Category : PC Hardware (archive 1)

PowerUsers.info - Paul Doherty Askme Archive of Questions and Answers

Return to Main PowerUsers.info Main Page

**********************************************************************

Category : PC Hardware

QAId : 52320
Asker : ccsu409352007
Subject : Compaq hardware
Private : No

Question : Can I put a Compaq harddrive in any other brand of PC such as an AST? I am concerned about this because I have heard that Compaq's equipment is proprietary.

Answer : You should have no trouble - as far as I know Compaq has not used any prorietary interfaces (they stick with IDE or SCSI now) for quite a long time. The drive should move to any other system you'd like to use. (I am assuming you are referring to a desktop model Compaq and not a server - the servers do use SCSI disks in a hot-pluggable case made by Compaq)

Paul Doherty
Rating : 5

----------------------------------------------------------------------
QAId : 55287
Asker : mrpun
Subject : win95 peer to peer
Private : No

Question : I successfully connected two pentium (100 and 200 mghrtz) 10mghrtz ethernet, twisted pair configured computers with a small 5 outlet hub.

Everything worked fine until the secretary had problems accessing her accounting package which she'd asked me to hook up to the network. We turned off network support for it. It comes up without error now but...

Now each computer recognizes itself on the network but not each other.

Do I need to pull each card and reinstall?

Answer : I am not sure where your accounting package fits into this - perhaps you can clarify what you mean by her accessing the acctg packge over the network. Is she running the executable off another machine? Is she working on data files from another machine?

I am taking your "each computer recognizes itself on the network but not each other" to mean that you can open network Neighborhood and see only thr machine you are on listed. If that is indeed what you mean, here is an excerpt from another answer I gave a couple of days ago in the "Computer Networking" section:

In a Windows world every machine has the potential to be a "browse master" which is the machine that controls what everyone else sees in their Network Neighborhood. If more than one machine is set to be the browse master (or even set to be a potential one - the default) an election can be forced to determine which will become the broswe master. By default a Windows 95/98 machine gets a vote (of low value - usually "1") while an NT Server gets a high vote (I believe a "16"). thus in a network with an NT Server the master browser will always be the NT Server unless steps are taken to make it not so. There are two things you can do to stop this behavior:

1) You can disable the ability for the 95 machine to *ever* be a browse master, thereby relegating it to the status of a browser client.

Here's how:
a) Right-click on Network Neighborhood and choose Properties.
b) Double-click File and Print Sharing for Microsoft Networks.
c) Select Browse Master and choose Disabled using the drop down list on the right. Click OK to exit this window, and OK to exit the main Network window.
d) Choose YES when asked if you would like to reboot.

2) You can ignore this and share the root of each drive (share C:\ as "C", D:\ as "D", and so on) then go to your Network Neighborhood and in the address field at the top type "\\Win95machine_name" and hit ENTER at which point you should get connected to the machine whether it appears in the NN or not. When it does go to each of it's drives or other shares and right-click each in turn and map them to a drive letter on this machine *selecting reconnect at logon* so each time this machine comes up it will connect that share to that drive letter without a visit to the Network Neighborhood. This is the best method as you will always have access to the other machines shares by letter and will soon learn which letter goes with which share (rather than have to go to NN every time and map it then). I would still recommend that you set one machine to be Browse Master (say the 98 machine) and the other to be disabled for BM ability.

The above applies to you as well - simply pick which machine that you would like to be the browse master, enable that one, and disable the browse master ability on all other machines.

Hope this helped...

Paul Doherty, CNA (3 & 4), CNE (4), MCP+I, MCSE, B.A.Sc.

Rating : 5

----------------------------------------------------------------------
QAId : 55535
Asker : laudire
Subject : 2 hard drives
Private : No

Question : I have a Intel Penthium 233 Mhz with 2 hard drives (a 2.56 GB Maxtor 82560a4 on which I am running Win98 Se and a second hard drive on which I had installed RedHat Linux 6.0. I deleted all the partitions on the second drive (using diskdruid) because I had a winmodem and coul use Linux to its full potential. I wanted to use it for Win98
instead. After I installed a primary partition and reformated (rebooting between each manipulation) and scanned I am told that I have only 503 MB usable now.I tried using Linux fdisk, dos fdisk, Partition Magic, EZ drive to no avail. Whatever I delete or however I reformat it is the same. My BIOS tells me that the drive is in LBA mode. What can I do to recuperate the missing 1.5 GB.
Please email me at laudire @ns.sympatico.ca.
Any suggestion will be appreciated. Réjean.
P.S. If you need more information just ask I'll tell you what I can find out.

Answer : I fI follow you right you had a full-size partition on the first disk with 98SE installed, and deleted the Linux partitions on the *second* disk and now cannot create partitions larger than 503MB on the second partition? that doesn't seem right so I'll instead assume you mean that after blowing away the partitions on *both* disks you cannot create partitions larger than 503MB on the first disk (since you also didn't indicate a size for the second, which may even only *be* 503MB for all I know). The easiet way to do this is if you intend to reinstall 98 onto the first disk and don;t care about what is currently on it. If this is the case I would suggest you experiment with the opctions for your disk geometry in your BIOS. First thing to try is to set both the detection and transfer mode to "Auto" and see what the drive comes up as. Create a DOS boot disk with fdisk, format, xcopy, xcopy32, and edit command on it. Boot with this disk and fdisk the newly defined first disk with fdisk. When it asks if you want large partitions you can answer yes or no (will determine whether the partition created will be FAT (no) or FAT32 (yes). Once the partition is made reboot on the same floppy and format the partition, at which point you will see the size the OS believes the disk to be (in this case it should be 2.4GB roughly). After formatting do a

dir c:\

and see what is reported as available bytes at the end of the dir command. If it says 2.4GB roughly that's good (of course :-). To verify that you indeed *do* have that amount free you can do the following:

copy a text file (like autoexec.bat) to C:\
edit a new bat file called test.bat on C:\

edit c:\test.bat

Make test.bat contain the following:

@echo off
:start
type c:\autoexec.bat >> c:\stuff.txt
goto start

Now run this test.bat command and go get a Coke or something. When this thing finishes you should have a very large file on your hands (it may peak at 2GB for an individual file so you may need to edit the test.bat and just change stuff.txt to stuff2.txt to start another). This test will verify that you indeed have the ability to store the full reported capacity of your hard disk. If this doesn't work go back to the BIOS and try LBA settings, then LARGE, repeating the fdisk, format, test.bat sequence.

If all else fails you can use the MaxBlast software from Maxtor's website to add a transparent layer to your hard disk to allow machines with older BIOS's access to the full capacity of their hard disks. Get it at http://www.maxtor.com/maxblast/index.html

Good luck!

Paul Doherty, CNA (3 & 4), CNE (4), MCP+I, MCSE, B.A.Sc.
Rating : 4

----------------------------------------------------------------------
QAId : 68249
Asker : coco_bean2
Subject : the central processing unit(CPU)
Private : Yes

Question : 1.which CPU register holds the adress of the nexr instruction to be executed?

2. Which CPU register holds the most recently fetched instruction?

3. The Intel 80386 CPU could directly adress 16 megabytes of main memory. How wide therefore was this adress bus? Please explain how you arrived at your response?

Answer : The IP (Instruction Pointer) register holds the address of the next-to-be-executed instruction. The control unit of the CPU runs an infinite loop, constantly fetching the instruction pointed at by IP, updating IP to point to the next instruction in the stack, and then executing the fetched instruction. For your second question I suppose if you setup a temporary variable and stored values of IP as it went along you could have the last instruction executed (temp var) as well as the next to be executed (current value of IP).

As to your third question, I think you are mistakenly referring to the 80286, not the 80386. The 80286 has a 24-bit address bus, which allows a total of 16,777,216 (16MB) of memory to be accessed. The 80286 has the ability to actually track up to 1,024 MB of memory via virtual memory techniques (16MB real, 1008MB virtual), but the actual physical RAM limitation is 16MB.

The 80386 (like all other 32-bit CPUs) can access 4GB of RAM. The 80386 also has virtual memory capability, up to a total of 16TB (real + virutal).

The way I got these numbers for the amount of memory accessible is to take 2 (number of digits in the binary number system; 0 and 1) and raise it to the power of the number of address lines a CPU has available. So in the case of the 80286 2^24 = 16MB, and in the case of the 80386 2^32 = 4GB.

Paul Doherty

----------------------------------------------------------------------
QAId : 97108
Asker : uuinin36636
Subject : How to perform low-level-format in Win98?
Private : No

Question : As title.

Answer : There is no usch thing as a "low-level" format on IDE devices anymore. The way the drives are setup a low-level format would consist of nothing more than writing 0's to all areas of the drive which does not have the same meaning as low-level used to have. A normal format (right-click device, select format, or DOS "format X:") are the only formats available to you. The DOS utility fdisk would be used to initially *partition& the drive before formatting so if that was what you mean by low-level format then the answer there is that fdisk will not run in Windows, even in a DOS prompt. It works at too low a level for Windows to deal with so you must either select Start/shutdown/Restart in DOS mode or simply reboot and hit F8 and go to Safe mode command prompt only and then run the C:\windows\command\fdisk.exe to partition the disk. You will only use fdisk, however, if you intend to slice up the whole disk into more than one drive letter. For example if you had an 8GB disk and wanted two drive letters ("partitions") C: and D: you can use fdisk to split the disk into two partitions (NOTE - which will DESTROY anything currently anywhere on the disk!) which both then need to be formatted (which will require a bootable floppy with the necessary utilities (format at a minimum)).

Good luck!

Paul Doherty

----------------------------------------------------------------------
QAId : 107046
Asker : LittleMr12449
Subject : Two ?s
Private : No

Question : ? #1: What is the difference between a mac and a PC?

? #2: My computer freezes often when I am on the Internet. Any ideas why?

Note: my computer is only about 1 1/2 years old

Answer : The difference between a Mac and a PC is about as far apart as two computers can be. On the Mac side you have a graphic user interface that's been designed into the machine since day one and is very user-friendly. The Mac unfortunately does not cater well to power users due to it's lack of a (built-in) command-line interface. A command-line interface (CLI) allows you to manipulate the OS and directories/files in a rapid way, and to automate repetitive tasks.

A Windows machine on the other hand (excluding Windows NT/2000 for the moment) are graphic user interfaces running on top of a CLI (DOS) - actually that's not entirely accurate as DOS is used as more of a loader and really either isn't even resident once Windows loads or has had the vectors for interrupts stolen that it does nothing if it is still resident. You can always get to a DOS prompt within Windows, however, which IMO gives you the best of both worlds - a nice GUI and a nice CLI.

The only other major differences between the Mac and PC are that Macs use the Motorola chips (first the 68000 series, and now the PowerPC chips). the PCs on the other hand use the Intel 80x86 line of chips and much more tied to their roots (which is a limiting factor that clever engineers have managed to turn into a mostly moot issue).

In the end people choose their computers for the software they can run on it - my personal choice is the PC since it has the GUI, it has the CLI, it has the most software support of any platform in existence (check the shelves for Mac vs PC software at your local computer store), and in fact you can run many different operating systems on a PC (you can run several on the Mac too but not as many) - BeOS, OS/2, Solaris, and many flavors of Linux can all be run on the same PC (in fact they can even be installed at the same time and you can choose which to boot into) you run Windows on...

Question #2
You likely have a driver issue or a hardware conflict. From your limited description of the "crash" I will suggest you upgrade your video and audio drivers to their latest versions from the web sites of the people who make them. Many times crashes like these come from "leaky" drivers that allocate resources for their use, but fail to return them, or worse, interfere with the normal operation of the OS at a low level.

