Greg
April 5th 03, 06:50 AM
1. I have 3 computers on a home network, all with WinXP
and MS JVM with no problems. I experience none of what
you describe. Boot times can be slowed by files
accumulating in the Prefetch folder. Details are here:
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/davegerber/davebytes/dave_by
tes_august_01_02.htm
2. I never do software upgrades to Windows or Office
products and never have any problems. Look through this
column of people asking for help and you'll see a large
portion of them have problems after software upgrades.
A few months ago, I did upgrade one of my computers that
at the time was running Win2K with Media Player 7 to
Media Player 9. The computer would not shut down after
the upgrade. I just formatted and loaded WinXP with Media
Player 8 and left it alone. Now there's no problems.
3. I think MP9 was eating up processor time because it
was probably doing something like trying to connect to
Microsoft. As far as the memory issue - WinXP will take
about 70-90MB of system memory on a fresh boot without
any additional programs running. Look at your Task
Manager next time you format and reload but before
installing programs and anti-virus. Win2K takes about 60-
64MB of memory on a fresh boot. Win98 takes about 32MB.
4. My advice to you is to go with what works. Install a
fresh copy of WinXP. DO NOT upgrade to DirectX 9.0a, WM9,
or perform any individual Windows upgrades or SP1.
Download Sun Java 2 from their website if you think you
have problems with MS JVM.
5. Nice computer. I have the same mainboard in one of my
computers with a 1Ghz Athlon and 256Mb Crucial PC2100 DDR
RAM. I always use Gigabyte boards when building systems.
The only thing I noticed about your computer that I'd be
leary about is you have installed two different hard
drives in the same computer. In the past, I've
experienced problems when doing this. I had one hard
drive fail due to a compatibility issue with the other
HD. My experience has been to match HD manufacturers,
rpm, and ATA speed. The size of the drive won't matter
though. You have drives from different manufacturers,
both ATA100, but what rpm do they run at?
Here's a quote from a website:
Unfortunately, some older hard disks will fail to work
properly when they are placed on a channel with another
manufacturer's disk. One of the reasons why drives don't
always "play nicely together" has to do with the Drive
Active / Signal Present (/DASP) signal. This is an
IDE/ATA interface signal carried on pin #39, which is
used for two functions: indicating that a drive is active
(during operation), and also indicating that a slave
drive is present on the channel (at startup). Some early
drives don't handle this signal properly, a residue of
poor adherence to ATA standards many years ago. If an
older slave drive won't work with a newer master, see if
your master drive has an "SP" (slave present) jumper, and
if so, enable it. This may allow the slave drive to be
detected.
Drive compatibility problems can be extremely
frustrating, and beyond the suggestion above, there
usually is no solution, other than separating the drives
onto different channels. Sometimes brand X won't work as
a slave when brand Y is the master, but X will work as a
master when Y is the slave!
Website:
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/ide/confJumpering-c.html
"Problems getting drives to cooperate as master and slave
are common when using drives made by different
manufacturers."
The other website;
http://www.pcguide.com/ts/x/comp/hdd/configMasterSlave-
c.html
E-mail me your solutions.
Greg
>-----Original Message-----
>ok, the following bugs have caused me hours to grief,
and
>if anyone knows what I can do to fix them, please reply.
>
>1. It seems that there is a MASSIVE bug in the microsoft
>Java virtual machine causing it to eat MASSIVE amounts
of
>resources and kernel time once it has be activated. My
>normal boot times of between 45 secs and 1 minute were
>gone, and instead it took me well over 2 mintues to
>boot. I reformatted to escape this problem once I
>noticed it, but I'm told that it is in the knowlege
base,
>and that it hasn't been fixed yet: MS: GET ON THE
STICK.
>I paid good money for my XP copy, I want it to work
>CORRECTLY.
>
>2. After this reformat, I went through and patched my XP
>copy back up on windows update, including the updated
>Windows Media Player 9 (which I do like very much).
