[andrzejpw]

NOOOOO

I WAS JUST GOING TO POST THAT! lol

 

[kerelybonto]

Damn thing. It's making me resinstall Windows. It's already there, you stupid machine!

By the way, do we have any good Windows hackers in the house? I hate XP because it makes you do all this stupid stuff Microsoft wants you to do. Examples:

1. It sets up stupid user folders complete with their own 'My Documents' folders. I don't want to use that damn folder! Why can't I get rid of it? Ahh!

2. IE is now apparently entirely integrated into Windows. Unfortunately, my version of IE is broken and it won't let me uninstall the freaking thing so I can reinstall a working one! Upgrades haven't fixed the problems in the past. ...

kerelybonto

 

[grinch]

Quote:

Originally posted by kerelybonto By the way, do we have any good Windows hackers in the house? I hate XP because it makes you do all this stupid stuff Microsoft wants you to do. Examples:

so don't use it. i don't like it, so i use 2000 instead.

Quote:

1. It sets up stupid user folders complete with their own 'My Documents' folders. I don't want to use that damn folder! Why can't I get rid of it? Ahh!

just delete it off your desktop and don't use it. it's not a huge thing to get all worked up over heh

Quote:

2. IE is now apparently entirely integrated into Windows. Unfortunately, my version of IE is broken and it won't let me uninstall the freaking thing so I can reinstall a working one! Upgrades haven't fixed the problems in the past.

i'd go grab an entire install file or something. try this maybe:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/...6/download.asp
and see if you can get it to reinstall the whole application. of course, if you really wanted some decent system stability, you'd just reformat. "when in doubt, reformat." -microsoft slogan

my suggestion is to kill all those stupid linux partitions and just reformat your drive. partition like four to six gigs for the system stuff (office, xp, a few apps) then do a one gig (depending on your ram) partition to isolate the pagefile in, then make the rest a huge game/mp3/stuff drive. this'll keep all your heavily fragging files on their own partition and will help to keep the overall system quicker. (this has been my experience anyway).

and i'm not saying linux is bad.. i'd just get a spare drive for it and keep it on it's own (or better yet, a spare computer). just makes things cleaner that way. dual booting from one hard drive always makes things sticky. anyway, hope this helps.

edit: grammar typo

 

[kerelybonto]

I'm doing this on a laptop, so a second drive for Linux is not an option if I want to be able to use my optical drives with it. I actually have a second 20GB drive, but at least the system and application files for Linux will have to be on the primary drive with the Windows crap.

Also, I'm not about to go out and buy Windows 2000 when it's basically the same thing as XP, minus a few features. XP is supposed to be more stable and usable anyway. And, of course, I'd like to avoid buying any version Windows as much as possible.

The My Documents thing is much more of an annoyance than just sitting on my desktop. I actually have nothing on my desktop, except my My Computer icon, the trash, and my network -- I use the Start Menu and Windows Explorer to navigate. So anyway, the damn My Documents folder is used as the default opening folder in Windows Explorer and as the default saving folder in Office components. Plus it just exists and I don't want it to, damn it. It's my computer and I don't want anything I don't want on it! Ah!

I tried doing another full install on IE, but I have the newest version and it won't install another because it says I already have the newest. I don't think it'll ever work anyway, unless I can uninstall it, because the new versions just install on top of each other.

I'm not normally one of those Micro$soft-bashing people, but at times I really do think the world would be a better place without Bill and his creation.

kerelybonto

 

[jlo mein]

Hey i have 2 questions, since i know not a lot about pc's. I have windows XP.

I have had my new pc for about 6 months now. I notice things run a little slower than when i first got it (ie: CS loading times, CS ping). I have heard that reformatting your pc will make it like new again. Is there a way to reformat, but retain all the information you have on the hard drive?

i have all of the sudden forgotten my second question...lol...i'll post it later if i remember...

 

[kerelybonto]

No, you have to back up your data on another drive or some removable storage device if you don't want to lose it in a reformat. If you have two drives or a CD burner, that's fairly easy to do, as all you really need to back up are user files, since you can just reinstall program files.

I really don't think reformatting is a practical option though. Especially if you use a lot of downloaded utilities and things, which you'd have to redownload. You'd also have to redownload all the Windows updates and any other downloaded software updates and patches.

I also don't think anything in your system would affect the ping time on your internet connection. That's almost guaranteed to be the bottleneck for information transfer, not anything on your system. Just defragging and maybe downloading a startup manager or something to make sure you're not using up all your RAM on useless things will improve performance.

kerelybonto

 

[Duncan]

Not so far as I know jlo...

Even if you re-install Windows (XP) the program wipes out your current windows directory, unlike the older versions of windows which allowed overwriting

 

[ai0tron]

Rick,

Sounds scary, might be a virus. Do you have antivirus software?

K if not a virus, just remove the drive, take it to the other computer, set the drive as slave using the jumpers on the back of the drive. Plug the power in then plug the IDE cable in. Start your computer. Never plug/unplug when the comp is on, even from port at the back. Only USB is safe to be hot pluggable. Yuo have to make sure you set the drive as a slave and if necessary go into your bios and remove it form the bootable devices list or move it to the bottom of the list (the damaged drive).

