Different day, same 2 questions.

I asked this about 10 days ago, but although I received several
replies, they were not relevant. Apparently no one here knew
the answers to the questions in my original post, so I'll
repeat it as a fresh thread. (Sigh. I should get used to
having to do this, I suppose. A corollary to Murphy's Law,
perhaps: Robbie's Law: "The first 2 or 3 attempts to ask a
question in a Usenet newsgroup always result in nothing but
irrelevant responses, if indeed anyone responds at all.
Then they flame you and tell you to go away. Then, 3 or 4
weeks later, someone finally comes along who is able to
provide a non-irrelevant response, provided that you keep
reposting the original question in fresh threads.")

With that in mind, I'll do a recap:

Greetings, group. This is my first post to this group.
I've been using Windows 2000 since shortly after it came out
(late 2000). It's met all my needs until recently. But
lately, I've been running into problems as Microsoft,
software manufacturers, ISPs, etc are all phasing-out
support for Win2K.

SO, I'm considering moving to Windows-XP.

I have two questions:

Firstly, what are the options for obtaining XP install CDs
these days? I've heard MS has stopped producing them. So
we have to get them from places that still have them in stock?
Or are there other options?

Secondly, does XP require manually setting an entry in the
registry in order to use HD partitions over 137GB, as with Win2K?
Or is XP smart enough to automatically use the correct LBA type
(24bit or 48bit) based on HD size? (I'm looking to avoid any
repeats of an incident which occurred about a year ago in which
thousands of files on my computer were destroyed because
registry entry "EnableBigLBA" got reset to 0 on a clean
reinstall of Win2K.)

--
Cheers,
Robbie Hatley
lonewolf at well dot com
www dot well dot com slant tilde lonewolf slant

I'm sure you received valid responses last time, allthough I could'nt find
any previous posts under your name.
1) WinXp is no longer available from MS it and been superseded by Vista and
now Win7 so you will be installing an o/s at the end of its life cycle. You
will have to resort to third party resellers to obtain winxp
2) Depends on what sp level the version of winxp is as to whether large LBA
'is supported out of the box', from recollection its sp1
3) And then of course your hardware, suitable or not?, time to bite the
bullet and invest in a new sys?

"Robbie Hatley" wrote in message
...

I asked this about 10 days ago, but although I received several
replies, they were not relevant. Apparently no one here knew
the answers to the questions in my original post, so I'll
repeat it as a fresh thread. (Sigh. I should get used to
having to do this, I suppose. A corollary to Murphy's Law,
perhaps: Robbie's Law: "The first 2 or 3 attempts to ask a
question in a Usenet newsgroup always result in nothing but
irrelevant responses, if indeed anyone responds at all.
Then they flame you and tell you to go away. Then, 3 or 4
weeks later, someone finally comes along who is able to
provide a non-irrelevant response, provided that you keep
reposting the original question in fresh threads.")

With that in mind, I'll do a recap:

Greetings, group. This is my first post to this group.
I've been using Windows 2000 since shortly after it came out
(late 2000). It's met all my needs until recently. But
lately, I've been running into problems as Microsoft,
software manufacturers, ISPs, etc are all phasing-out
support for Win2K.

SO, I'm considering moving to Windows-XP.

I have two questions:

Firstly, what are the options for obtaining XP install CDs
these days? I've heard MS has stopped producing them. So
we have to get them from places that still have them in stock?
Or are there other options?

Secondly, does XP require manually setting an entry in the
registry in order to use HD partitions over 137GB, as with Win2K?
Or is XP smart enough to automatically use the correct LBA type
(24bit or 48bit) based on HD size? (I'm looking to avoid any
repeats of an incident which occurred about a year ago in which
thousands of files on my computer were destroyed because
registry entry "EnableBigLBA" got reset to 0 on a clean
reinstall of Win2K.)

--
Cheers,
Robbie Hatley
lonewolf at well dot com
www dot well dot com slant tilde lonewolf slant

I'm sure you received valid responses last time, allthough I could'nt find
any previous posts under your name.
1) WinXp is no longer available from MS it and been superseded by Vista and
now Win7 so you will be installing an o/s at the end of its life cycle. You
will have to resort to third party resellers to obtain winxp
2) Depends on what sp level the version of winxp is as to whether large LBA
'is supported out of the box', from recollection its sp1
3) And then of course your hardware, suitable or not?, time to bite the
bullet and invest in a new sys?