Paul Doherty
Rating : 5

----------------------------------------------------------------------
QAId : 116250
Asker : Anonymous
Subject : Terms I don't understand
Private : No

Question : I really need to understand TRANSLATION MODE and LARGE MODE. This has some thing to do with hard drives and I think the bios? I can't thank you enough!

Answer : These BIOS settings (usually called "Normal", "Large" and "LBA") come about due to a limitation in the communication (and maintaining compatibility with DOS-based apps that use Int13h to execute hard disk reads and writes) between the motherboard (BIOS) and the hard disk controller (IDE). The problem is that each supports a different maximum number for each of the 3 main items of physical geometry that defines a hard disk. These items are the number of Cylinders, the number of Heads, and the Sectors-per-track. Here are their respective maximums:

------C---H----S
BIOS 1024 256 63
IDE 65k 16 256

The problem here is that taken individually either the BIOS or the IDE controller circuitry (on a circuit board mated to the disk) can both address large hard disks (7.8GB for the BIOS and 128GB for IDE) since they have to work together to maintain compatibility only the lowest value from each column can be used in addressing a disk through the BIOS (required for compatibility with DOS). So a maximu of 1024 cylinders, 16 heads, and 63 sectors-per-track is allowable.

The various translation methods in the BIOS are, in some cases, ways of getting around this limit (translation makes larger groups of clusters appear as one cluster) while others are similar methods, but allow the IDE circuitry to interpret calls (which depending on the quality of the firmware of your drive may result in slightly slower performance). All recent (last 5 years) hard disks support LBA transfer modes and you will likely have good luck with LBA.

Paul Doherty

Rating : 5

----------------------------------------------------------------------
QAId : 116425
Asker : Anonymous
Subject : More Terms I need to understand
Private : No

Question : Your last annswer was right on, and FAST. I wonder if you could tell me the difference between SYSTEM CACHE and HDD CACHE? and any and all about the 2 would be very helpful. Thank You in advance. You are the man !

Answer : The idea behind cache is to let a fast device store some of it's needed data (usually the most recently used) in a small (relatively) area for quicker access in the event that data is needed again. In the case of the CPU the cache holds an amount equal to the cache size of whataver the CPU has most recently done, in the hopes that things like loops or instrcutions being performed multiple times on redundant data can be sped up by reading this data from the cache, rather than having to go to the "slow" RAM of the system. The same applies to hard disks. They use RAM (which is slow for the CPU, but 1000 times faster than a hard disk) for a cache so that data that has recently been read for the disk can be gotten faster if needed again relatively soon. When a device like a CPU or hard disk checks with it's cache controller and acquires data from it (meaning the data has needed is available in the cache memory) that is known as a cache "hit". When the device requests data from the cache controller and the cache memory no longer has the data requested that is a cache "miss". A high percentage of "hits" is the goal for optimal performance. So you can think of a cache as a middle-ground between a faster device and it's slower method of retrieving data.

Now on to the two types you mentioned:

"System cache" is the CPU's domain. There are several levels of cache, and where they are located depends on what CPU architecture you have. For purposes of example I'll use the common Pentium 2 arrangement. System cache here exists in several places: on the CPU itself there are two caches of high-speed memory, both 16k in size. One caches instructions and the other caches data. This cache is called L1 (level 1) cache and is the first place the CPU looks for items. If you've ever seen a P2 or P3 (pre-Coppermine) CPU you know it's a wide black thing on a circuit board. The reason for that is that the fab size (.28 or .22 micron) is too large for them to include the L2 (level 2) cache (which is 512K).

hard disks use RAM since it's so much faster than the physical disk itself. They can also set aside much larger amounts since RAM is cheap compared to the speed of memory required for the cache on a CPU. So you may have an 8 or 16MB (or larger) cache on your hard disk, that allows the OS to retrieve data from the cache when a hit occurs, rather than take the long, expensive time penalty to move that hard disk head around.

Paul Doherty
Rating : 5

----------------------------------------------------------------------
QAId : 165374
Asker : lguidone
Subject : Purchase of a computer
Private : No

Question : I am about to purchase a new system. I am torn between a PentiumIII 733 and the Athlon 700-800 systems. I want to edit analog videos from my sony handicam and I do photography work for hobby enjoyment on the computer, also I am confused as to weither to buy a compaq or not due to reputation. Also the new RDAM from Dell by Rambus vs the SDRAM
Please help.

Answer : In another question I complete cover the differences between RDRAM and SDRAM - I will paste it into here since I don't know yet how to add that question to my FAQ list. Look for it at the bottom after the answer.

I would have to say go with the Pentium 3 for a few reasons:

1) As fast or faster than the Athlon - the older P3's were slower than the Athlons but the new Coppermine chips with their full-core speed 256K cache are the equal of an Athlon of the same clock speed (this may change when AMD starts producing their new .18 micron Athlons with integrated cache - in fact I expect it to change but nonetheless suggest a P3 for reason #2)

2) COMPATIBILITY - The CPU itself is not a concern as the Athlon is fully instruction-set compatible with the Intel CPUs. That's the easy part. Where things fall apart is in what's called the "chipset" of the motherboard. This is the main logic that controls everything from movement of data across every bus in the system, to providing the advanced features you want like ATA66 hard drive support and AGP 4X transfers, etc. AMD CPUs do not use Intel chipsets (for obvious reasons - Intel won't let them is a major reason) and the chipsets that ARE available for the Athlon (and indeed the K6-2 and K6-3's as well) are not up to snuff IMO. I tend to beat my machines mercilessly and if you're doing video you will too. I also run many alternative OS's and had major problems when attempting to do on an AMD K6-s I used to have (not the "used to"). In summary: You will have less problems if you go with the Intel.

Another nice thing to know is that you can now get an Intel Coppermine running at 800Mhz - this is not a CPU that Intel currently produces, but is coming from overclocking a lower (600Mhz) and *less costly* CPU. The beauty of this is that the people who do this stand behind the CPUs and coolers (heatsink/dan combos) with a lifetime warranty. No longer is overclocking a crapshoot where you just have to hope the quality of the chip is good enough to make it to the speed you want.

Check out the site - step-thermodynamics

http://www.step-thermodynamics.com/

And their Internet Specials page

http://www.step-thermodynamics.com/InternetSpecials.htm

For about *half* what a P3-733 alone costs you can get a P3-800 from these guys *with cooling system* and guaranteed to run at 800Mhz for life...

You will need PC133 RAM for this system since the overclock involved running a CPU intended (meaning multiplier-locked) for a 100Mhz FSB (Front-Side Bus) at 133Mhz, which in turn is where the 800Mhz comes from. This is THE best way to go to build a system yourself as far as I'm concerned. You'll save enough on the CPU to buy yourself another 40GB hard disk!

Good luck!

*****************************************

SDRAM vs RAMBUS

SDRAM is Single Data-Rate RAM. It runs at speeds of 100, 133 and 150Mhz. It is on a 64-bit bus.

RDRAM is RAMbus memory - a new spec by Intel that is utilized by their new motherboard chipset the i820. Rambus mainly differs from SDRAM in it's clock speeds. It is a clock-doubled RAM that can send and receive data on the rising and the falling of each clock tick. So RDRAM that runs at 100Mhz for instance effectively really moves data at 200Mhz. Rambus speeds are even higher than that - I'm not sure of the highest clock speed but I believe it's 400Mhz - which when clock-doubled makes for a whopping 800Mhz of speed. Sounds good, doesn't it? 800 vs 133 on SDRAM? But it ain't so. The missing piece of the puzzle I left out is that, while SDRAM has a 64-bit bus (which means 8 bytes per clock tick can move back or forth across the bus), RDRAM is only a 16-bit bus (which means 2 bytes per clock tick). So, RDRAM at 8 times the frequency, when this 1/4 sized bus is taken into consideration is now only (all other things being equal) twice as fast as 100Mhz SDRAM. And as I mentioned there is 133Mhz SDRAM available now. On top of that RDRAM is expensive. And I do mean expensive. A 128MB stick (DIMM) of SDRAM will run you about $150.00. The same capacity of RDRAM will set you back a cool thousand bucks! And to fit the final nail into the coffin on it's way to your RAM slots is a new memory standard DDRAM. It's clock-doubled memory just like RDRAM is, but it's like the SDRAM with it's wider 64-bit bus. And it will likely be a lot less than comparable RDRAM 9and right now now RDRAM would touch it at a clock-doubled 133Mhz (266Mhz effective, 64-bit)) speed. DDRAM is on video cards with the NVidia GeForce card and will be coming to PCs in the form of DIMMs very soon I suspect.

Paul Doherty
Rating : 5
Rating : 5
Rating : 5

----------------------------------------------------------------------
QAId : 173845
Asker : paullewis
Subject : usb printer
Private : Yes

Question : I have a printer connected to my parallel port and I have 2 usb ports.I want to connect another printer to one of my usb ports. How do I do this without getting any conflicts; so both printers can print at the same time. When I enter setup, there is nothing there to enable my usb ports but in system device manager, the usb controller is listed.

Thanks

Answer : USB devices are intended to be hot-pluggable (meaning you can plug them in and out at any time - including when the system is running) and it doesn't matter which USB port you plug them into. The first time you plug almost any USB device into Windows 98 you will, hoever, need to provide the drivers that came with the device (most USB devices out now were not out when 98 went gold so it has few of the drivers - and they would not be the newest ones anyway). Once this driver install goes (and you do this only once) then you can plug and unplug at will. I don't forsee any problems with two printers but you won't know until you try. Just plug one of them in, get it's USB drivers installed and test that it's working. Then plug the second one in (and if you want to be really "safe" unplug the first one first) and get it configured. Then you should have two printers defined in Start/Settings/Printers and should be able set whichever you want as the default, and also select whichever you want jobs to go to inside your apps as you do with any LPT or network printers.

Good luck

Paul Doherty

----------------------------------------------------------------------
QAId : 175701
Asker : dickgamb36304
Subject : Buying new computer
Private : No

Question : Hello to all. I am addressing this several experts in order to recieve multiple opinions about my question. I am in the process of buying a new computer and came across an advertisement for a home PC package on a VCstore infomercial. Now dont laugh. I am fairly familiar with the track record and reputation of such "entertainment" on television but I decided to check into it anyway. Initially, I like what I see. Many of the peripherals that come with the system may not have well known brand names to some, but test out well when compared to the competion. The main thing that I am leary of (excluding acutually ordering a system) is that the PC brand is an Everex. I have heard of the company and know they are a large manufacturer of computers but I have never heard anything about them in the home PC marketplace. I would like to find out how Everex rates in performance and track record when placed against others such as Dell, Compaq, Gateway, HP, Acer, Emachines, etc. What I would like to ask each expert is to visit the VCstore website and view the computer and peripherals and tell me what you think. The pro's/con's. The address is www.vcstore.com The computer # is PC-3260 and it is the Everex that sells for $1582 after rebate. I am anxiously awaiting your response. Thank you.

Answer : 1) I've never even heard of an "AOC" monitor before so I can't attest to its quality, but I can tell you two things:

a) 17" monitors are not where you should be these days - for about the same money (around 400) you can get a very good 19" monitor.

b) The monitor they are advertising with this system has a .28 dot pitch (assuming it's a shadow mask as they don't indicate). This is atrocious by today's standards and is unacceptable on a larger than 15" monitor IMO. I would not have this monitor on a bet. My current monitor cost me 400 before shipping and is a 19" Hitachi SuperScan Elite and has a .22 dot pitch across the whole screen. The monitor is the one component you *do not* want skimp on as it is the one item of the system you will use all the time.

