Mua_Dib

For some strange reason after a re-boot my dial-up connection icon no longer exsists! I tried re-creating the connection but when i get to step three where it wants me to name the connection it wont accept the default name or any name i attempt to enter.....it wont accept anything. It responds "'blah' is not a valid name. The entry name must contain at least one character that is not a space and cannot begin with a period. Choose a different name." I have recently added SP2. Help!

I'm having drama's with a Promise Fastrak100 "lite" controller (A7V333) and 2 x 40gig Seagate Barracuda IV's. XP wont install. Tried all the obvious fixes;- New cables, F6 then driver disk, changed CD-ROM's, updated BIOS'es blah blah etc etc etc...... Gonna try 2 IBM's..... -Mua

I intergrated SP2 within a new CD burn of Win2k Professional and it worked fine.... Trying to do so with Advanced Server has caused me some heart ache. At the point when the files are supposed to start copying and the TXTSETUP.SIF file is read i get an error stating the .SIF file may be corrupt or missing and "Value 0 in the line in section [sourceDiskFiles] with key SP2.cab" I went to that line on the CD and it says SP2.CAB = 2,,,,,,_x,39,0,0 I'm not sure what this means or what value is incorrect. HELP!

I've noticed slight improvements since the days of UDMA33 drives. But the increased performance is negligable since the previous incarnation. The ATA design seems to be getting old and tired and arent moving in larger steps inline with what other hardware manufacturers are doing. For example; Processor giants arent increasing the speeds of their flagship chips by 33mhz increments anymore. Adaptec have also stopped increasing their interface bandwidth by 20/40 mhz upgrades and are now doubling in each new design. As soon as i get some dosh together i'm moving to SCSI160/320 with a Seagate Cheeta 15k drive. -Mua

Fair enough. But page files can get quite large and vary in size (if you let windows change its size for you). This of course does depend on how much ram you have to start with. I have 128 meg of ram and my page file is currently 260meg (i was just playing emperor battle for dune ). There really is only 2 ways to get the most out of a page file. 1. Dont have one at all. spend up big on ram. 2. Place the Page file on a seperate smaller disk on its own (if IDE, not on the same interface as the OS Disk) or place it at the beginning of your disk in its own partition. -Mua

Yeah. I havent been paying to much attention to the prod activation thingy. Theres 2 ways of looking at the issue. 1. I'm sure you could imagine how much money MS has lost due to people copying OS's. Its the same ol same ol about software companies loosing income because of piracy. Of all the software that does get copied OS's surely must be the most pirated. So from this point of view i think its fair enough that they put copy protection in. 2. MS is so huge and makes so much money anyway, how is a few 100's of thousands of extra copies that are made and or cracked going to put them in the financial hurt locker. From this perspective i go and start to warm up my burning tower! (not really, but some would) So i spare little thought to it mainly because one day when Win2K is long dead, XP is on its way out and been outdated by 3 newer MS OS's, Prod Activation becomes the norm, we will have very little choice anyway. -Mua

Yeah. Drivers are fun huh? Thats why i dont jump on the band wagon to soon when a new OS comes out. I will wait and watch quietly for a little while b4 i snap-up XP Pro. I will wait for SP3/SP4 first b4 going to XP. But i dont think MS will stop support. I think perhaps that the support will be paralell between the 2K/XP Pro. Either way i think the future looks bright for all the current NT based OS's. -Mua

Creating a RAMdrive to put the page file in defeats the purpose of having it in the first place. The page file is there for when you run out of physical memory and when your task swapping. For example, if EddiE created a half gig ram drive he would then have to have a page file because he effectively would then have only 256 meg of ram. But whats the point of that? (unless of course you were doing something other than the norm with your OS/Apps) -Mua

AndyF is right Dusz. I've never even heard of anyone using a RAMDISK in that manner these days. Back in the MS-DOS days, if you were lucky enough to have large amounts of ram you could use a ram disk for time-critical and resource intensive apps. The only other time i see it now days is when a boot disk creates one to load in tools to be used such as a virus scanning or hard drive partitioning/creation tools. -Mua

So long as you got it from the ASUS website (which is strange because it says the latest update is 1005. Goto http://www.asus.com.tw/products/motherboard/bios.html for more information) just use it as is on a boot disk with Aflash.exe and the new BIOS file. Remember: backup a copy of your current BIOS file. I run a p3v4x as well. -Mua

Thymios, XP is completely unrelated to 98/ME architecture. XP is based on the NT Kernel with many improvements. Its more accurate to say this is a more improved version of Win2K/NT4. Also XP will come in 2 version. XP Home (aimed at home users as you mentioned) and XP Professional (Win2k pro's replacement/alternative) As for Win2K Pro's future, who knows? It is unlikely that a new OS released 2 years after another is going to be missing some of the features introduced in the earlier incarnation. That would be a step back. http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/default.asp http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/home/default.asp These Links should help. -Mua

