averagejane

Hey all, My system consists of asus csul-2c mb with pentium III 866, 256 ram, Soundblaster live value sound card, ATI all in wonder 128 pro agp video card, 60g maxtor hard drive ata 100, TDK velocid cdrw. I have a best data cable modem, a linksys 10/100 lan card and networking with netgear phoneline 10x usb adapters. This is my 1st attempt at a home built, upgraded my old pc to the limits so I had a little clue and did lots of reading. I did a clean install with an upgrade disk, just inserting the win98 cd to verify that I had an older version. my resource problems are user resources and gdi resources, which from what I have read, are not related to ram. The articles I have read about user resources and gdi say that win 9x has a 64k limit. NT based systems including w2k do not have this limit. This problem occurs primarily on the internet, worse with any streaming video. We have also experienced the low resources after playing the age of empires game. I have very little running in the back ground, explorer, systray, firewall & proxy (have disabled start up from most the stuff in msconfig). The system resources issue is what attracts me to w2k or xp when it comes out. The game we like to play is The Sims, the maxis game that you create people and their homes. The book with the sims says it will not run under nt. I also have concerns that drivers for my hardware will be no easier to get, than with win me. I should say win me runs great except for the low resources occasionally. I never had a low resource problem with my old 166 pentium 128 ram system running 98. That computer was left on 24-7, allowed to suspend and rebooted only occasionally. The winme system needs boots to keep it's resources up as it spends alot of time on the internet. I have done the usual tweaks...putting my swap file on another drive, limiting start up programs and changing to network server in file system. I've got dma enabled on all the drives. So, any other tweaks would be appreciated. I'll look into the resource freeing programs that were recommended. Thanks, Mary

Brian, My post did not mean that I was necessarily unhappy with winme. There are several features that I do like. First off, I haven't suffered from crashes or bsod, like I have had with the 98 pc. It does warn me before it goes that far. I love the system restore and have used it several times during the first couple weeks. I like the media player, believe it or not, and haven't had problems with it. I like the active desktop idea, tho I don't use it. I think there could be some improvements to the system, but it has been really stable for me. The a-open modem was a bad deal and their tech support consists of their website or a long distance call to taiwan...I couldn't find an e-mail address for tech support and for some reason whenever I tried to get to the user forums, aol would report it was not a valid newsgroup. I had major problems with aol using both 5.0 & 6.0 which I think had more to do with the modem than winme. I am still using aol with the cable modem with no problems what so ever. cept, I'm not gonna pay for aol as well as my cable isp. The software that came with the modem didn't work and I had to purchase software for faxing. I do think that winme isn't something a very inexperienced person would want to install, as the drivers for a lot of my hardware required a lot of searching and work. I bought the soundcard based only on the reputation of the name not even giving a thought to compatibility. I assumed creative would support winme drivers and I'm very disappointed. They do have what they call winme drivers, but me complains about the sb emulation driver and the serwave driver. The turtle beach card is calling my name and should work with w2k or xp. I have concerns that winme drivers for various hardwares will be abandoned. I can't blame microsoft for hardware companies unwillingness to provide usable drivers. I could wipe the drive clean and go back to 98, but I'm not that unhappy. If I knew then what I know now, I would have stuck with 98. Winme was a gift from a relative who thought it must be an improvement since it's new. Can you share the tweaks mentioned to get better use of resources? As far as the sims go, the booklet says it wont work with w2k and the newsgroups here seem to go both ways. It's really the only game I play and my kids and I fight over turns to play it. It really is a fun game. If I had to give a rating to winme, I would give it a 7. Thanks for your opinion. Mary

I'm just an average windows user. Installed me on my first home built pc and things have gone well. It was a little trickier to make it happy than 98se, but I seem to be on the right track. Someone had mentioned that there are some tweaks to free up resources, and I want to know them!! This is one of my few complaints of me, it does tell me quite a bit that resources are low...usually when surfing the web, especially watching the live space station feeds. I start up with about 87% free and I've gotten down to 1% just using the internet. I have networked this pc to another 98 machine. Could this contribute to the resource problem? My 2nd complaint is my stupid soundblaster live value card, sure didnt do my homework on that one. 3rd complaint AOL problems with me. Ended up with cable connection and dumping aol soon. Cable is great!! I wish hardware manufacturers were more on the ball with winme drivers. Even when it says winme ready on the box, it isn't. win2k and winxp sounds like a cure all to the resources problems...but I gotta have my sims!! Installing drivers for me seemed way difficult with the all in wonder 128 pro agp, soundblaster stupid card and stupid, cheap chinese a-open modem. Networking was a headache, but this was my first try at it. I think an average person should be able to configure an operating system. You shouldn't need a degree or be an IT person to get it running right. As anxious as I am about getting win2k or xp, Ill give it time and watch these groups before I run out and buy it. Also, the registration crap that I keep hearing about with xp is a real turn off and that alone may keep me from purchasing it. So, if anyone has a suggestion to a newbie, please feel free to give it. Mary