(I once fried my mobo with shock of static electricity from my monitor plug when I switched while the system was on once.)

The drive will show up automatically, if it doesn't... well your in trouble.

Oh yeah, I'm not positive but I believe win 98 can use fat 32.... And if that is the case I believe that your win 95 system will be unable to read files on it. Chances are however that everything is fat 16.

If the drive doesnt show up the first time you boot restart it, if it doesnt show up again turn the system off turn it back on. If it doesnt show up again. Check your connections. IE power, IDE cable. Make sure the system BIOS is seeing the drive during POST. If you can see it, it should show up in windows. If it doesnt show up in windows even though you see it during POST you may have the fat 32/fat 16 problem although I doubt it, it should show up still but just as unformatted drive. Whatever you do, do not format the drive by accident. Windows may pop a dialogue when it boots, "this drive needs to be formatted hit ok to proceed" Dont accidentaly wack ok.

And hard drives are sensitive but not THAT sensitive. If you drop it dont start weeping or anything, I had one fall off my desk onto the metal base of my lamp and it worked fine. I dont use it, but im sure that if I needed to I could retrieve files from it.

A hardrive fan might be in order if you are using a 7200 ide or one with higher rpms.


GL.

 

[rickcr42]

thanks AI , I had not considered a virus before.
I do keep my anti virus up to date and scan on a regular basis but my youngest son had recently been downloading cough-hacked-cough games and he is not big on checking for viruses.
When I went to use the computer the above problem surfaced.

Possibly some good news though.I may gain access to an identical computer in which to do the hard drive slave thing.
Same software package,virus scan,the works-though not until the weekend.

Can only hope , some of the info is not easily replaced

Rick

 

[grinch]

Quote:

Originally posted by kerelybonto I really don't think reformatting is a practical option though. Especially if you use a lot of downloaded utilities and things, which you'd have to redownload. You'd also have to redownload all the Windows updates and any other downloaded software updates and patches.

reformatting is the only option if you want decent performance and microsoft windows. that's just the way it is. unless you never add/install/touch anything on the machine, fairly soon it'll really start to suck performance-wise.

it's an extremely viable option. you save your internet bookmarks and whatever personal files you save. if the first thing that pops into your head is "waaah, my music!" i'd say let it go. i've backed up and reformatted plenty of friend's computers and i swear none of them ever touch the five or six cds that i had to burn to save all of their stupid mp3s for them. they just download them again, if they liked the songs that much. after a few reformats, you begin to realize that you only use very few things.. for me those are: winamp, winzip, ms office, cdrwin, eac, powerdvd, and photoshop. do i use other programs? sure. but if i install those few, i'm ready to go and my computer is now fully functional. people get so into their machines and think "oh no, i NEED that" but 90% of the time you forget about it after you don't have it for an hour. i acted the same way, but now i know.

i offered my help and i can honestly say that's the best configuration that i know, it just takes some self-control to use. you don't even have to backup if you've set your pc up that way, just copy stuff to the game/miscellaneous/etc partition. but hey, do what you want.

 

[jlo mein]

k thanx ppl....i'll think about it since it doesnt seem too hard...i have a cd burner...

i remembered my second question. I have a 40gig harddrive partitioned into two 20gigs, C drive and D drive. C drive uses the NTFS file system, and D drive uses the Fat32 file system.

Does this affect anything? Is it better to put certain things on one drive over the other, since they have different file systems? Does one work better?

 

[ai0tron]

Jlo

The advantages of NTFS are mainly improved system stability, better space management and perhaps some small speed increases. If you have an NT only system it is ok to format all your drives as NTFS. If you dual boot 98 and nt, keep one drive fat 32. I am pretty sure that NTFS is regarded as being better than fat32 in everyway.

 

[jpelg]

The advantages of NTFS under the Windows NT operating system are a huge waste on a standalone workstation. The overhead cost of setting up and using NTFS, and all its "features" (primarily security related), are almost completely lost in such a configuration.

Right off the bat, NTFS sets up a huge file called the "Master File Directory" or MFD. This will take up around 10% of your drive space immediately. Your system will end up doing more disk-writes than it does under FAT16 because it is constantly storing all that changing file stuff. It will also poll the drive even when you are not doing anything! The space-saving advantages (more efficient storage method) are miniscule compared to what is lost with the MFD. Speed increases - maybe, theoretically on a database server, but not much , if anything on a workstation.

All good stuff for a critical-app server, ....big waste on a workstation, networked or standalone. Tried it, wanted to like it, but... I've converted and run several NT4.0 workstations and laptops over the past several years using FAT16, and it is sweet. Servers are a whole 'nother story.

 

[jlo mein]

well, i have NTFS on one partition, and FAT32 on the other partition. I havent really noticed anything too different between them so far so i was just asking.

However, i do usually try and put applications and programs on the NTFS, while i put files and games on the FAT32.

 

[jpelg]

AFAIK the NTFS file system under NT4.0 does not read FAT32 disks. How do you use the FAT32 disk partition for data storage for programs installed on the NTFS partition?