>After this sequence of updating, I ran WMP9, and to my
>alarm, I noticed that it was eating up 100% of my
>processor and (after sitting for 20 min) 80-100 megs of
>RAM and VMEM. It also forced the Kernel times to jump
>wildly, and it could not play back the files I asked it
>to. This is terrible, because it worked fine on my
>previous install. I've attempted to reinstall it
overtop
>of itself, but this did not fix the problem either. It
>also refuses to add my files to the media library, and
>even when the program is closed, the process runs for an
>additional 20-30 seconds.
>
>3. I also installed DirectX9.0a from windows update. I
>noticed another problem: when playing Impossible
>Creatures, my wonderful framrates and image quality are
>gone. The shadows look jagged, and every so often I
>experience a 'lagspike' which seems to consist of about
>100-200 dropped frames. I have no explaination for
this,
>because the game worked fine on my previous install
using
>the same settings and DX9.0
>
>4. I heard that there is a bug within UT2k3 that causes
>it to run poorly under DX9.0. This isn't good because
>there is no way to DOWNGRADE DirectX. My Framerates are
>very inconsistant in the game, as in I'll be running at
>about 60 FPS at High settings (not highest) and 800x600,
>and then it will randomly lagspike just like in
>Impossible Creatures... I don't have an explaination for
>this either.
>
>Incase anyone wants my system stats (or if any of the
>bugs are hardware related), here they are:
>
>Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP1 (fully updated in
>windows update)
>Gigabyte GA-7DXR (10a BIOS beta, newest release)
>AMD Athlon XP 2400+ (throughbred core, running at 41C)
>Crucial 512MB PC2100 DDR RAM
>ATI Radeon 8500LE 64DDR overclocked to 235/245 (bugs are
>still present w/o the overclock) running catalyst 3.2
>driver suite
>Western Digital 80GB ATA100 HD (data)
>Maxtor Diamondmax 40GB ATA100 HD (boot)
>Creative SoundBlaster Live! 5.1 with newest drivers
>Sony 40x CD-RW
>generic 16x DVD-ROM
>Intel pro/100 NIC with drivers from windows update
>
>Any help or suggestions? I need to have this fixed as
>soon as possible. thanks
>
>Gigas-VII
>.
>
and MS JVM with no problems. I experience none of what
you describe. Boot times can be slowed by files
accumulating in the Prefetch folder. Details are here:
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/davegerber/davebytes/dave_by
tes_august_01_02.htm
2. I never do software upgrades to Windows or Office
products and never have any problems. Look through this
column of people asking for help and you'll see a large
portion of them have problems after software upgrades.
A few months ago, I did upgrade one of my computers that
at the time was running Win2K with Media Player 7 to
Media Player 9. The computer would not shut down after
the upgrade. I just formatted and loaded WinXP with Media
Player 8 and left it alone. Now there's no problems.
3. I think MP9 was eating up processor time because it
was probably doing something like trying to connect to
Microsoft. As far as the memory issue - WinXP will take
about 70-90MB of system memory on a fresh boot without
any additional programs running. Look at your Task
Manager next time you format and reload but before
installing programs and anti-virus. Win2K takes about 60-
64MB of memory on a fresh boot. Win98 takes about 32MB.
4. My advice to you is to go with what works. Install a
fresh copy of WinXP. DO NOT upgrade to DirectX 9.0a, WM9,
or perform any individual Windows upgrades or SP1.
Download Sun Java 2 from their website if you think you
have problems with MS JVM.
5. Nice computer. I have the same mainboard in one of my
computers with a 1Ghz Athlon and 256Mb Crucial PC2100 DDR
RAM. I always use Gigabyte boards when building systems.
The only thing I noticed about your computer that I'd be
leary about is you have installed two different hard
drives in the same computer. In the past, I've
experienced problems when doing this. I had one hard
drive fail due to a compatibility issue with the other
HD. My experience has been to match HD manufacturers,
rpm, and ATA speed. The size of the drive won't matter
though. You have drives from different manufacturers,
both ATA100, but what rpm do they run at?