"Robbie Hatley" wrote in message
...

I asked this about 10 days ago, but although I received several
replies, they were not relevant. Apparently no one here knew
the answers to the questions in my original post, so I'll
repeat it as a fresh thread. (Sigh. I should get used to
having to do this, I suppose. A corollary to Murphy's Law,
perhaps: Robbie's Law: "The first 2 or 3 attempts to ask a
question in a Usenet newsgroup always result in nothing but
irrelevant responses, if indeed anyone responds at all.
Then they flame you and tell you to go away. Then, 3 or 4
weeks later, someone finally comes along who is able to
provide a non-irrelevant response, provided that you keep
reposting the original question in fresh threads.")

With that in mind, I'll do a recap:

Greetings, group. This is my first post to this group.
I've been using Windows 2000 since shortly after it came out
(late 2000). It's met all my needs until recently. But
lately, I've been running into problems as Microsoft,
software manufacturers, ISPs, etc are all phasing-out
support for Win2K.

SO, I'm considering moving to Windows-XP.

I have two questions:

Firstly, what are the options for obtaining XP install CDs
these days? I've heard MS has stopped producing them. So
we have to get them from places that still have them in stock?
Or are there other options?

Secondly, does XP require manually setting an entry in the
registry in order to use HD partitions over 137GB, as with Win2K?
Or is XP smart enough to automatically use the correct LBA type
(24bit or 48bit) based on HD size? (I'm looking to avoid any
repeats of an incident which occurred about a year ago in which
thousands of files on my computer were destroyed because
registry entry "EnableBigLBA" got reset to 0 on a clean
reinstall of Win2K.)

--
Cheers,
Robbie Hatley
lonewolf at well dot com
www dot well dot com slant tilde lonewolf slant

Robbie Hatley wrote:

snipped all the prelude blathering

Firstly, what are the options for obtaining XP install CDs these days?
I've heard MS has stopped producing them. So we have to get them
from places that still have them in stock? Or are there other
options?

Even when Windows XP was in its hey day, you still purchased it from
whatever a vendor had "in stock". Nowadays the question is if the
vendor can REstock the item. That Microsoft has stopped *support* of
Windows XP doesn't mean they stopped selling licenses for it (but
through resellers or OEMers because Microsoft won't support it). The
OEM version is still available because it is the OEM that is responsible
for support of that license - and if you buy and install the OEM version
then *you* are the OEM that provides the support.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...ting%20Systems
(short URL: http://tinyurl.com/6rkf96)

I'm looking to avoid any repeats of an incident which occurred about a
year ago in which thousands of files on my computer were destroyed
because registry entry "EnableBigLBA" got reset to 0 on a clean
reinstall of Win2K.

The EnableBigLBA registry setting was needed in Windows 2000 because, as
it was released, it did not have native 48-bit addressing support in the
ATAPI service then available for Windows 2000. If you read the KB
article at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/305098, you see the registry
entry that was added for the ATAPI service but, as I recall, wasn't an
applicable feature until service pack 2 for Windows 2000. I didn't see
you mention your service pack level for Windows 2000 or if you have kept
that OS up to date. Windows XP was released a year later in 2001 so it
was still too early for adoption of the newly presented need for 48-bit
addressing. When a product is released is not when the product is up to
date with whatever showed up new during its development. When released,
it is already old code.

Whether EnableBigLBA is needed in Windows XP depends entirely on what
service pack level you are talking about. In my SP-3 version, there
isn't even an EnableBigLBA setting for the ATAPI service in Windows XP.
However, 48-bit addressing mode didn't become available in Windows XP
until its Service Pack 1. So if you install the Gold version (no
service packs) then you are limited to the 137GB (128GiB) partition
size. Do the install of the Gold version, apply ALL updates (which will
take you to service pack 3), and then use a 3rd party partitioning tool,
like from Easus, to enlarge the partition - if you feel like you want
everything plowed under one partition rather than have separate
partitions for games, data, backups, etc. In pre-SP1 (gold) versions of
Windows XP, and as the following KB article mentions, you are still
liable to data corruption if the EnableBigLBA registry setting needed
for that version of XP has a mismatched value versus what your BIOS is
using.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/303013

If whatever changed the EnableBigLBA mode in the registry is still
present when you use Windows XP regardless of which service pack level,
that corruption can still occur. Users are ravaging their OS every day
with registry cleaners and malware hasn't disappeared. You didn't
mention HOW that registry setting got altered. There are LOTS of
settings that can be changed in the registry that would not only corrupt
data but also make it impossible to boot the OS. If you don't
understand the registry, best is to stay out of there. Of course,
programs are always fiddling around inside the registry so some software
you used could've been the culprit - and if you use it under Windows XP
then it could also cause problems there.