2) No brands given for the audio card, the DVD-ROM drive, the modem or the video card (mysteriously listed as "8MB AGP 3-D Video Card"). This bodes poorly for the whole system in both compatbility and speed. Just the fact that there is a mere 8MB on the video card (most AGP cards out today have 32MB) tells me this system will never be able to play even today's games at decent frame rates.

This system looks like a slapped-together generic-Tawian branded components system. I would not have it and it will likely give you headaches far past the time the 200-300 dollars you saved by buying it is forgotten.

Go with quality - it's a mantra that's never let me down.

Paul Doherty

Question : My name is Michael and I'm decideding to start my own business and put it on the web! But I'm not sure how to make my own web site on the internet. I have a IBM Aptiva with windows 95 in it. If you know how to create a web page on my computer, I would appreciate it if you could tell me everything you need to know to make a web page. Please try and get back to me in the next couple of days (today is February 14, 2000). You can e-mail me back at www.micro_mike52@hotmail.com

sincerly,
Michael

Answer : Well Michael I can't tell you *everythng* about creating a web page in one answer (even a *book* won't do that! :-) but I can tell you making a standard web page is far easier than you think. If you have either Internet Explorer 5.01 or Netscape 4.x (4.7 being the newest one) they both come with free web creation tools. IE (http://www.microsoft.com/ie) comes with FrontPage Express which is nice and Netscape (http://www.netscape.com) has Netscape Composer, both of which are GUI HTML editors that make building basic web pages as easy as making a normal letter in a word processor. This shouldn't come as a terrible surprise because at its core HTML is not a programming language, but rather a Markup language (the "M" in HTML) which is a fancy way of saying a way to indicate where things should go, and what special styles should be applied to them. Open up either one of these and start making a brand new page - add text, add some pictures, add a few hotspots for jumping to other pages either that you make or that will be on the internet when the user would click them. Then save your page and preview it in either browser by selecting File/Open (page) and opening your *.HTM or *.HTML file. Once the page is done you will upload it your ISP into your home directory (usually paying for an ISP account entitles you to a few MB of web space). You will use FTP to access this - if you need help here get the name of your ISP's FTP server and follow up this question with another.

A few tips:

When you add pictures to your web page while designing your page put the actual image file into the same directory where you have saved the HTML file you're making *before* you add the picture. This way the image link will reference the "current directory" which will be valid both for testing on your home PC *and* when you get it (the HTML file and the pictures) up on your ISPs web server.

Use GIF images unless you absolutely need the extra colors. GIFs are almost always smaller than a corresponding JPEG, even though JPEGs are a compressed image format (actually so are GIFs but they don't let you "dial up the compression" the same as JPGs). This will save your web page viewers some time viewing your page without significantly distracting from the experience.

A fun thing to try is to open one of the editors with a blank page, then select File/Save As and give the file a name like "basic.html". Then open basic.html in an editor like wordpad or notepad and you can see the framework that is put in place to support your HTML even when nothing is on the page. Then compare that basic page to one that has a single picture on it, and so on. You will get a feel for how each type of HTML tag looks.

Have fun...

Paul Doherty

----------------------------------------------------------------------
QAId : 182062
Asker : Anonymous
Subject : e-mail
Private : No

Question : Dear Paul,

I have a consern with my e-mail address. I currently have a address under netzero.net and i would like to change it to hotmail.com
Is there any way to do that? I've read your previous answer on the matter about netzero and could still not get it to work. Thank you very much for your time.
Respectfully Yours,
Scott

Answer : I do not think you can *replace* your NetZero account with a Hotmail account, but you can certainly *add* a Hotmail account and use it place of the NetZero one (leaving it idle) if you want to. You can also get free email accounts at:

http://www.onebox.com (best interface)
http://www.yahoo.com

Paul Doherty
Rating : 4

----------------------------------------------------------------------
QAId : 190086
Asker : she9658
Subject : Error message Which disables my computer
Private : No

Question : Hi,

I sure hope you can help! The problem i am having is my computer comes up with the following error message and my computer stops responding. I have to shut computer off and restart from the beginning. I have a packard bell which i must admit is old. This is the message i receive:

DPAL error

Abnormal parameter passed
In_ _ _ in file
.\hdlc.c at line 550

Thanks for any input you can give me.

Sheila

Need More Information : Yoiu need to give me more details on the system - what OS are you running? What part of the boot process is happening when this message occurs?

This is an odd error message - it appears to be a compiler message complaining about a C language source file.

Paul Doherty

FUQuestion : Hi,
I am not sure what you mean by os but i am going to try to tell you what i have on my system. I have Windows 98, office 97. This message occurs at different times it is usually when i am on the internet, for example right after i emailed you. The screen comes up with that message on a blue background screen. It tells me to hit enter to continue but that does not work at all. It just returns to the same message. I then have to physically shut the machine down and put the machine back on. I cannot find anyone to explain to me why this happens or what is causing it. I have tried reloading windows 98 and office 97 but i still have the same problem. I have ran diagnostics on it but it does not come up with any errors. Maybe its just possessed. Well if you can help i would appreciate it. I also have remove it software and i have tried to clean up some of the files but i dont know where this is coming from.....Thanks again, and thanks for answering so quickly.

Sheila

Answer : Well you're in luck - it appears that this is nothing more than driver issues with your modem. If you have a Supra modem then the following will almost certainly do the trick - apply the newest drivers for your specific modem and it should go away.

http://www.diamondmm.com/customer_caretechnical_supportdrivers.htm

More info on this error can be found at:

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q238/0/73.ASP?LNG=ENG&SA=ALLKB&FR=0

Paul Doherty

----------------------------------------------------------------------
QAId : 196896
Asker : clicq
Subject : turn computer off or not?
Private : No

Question : Is it more cost effective (ie, cheaper) to leave a computer on at night vs. turning it off? I know that when you turn the computer on, there's a voltage spike that is bad for the computer, but I've never had a problem with it. (I have an 8 year old computer, turn it on and off daily, and it's still working.) I'd like to keep my computer on, but I'm worried about the cost of the extra electricity. What are your thoughts on this?

Answer : My take on this is to leave it on... set your screensaver to blank screen and have the monitor power down (if it's capable - else turn the monitor off) after 60 minutes or so.

Several reasons why (and power consumption is not the main one).

1) There is more likely to be damage or failure of system components on power-ups/power-offs as you mentioned

2) The main reason is that constantly turning on and off your PC doesn't allow the system to reach a constant temperature (which an always-running PC does) and the heating-up/cooling-down can make solder traces brittle. Once a PC runs for a couple of hours it will not vary in tempurature more than a few degrees, and then only slowly. Much better for the system's life expectancy.

3) The computer itself uses very little power. Most monitors use more power than the whole PC does so if you can arrange for the monitor to power-down then you will be using about the same power as a pair of 100-watt light bulbs.

Newer systems also support some power management that can spin down drives (reducing the only real problem from keeping the system on - drive bearing wear), and idle the CPU to save electricity without significantly changing the tempurature inside the case.

Paul Doherty
Rating : 5

----------------------------------------------------------------------
QAId : 212464
Asker : emmanuelmarshall
Subject : hard disk upgrades
Private : No

Question : my comp mem and hard disk functioning is getting a bit geriatric, (five years old) and i want to get a new Hard disk - can i preserve my files, preferences etc when i change disks?
if so, how?
can i get someone to do it for me, secure in the knowledge that i wont lose everything? - (online stuff too like chat adress book etc.)

????
thanks people.

Answer : Listed below is a question/answer session I had with a guy here on Xpertsite, but he asked his question in another category, General Technology, so I'll just include the conversation since it directly applies to you.

*********************************************

Hi Paul,
Im running win98 on a 200 Mhz PC. I Installed a 17GB slave drive "D". I wish to copy all current info from "C" to "D" and make this my new "C" drive. The install software that came with my new Western Digital HD allows me to partition in FAT32 no problem. I receive an error message when I attempt to copy my existing "C" drive to "D". I receive a message about unable to access root directory FAT error. I thought perhaps Norton Antivirus was in the way and uninstalled it. No luck. Can I copy reliably with a DOS command?
Thanks in advance
Steve

pauldoherty answered the question on 2/1/00:
Here is a much faster, cleaner way to do it. Access the URL at the bottom of this message to find a copy of the utility GHOST (Generic Hardware-Oriented System Transfer). What this little baby will do is remove the drudgery from what you are attempting to do - namely, take an installed C: drive and move it's entire contents (including boot-sector) to another, larger hard disk and then jumper the new larger disk as master, remove the original and boot as if nothing has changed if I understand you correctly. This is as smooth as it can get (there are much more tedious methods to the same end but why do it the painful way? :-)

Install the second disk as slave (it appears you have done so) - there is no need to fdisk it, format it or anything else - a bare disk is just fine. Then make a bootable floppy disk under DOS (either pure DOS or a DOS prompt under Windows) by:

c:
cd \windows
format a:
sys a:

--

Now copy the ghost.exe you obtained to this floppy and write-protect the floppy.

Boot on the floppy and when it finishes you will be at an A: prompt

Type ghost and hit ENTER

From the menu Select Local/Disk/To Disk and select the first hard disk (your installed "C:" primary IDE drive) as the source, and the new larger disk as the destination. Start it, and when it's done shut down the machine, take out the primary disk, replace it with the new one (jumpering it for master as you do so) and then turn the system back on. Voila! Back in business with a larger disk!

Paul Doherty

This program was purchased by Symantec, who no longer has an evaluation copy of the program available for download. So it is necessary in this event to do an FTP search on what you know you need to find someone who has a copy that will work long enough for this one operation, so you don't need to purchase a 100 dollar program for a one-shot upgrade. It's probably not totally above-board to do so, but if your conscience allows here's one I found that should do the trick:

ftp://ftp.aracnet.com/users/felix/GHOST.EXE
Rating : 3.8
Rating : 3.8

----------------------------------------------------------------------
QAId : 215494
Asker : purringcritter
Subject : how to delete
Private : No

Question : Could you tell me how to delete website address that are no longer needed from the line at the top of the computer screen? I tried to highlight it and delete it but it didn't work. Its too full and I need to erase it because its getting too cluttered and I think its causing my computer to be slower. I've asked a lot of people and no one knows what to do. Thank you.

Answer : It sounds like you are using Internet Explorer for browsing so here you go:

Go to the Tools menu and select Internet Options at the bottom. On the General tab at the bottom is an item called History with a number indicating the number of days of web page URLs to keep in this history buffer. Set it lower and/or click the Clear History button to remove all the items in the list.

Paul Doherty
Rating : 5
Rating : 5

----------------------------------------------------------------------
QAId : 218121
Asker : Sids
Subject : CPU
Private : No

Question : sir, i'm a student. Can u please tell me ....

1)How does CPU work in co-relation with a PCI ?

2)What is basically the use of PCI ?

3)In my book, its written that "PCI is High Band-width Processor-Independent Bus and It Delivers better System Performance for high speed I/O subsystems. It does 64 Data Lines transferring upto 264MB/sec at 33MHz.
Now my question is....
(a)What do u mean by High Speed I/O
"SUBSYSTEMS" ?
(b) What does it mean by 64 Data Line
Transferring?
(c) At what speed does a PCI bus work?
(d) According to me ....it is not possible
that a PCI can transfer 264MB in a
second that too at 33MHz. Please tell
me something about Data Transfer
through PCI & whether the transfer rate
i told above is possible or not.
According to me if data transfer can
be so high....then the system must be
a supercomputer.
(e) Can such a high Data Transfer take
place on normal server systems.
(f) If my Processor has a speed of 450MHz
then at what speed would my PCI work &
how will it effect DATA TRANSFER.
(g) Does 64 Data lines mean 64 BITS.
(h) Is 33MHz the speed of cycle. If it is
then which cycle are we talking about.
Is it the cycle of CPU or the PCI.
(i) Is the above line written in my book
wright or wrong ?