Here's a quote from a website:
Unfortunately, some older hard disks will fail to work
properly when they are placed on a channel with another
manufacturer's disk. One of the reasons why drives don't
always "play nicely together" has to do with the Drive
Active / Signal Present (/DASP) signal. This is an
IDE/ATA interface signal carried on pin #39, which is
used for two functions: indicating that a drive is active
(during operation), and also indicating that a slave
drive is present on the channel (at startup). Some early
drives don't handle this signal properly, a residue of
poor adherence to ATA standards many years ago. If an
older slave drive won't work with a newer master, see if
your master drive has an "SP" (slave present) jumper, and
if so, enable it. This may allow the slave drive to be
detected.
Drive compatibility problems can be extremely
frustrating, and beyond the suggestion above, there
usually is no solution, other than separating the drives
onto different channels. Sometimes brand X won't work as
a slave when brand Y is the master, but X will work as a
master when Y is the slave!
Website:
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/ide/confJumpering-c.html
"Problems getting drives to cooperate as master and slave
are common when using drives made by different
manufacturers."
The other website;
http://www.pcguide.com/ts/x/comp/hdd/configMasterSlave-
c.html
E-mail me your solutions.
Greg
>-----Original Message-----
>ok, the following bugs have caused me hours to grief,
and
>if anyone knows what I can do to fix them, please reply.
>
>1. It seems that there is a MASSIVE bug in the microsoft
>Java virtual machine causing it to eat MASSIVE amounts
of
>resources and kernel time once it has be activated. My
>normal boot times of between 45 secs and 1 minute were
>gone, and instead it took me well over 2 mintues to
>boot. I reformatted to escape this problem once I
>noticed it, but I'm told that it is in the knowlege
base,
>and that it hasn't been fixed yet: MS: GET ON THE
STICK.
>I paid good money for my XP copy, I want it to work
>CORRECTLY.
>
>2. After this reformat, I went through and patched my XP
>copy back up on windows update, including the updated
>Windows Media Player 9 (which I do like very much).
>After this sequence of updating, I ran WMP9, and to my
>alarm, I noticed that it was eating up 100% of my
>processor and (after sitting for 20 min) 80-100 megs of
>RAM and VMEM. It also forced the Kernel times to jump
>wildly, and it could not play back the files I asked it
>to. This is terrible, because it worked fine on my
>previous install. I've attempted to reinstall it
overtop
>of itself, but this did not fix the problem either. It
>also refuses to add my files to the media library, and
>even when the program is closed, the process runs for an
>additional 20-30 seconds.
>
>3. I also installed DirectX9.0a from windows update. I
>noticed another problem: when playing Impossible
>Creatures, my wonderful framrates and image quality are
>gone. The shadows look jagged, and every so often I
>experience a 'lagspike' which seems to consist of about
>100-200 dropped frames. I have no explaination for
this,
>because the game worked fine on my previous install
using
>the same settings and DX9.0
>
>4. I heard that there is a bug within UT2k3 that causes
>it to run poorly under DX9.0. This isn't good because
>there is no way to DOWNGRADE DirectX. My Framerates are
>very inconsistant in the game, as in I'll be running at
>about 60 FPS at High settings (not highest) and 800x600,
>and then it will randomly lagspike just like in
>Impossible Creatures... I don't have an explaination for
>this either.
>
>Incase anyone wants my system stats (or if any of the
>bugs are hardware related), here they are:
>
>Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP1 (fully updated in
>windows update)
>Gigabyte GA-7DXR (10a BIOS beta, newest release)
>AMD Athlon XP 2400+ (throughbred core, running at 41C)
>Crucial 512MB PC2100 DDR RAM
>ATI Radeon 8500LE 64DDR overclocked to 235/245 (bugs are
>still present w/o the overclock) running catalyst 3.2
>driver suite
>Western Digital 80GB ATA100 HD (data)
>Maxtor Diamondmax 40GB ATA100 HD (boot)
>Creative SoundBlaster Live! 5.1 with newest drivers
>Sony 40x CD-RW
>generic 16x DVD-ROM
>Intel pro/100 NIC with drivers from windows update
>
>Any help or suggestions? I need to have this fixed as
>soon as possible. thanks
>
>Gigas-VII
>.
>