NT dos box, run with VDMSound (without sound cards set up). Worms loads the intro movies but doesn't get to the menu. Re-inforcements gets to the menus but when you try and launch a match it hangs on the landscape generation screen. **Dosfreak when you say 'it just runs' were you referring to native NT dos box or VPC5.1? Anyhow thx for the help I'll post some of these msgs on VOGONS too see if ppl have any fresh ideas. PS Sapucdex (I cant find any info on VOGONs.. where can I get hold of it?)

Can anyone tell me the default startup settings for the Rdr & Parallel services in the 'Devices' Panel for NT4 Wks? Thx

The reason I asked was because I was seeing how many sevices I could stall out before NT refused to boot (and thus determining the minimum needed to save RAM). Although these 2 services seem to work ok, I would like to put them back to thier defaults for peace of mind.

I've just setup an NT PC and I want to load the defrag utility 'contig.exe' on boot, ie I don't want to have to log in for the program to launch. I think this is probably a job for a script or a reg hack, but I'd be greatful if someone could walk me through the process step by step as I'm not very familar with scripts. Atm I have a batch file in the allusers\startup dir: Shortcut: 'C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32\CMD.EXE /C "START /LOW C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32\CONTIG.BAT"' CONTIG.BAT: 'contig -s c: *.*' Ideally I would like the program to launch minimised and then exit when its finshed it's run and use as little CPU time as possible (Is there an 'IDLE' priority level on NT4?). Any tips much appriciated thx

Thanks for the wealth of info ppl (especially APK!) I will have a mess about and let you know what happens. The srvany.exe tool sounds an interesting one I'll give that a go too, as ideally I want to load contig without having to log on 1st. Is there any way of getting a service to quit once it has done its job? (like the CD Burning service on XP).