Sir...i would be highly greatful if you can send me the answers to all my questions as soon as possible. If u can give the answers in detals ...that would do the best for me.

My email address is sidharth_verma@hotmail.com.

Thanking you.....

Sincerely,
Sidharth Verma

Answer : Ok here we go...

1) The CPU and PCI have no real relation in the workings of the computer. The CPU does calculations, while the PCI bus (and it's corresponding controllers) handles peripheral cards plugged into it (the PCI bus, that is).

2) The basic use of PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect) is to enable you to plug in high(er) speed add-in cards like sound and video cards. PCI was a step away from the older architecture of 8 and 16-bit ISA slots. ISA slots ran at a much slower rate (around 8Mhz) and, as stated, were only 16-bits wide at a maximum. In the beginning of PCI only things like video were put on the PCI bus but nowadays everything from sound cards, modems and SCSI controllers are put on the PCI bus.

3a) High-speed IO system is exactly what PCI is - it is simply a series of electrical (and physical) contact points ("slots") and their corresponding controlling circuitry. PCI slots simply allow you to add functionality to your computer to customize it's capabilities to your specific needs. "IO" (usually written "I/O") stands for Input/Output indicating that PCI is a mechanism for moving data. Subsystem seems to be causing you some confusion as well. Sub means "below" so subsystem is something below the system as a whole. That is, a subsystem is an underlying working piece of what makes the whole possible.

3b) "64 data lines" is actually 64-bit data lines and refers to how many bits can be sent back or forth across the PCI bus at one time. 64 bits is 8 bytes at a time since a single byte is 8 bits (8 * 8 = 64).

3c) 33Mhz is the clock rate of the current PCI slots. This means that the slots work off an oscillator signal that "pulses" 33 Million times per second. These pulses are the conductor of the transfers across the bus and let the controlling circuitry know *when* sends or receives are eligible to take place.

3d) The PCI bus can indeed move that amount of data per second. But remember this is an electrical bus with no moving parts - electronics are quite fast when they are not encumbered by physical devices (like spinning hard disks). Your number is right on the money too - here's how to calculate it:

64 bit bus width = 8 bytes (8 bits per byte * 8)

So in theory we have 8 bytes per transfer across the bus based on this 64-bit width. Now all we do to find the throughput is multiply this width by the number of "opportunities per second" the bus will get to move data (and for maximum transfer purposes assume every opportunity to move data is utilized). So with our 33Mhz (33,000,000 cycles per second) oscillator we have 33 million opportunities per second. So we multiply:

33,000,000 x 8 (bytes per transfer) =

264,000,000 bytes

Now divide that by 1,000,000 to get (roughly) 264MB of throughput per second. I say "roughly" because a megabyte is actually based on 1024 x 1024 (1,048, 576) but we're getting nitpicky here.

3e) Yes, such high transfers take place across the PCI bus all the time - but remember there is contention involved (more than one card vying to use the PCI bus at the same time) which dwindles available throughput for any one card, there is overhead in each transfer that also whittles away at the effective speed. But the burst available to the electronics of any PCI card is the 264MB per second figure quoted (and calculated). In fact there is a faster bus - the AGP bus - intended for graphics boards only that runs at multiples of the 33Mhz speed that PCI runs at. The standard AGP on most motherboards today is what is known as "AGP 2X". The "2X" refers to the fact that AGP is a clock-doubling bus technology. Instead of being able to move data on only the rising portion of each clock pulse like PCI does, the AGP bus can move data on the rising *and* falling of each clock pulse, effectively doubling the number of opportunities for transfers. There is also an AGP 4X that quadruples this speed. AGP 2X and 4X move 528MB and 1056MB respectively. Well past the PCI speed.

3f) The speed of PCI is not dependent (anbd thus will not benefit from) on the speed of the CPU. You even quoted from your book in your question that PCI is a "Processor-Independent bus". And that is the correct term. The PCI needs a 33Mhz signal and will derive it from other signals on the board (or be fed a direct 33Mhz signal - doesn't matter which) based on the motherboard designer's choice. In the end the PCI bus runs at the same speed whether it's in a 200Mhz Pentium or a 733Mhz Coppermine Pentium 3. The only benefit you may potentially see is a very slight increase in efficiency of the PCI bus transfers on a faster CPU. This would be due to the CPU being less of a potential "bottlenck" and less likely to hold up a pending transfer on the PCI bus.

3g) Yes - 64 "data lines" is just another way of saying "64-bit" - covered above.

3h) As discussed above 33Mhz is the clock signal fed to the PCI circuitry and has no relation to the CPUs speed.

3i) The line in your book is correct (other than the minor quibbling over what constitutes a MB)

I'm very glad to help a polite person such as yourself - I hope this has answered your question to your satisfaction...

Paul Doherty

Rating : 5
Rating : 5
Rating : 5

----------------------------------------------------------------------
QAId : 233739
Asker : phonerate
Subject : computer partion numbers missing
Private : No

Question : I installed windows 95B OEM version on my new 533mhz system with a
13.2GB hard drive and not too long afterwards, three of my drive letters
disappeared from "My Computer" and now I don't have access to over 5GB
of space. I have no idea what happened. I checked the registry and
found a section named "NoDrives" and the numbers after it are as
follows 0000 95 00 00 00 What do you
think happened, and how do I correct it?

Brad

Answer : Simply delete the "NoDrives" key entry entirely and reboot to get Explorer to attempt to find all partitions. If this doesn't work ensreu you can even read these from pure DOS - if you can't then you have real trouble. I suspect removing this registry key will fix it though...

Paul Doherty
Rating : 3

----------------------------------------------------------------------
QAId : 235897
Asker : Anonymous
Subject : changing e-mail address
Private : No

Question : I recently added a new e-mail address, as the server is cheaper. This new service provides an "alias". I would like to know what that means. What is the easiest/best way to notify others of a new address w/out losing mail? Also, can mail on old address be received at new address, somehow? Since new account allows several e-mail addresses, can I add old address so as not to lose mail? Thank you, Hockeyspice

Answer : The "alias" is another email name that will deliver email to the same account. So for instance if your real email name you created the account under was JoeBlow@thissite.net and you wanted to protect that account from spam (giving it only to your friends and family) you could create an alias that you could use on the net at large. The alias could be something like Maniac@thissite.net. This alias would be of less value (since you can get rid of it, or change it to a new alias) and thus you would use it for things like registering on web sites, answering surveys, etc. Once the spam starts flowing into that alias account and it becomes bothersome you delete it and make a new one.

When you say the new account allows several email addresses I'm not sure if you mean multiple aliases or that you can add emails from other sites. I suspect you mean the latter. Most services that do this can handle POP (Post Office Protocol) email accounts and can indeed pull mail from your old account.

Paul Doherty
Rating : 5

----------------------------------------------------------------------
QAId : 243869
Asker : PEresearcher
Subject : Downloads and CDs
Private : No

Question : I have just bought myself a new PC and want to download some MP3 files, and record these to CD.

What is the quickest way of downloading this files as some of them are quite big and can be quite lengthy. Is Winzip the best way ? Any other suggestions on how to speed them up.

Also I want to record some video footage to CD but most CDs only seem to hold 650mb - can I get discs that will hold data larger than this for movies etc ?

Many thanks for your help .

Please email me at

emmajrich@hotmail.com

or E.J.Rich@lboro.ac.uk

Answer : There is no way to speed the downloads of MP3 files. WinZip is not used on MP3 files because there is no room for further compression - a MP3 is already compressed at a 10:1 ratio...

As far as getting more space on a CD - there are some 80 minute CDs that, coupled with a proper burner and software, can go beyond 650 MB (but not much beyond - not enough to warrant the effort, IMO). If you really need larger capacity you can look into recordable DVD drives (2GB per disk or so) but I don't really recommend this as the standards for writable DVDs are still up in the air and you may be left with a device not compatible with the final standard that wins out in the marketplace.

Paul Doherty

----------------------------------------------------------------------
QAId : 245508
Asker : planman
Subject : planman@snip.net
Private : No

Question : Is a celleron 366mhz with 64 meg sdram and a 4g hardrive enough computer to play all the current computer games? Thank You

Answer : I think you will find it adequate, but the CPU speed may very soon become a limiting factor in the games (or more specifically, the resolution you play them in) you will be able to play. Unfortunately most video cards (the major component of the 3D games so prevalent today) scale with the speed of the CPU. A significant portion of the 3D rendering pipeline is handled by the CPU so there is an upper limit to how fast even the best video cards can run in a slower PC. This bottleneck is sure to get worse as games begin to ramp up the number of polygons in each frame rendered and as texture sizes applied to the 3D models are increased in detail, color depth and resolution. One thing that can help is something relatively new on the market - a video card with a GPU (Graphics Processing Unit). very much like a full-blown CPU, a GPU migrates two of the major functions of the 3D pipeline traditionally handled by the system CPU, lighting and transform, to this dedicated GPU on the video card. Now the video card has less ties to the CPU making it less "CPU-bound". This means that the card can deliver faster frame rates with a somehwat slower CPU (within limits) because it's performance is not so reliant on the speed of the system CPU (part of it's workload having been offloaded to the GPU). This type of card is pricey (the better ones being 250-350 at the moment) but can curtail obsolescence for your system. However, since you are purchasing the system it is not an after-the-fact prolonging of life you need, but rather a purchase that takes this into account from the beginning. With this in mind I would suggest that you consider a bit faster of a CPU, on the order of a Celeron 550 or a Pentium 3 450-600 to extend the life of your PC for gaming regardless of what video card you buy.

64 MB is adequate but 128MB is preferable. RAM is quite inexpensive - check here for a reasonably-priced 128MB DIMM

http://www.step-thermodynamics.com/Memories.htm

4GB is not bad but I think it will be a bit cramped. You can always add another disk later if it becomes too confining, but 8GB is a better range to shoot for.

Good luck,
Paul Doherty

----------------------------------------------------------------------
QAId : 247504
Asker : SeaEarth@...
Subject : dvd
Private : No

Question : Hello,

I am interested to know why the DVD player in our recently bought Compaq laptop has only five allowable switches of the regional setting for the DVD. This seems particularly useless since we have a great interest in seeing foreign films.

Are there other brands available that allow unlimited switching of DVD regional settings?

Looking forward to your answer.

Thanks,

Seaton

Answer : The region settings on DVD players is done so that, for instance, when a movie is released in the US, but is not due for release in the UK and Europe for another 6 months, users can not obtain a copy from somewhere else and dilute the movie opening by showing or distributing the movie before it's release.

There are some purveyors on the web who will sell you "region free" units.

Here are some links to info and sellers:

http://www.dvdutils.com/
http://www.mailuk.org/
http://members.tripod.com/dvdpage2/index.html
http://www.codefreedvd.co.uk/dvd_dvdrom.htm

Paul Doherty

----------------------------------------------------------------------
QAId : 255467
Asker : Anonymous
Subject : computers
Private : No

Question : i am looking at buying a simple computer with at least 64 mb of ram to play my game "everquest" and use the internet, can u tell me what I should be looking for and the approx. cost, as I cannot afford too much being a student.

