Damien

Hello people, While upgrading my system the other day (including a reinstallation of Windows 2000) somehow the partition table on my secondary hard drive got corrupted (a Quntum Atlas II ultra Scsi 7,200 rpm disk). All windows sees now is the entire space of the drive as unformatted/unpartitioned media. I know the information is still there because I used the program BPR to scan the drive. Unfortunately while this program can restore my hard drive to its former glory, I have to register it first - some $80 which is a little steep (especially as I am a money stricken student). Does anyone know of a freeware program that would be able to do the same job, it needs to support Win 2000 filesystem (NTFS) and be capable of rebuilding file and partition components. Cheers guys, Damien.

Not all scsi cables have a terminator on the end, you'll need to check this. Looks something like a bank of resistors on the end of the cable. It won't work if the end of the looks like nothing more than the usual connector. Hope this makes some sense.

Hi Guys, Don't know if anyone has come accross this, but each time I boot in to XP Professional, I get the System has recovered from a serious error dialogue box. The system hasn't had any such errors recently, so there seems to be something corrupted in the registry that is making this appear ever time I log in regardless of whether the computer has come accross a problem or not. Anyone know how to fix this annoyance??? Many thanks, Damien.

I think you are right in what you say, I have no real problems with Win XP, except for some annoying glitches, and I also think that people expect a lot more nowadays. When I think about the type of hardware I have in my system - complicated SCSI disk subsystem, hardware DVD card, Matrol RT2500 videoediting card, not to mention all the Yamaha sound equipment, systems such as XP do handle all of this demanding hardware very well, and I haven't come across many major problems. Unfortunately working with corporate hardware does somewhat spoil you, and you expect home equipment to perform with the same degree of stability, which due to the vast amounts of different hardware configurations users have in various machines, would seem to be an almost impossible task. I have to say though that I have had more annoying problems with XP than I ever had with 2000, and I've already reinstalled the OS several times to get it working properally. Out of the entire time I was running 2000, I think I re installed it once. You're right to say that you think things will shape up with the release of SP1 which wilkl hopefulky fix the inevitable bugs that a new operating system brings.

Cheers for that I thought it must be a known problem. I'm still somewhat unconvinced about XP, I think that a lot of the coding under the skin of the system is 'pretty crappy' especially when compared to Windows 2000, which is generally agreed to be the best NT platform available right now. My work sometime involves a lot of interaction with OS/2 which is a far better system, though now delegated to the corporate sector, so is not a wise choice for someone like me who is predominently interested in running software designed for the Microsoft platforms - oh well with service packs, things can only get better ......

I'm not so sure, the heat at which the hard drive runs, can depend upon who manufactures it, Ok interested is right to say ckeck the bearings, but there are certain drives that naturally do run very hot, as I said in my last post my Atlas II does run very hot, always has done, and the drive is now nearly five years old. It is used day in day out and has never experienced any prolems, but I do tend to keep it very well ventilated, which might be why I haven't experienced any problems.

Abit KG7, good board but uses the now supassed AMD 760 chipset, best bet, Abit KR7 Raid, excellent performance and great with Windows XP.

Most new high speed hard drives (7200 RPM and especially 10,000, 12,000 etc.) do run hot, due to the increased friction created by the platters rotating at high speeds. My IBM Ultrastar SCSI drive runs especially hot, I actually have two fans cooling this and my now matured Quantum Atlas II. SO in short running hot is perfectly normal, but just make sure the drives are well ventilated/cooled.

I think there must be a bottleneck, because on an old TNT2 with a K62 400 I could get more than 17fps - around 30 I think at 800 * 600 but don't quote me on that. Dos freak is right, if the SIS board uses a Via chipset make sure you have the latest 4 in 1 drivers.

What's all the excitement about, you can't want more power!!?? Is not a Geforce 2 Ultra enough? Personally I would be far more interested in when the next Matrox card is comming (rumours abound at MURC that a G550 could be on it's way soon) I'm still soldering on with my Matrox G400Max - which is getting a bit long in the tooth now, but it does keep me very happy with it's dual head capabilities (twinview - what a joke!) and the fact that the drivers actually seem to work (can't say I've had this experience with Nvidia products in the past)

Are you sure you have the right drivers? Are they the latest versions? Are you installing the drivers for the correct controller? [This message has been edited by Damien (edited 14 March 2001).]

Good - you shouldn't get any problems using that method - as it acts as a software eject. As such, the operating system will ensure that all data is written to the device before the media is ejected.

Windows 2000 ignores the bios settings because it makes use of ACPI. It may be possible to make it take notice of the bios by installing making the operating system detect the system as Standard PC. If you do a forum search, you should be able to find details of how to do this. Does the SCSI card work okay? If so then leave it alone, if not them obviously you'll have to try the above.

