M-Tec

You may have an IRQ conflict. There are times when for some reason, Windows will assign the video card and the audio on the same IRQ and can cause instability. Check your system properties and see if they are using the same IRQ. This may not be a problem on all motherboards but I've seen it happen on one of my earlier motherboards that I used. Also check the bios version of your motherboard and make sure you have the most current bios from the board manufacturer. Some problems like that may go away wtih a bios update.

As in the previous reply, you will need to boot from the Windows XP CD. When it ask if you want to install a third party driver for SCSI, press F6 and it will eventually ask you to insert the floppy diskette (the one that came with your serial ata hard drive) once, maybe twice. It asked me twice on my motherborard install. Once Windows reboots, afterwards, you should see a choice for Serial ATA on your boot sequence. But be aware, you may need to set your boot sequence to boot to SCSI first. On mine, the boot sequence does not even list a Serial ATA drive but it rather registers as a SCSI drive and will need to boot from that. Also, make sure you have any other hard drives disconnected as this has caused a problem in the past. Then once Windows xp is installed, plug in your other hard drives, if you have any. But remember once you install another hard drive, Windows may ask you to reboot, once you begin to reboot, make sure the boot sequence hasn't changed as sometimes it has happened and the boot sequence was changed to the second hard drive, causing windows not to load. Good luck MSI K7N2 Delta (Nvidia Ultra 400) AMD XP2800 (Barton core) 768 MB Corsair DDR 3200, CL2 ATI Radeon 9700 Pro All-in-Wonder Western Digital Raptor Serial ATA 37 Gig at 10,000 Rpm

Yes, I agree. Too much time wasted and annoyance to customers as a result of anti-piracy and product activation equals a substantial loss of money for the company. AMD XP2800 MSI K7N2 Delta Nforfce2 768 MB Corsair PC3200 CL2 ATI Radeon 8500 Asus DVD E-616 udma 100

I think it will run about 15 days before it will force you to activate it or it will stop working. As to the tollerance of hardware changes, those are questions Symantec has yet to answer. As usual, the consumer is left in the dark and guessing. Can the activation feature be circumvented? I can only hope that a hacker will be using his talent and a patch will appear on the net. I will not buy any product that requires activation. One time all I did was install the new nvidia Nforce drivers and it caused my windows to require reactivation and I didn't even change any hardware. Nope, don't buy any product that requires activation, vote with your wallet and send them a message.

Norton Antivirus 2004 beta seems to run great on my computer. The only difference I see from the 2003 version is they added scanning for sypware and adware. The virus scanning engine itself seems to be the same as well as a few other options have been added. Because it seems to be not much different then version 2003, I don't see the justification in buying it and I will continue to use the 2003 professional version. The activation feature might be a real problem if you reformat your hard drive and need to reinstall. Which brings back many happy memories with the Windows XP acivation feature. Yes, Norton Antiviurs 2004. has to be activated through the symantec server. Will they have the same problems as Intuit (Quicken) did and get sued too? Time will tell.

In addition, you also brought up an interesting point. I did a version check of my copy of Nero and it says version 5.5.7.1 bundled. So it may be that your version is coded to check your CD burner at the bios level. I'm not really sure but on my version, as long as I do not use the auto play feature and use the install.exe file on the disk, I can install and use it on any one of my computers, regardless if I have the intended CD burner or not.

Actually, the program functions fully but of course, I cannot burn a CD on A DVD burner but it will let me burn the image file to my hard drive for later burning if I get a CD burner for that computer. Using the auto play feature, the program would not even install on the computer because it did not have the BenQ CD RW on it. I now plugged in a generic CD burner and again, the program functions fully without any limits.

Actually, I also bought a CD RW made by BenQ (Acer) and received a copyof Nero 5.5. I did attempt to install it on another computer of mine and got the same issue, that it will run only on the BenQ, However. I did notice that when I exited the auto run feature of the program and went back to my destop and used another method, it installed fine. What did I do? Simple, after the the auto run was closed out, I went into My computer and clicked on the drive the nero disk was in and I used the explore feature and found the main installation file for Nero 5.5 and opened it up and it installed just fine. It may be that if the auto play feature is used, that part of the software may check to see if it is being used on the intended drive. I can't say this will work for somebody else but it worked for me. The computer I used it on had an Asus E-616 DVD drive and it even isn't a CD burner. I just did it to see if I could get away with it and I did. So I had the last laugh on NeroSoft.