Answer : Try the eMachines - they are sold at retailers and also:

http://www.e4me.com/

They sell some decent lower-end machines at good prices. One of their systems looks like a good fit for your needs - the eTower 500id:

http://www.e4me.com/infocentral/product_tower500id.html

Paul Doherty

----------------------------------------------------------------------
QAId : 265688
Asker : Anonymous
Subject : Loading windows 98 on a scsi hard drive
Private : No

Question : Hi
I recently purchased a 4.2 scsi quantum hard drive from an auction on ebay. I found out that it was a SCA drive so I had to purchase
a sca adaptor. Used an adaptec 2940 u controler card with a 50 pin hookup. Removed
my IDE drive and setup bios to boot from
a;c;scsi. My bios does not have a; scsi
options but my option seemed to work ok.
SCSI controler bios loaded the scsi as c
drive and bootedup to "a" drive loaded my cdrom
plus allowed me to partition and format the
scsi. I thought that I was in business but
low and behold I have tried everything to
try to load windows 98 on it. After starting
setup from the cdrom, scandisk checks the drive and finds zero errors. Then setup
loads setup files after it does that it
hangs up and stops. I did check the scsi
out by reinstalling the IDE drive as c drive
and the scsi as d drive. It works just fine,
I am able to copy files to it and run programs from d drive so I can not understand
why even after accepting the scsi as a bootup
drive, it will not allow me to setup windows
on it. I have tried putting system files
on the SCSI when running as c drive and it
boots up to the dos prompt. I set the jumper
on the sca adaptor to id0. Can you make
any recommendations. I am not computer
illerate because I have been building systems
for other people and do this as a part time
business. This is the first time I tried
working with a scsi so I know very little
about these. Sure would appreciate your
advise. I would like to get rid of the ide
and use only the scsi. I can use it as
secondary drive the way it is now but thats
not the purpose I had in mind.

thanks
Joe

Need More Information : You may want to try the setup with the "/id" parameter to have Windows skip the free disk space check. Also you might want to change the BIOS boot configuration to not be A: SCSI but rather the option that has SCSI listed first. Finally if you are using an Adaptec SCSI controller you can hit CTRL-A at boot time to enter the setup for the controller and ensure the boot options are right for it to be the primary disk.

Paul Doherty

FUQuestion : I tried different boot up options like the
scsi first without any help. I did notice
that when I bootup on the scsi and try to
run scandisk my system locks up during the
the surface scan. As long as it runs the
normal scan with the surface scan no problems
are noticed. What's strang is that i can
run the scsi as d drive and not c drive,
a surface scan will run and show no errors.

Answer : That *is* strange. How do you have the primary IDEs set in the BIOS when using the SCSI alone? (set to None?) Check the termination of your controller and hard disk. For an internal SCSI chain you need to be terminated on the controller and at the last internal drive. You may have termination settings in the CTRL-A menu of the SCSi controller.

Paul Doherty
Rating : 5

----------------------------------------------------------------------
QAId : 293481
Asker : Anonymous
Subject : cpu usage from soft modem
Private : No

Question : I have an Emachine with a conexant soft 56 modem I installed Netmedic which shows the cpu load it was fine .
when I updated to the latest version driver for my modem the cpu reads 100% is this right is the new driver causing problems ? or is netmedic showing things I wouldnt have known before?

Answer : I would suggest two things:

1) Don't rely on NetMedic to be an accurate measure of CPU usage. I have used it and seen it peak out when I knew the CPU was nowhere near pegged.

2) Ditch that winmodem - they *are* software modems and that is wrong on many levels. :-) Truly though if you do have an alternative take it as using CPU time to run what should be a hardware function is a major step backwards.

Paul Doherty
Rating : 2.5
Rating : 2.5

----------------------------------------------------------------------
QAId : 324187
Asker : anmol
Subject : c++
Private : No

Question : dear expert,
hi,
i am studying in a computer institute.i have finished my ms office.now iam promoted to a new semester.i have programming in my syllabus.i have never studied programming before.can you suggest me any book or guide of c++?also someone told me that c++ isn't a good start for learning programming.and that i should learn c first.iam really very confused.i dont know a thing about c++.how can i learn the basics of programming.

confused student

Answer : I started with C as my first language many years ago and I agree it is better to start with than C++. Since C++ is really a superset of C it makes some sense to come at it from C first. Then you can tackle the differences (some good) of object-oriented devlopment once you have the syntax of C down pat. Here's a CD I found (but cannot recommend as I have not seen it) that looks like it would be a good way to get a feel for C development.

http://s1.amazon.com/exec/varzea/ts/exchange-glance/Y01Y6503262Y8642503/qid=953059157/sr=1-1/ref=z_ob_qs/002-1231137-0687407

Checking Amazon.com or BarnesandNoble.com could be a good way to find a decent book as the users of the website many times will provide reviews and ratings of the books so you can see what works and what doesn't. Another way to find good books of the level you need is to go to

http://www.deja.com

then click on the Search Discussions link at the top, then type in the terms you want to search for - for instance here are the results I got for a search for the terms "c beginner recommend book" :

http://www.deja.com/dnquery.xp?QRY=c+beginner+recommend+book&ST=MS&svcclass=dncurrent&DBS=2

Pascal is also an excellent language that shares a lot in common with C. It wasn't my first but is still one of my favorites.

Paul Doherty

----------------------------------------------------------------------
QAId : 337151
Asker : DDuez428
Subject : Error Occurred
Private : No

Question : Error Occurred in the script on this page:

I receive this identical message, Line #,Character#, Error:Invalid Character, Code:0
URL: Several different programs, but same items above.

I can't figure out why I get this same message, on several different programs?

Is there any thing I can do to remove this message from my computer, or correct the problem causing it to appear on these differnt programs.?

Any help will be greatly appreciated!!!!!
DDuez428@aol.com

Need More Information : What programs cause this error?

What are you doing when the error occurs?

What did you mean when you said "Error occurred in the script on this page:"? Do you mean that the Xpertsite caused the error? In what browser, and what version?

Paul Doherty

FUQuestion : I'm sorry Paul-
One of the programs is: jigzone.com & the other was ZDNet.com.
Error occurred in the script on this page:
Line: 2
Char: 9
Error: Invalid Character
Code: 0
URL: programs listed above.
Do you want to continue receiving scripts on this page?
(2 boxes) YES NO

Answer : It sounds like you are merely encountering some poorly-written (at least by MS standards) scripts. To stop these messages (I assume you're in IE) go to:

Tools/Internet Options/Advanced

and uncheck "Display a notification about every script error"

and check the box for "Diable script debugging"

Paul Doherty
Rating : 5

FUQuestion : Thanks Paul-
This worked fine when I went on with my computer after I read your info, and acted on it.

The next time I signed on line, it started up again,

How do I make that selection, a default setting?

DDuez428@aol.com

Answer : Uh - unless you loged into your computer with a different name or something (which may have a profile associated with it) it *is* a default setting when you change it there. When you enter that settings area are the options set the way we want them or no?

Paul Doherty

FUQuestion : Paul-
Thanks again-

I went to that Advanced, and it was not what I set
it at.
I unchecked it again, and this time on the bottom of the screen, was an (Apply) button. I clicked it.

Note: Also, on the bottom was a button to return to Default. I didn't click it-

Thanks again- Don

P.S. This time, I copied your answer, so I wouldn't have to look it up again.
Haha.

Answer : You're welcome!

Paul Doherty

----------------------------------------------------------------------
QAId : 349078
Asker : skari77
Subject : sound card not found
Private : Yes

Question : hi
I was having IRQ problem and someone suggested that I sould move my sound card to another PCI slot and I did. Now windows dosn't find the card.
What can I do ? any suggestions ?

Answer : Check in your System control panel (under Device Manager tab) to see if you still have the sound card as detected. You likely do. If it is still there remove it by clicking on the sound card entry and clicking Remove at the bottom. (If it isn't there then run the Add New Hardware control panel item to seek it out.) Now with the card removed reboot the machine (and have your sound card CD or path to drivers ready). If the sound card isn't detected on the nest reboot (whereupon you'll be asked for drivers or Win install files) then I'd suggest that you need to reseat the card (it's not in all the way) or move it back to the PCI slot it came from.

However, since you started this whole scenario with an IRQ conflict I'd suggest that this may be the whole reason the card isn't being seen. Find the device (usually will have a yellow exclamation point icon) that is conflicting with the IRQ for the sound card and try to manually move the IRQ for the offending device. Barring that (some won't allow changes, or won't allow them from inside Windows) you may need to grab the configuration utility for the card that is conflicting - many manufacturers (especially ethernet card makers) have DOS-based utilities that you can run in pure DOS to change IRQ and I/O address settings.

If you are still stuck respond with more details about the current status of the machine (conflicts or no, what hardware is in there, sound card in DM or not).

Paul Doherty
Rating : 5

----------------------------------------------------------------------
QAId : 353998
Asker : Anonymous
Subject : buying a computer
Private : No

Question : Three years ago we upgraded our old Gateway. I didn't know anything about buying a computer. My first husband was the computer expert. He wrote the 911 programs for the midwest and helped the police departments choose their computer equipment. Why did I need to know anything? So, when it came to buy another, I was lost. I turned to the man that replaced him after he died. He had a side business of building computers. Well he built one and we've had nothing but problems with it. It seems everything has been replaced at least once. We spent well over $2,000 and have a very heavy paperweight: it doesn't work at all any more. So now we want to buy a computer. I want to get it whole, not piecemeal so I don't have to pay someone the labor to replace parts. And I want a warranty. I have two hard drives here - still under warranty - that don't work and I don't believe it's worth paying the guy to take them out and send them in for repairs. We've been that route once already.

My daughter is home-schooled so spends a lot of her day on the computer. She is in high school and plans to work in computers when she is older. She hasn't decided in what field, though. We need a computer that has a lot of punch for the least amount of money. And, like I said I want a whole system. A warranty. And service. I don't know how to take it apart. Wouldn't know what to look at anyway.

We have heard that Gateway is now middle of the road and Dell is the absolute best, but I'm concerned about the cost. Are they REALLY worth it? We saw a HP today that looked good and had lots of extras and was only $750 (not including monitor). But I don't know how well they are at making computers. I know they make the best printers. Any suggestions? Comments? Like I said, I don't know what to look for. Don't know which processor is best, how much ram memory to get or what kind, for that matter, etc. HELP!!

Thanks for your help.

Please reply to:
Linda

Answer : I agree Dell makes some of the better pre-made systems. As long as you don't live in Texas (where Dell is based) you can buy their system and avoid sales taxes making it a good deal. Dell does have some lower-end systems that cost a lot less than the ones they advertise on the back cover. Unfold that ad or go to their website http://www.dell.com and look around.

As far as other low-cost decent systems you may want to look at the eMachines

http://www.e4me.com/

Minimum specs I would look for in a system I want to keep for a while (and not have to upgrade for at least 12-18 months):

P3 (Coppermine) 500 or 550 CPU
128MB PC100 or PC133 SDRAM
8GB (preferably ATA66 & 7200RPM) hard disk
17" or 19" monitor (prefer aperture-grill aka Trinitron)
TNT2 or TNT2 Ultra video card
CD-ROM or CDRW (burner for making your own CDs)
Decent sound card (Creative Labs will do here)

Those are the general guidelines - if you stay close to that you will have a good system for probably around 1000-1200 dollars, maybe less.

Paul Doherty

----------------------------------------------------------------------
QAId : 356386
Asker : mmatt58581
Subject : Screen moving
Private : Yes

Question : Could you please tell me how to stop my screen picture from moving up and down and left and right when I move my cursor in those directions.
Also can you tell me how to find previous answer I have requested. When I ask everyone I don't know where to find answers.My email address is mmatt58581@yahoo.com

Answer : To get your answers just go to the main page at http://www.askme.com and then click the "Members Only" button at the top - assuming you've logged in and check the "remember me" box once the web site will have left a cookie on your machine and will log you in automatically and show you the questions you asked and their answers.