Like i said earlier, XP will do better in terms of Application Compatibility. This may not be of any benefit to those that run 2K already without any problems. When XP does come along, i'll be getting it. Mainly because my migration from nt4 workstation to 2K pro did not go as smoothly as i liked mainly because on app problems. My 2K servers have got a fair few SI packages just waiting to be served to XP boxes that wont run well or at all on 2K machines. As soon as thats in place i spose i'll change over to the Server 2002 family Gotta stay employed somehow -Mua

I do agree that XP's timing seems strange and it will be interesting to see if they continue to do SP's for both Win2k and XP. Or maybe starting with SP3 or maybe SP4 there will be relevant updates included for both OS's. After all they have virtually the same kernel. At least Mico$oft is giving us more of a choice now -Mua

I think one of the 'great things' that XP will improve over w2k on is application compatibility....so the beta testers tell me anyway. This will be of use to me and other network administrators who suffered a little going to Win2k from NT4 on a network with hundreds of different kinds of apps to support. On a home note though i have experienced some difficulties with older apps on W2k and apparently XP is going to resolve some of those issues. BUT! If SP3 is a huge improvent i may be at the back of the queue with ya! -Mua (and dont even start me on WinPatchMe!)

W2K Drivers will work on XP. For me however W2K has been great but its just a stepping stone to XP. Microsoft has dealt with most issues that have stopped W2K from being the messiah of OS's so XP should be good (and from what i've heard from the Beta testers i work with its going to be grand). I'm expexting great things from XP and I've never been afraid of trying new things (cept this one time.....Win95) he he he. I'm just glad they have dumped the 16bit stuff. -Mua

I think you should call your ISP and see if any of their other Win2K users are experiencing any problems. Aside from that you may need to just re-run your win2k cd installation again. Dont worry bout it either, i did it the other day and it corrected some niggling problems i was having. -Mua

Is the service failing at any time? Have you tried going to the recovery tab on the service properties and setting the first/second/subsequent failure boxes to 'restart service' -Mua

Unless your running a P200 with a poofteenth of ram i wouldnt bother disabling services, as i have found out it can be quite detrimental to your system rather than good. Keep in mind that some services are interdependant on other services, and some system files are dependant on system services, to be running. So if you disable one you must go through and find the others you have to disable. For example, the Server service depends on the Computer browser service. Also, recently (hehehe, see my entry for Dial-Up Problems) i found out that if i disable my Event logging service i lost my Dial-Up connection because the file RASPHONE.PBK which contains entries for dial up connections is dependant upon the event logging service (i still dont know why though ) So i hope we can curb your fear of services and help you understand that although they may use up tinee bits of system resources they act to smoothen system operation on the whole. -Mua

Both PC's cant have the same netbios name if they are on the same network. To change your name go to your Network and Dial Up Connections, goto Advanced in the menu bar and click Network Identification and hit the Properties button. From there you can change your Name and workgroup/domain names. -Mua

You did not mention it, but have you attempted enabling the option that allows the system to obtain a DNS server automatically? If you think your lan connection might be causing you heart ache try disabling it. After restarting the connection (or rebooting if you have to) periodically check to see if you have picked up a DNS address using the command line session window command "ipconfig /all" If this dont work i suggest calling your ISP. -Mua

Or you can use Directory replication which, when you make changes to the NTCONFIG.POL, will automatically update the policy files on the netlogon shares on all the domain controllers. -Mua

Yeah, both my drives are NTFS. Its faster than FAT32. But wouldnt having so many partitions slow down the system a little?(unless of course you have a SCSI160 drive on a high end controller I just try to keep things simple on my drive. (its only 9 gig hahahah) At work though i have a Win2k Advanced Server running and i have 4 SCSI 9 gig drives in it. What i have done is created an OS partition, a file server partiton and mounted the other drives as folders in the file server partition. The disk management snap-in is really great and flexible, but i wonder what limitations doing that imposes on the File System?

I thought FAT32 could go upto 8TB? I know you cant format over 32GB with WIN2K but the FastFat driver can mount upto the affore mentioned volume size (subject to other limitations)

I usually dont have a problem with DFLW but Red Alert2 will sometimes stutter then re-boot. I must say this for microsoft though. They got rid of the blue screen of death! hehehehe -Mua "'beggining dump of physical memory' still makes me **** my pants" Dib P.S When that happens and it tells me to contact my system administrator (thats me) who do i contact? hehehehe

Win2k. But never mind, i finally worked it out...... Interesting to.... I turned off my event logging service and thats when my dial-up icon dissappeared (after a re-boot). I found out it was the event logging service completely by mistake. I did a text search on 'chello2k' (the name of the missing icon) on my system drive and it turned up a file name called 'rasphone.pbk' thinking my answer layed in this file i tried to run it and it wouldn't let me because the event logging service was not running. So i turned it back on so i could access the file and lo-and-behold my icon magically re-appeared. Strange huh? (i'll find out why one day so it wont seem so strange) Anyone know why rasphone.pbk is dependant on event logging running?