GarryB's computer woe's

Now that’s interesting…

booting from two hard drives…make sure you set the slave/master settings on the drives correctly if they’re on the same IDE port…and an intersting thing about XPs more than 2000 is they check OFTEN for drive “integrety” which i don’t know what would happen if it detects two boot sectors on both drives….occasionally it detects, occasionally it doesn’t. Garry, you shouldn’t play with that mouse anymore, i know exactly what you’re problem is…it’s the native windows mouse driver that’s trying to load everytime you plug in a mouse without regards to other drivers. NEVER convert FAT32s to NTFS…will give you problems EVENTUALLY.

“Want to know what i do to get both WinXP and Win98??? install win98 on one hard disk. Remove it and install WinXP on another. Put both back into machine and change which one boots up first in the BIOS. No conflicts or problems “

That is the solution my brother uses. Cold swapable racks for his hard drive. He had an 8 or so GB HD and bought a new much larger drive (60-80). He got a cold swapable rack for his computer and two “shoes” for his two hard drives. He has 98 installed on the smaller drive and uses it for games and lets his two daughters play on that. When he needs to do some work he can just turn off the computer slide out the small HD and put in the big one and reboot and he is running NT (the same environment he runs at work, with all of his work software installed etc).

From memory the rack and the fittings for the drives worked out at less than $100.

Originally posted by mixtec
Im thinking of going with a dual boot XP/win98 myself as I want to be sure to be able to play older games. This is an instruction for this dual boot setup that frankvw gave me via email:

“What to do then?
Easy: install W98 in c:WIN98. Then put the XP CD in it, and install it in
C:Windows (In this order)”

Hey Frank, where do I put linux as Im thinking of doing a tripple boot setup?

After doing 4 reistalls my computer I still have problems like you mention, warning messages, comp going into safe mode, its very fustrating. Be sure and get an optical mouse if your going to do sensitive sniper work, it makes a huge difference over a ball mouse.

Want to know what i do to get both WinXP and Win98??? install win98 on one hard disk. Remove it and install WinXP on another. Put both back into machine and change which one boots up first in the BIOS. No conflicts or problems 😀

:confused: :rolleyes: 😮 😀

What I meant in the last post was that I not without computer knowledge… but there are things I have never had to do before and I prefer to seek advice from others before launching into the unknown… and not so I can blame someone else if things go wrong… 🙂

I had a lecturer whom I rather liked. He was American and had spent at least 40 years in the CIA working with computers. He lecturs in computer security amongst other things. He has been using computers before there were home computers. The Police use his expertise to help solve crimes and he gives lectures at international forums and places like West Point.

He doesn’t like to call himself a computer security expert, so I don’t think I can describe myself as a computer expert either.
(He always says an expert knows everything there is to know about the subject they are an expert on. He says anyone who claims to know everything about computers is a liar as everything is always changing and advancing. With computer security new attacks and new defences against those attack are created all the time.)

The best “targetting” device I have used so far has been a trackball. It was quite some time ago… when Quake II was new, but the precision and responsiveness was way better than any mouse I had used till then.
(The first piece of software I ever bought was Operation Wolf on an Amiga 500… great training software from getting used to using a mouse… 🙂 )

“How the heck can you have computer problems Garry? You are a pretty smart guy.”

Unfortunately my training is in software development (and a bit of computer security and web design… (though I prefered the usability aspects rather than the actual development of web pages… I am not very artistic))… I haven’t really don’t much in the way of hardware, and I tend to leave well enough alone as long as it works. Now that it isn’t working I’ll play around with different installs. I can install memory and graphics cards and various drives (I have a floppy drive, a zip drive, a DVD drive, and a CD burner, plus I only had an 8GB hard drive for a while, but have added an 80GB drive and when memory was cheap I got a 512MB memory card. I didn’t install the floppy or my original HD, but everything else I put in and it seemed to work. (I also added external stuff but that doesn’t require grounding or a screwdriver… 🙂 ))

Im thinking of going with a dual boot XP/win98 myself as I want to be sure to be able to play older games. This is an instruction for this dual boot setup that frankvw gave me via email:

“What to do then?
Easy: install W98 in c:WIN98. Then put the XP CD in it, and install it in
C:Windows (In this order)”

Hey Frank, where do I put linux as Im thinking of doing a tripple boot setup?

After doing 4 reistalls my computer I still have problems like you mention, warning messages, comp going into safe mode, its very fustrating. Be sure and get an optical mouse if your going to do sensitive sniper work, it makes a huge difference over a ball mouse.

How the heck can you have computer problems Garry? You are a pretty smart guy.

Get XP when you get a chance. You will enjoy the stability.