As to the screen moving you haven't indicated any details on the OS. I'll assume you are referring to Windows 95 or 98. It sounds like you have a "virtual" resolution going where the actual screen size is larger than the resolution on the monitor. Go to your Display control panel (Start/Settings/Control Panel/Display) and look in the Settings tab - ensure you are set at the resolution you want. Also check for any cirtual screen entries in all other tabs under this Display control panel as some 3rd-party drivers you may install may have put this feature in (as it's not standard).

Paul Doherty
Rating : 5
End :

----------------------------------------------------------------------
QAId : 366919
Asker : cyandrew
Subject : information sources
Private : No

Question : I have a really simple question:

I couldn't find any relevant information about harware history and nowdays trend. I need some organized resource AND especially focused on storage media (except HDD) like tape, CD, DVD, Clic, LS120, ZIP, A:drive... I found a lots of companies profiles, but I would like some independent a objective summary.
Please, be patient with my English. And thank you very much for any advise.
Bye.

Answer : I found some stuff for you...

http://www.mkdata.dk/click/module4d.htm

Another good resource is the Millenium Edition of "How Computers Work" - by Ron White.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0789721120/o/qid=953594471/sr=2-1/104-3159899-7459609

Paul Doherty

Rating : 4

----------------------------------------------------------------------
QAId : 373680
Asker : mmatt58581
Subject : System want bootup
Private : Yes

Question : Hello I been working with and older computer.When it try to bootup it say cmos failure hit f1 to continue. Then it goes to a setup screen. I tried using a bootup disk in drive A: it will say starting window 95 and stop. I try changing to c drive to pull up window 95. But it will only let me get in A & B drive. When only has one floppy drive. and One Cd drive. The main featue shows this. Main process...., Numeric.....,Floppy A 2.88MB 31/2, Floppy B 2.88MB 3 1/2
Ambios Dat 7/25/94
Ext. Memory 640kb
Display type VGA/EGA
Serial Port 378,2f8
Paralel 378
80mhz cpu

Answer : "CMOS failure" can mean two things - corruption of the memory, or battery failure that supports the CMOS memory. Easy way to tell is to get the BIOS settings right (so no error messages appear at boot) and then turn the machine OFF. If the messages come back then your CMOS battery is toasted. Quick solution is to not turn the machine off ever (all my PCs stay on 24x7). Slow solution is to replace the CMOS battery on the motherboard.

Enter the BIOS setup and either configure the parameters for your hard disk manually (you will need the number of Heads, Cylinders and Sectors per track) or find the "Scan for IDE devices" type of menu option which will hunt out the drives automatically. Once you do either of these save these settings and reboot *without a floppy in the drive*. The problem you were having with booting with A: and then trying to load Windows is that your boot device (in the case the floppy disk) is your system disk even if Windows is on C: and the OS will look to the boot device for some items.

Paul Doherty
Rating : 4

----------------------------------------------------------------------
QAId : 376346
Asker : Anonymous
Subject : home pc
Private : No

Question : I am planning to buy a PC for internet, games and entertainment. I have an eye on the Quantex M600t. What is your opinion? Or, do you have any suggestions? My price is 1300+. Thank you!

Answer : Looks generally good - a few areas that may need some inspection:

1) The 17" monitor - a 19" monitor is realy preferable and is not that much more. I know most peoples' attitude on this question (which is usually to skimp a bit on the monitor) and all I can say is that the monitor is the one component you use 100% of the time on your PC - the pain you spare your eyes is well worth the difference in price. Look for .25mm or smaller dot pitch (or aperture grill pitch on trinitron-style monitors).

2) Another concern is the unspecified "Intel D/3D" video chipset. Intel has never had a good video chipset so this is unlikely to bode well if you're a gamer.

Those are the primary concerns I would have - other than that it looks good - you have a Coppermine P3, 128MB, and 15GB Ultra ATA (unspecified whether ATA 33 or ATA 66 and no spindle RPM listed) drive. Decent system for the money - if you add the items I suggested it brings the price to 1479.00 (wasn't able to deselect the video card which is not good as it indicates to me the video chipset is likely to be integrated on the motherboard - you can always buy an add-in (normal way to do it actually) video card at a later date if the speed isn't what you need).

Paul Doherty
Rating : 5

FUQuestion : what is the difference between ata33 and ata66. what is the rpm for. what video card do you suggest? thank you!

Answer : ATA 33 and ATA 66 are IDE controller standards taht pertain to the electronics portion of the hard disk controller (the part of the system responsible for moving data off of, and on to, your hard disks. Most drives out today are now ATA 66 drives - to get the maximum of performance you need to mate the drive with an ATA 66 controller or else you'll be limiting the burst speed of the electronics (disks almost never produce consistent rates higher than 30MB/sec).

Spindle speed (measured in RPM) is how fast the hard disk rotates the platters underneath the reading head. The faster a disk of the same diameter rotates, the quicker any particular area of the disk may be accessed (less likely that when the head arrives it will have to wait long for the required data to pass underneath the head - or if it does have to wait it's maximum wait time (if it just "misses" the data as it arrive, thus necessiatating a full rotation) is reduced). The net effect of faster RPM spindle speeds is increased hard disk performance and the difference between 5400 and 7200 RPM drives is truly visible to the user.

I like the NVidia chips myself - look for a TNT2 Ultra card like the Creative Labs 3D Blaster TNT 2 card. The TNT 2 Ultra is a great chip and is probably the best bang for the money at the moment. It also has 32MB of video memory meaning it will have a good long life in your system. It can be had below for 149.00 (before shipping):

http://www.pricewatch.com

once at the main page type the following in the field at the top and hit ENTER:

creative labs TNT 2 ultra

Paul Doherty

FUQuestion : i looked at these several products.
i feel there are almost the same.
i need some opinions here.
what is the difference between ultra ata and ultra dma?
reminder, i want a pc for gamess, internet and entertainment.

http://www.microexpress.net/cgibin/configurator?system=55PLUS&table=Desktops&cartid=

http://www.kaypro.com/kaypro_systems/kaypro_pcs_kaypro_systems.cfm?systemid=14&cfid=9
3281&cftoken=30183430

http://www.quantex.com/store/qonline/customize.asp?model=04m34

thank you!

Answer : "Ultra DMA" probably indicates only a 16MB/sec controller with DMA (Direct Memory Access)

"Ultra ATA" is going to be a controller with DMA at 33MB/sec.

Check here for a recent answer I gave to another AskeMe.com user about low-cost machines. I elaborated what corners may be cut and what to look out for (both good and bad). Armed with this info and what I've given you here you should be able to form an opinion about any machine.

http://www.askme.com/ViewAnswer.asp?vid=376083

Paul Doherty

----------------------------------------------------------------------
QAId : 405408
Asker : jet159@...
Subject : Motherboard
Private : No

Question : Hi -

I have a computer motherboard without anything on the board at all and I want to know where I can find diagrams of what is suppose to go into each slot and I want to know how I can find out if it still works or what chip set is on it.

Thanks,
Matt

Need More Information : I need some elaboration of what you mean by "without anything on the board at all" - does this mean all the soldered chips have been removed, or just that you have a motherboard with no cards installed in any slots?

Paul Doherty

FUQuestion : Ok - all the chips and sockets are on the board but nothing is in them. I would like to know if what would go into each socket.

Answer : Well the minimum you will need is a video card, either PCI or AGP. The AGP slot is the one closest to the power supply and CPU slots and is a light brown in color. The PCI slots (3 to 5 of them usually) are white.

Get a video card, a floppy drive and a hard disk and you can set up a basic system. Other items you may want would be a sound card, CD-ROM, joystick and so on.

Paul Doherty

----------------------------------------------------------------------
QAId : 413091
Asker : rditlow
Subject : USB hookup
Private : No

Question : I have recently purchased a CMOS-A USB Camera. I have installed the software successfully. I am having problems in where to connect the adapter to my motherboard. I have determined that it is a 5 pin double connection but have no idea as to the location on my motherboard. Could you please help?

Answer : I hate to ask the question but do you have USB ports on your system? If it's made in the last year or so you will - the latest motherboards and cases are made to a specification called "ATX" - easily distinguished from older case designs by the fact that looking ta the back of the motherboard you can see all the systems ports in a neat, rectangular arrangement at the bottom-left of the motherboard area ( as you face the back of the system with the motherboard flat).

If you do not have USB you can probably do one of two things:

1) Buy a PCI USB port add-in card. This card will plug into an expansion slot fo your PC, giving you USB ports at the back.

http://www.buy.com/comp/searchresults.asp?qu=usb+pci

2) Find a USB to serial converter and plug the USB cable into this adapter, and then into your PC's serial port. This will slow down transfers some but it's not painful (my digital camera Olympus D320-L uses serial and is pretty quick).

Good luck,
Paul Doherty
Rating : 5

----------------------------------------------------------------------
QAId : 442372
Asker : Anonymous
Subject : Upgrades
Private : No

Question : Do you know what the fastest processor is that I can use on a pt-2006 motherboard from FICA? Also can I use both SIMM and DIMM memory chips together on this board?

Answer : Looks like a Pentium 166 is the highest that board will take. With regards to using the DIMM and SIMMs at the same time - it will work but can cause problems with the DIMM. This from the FIC web site:

"Although it is widespread, DIMMs and SIMMs should not be used together, since the output signal of 5V memories can damage 3.3V memories. After some period of time, the 3.3V chips might malfunction."

So just use SIMMs you already have, or if you don;t have any, instead *buy* a good quality 64MB or 128MB DIMM.

Paul Doherty
Rating : 4
End :

----------------------------------------------------------------------
QAId : 460910
Asker : rafaelsi74558
Subject : RS232C
Private : No

Question : Hi,
I recently got my first Point of Sale Display. And after follow the installation instructions it doesnt work. I only get the message:
"WELCOME POS SYSTEM".

The manual say that connect the display to an RS232C. My question is: An RS232C is the same than an serial port? I mean, the connector is apparently the same that the one used by an serial mouse...

Please, give me a hand on this.

Sif

Answer : Yes an RS232C is simply a 25-pin or 9-pin serial port, also known affectionately as DB-25 and DB-9 connectors. Something else is wrong with your setup - perhaps you need to indicate the port in the software and have it pointing to the wrong serial port? I'd suggest you stick with either COM1 or COM2 (in case yours were remapped to COM3 or COM4) since COM1 & 2 have standardized IRQ settings and are less likely to give you any trouble.

Paul Doherty
Rating : 4

----------------------------------------------------------------------
QAId : 462171
Asker : r_misteryman
Subject : getting a hard drive &installing
Private : No

Question : i have a intergraph TD-30 factory ref
it has a scsi hard drive in it but i deed a bigger one what kind will fit and how to install it

Answer : I'm guessing a "TD-30" is a system since you didn't say. If that's the case you can put any capacity of SCSI you want - shoot for a 3.5" drive, however, as you may only have that size bays available. You can get SCSI drives up to 50GB easily.