Robbie Hatley wrote:

snipped all the prelude blathering

Firstly, what are the options for obtaining XP install CDs these days?
I've heard MS has stopped producing them. So we have to get them
from places that still have them in stock? Or are there other
options?

Even when Windows XP was in its hey day, you still purchased it from
whatever a vendor had "in stock". Nowadays the question is if the
vendor can REstock the item. That Microsoft has stopped *support* of
Windows XP doesn't mean they stopped selling licenses for it (but
through resellers or OEMers because Microsoft won't support it). The
OEM version is still available because it is the OEM that is responsible
for support of that license - and if you buy and install the OEM version
then *you* are the OEM that provides the support.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...ting%20Systems
(short URL: http://tinyurl.com/6rkf96)

I'm looking to avoid any repeats of an incident which occurred about a
year ago in which thousands of files on my computer were destroyed
because registry entry "EnableBigLBA" got reset to 0 on a clean
reinstall of Win2K.

The EnableBigLBA registry setting was needed in Windows 2000 because, as
it was released, it did not have native 48-bit addressing support in the
ATAPI service then available for Windows 2000. If you read the KB
article at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/305098, you see the registry
entry that was added for the ATAPI service but, as I recall, wasn't an
applicable feature until service pack 2 for Windows 2000. I didn't see
you mention your service pack level for Windows 2000 or if you have kept
that OS up to date. Windows XP was released a year later in 2001 so it
was still too early for adoption of the newly presented need for 48-bit
addressing. When a product is released is not when the product is up to
date with whatever showed up new during its development. When released,
it is already old code.

Whether EnableBigLBA is needed in Windows XP depends entirely on what
service pack level you are talking about. In my SP-3 version, there
isn't even an EnableBigLBA setting for the ATAPI service in Windows XP.
However, 48-bit addressing mode didn't become available in Windows XP
until its Service Pack 1. So if you install the Gold version (no
service packs) then you are limited to the 137GB (128GiB) partition
size. Do the install of the Gold version, apply ALL updates (which will
take you to service pack 3), and then use a 3rd party partitioning tool,
like from Easus, to enlarge the partition - if you feel like you want
everything plowed under one partition rather than have separate
partitions for games, data, backups, etc. In pre-SP1 (gold) versions of
Windows XP, and as the following KB article mentions, you are still
liable to data corruption if the EnableBigLBA registry setting needed
for that version of XP has a mismatched value versus what your BIOS is
using.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/303013

If whatever changed the EnableBigLBA mode in the registry is still
present when you use Windows XP regardless of which service pack level,
that corruption can still occur. Users are ravaging their OS every day
with registry cleaners and malware hasn't disappeared. You didn't
mention HOW that registry setting got altered. There are LOTS of
settings that can be changed in the registry that would not only corrupt
data but also make it impossible to boot the OS. If you don't
understand the registry, best is to stay out of there. Of course,
programs are always fiddling around inside the registry so some software
you used could've been the culprit - and if you use it under Windows XP
then it could also cause problems there.

Robbie Hatley wrote:
I asked this about 10 days ago, but although I received several
replies, they were not relevant.


The fact that you simply didn't like ( or perhaps understand) the
perfectly correct answers you received doesn't make them irrelevant.


--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/555375

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. ~Benjamin Franklin

Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do. ~Bertrand Russell

The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has
killed a great many philosophers.
~ Denis Diderot

Robbie Hatley wrote:
I asked this about 10 days ago, but although I received several
replies, they were not relevant.


The fact that you simply didn't like ( or perhaps understand) the
perfectly correct answers you received doesn't make them irrelevant.


--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/555375

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. ~Benjamin Franklin

Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do. ~Bertrand Russell

The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has
killed a great many philosophers.
~ Denis Diderot