Dirty Harry

Confusing, haven't encountered anything like it. Have you really, really, really tried the suggestions in my last post, especially looking for the small grey bar like this ---> | What happens when you press F11 ? Do you have an address field or a go button ? Is there a grey field at all beneath the blue (or whatever) window bar (top of the frame ?) What do you see when you RIGHT click in the window ? more tomorrow... H.

OK, sloppy reading here on my part, sorry. Are you really saying that the bar with "File Edit View etc" is gone ? Even if you doubleclick the top border of the window or press F11 when that window is active ? Could it be that you have an address bar or some other bar below the (presumably) blue window bar ? Somthing like a empty white field or a Go button ? Look for a small grey sign like this | and try to drag it left or right. H.

Go to show / toolbars / and put a check mark for all items you want. H.

MS Natural Keyboard pro, Just as a keybord should should be but a bit bulky perhaps. Connects to the PS/2 port, but still has USB ports built in (the cable splits to a PS/2 and a USB connector) and some of the extra buttons are really useful, like the Sleep (hibernate or Stanby) key, the volume controls and occasionally the mail/web keys. An extra bonus is that the driver lets you disable tHAt iRrITating CAps loCk key and you can remap some of the buttons. H.

Try this http://www.mywanip.com/ and its freeware too... H.

Look now Alvarez, you are the one claiming that there is a difference, that ACPI slows down. Funny that you are asking us to run HD tach to prove it, I'd guess that you've done it already as you tell us there is a diffrence. Or do you just think there could be a difference ? By all means, run your computer without ACPI if you want, and believe what you want but if you claim its slower with ACPI then post some facts. Not just unfounded opinions. Opinions are like a$$holes, everybody has one. H.

3 monitors ? You only got 2 eyes ! Just outta curiosity, how were you planning to use 3 mons? Are the 2 pci cards identical ? H.

Ooh, I see... And would you please post the benchmark results to prove that ? H.

Don't you have such an app in Start Menu's System Tools, included with windows ? Or go shareware and try Window Washer H.

This one really made my day,about the coolest script out there. There is one thing I can't figure out though. Say I want to add a favourite site, like for example NTcompatible. How do I find out what the name is of the correct .php or .rdf file that the site is using for the news headlines? Here I've tried all that I can spot, like article.php, index.php but not found the right one. Anyone ? H.

Cool work, outrig. Make it available for download so we can try it out, those of us who are lazy. BTW, where did you get the clock? I've been looking for something like that. H.

Definately a joke. Checkout http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/28/23650.html H.

Your board - your call, but boy am I happy you switched back. H.

I'd guess "ghosting" refers to using Norton Ghost and "imageing" to using Powerquests Drive Image. Both do the same thing, they store a bit for bit copy of the HD or partition, only in different proprietary file formats. In a few minutes the whole thing can be restored, for instance to a new HD. Both work just fine on a W2K sys. H.

Does it really stop at 99% ? I've seen this behaviour but found that if you wait a while (a minute or so) and/or click the desktop or the menu button a few times it gets going again. It also seemed that it was only the display (the bar graph) that stopped, not the install. Have the task manager running and see if the install is working or really has stopped. H.

Could it be that your NIC is autodetecting the speed of the other devices and trying to get the cable modem to accept 100 Mbps speed? The modem only does 10 Mbps, but your card (likely) does 100 Mbps. This is no problem, but many NICs are by default on autodetect, i.e. they are figuring out the highest possible speed constantly. Try setting the NIC to 10 Mbps and see if the blinking stops.

DHCP...???

Well, one thing is sure, the key was not found from the freshly formatted partition. Here a couple of guesses in addition to Yakkobs - you copied over some files to the fresh install - or maybe imported some registry settings - your Halflife CD was "fixed" before burning... - Half-life has a malfunctioning key check - you first installed some other game from Sierra (r another game using the Halflife engine) that took care of the key. Iteresting, let us know if you find out.

Quote: ... you'll get faster pings with USB, which for my purposes is what I'm looking for as it's to improve web browsing. Look now Christianb, unless somebody puts me in the same corner with Xiven there are no USB cable solutions that lets you do web browsing. This was about how to use the USB ports to network two PCs, and you can't. You can connect them for file transfer, yes, but network them, no. All the nice theories discussed here are just theories, a USB connection, (that still only does file transfer) is in practice a lot slower than an ethernet one. Believe me, I've tried them both, and on more than one occasion, altough its some time ago I needed to toy with the USB. If you want to improve your web browsing, get a faster connection to the backbone. Or go optical, 1000Mb/s NICs or whatever. There is no way your Ethernet LAN is going to be the bottleneck when you are Web browsing with two PCs. H.

I'm sure you'll have lots of fun debating the theoretical speed of USB 1.0/1.1 and (the so far almost non-existent) USB 2.0 etc but, from practical experince I can assure you that Ethernet is many times faster than a USB cable. When I used a USB cable a year or so ago to transfer some files it was a LOT slower than my LAN. In practice I'd say I can transfer 100MB of files in perhaps 10-20 secs over my LAN today (haven't timed it, can do if you are interested). What I recall is that it took many minutes (5-10) to transfer larger directories (200-600 MB) with the USB thingy. Don't really feel like trying it out again though. I still recommend anyone who has the need to connect two computers on a somewhat regular basis to go ethernet and install a LAN, which can do much more than the USB cable can. There is however one great potential use for the USB cable, say you have a corporate laptop w/o ethernet card (or you don't care to fiddle around with its network settings). Then the USB cable can come in really handy. Also, its easy to carry along together with the diskette. As long as the other PC doesn't run NT of course, which doesn't support USB. H.

As far as I know a standard USB cable doesn't work, you must use a special USB cable (has a little box in the middle) and the software that comes along with the cable you buy. Never tried on W2K to W2k but between W2k and W98, it works well for file transfers and such, but it is not a network. If you are going to connect the computers regularely, I suggest you go for a Ethernet solution; 2 cheap NICs and a crossover cable. Much more conveniant, the cable can be longer and you don't need to install any extra software. H.

If you have a LAN (more than one NIC) you must do this on each card. If you still have the problem at 10 / half duplex I'd suggest you look at your DHCP settings and for all you error log to see if they give a clue to whats going on. Good luck. H.

I had a similar issue with W2K, it turned out that if I had the NIC speed setting at auto the card broke the connection every now and then to test for highest possible speed. Try setting your NIC properties speed setting to a fixed 100 or 10. H.

Shassounehs comments are right on target, I'd only add a few conciderations: If you are about to buy the OS (as opposed to just asking a hypotehical question), you might as well go for XP, but be aware - by buying XP you support the quite likely MS scheme to turn your PC into a small pay-Bill-per-minute-used machine. Product activation is only the first step in this direction. You'll also have to contact MS everytime you switch PC (or major parts). And Big Brother will be watching you, just in case you believed that you can install the OS you bought on say both your desktop and laptop. If you ever want to sell your copy of XP I guess it could be worthless, because Big Brother will not believe that the buyer really bought it. H.

Quote: Well the fact of the matter is that you PHYSICALLY CANNOT convert an NTFS partition into a FAT32 regardless of... For my part I would be very interested in which of the above statements is true, as I don't know whom to believe. Could you sort it out without any hurt feelings ? Anybody here (except Jedi O.)that has successfully converted from NTFS to FAT32 ?? H.