Your XP Tip for the day:

Select: “Classic Menu” in your setup so everything is organized like a normal Windows environment. You might not like the funky XP folder/menu display.

Again… thanks for the advice guys… I can get XP for free if I want it… my brother works in the army in IT so he gets operating systems and site licences. I have a few friends who sell hardware so I’ll check with them about whats available here.

I use my computer mostly for games (generally 3D military games like FPS and flight sims)… what are the compatibility issues with using XP?

I’ll probably just play safe this time and reinstall 98SE and if everything works OK I might consider XP later on. MS seems to be dropping support for 95 so I guess it is only a matter of time before they do the same to 98… just to get people to buy a new OS.

Thanks again guys…

Originally posted by GarryB
Anybody got Geforce 4 graphics cards?

What do you think of them regarding performance vs cost.

I think theres some good discussion on graphic cards in Mixtecs gaming post “Whats the latest in combat pc games?”

The basic gist is get something like a TI4200 and avoid the MX as its cheap and nasty. I bought the retail version of Gainwards Geforce 4 TI4200 and got DVD player software, video editing software and game. If you don’t fancy the software you can prob pick up the OEM version for less but you don’t get those extras. The beauty of the gainward is the ease of overclocking which means I should be able to tweak the card to perform as a TI4400 which when i bought mine was about £200 more expensive.

Here’s a list of fairly powerful cards, i bet you could find them cheaper if you looked around

www.overclockers.co.uk

As for mice (mouses) i have a microsoft intellipoint USB optical jobby, it was pricey but its a great mouse.

I also bought Win XP pro for £103 quid OEM (means you have to buy it with hardware but if you get the mouse or the graphics card from them too you’ll have no trouble) from www.scan.co.uk. click on today only and the microsoft mouse is on special at £15 but i think the deal changes today at 10am so be quick. Looking under software XP Pro OEM is currently £106 so add the mouse to that a postage and it’ll cost you £130.

Hope that helps.

Domin

If you have Rundll32 errors, then yes, reinstall everything. If you have the possibility, consider WinXP 😉

About Geforce 4 cards, they are very good… if you avoid the MX series. These cards are less powerful than some Geforce 3 series cards. I think the best price/performance compromise is the Ti4200.

I’ve spoken to a computer tech friend of mine and he suggests that I buy a new mouse (I want one of those new wheel mouse’s anyway), a more modern graphics card (that I was going to get anyway) and reinstall windows. I have been getting a few Rundll32.dll errors and he has said that is a sign the windows installation is not well.

My current graphics card set up is a little strange in that I have an Intel 8MB graphics card for 2D stuff and 2 Voodoo 2 graphics cards for the 3D gaming. It has worked well in the past but I’ve been planning an upgrade anyway…

Anybody got Geforce 4 graphics cards?

What do you think of them regarding performance vs cost.

Coupla things-

Does the mouse have an installation disk?

Have you tried searching for updated drivers on the web?

Maybe you need to remove and clean out the trackball and its receptacle?

Failing that, you can get a laser mouse for cheap. Never had a problem with mine.

I am currently running 98 second edition.

“When you swapped from PS2 mouse to serial the computer should pick up on the change because as you switched the computer off its not much different from removing and replacing any other piece of hardware.”

I installed the softare that came with my mouse, as it has 3 buttons and then booted up with the mouse connected. I got an error saying the P/S2 mouse could not be found so I removed it via control panel/system. (I didn’t have the use of my mouse to do it even though it should have detected the serial mouse). When I booted up again windows would boot up and my usual icons would appear and the icons also started to appeare next to the time… before all the icons appeared however the screen went black and nothing would work… at first I though it was a power cut but my moniters light remained lit.

The wiring seems fine for the mouse. The pointer started jumping into the top corners of the screen and the pointer menu kept flahing on and off as though someone was clicking on the right mouse button repeatedly. this occured whether the mouse was moving or not.

What do you think is conflicting with your graphics card? Do you have more than one installed?

I have a Intel video card installed, plus two Voodoo 2 graphics cards linked in series. In the past it has worked very well and allows me to play some game that require much better cards. (Some cards don’t like it… like Subcommand is very slow and clunky… especially with the 3D graphics turned on).

BTW thanks for the concern guys… I really appreciate the assistance.

Small addition to the mouse problem: check that the pins in the PS/2 plug are not bent… Sometimes it happens, and then, it “does not work as smoothly as before” 😉

Also, check if the rollers in the mouse are cllean (i guess it is not an optical mouse. If you see something looking like a rubber band in the middle of the rollers, remove that completely. In fact it is only dirt!

And if he mouse is an optical one, check that there are no hairs between the led and the lens. Be sure, if theree are some, not to scratch anything, or you can forget your mouse.