CuViper is correct, this is the cause of the error. i assume that you are ejecting the disk by pressing the eject button on the drive. However, if you want to leave the write cache on, you can avoid this error by right clicking on the zip drive icon, and selecting eject from the pop up menu.

Looking for a scsi DVD rom drive - it needs to be region free - so I need to know of a good quality model that can have its firmware updated to remove region protection. it doesn't need to be any faster then 12 X. Any ideas???? Many thanks in advance ------------------

Thanks people!! I'm gonna start looking for a replacement for those crappy drives bundled with the Creative Encore packages - The build quality is dreadful - they spend all day spinning up and down instead of reading the disc and seem unable to resume dvd playback after a pause that's any longer than five minutes!! To top it all off they're IDE too and unreliable IDE at that - so thanks for all the help - much appreciated. (phew - can I put the soapbox away now please?) [This message has been edited by Damien (edited 09 February 2001).]

Sounds like you want the Radeon VIVO to me, I think they even do an all in wonder version like the ATI 128 - having never owned anything ATI I don't know about drivers etc. But it looks like you might know about that. Hope this helps [This message has been edited by Damien (edited 08 February 2001).]

Try clocking down the speed of you ram - not just the fsb speed, but also the memory timings themselves. The option on my ABIT KA7 allows settings of SDRAM 8NS, SDRAM 10NS, Normal, Medium, Fast and Turbo, you should find this in the bios - can't guarentee its the same for your board though.

Hardware config sounds fine for Win2K. You don't need to use partition magic to convert to NTFS as Win2K includes a conversion utility as standard, and yes it is much better to upgrade the whole disk to this system (as long as you intend to use Win2K for ever - because once you convert to NTFS - it is quite difficult to go back - this is where partition magic would come in handy!!) as performance is higher, and in the event of a data catastrophy, you will be better able to restore your system. No you don't need to take any cards out to install Win2K And No Win2K unfortunately does not have the same driver support as WinME, but driver support is growing all the time - from the look of your hardware, you shouldn't bump into any problems. Furthermore, most new hardware comes with Win2k drivers. The only thing you may need to check is the modem, as Creative can be very bad when it comes to Win2K suopport for their products. Good Luck!!!

Yes it is possible that your drive could read cd's and not dvd's because they generally contain two lasers - one for cd one for dvd. It is possible that the DVD laser isn't calibrated properally or is damaged - i had the problem a while back with my old Creative 2X DVD drive. I suggest that you try taking it back and swap for a replacement.

Not sure, I've got the same card, and my computer certainly boots Win 2K fine when the card is inserted. However, I have had a number of problems with the Win 2K drivers - so many in fact that the card has been relegated to the bottom drawer in my desk. Sorry this isn't too much help, maybe if yuou reformat and reinstall Win2K you might get the system to work - also ensure that plug and play os is set to no in your bios. BTW - My system spects - just to give you a list of components for a system that works with the card: Athlon 800 Abit KA7 256MB PC133 Crucial RAM Matrox G400MAX Soundblaster Live Platinum 5.1 Adaptec 29160 Ultra Scsi Card Realtek 10MB NIC Creative DXR3 DVD decoder IBM Ultrastar 18GB Ultra SCSI 160 Hard Drive Quantum 9.1GB Atlas III Ultra SCSI

Not sure, I've got the same card, and my computer certainly boots Win 2K fine when the card is inserted. However, I have had a number of problems with the Win 2K drivers - so many in fact that the card has been relegated to the bottom drawer in my desk. Sorry this isn't too much help, maybe if yuou reformat and reinstall Win2K you might get the system to work - also ensure that plug and play os is set to no in your bios. BTW - My system spects - just to give you a list of components for a system that works with the card: Athlon 800 Abit KA7 256MB PC133 Crucial RAM Matrox G400MAX Soundblaster Live Platinum 5.1 Adaptec 29160 Ultra Scsi Card Realtek 10MB NIC Creative DXR3 DVD decoder IBM Ultrastar 18GB Ultra SCSI 160 Hard Drive Quantum 9.1GB Atlas III Ultra SCSI

If the problem goes away when you up the processor voltage, it may simply mean that your current processor cannot run stably with the default voltage - so as long as it doesn't get too hot then I would keep the voltage upped or clock the processor down.

Am I the only one who thinks that this thread is a complete waste of time? I think it should be closed so we can have some real discussions instead of rising to the my dick's bigger than your dick syndrome. Hey guys don't rise to people like Oxide - it's simply not worth it!!! [This message has been edited by Damien (edited 29 January 2001).]

Christ - I posted the original solution for this about a year ago! I can't remember exactly what to do, but just do a forum search - that should unearth the answer.