Paul Doherty

Answer : As far as install goes it's a simple matter of switching the cabling from the old to the new. But a better way is to use "ghost" to copy the contents of the first disk to the new one - makes the upgrade quite painless. Here is a link to a question I answered a while back about ghost where I detail the procedure:

sserra@... asked this question on 2/1/2000:
Hi Paul,
Im running win98 on a 200 Mhz PC. I Installed a 17GB slave drive "D". I wish to copy all current info from "C" to "D" and make this my new "C" drive. The install software that came with my new Western Digital HD allows me to partition in FAT32 no problem. I receive an error message when I attempt to copy my existing "C" drive to "D". I receive a message about unable to access root directory FAT error. I thought perhaps Norton Antivirus was in the way and uninstalled it. No luck. Can I copy reliably with a DOS command?
Thanks in advance
Steve

pauldoherty gave this response on 2/1/2000:
Here is a much faster, cleaner way to do it. Access the URL at the bottom of this message to find a copy of the utility GHOST (Generic Hardware-Oriented System Transfer). What this little baby will do is remove the drudgery from what you are attempting to do - namely, take an installed C: drive and move it's entire contents (including boot-sector) to another, larger hard disk and then jumper the new larger disk as master, remove the original and boot as if nothing has changed if I understand you correctly. This is as smooth as it can get (there are much more tedious methods to the same end but why do it the painful way? :-)

Install the second disk as slave (it appears you have done so) - there is no need to fdisk it, format it or anything else - a bare disk is just fine. Then make a bootable floppy disk under DOS (either pure DOS or a DOS prompt under Windows) by:

c:
cd \windows
format a:
sys a:

--

Now copy the ghost.exe you obtained to this floppy and write-protect the floppy.

Boot on the floppy and when it finishes you will be at an A: prompt

Type ghost and hit ENTER

From the menu Select Local/Disk/To Disk and select the first hard disk (your installed "C:" primary IDE drive) as the source, and the new larger disk as the destination. Start it, and when it's done shut down the machine, take out the primary disk, replace it with the new one (jumpering it for master as you do so) and then turn the system back on. Voila! Back in business with a larger disk!

Paul Doherty

This program was purchased by Symantec, who no longer has an evaluation copy of the program available for download. So it is necessary in this event to do an FTP search on what you know you need to find someone who has a copy that will work long enough for this one operation, so you don't need to purchase a 100 dollar program for a one-shot upgrade. It's probably not totally above-board to do so, but if your conscience allows here's one I found that should do the trick:

ftp://ftp.aracnet.com/users/felix/GHOST.EXE

----------------------------------------------------------------------
QAId : 463803
Asker : pt
Subject : RAM
Private : Yes

Question : Hello:

When I bought my computer last year running Win98, it came with 64 MB of RAM (2x32MB)... Now, I had just received a panel of 128MB of RAM PC100 SDRAM... someone told me to skip the 64MB of existing RAM because both will cause problem due to BIOS set up...

Could you please tell me your opinion and the solution to optimize the performance...

Thank you in advance.

Best regards,

Patrick
pt@iwon.com

Answer : I'm not sure if by "skip" you mean "not use" but I'll assume so. You may indeed have trouble with mixing memory types, even if both are rated at the same spec (PC100 for example). If those two 32MB DIMMs are not PC100 and you intend to run at 100Mhz FSB I would not expect them to work together, but you might get lucky. Best BIOS strategy would be to adjust the BIOS CAS (Column Address Strobe) latencies (third or fourth screen in the BIOS config screens - enter at boot-time with DEL usually) to their highest values (usually 3) and see if you can get stability there. If you can then you can try cranking them down to 2 and see if the system still functions.

Paul Doherty
Rating : 5

----------------------------------------------------------------------
QAId : 468884
Asker : 102151_1412
Subject : New computer means re-installing all apps all over again??
Private : No

Question : I'm thinking of buying a new PC. But it just occurred to me:
I would have to re-install every single one of my applications
all over again!!! (--Since the hardware they assume is now
different!)
--And I've got 4 years worth of programs on my drive by now!
Oh DARN!

Am I Correct?

Answer : Yes and no...

Normally you would do this as the Windows install on your machine now would almost certainly choke and puke to some extent on your new motherboard. What you may be able to do, however, is the following (from a pure DOS prompt (Start/Shutdown/Restart in MS-DOS mode) *before* moving the hard disk to the new machine):

xcopy c:\windows\*.* c:\winback\*.* /e
deltree c:\windows

Install the hard disk into the new machine at this point and do a normal Windows install (of the same version that we backed-up on the disk). If the new machine already has a hard disk and you'd like to use it *and* continue with this process you will want to find a copy of ghost.exe and use it to move the data from the old disk to the new (disk to disk copier - put ghost.exe into the search string here - http://ftpsearch.lycos.com/). Once the Windows install is finished on whichever drive you use you can start making shortcuts in your Start menu to your already-installed programs. They may be missing some things like DLLs, VXDs, etc but you now have those backed-up in \winback so just copy them from \winback\system to \windows\system as needed.

This has next to zero risk (since you are not risking your data) and may enable you to get up and running faster. But you will need some technical know-how and some persistence to make this work.

Paul Doherty
Rating : 5

FUQuestion : Hi Paul

Just got up and checked my answers

Great! You were the only one who talked about an idea that I could try. What you're saying, I gather, is that the only point of concern is the Operating system. It has to be the right one for the new machine (which the old one isn't) and it has to be the same version that my apps have been dealing with.
The reason for bringing along a backup is to restore some DLL's/VXD's /Etceteras that the new Windows will complain about missing. (??)
(Do I have that right?)
(What about the Registry, which is the key to have Windows see all my current stuff?)

First: Right now I have an IBM Pentium 200Mhz Win95. (With two drives.) The new one might be a Micron Pentium III, coming with Win98 or 2000.

So... First Upgrade the Win95 in my current machine to Win2000 or 98, to match the one in the new machine.
Back it up, to 'Winback'.
Then: Take out the new drive out of the new machine and stick in my 2 old drives.
In DOS, overwrite the Registry with what the old one had.
Start up the machine in Windows... with fingers crossed.

If (IF) this works (Pray!right? What could be a reason for it not to?) then use my Partition Magic, Drive Image, Magic Mover programs to move my stuff over to the Micron's new large drive.
(Oh, they're Win95's. I hope they'll work in '98/2000.!)
Am I on track, Paul?
Can you alert me to any detailed danger spots/booby traps along the way?
Besides the OS, the apps themselves will not be confounded by the different Modem, Sound card, Video system, and the rest?

Hmm... I think there's a hitch coming up. I'll never be able to match OS's. The new one will be a late version OEM. The only version I could upgrade my current system to will be a plain "Upgrade". So that ruins the whole scheme for me -or what?

Have you actually done such a thing yourself, Paul? Or know someone who did?

I'm really so appreciative of the time you'll give me on this.

Regards,
Hank

==================
Here's the history since it's been a nice couple hours...

(Also Paul, I'm leaving for work, so do not wonder if there's no answer to what you'll maybe answer very quickly.)
--------
I'm thinking of buying a new PC. But it just occurred to me:
I would have to re-install every single one of my applications
all over again!!! (--Since the hardware they assume is now
different!)
--And I've got 4 years worth of programs on my drive by now!
Oh DARN!

Am I Correct?

pauldoherty gave this response on 3/31/2000:
Yes and no...

Normally you would do this as the Windows install on your machine now
would almost certainly choke and puke to some extent on your new
motherboard. What you may be able to do, however, is the following
(from a pure DOS prompt (Start/Shutdown/Restart in MS-DOS mode)
*before* moving the hard disk to the new machine):

xcopy c:\windows\*.* c:\winback\*.* /e
deltree c:\windows

Install the hard disk into the new machine at this point and do a
normal Windows install (of the same version that we backed-up on the
disk). If the new machine already has a hard disk and you'd like to
use it *and* continue with this process you will want to find a copy of
ghost.exe and use it to move the data from the old disk to the new
(disk to disk copier - put ghost.exe into the search string here -
http://ftpsearch.lycos.com/). Once the Windows install is finished on
whichever drive you use you can start making shortcuts in your Start
menu to your already-installed programs. They may be missing some
things like DLLs, VXDs, etc but you now have those backed-up in
\winback so just copy them from \winback\system to \windows\system
as needed.

This has next to zero risk (since you are not risking your data) and
may enable you to get up and running faster. But you will need some
technical know-how and some persistence to make this work.

Paul Doherty

Answer : You have a couple of areas you've misunderstood me - you will not put back in place the regisrty from the old machine as that would defeat the point of a new install. The old registry has info on all the old motherboard hardware and would louse up the new install of Windows. What you are after in backing up the old \WINDOWS to \WINBACK is to make available all the old DLLs/VXDs/etc that your installed apps may have needed. Most well-behaved Windows apps will reinitialize their sections of the new registry when they are run the first time so most will come back with no problems. You may still have to reinstall some though (reinstall to the same dir). Here's the procedure:

1) Upgrade to 98 or 2000 on your present machine (as close to same version on the new machine as possible - at least same version if not identical (98/2000)). Having the systems be different is not nearly the concern you are thinking as you *are* going to be doing a clean install of the OS - the only DLLs/VXDs/etc that you will put in place are the ones your apps specifically put in place, which are unlikely to be replacements for the base ones Windows uses.

2) Copy \WINDOWS to \WINBACK

3) Plug new hard disk into old machine and ghost both disks to two partitions on new disk

OLD DISK C -----> First partition on new disk

OLD DISK D -----> Second partition on new disk

4) Install a new copy of the same version of Windows to \WINDOWS - get it all done with video audio drivers - the whole 9 yards.

5) (optional) Backup \WINDOWS\START MENU dir to alternate location and then copy the \WINBACK\START MENU\PROGRAM FILES over the same-named \WINDOWS path. This will reinstate your "Programs" section of your Start menu since the Start menu is nothing more than the "Start Menu" subdirectory under Windows and contains (usually) only shortcuts to executables on your system. Since you'll be using GHOST to move the first disk to C: on the new disk and D: to the second partition on the new disk your drive letters will be the same as they were and you can try each program you had installed one at a time to see if any DLLs or other drivers are missing.

6) Resinstall the apps that need reinstalling.

7) EBay that old system, give it to your kids, or donate it to charity for a write-off.

In answer to your question, I have done similar operations and I'm familiar enough with Windows that I know this can be done.

Paul Doherty

FUQuestion : Thanks so much, Paul.

First of all, when I described my current system I mentioned I had two drives in my old Pentium. I think that's an unnecessary complication in my question because before anything I'll consolidate them into one drive, so let's disregard that

This project is a very serious business for me, as you can imagine, and when I start working on it all alone, if I hit one single hitch it can blow away everything. So I'm going through this very, very minutely and nitpicking about *everything*. Sorry for that but I have to look ahead at every single tiny detail. So I'm doing a lot of contemplation about every suggestion I get, and a lot of asking-around.

In the step 4 you gave me, you say: "Install a new copy of the same version of Windows..." over the one in the new drive. (Remember, this is all about how to not have to re-install my apps all over again.) Question: A re-install of Windows does a wipe-out of the registry, doesn't it?
(Or is there a method of installation that leaves the registry intact?)

Until I'm clear about this the way I have it is:
1)Backup my current drive, totally.
2)Upgrade my drive to Win98
(I also have a Win98 OEM cd. Will that work??)
3) Copy \Windows and all subfolders to \Winback

On the new Micron:
5)Plug the old hard disk into the new machine.
??You had it the opposite way! You meant that??
6)Boot up the new drive, to its Windows.
Windows will see the contents of the old disk -I presume...
7)Do NOT make any new partition on this new drive. (Since only one old drive now.)
8)Copy over the stuff from old drive into the new drive.
--Using "Ghost" (Why wouldn't just plain Copying work? )
9)Store \windows\start menu folder to a backup location.
10)Copy over it with the backed-up \windows\start menu\program files.
11)Try to run the apps.
12)Copy any dll/vxd's windows wants from the \winback\system to the \windows\system.

Right?
Now: Question is, the Micron's Windows OS that boots up -it's got no information about any of my apps in its Registry. !!! -So, clearly, there's a big missing link in my understanding, Paul.

--So maybe you DID mean: put the new hard disk into the old machine.
Hmmm...
So... Copy over my old stuff into this new drive
Boot up, in my old machine, to the OS that comes with the new disk.
Re-install the OS. ?? Which. The OEM late model one that comes with the Micron? Or the one I had just upgraded to?
The old, upgraded one: How will it recognize the stuff in the drive that Micron gave me?
The Micron's? How will it take to the different hardware world it's in? And how will it recognize all my apps?
The Registries won't match the case, whichever the case. So I don't follow with this either.
--And then what? When done, remove this drive and put it into the new computer. ?? Now it's in a different hardware environment. (!)

...I feel dizzy already just *writing* about this.

(On the other hand I was contemplating about this idea: Making a Dual Boot machine. (using BootMagic).
So I could switch to my Old-system drive to run the apps I can't re-install all over again.
Like this:
Add the old drive into the Micron. Boot up on it via BootMagic (to its old OS.) Do a re-install of that same OS. The kind of install that doesn't modify anything in the registry. That is, only rebuilds it's "knowledge base" of the new hardware.
Or, Someone suggested:
In Device Manager, under "Hardware Profiles" copy my configuration to a "test" profile
for trying out. Reboot to that profile. Then, in Device Manager, in "System Devices", remove the "PCI Bus". This will cause my old Windows to start rebuilding its 'knowledge' about its environment all over again. I'll supply all the drivers it asks for from the CD that comes with the Micron.

Now, if this works, I'll have an OS on that drive that understands the hardware, with a registry that knows all about my apps.

Is there a flaw in this? (Must be!) If not, then I'll have use of all the dozens of apps that I can't re-install together with the benefit of a blazing 600Mhz machine, fast motherboard and huge amount of Ram. --And it was no big hassle. And both drives should see each other. (Correct?) And those apps that I *can* re-install I will, into the first drive.

Please clarify, and thanks so much for your attention so far.
Hank

Answer : One note before I go into massive detail on how to do this - the OS that comes on the Micron hard disk... *will not be there* after we ghost the old hard disk to the new - ghost is a hard drive duplication program and the contents of the disk will be identical when we finish (only the new one will have more free space).

OK here we go... here is the entire procedure in detail:

1) No do not backup your hard disk (unless you just want an extra safety net) - simply upgrade the old machine to 98 and (as you said in this last message) consolidate the data off of D: to C: so you have only one hard disk in the old machine.

2) Ensure all your apps still work under 98 and that none of your shortcuts are messed up by there being no drive letter D: anymore.

3) Reboot the old box and press F8 during boot to bring up the boot menu and select Safe Mode Command Prompt Only. Then issue the following commands:

C:
CD \
REN WINDOWS WINBACK

(you have now renamed the whole tree \WINDOWS as \WINBACK)

4) Since you now have only one hard disk in the old machine I will go with your way of putting the old disk into the new machine. It doesn't really matter either way as whichever way we do it the old disk will be removed or the new hard disk will be put back into the new machine after the ghost procedure is done. We simply need all the disks to be in one machine at the same time. When placing the old disk into the new case with the new drive you will need to jumper the old disk to be "slaved" to the new disk. Look for a jumper (small black cap that slides onto two metal pins) and any markings around the jumper location like "MAS" (Master) or "SLA" (Slave) and jumper this old disk to be slaved to the new. Now use ghost.exe to copy the old disk to the new entirely (Disk to Disk). When the copy is completed power down and disconnect (but do not yet remove) the old disk from the IDE chain and power cables. Now start the new system on the new IDE disk and press F8 again to select Safe Mode Command Prompt Only. If this succeeds then the copy is good.

5) Now you can proceed with doing a *clean install of Windows 98* on the new machine's hard disk. Install to \WINDOWS as usual (hopefully Windows will not sniff out and balk at there being a valid Windows install at \WINBACK - if it does try renaming WIN.COM to WIN.BAK or if desperate just issue:

attrib -r -h -s c:\winback\*.*
del \winback\*.*

This is OK since we don't really need the files in the root Windows dir (probably) and are mostly after \WINBACK\SYSTEM as this is where most of the DLLs/VXDs live. But don't do this unless Windows gives you a hard time about installing.

6) Windows is finished - audio, sound, network, modem, everything - is installed and configured (if any drivers ask for path information at install give them the path to your original install of the same drivers as that directory exists (we copied the entire hard disk, remember?).

7) Once the install is complete you can optionally copy the \WINBACK\START MENU\PROGRAMS to \WINDOWS\START MENU\PROGRAMS (Open a DOS prompt in Windows and backup the current one first with):

xcopy "c:\windows\start menu\*.*" c:\smbackup\*.* /e

That way if something goes haywire with the menu (or you do something incorrectly) you can just put back this one by reversing the parameters above:

xcopy c:\smbackup\*.* "c:\windows\start menu\*.*" /e

8) Now with the old Start menu installed try running some apps. You may encounter a few problems but I don't expect a lot. When you do encounter a problem you can do one of two things:

A) If the problem is an error like "Cannot find XYZ.DLL" then simply copy XYZ.DLL from \WINBACK\SYSTEM\XYZ.DLL to \WINDOWS\SYSTEM

B) If the problem is more serious and one you can't figure out, drop back and punt, reinstalling the app *to the same dir it already exists at on the hard disk*.

C) Worse comes to worst if the app gets entirely hosed up you *still* have the old hard disk installed and can easily hook it up as slave, reboot, and copy anything you need off the disk.

Once all apps have been verified you can then remove the old hard disk from the new machine and close it up. Job well done!

Paul Doherty

FUQuestion : I've got it now. Paul, your patience with me is gratefully appreciated. This was my first encounter with this website. How do I keep repeating the Excellent rating I gave the first time? I'd want to double it again and again, but there's no way here... You were the only one among all the computer gurus I've turned to who said Yes, and supplied the technique for getting my current apps to remain installed in the new computer. It's so lucky I got to you!

I really wish I wasn't going to impose on you any more but there's one point I need to get clear on. In all the years I've used Windows I never yet did a re-install. I thought that that clears up the registry and thus it meant having to reinstall all my apps. So this has always been my bugaboo about it. What is implicit -but not *explicit*-- in your long rundown is that no, the registry does NOT get over-written when reinstalling. Just that point, all alone by itself, was the big troublemaker in any method I envisioned. (And the same for Win95 as for Win98?)
That shouldn't take much more of your time with me, hopefully. You've done far more than enough for me.

Thank you so much for your absolutely solid guidance.
Hank

Answer : You're very welcome Hank... I'm quite glad to be of assistance to you.

As far as the registry goes it really consists of two main files:

system.dat
user.dat

Stored here between these two files is all the information about your hardware and user preferences. In my directions you *will be instantiating a new instance of registry files* (so you are correct when you say new registry files are created) when you install the new copy of Windows. What you *won't* be doing is running over the top of your entire hard disk, meaning all installed apps are still there but Windows is as of yet unaware of them. Once you run them the majority will work. You are counting on a couple of things to run these without modification:

1) The developer followed the "specs" and used only Windows-supplied DLLs so the app will have everything it needs at hand.

2) The app will re-establish the registry settings it needs to function and save user preferences.

There is no need to reinstall an app due to a clean install of Windows *unless* you can't get it running without reinstalling (and if you *do* have to reinstall do so at the same directory where the app resides now).

Paul Doherty

----------------------------------------------------------------------
QAId : 474414
Asker : Anonymous
Subject : expansion bays?
Private : No

Question : HI-
My computer has two "expansion bays" on the front. It is a mid-tower Gateway. What are these for?

Answer : Those can be used for any type of drive you like, but the most often items you will put into a new bay like that is things like DVD-ROM drives, CDR/CDRWs (CD burners), extra CD-ROMs, tape drives and so on...

Paul Doherty
Rating : 4

----------------------------------------------------------------------
QAId : 477060
Asker : Anonymous
Subject : hard disk noise
Private : No

Question : After my computer is left unattended for 5-10 minutes, it the hard disk starts activity and will not stop, at least for the 5-10 minutes I can stand to hear it without turning the system off. Activating any key or mouse will stop this activity.

Answer : It sounds like you have a disk defrag or scandisk running - that or a lot of swap activity. Adding RAM can rid you of swap activity. If it's not a scandisk or defrag check to see what programs you have running by pressing CTRL-ALT-DEL once and examining the list. If you see anything suspicious let me know.

Paul Doherty
Rating : 4

----------------------------------------------------------------------
QAId : 490373
Asker : ball_morrilld@...
Subject : PURCHASING A BASIC COMPUTER BOX
Private : No

Question : I've been programming for 17 years, have my own computer consulting business, so I have familiarity with computers. I have successfully in the past added a harddrive, cdrom, and modem to my existing computer.

Frye's Electronics store has basic computers for sale, the box, cpu, power supply, so all I would have to do is add memory, videocard, and harddrive and I could upgrade. The cost of a Intel Pentium III, 500 mhz box right now is $349.00.

Is there a place on the Internet where I can find such and thing to buy?

Need More Information : Such a what thing? Are you buying the case at Fry's and want to know where to find the other parts, or do you want to compare Fry's price for a barebones machine with someone else's?

A couple of great sites for pricing hardware:

http://www.pricewatch.com
http://www.mysimon.com

Paul Doherty

FUQuestion : Here's what the add says:

500 MHz Pentium III SYSTM

* Intel Pentium III 500 MHz Boxed CPU
* 1.44 MB Floppy Drive
* 56k V.90 Fax Modem
* 64 Bit 3D ADP Video, 8 meg (shared)
* 3D Sound with Wavetable
* 10/100Mbps Fast Ethernet Card
* UDMA/66 Hard Drive Controller
* Micro ATX Case with Power Supply
* 3 SDRAM Slots for up to 768MB
* 1 Serial, 1 Parallel, 2 USB, 2 PS/2

Then in small print it says, Just install the CPU, your drives and memory.

Hope this helps,

Dwight

Answer : Well you didn't answer my question on clarification so I'll assume you want to compare prices for barebones machines. here are some online vendors who sell these type of setups:

http://www.gamepc.com/

http://www.bobjohnson.com/

http://www.dsgzone.com/BYOS.htm

http://www.normsdomain.com/Build%20Your%20Own%20Desktop%20AMD.htm

http://store.yahoo.com/solutionscomputers/buildyourown.html

http://stores.yahoo.com/strattoncomputer/

Paul Doherty
End :

----------------------------------------------------------------------
QAId : 501458
Asker : mmehslin
Subject : no sound
Private : No

Question : Have a new Compaq PC and all the sound drivers appear to be installed, but there is still no sound. I am leaning toward bad speakers. Someone said to check the connection on the back of the PC with headphones. If that is not the answer what else could I look at?

Thanks. Mike M.

Answer : I agree - use headphones to verifiy sound is working. Also make sure you've got the speakers plugged into the right output port on the card - most sounds cards have at least 4 connectors and it can be confusing getting the right one.

An excellent way to test if your sound card drivers are installed correctly if to open your control panels (Start/Settings/Control panel) and select the "Sounds" one - if you click an event that has a small speaker icon next to it at the left, the "play" button at the right *should* go from ghosted to solid black, indicating that you can test the sound associated with that event. If it stays ghosted you have driver problems.

Paul Doherty
http://members.home.net/iqueue
End :

----------------------------------------------------------------------
QAId : 506400
Asker : sb0692
Subject : CD-Writer/CD-Rom problem
Private : No

Question : I have recently installed a CD burner on my system, and after I loaded the software that came with it (Adaptec Easy CD Creator) my original CD-Rom drive sto