Madmanmcp

Whats scary is that the virus is being snuck into the distros and thousands are being infected from what many users assumed would be a safe place. A black eye for Open Source.

Hi Wilba, sorry but you have given us very little information here to answer your questions. There is a lot more to a computer than just the processor chip, the one you have listed is a 1.4Ghz I believe and is and older chip so it is not as fast as the current ones being produced. What games a computer can play is based on a number of other computer components, Video cards, video memory, RAM, Operating System and so on. And just a personal preference, if you want the best for playing "games", stay away from a Laptop. A desktop will do a better job. Laptops are built for portability, not games.

Hang onto your hat Jim, CNN just upgraded Rita to a Catagory 2. Stay safe!

/madman left the Dell bashing question alone on purpose

Not exactly sure what you mean here...you can only have "internet access" from one source at a time on a computer...as far as I know. If you are trying to set up multiple sources this may be the root of your problem...conflicts between the two. Sorry but I believe this is partially incorrect. Reinstalling in the same directory does not replace the registry, it replaces most of the Windows files but leaves the registry intact along with leaving the data files. Your computer will look exactly as it did before the reinstall. If your registry was corrupt before, it will probably still be corrupt after this type of reinstall.

Internet connection could be any number of things. Windows Firewall blocking access comes to mind first. Without knowing your setup, ISP, if you are cable or dialup or if you have a router ... makes it difficult for anyone here to troubleshoot. More info might help.

After thinking about this a little more it could be a problem with the current data on the HD. When you installed Win98 the drivers were not loaded and it was not accessing the tracks and sectors correctly. It wrote the data and assumed everything was fine, once you rebooted it all went haywire. For everything to work correctly these drivers need to be used/running when you fdisk and format the drive. They also need to be present when you install Windows, and present while running windows. I know in some cases the drives come with these drivers pre-loaded on them and a pointer in the MBR loads them when the drive first boots. I don't know if this is the case with your drive.

Well good luck Mike. I have a feeling its not a virus or an MBR problem. Either the BIOS or the OS is having difficulty accessing the space you think you have. When you formatted and fdisked the drive you used the special boot disk which allowed the system to "see" the total amount of space you had on the drive. Are there instructions anywhere explaining how to load these drivers into your version of Win98 so IT can also see and access this space. I think this is your current problem. The data is there on the HD, it reports all the space, Windows just doesn't know how to access it all because the drivers are not running.

Good to hear Mike, glad you stuck with it and found a way to get all your disk space.

Martin, it now sounds like you have a mini Print Server which attaches to the parallel printer port and has an ethernet WIRED connection port which allows it to be connected to your router and be shared by all computers on your network. You need to find some directions somewhere to help you run the setup process on this print server so the router will be able to recognize it and allow it to be used by the rest of the network. If you do not have these directions the best place to start is the company that made it. Check there and good luck.

Just agreeing with Steve here. You either connect a printer to a networked computer and "share" it, or you connect the printer to a network "server" component connected to the network. If you have the printer connected to a wireless "router" it will not work, you need it connected to a wireless "Print Server". You will also need to follow the directions to configure the print server to recognise and share the printer across the network. You will also probably have to load the printer drivers on each computer.

Hi Steve, I am afraid this practice is affecting more sports than just High School sports. I was on the Board for our Community Sports Programs and was also the Player Agent for our Little League Baseball program. The rules and requirements for criminal backgrounds checks has been the "hot" item for the last several years. We started out with just a signature on a form giving us permission to perform the check on individuals. It was tough a couple years ago to get one of these "checks" performed because there were not organizations or departments that could handle the workload involved. As a non-profit organization we also could not afford to pay for each individual...so we didn't require it to be done. We also decided that since all our parents were volunteers it was not right that we make them pay for the background check. What a mess. Both my kids are now out of the programs (age) and I am also out, thank goodness. I loved every minute of my volunteer time and hated to drop out when I did, I fully expected to stay involved long after my kids stopped playing. But the work involved got to be too much like "work" and it was not fun anymore. I imagine it will be the same across the US and its a shame. I wish there were an easy way around this mess but I am afraid there isn't. BTW, my involvement is these organizations and doing their web sites is what brought me to TCH.

Windows comes with one in Task Manager. Press Ctrl-alt-del click on the PERFORMANCE tab it also puts a little icon in the Systray to show usage. If you search the web you should find hundreds that will do the job you want.

Guess you know where my mind was

I side with Jim here. This will depend mostly on the amount of data you have and the number of components in this "data". A flat file will handle a simple data file of one or two components very quickly, say name and sex. But when you have lots of components, name, age, sex, address, shoesize, etc...this is where a database wins hands down. A database uses indexing which speeds up the search and breaks the search down to just the component you want (sex), where a flat file will need to search every character.

It could two things, your system BIOS and/or your operating system. I suspect both, you have and older computer which I assume has and old operating system and an old BIOS. Read these two sites and see if it helps explain things a little for you. You have a few options, but I don't think a single partition for the total size will be one of them. h_tp://www.spcug.org/reviews/bl0107.htm h_tp://www.dewassoc.com/kbase/hard_drives/hard_drive_size_barriers.htm

Sorry Samrc, Didn't mean to upset you. Just wanted to be sure you were aware of those places.

I don't think a single piece of hardware will do all that you ask. But a couple of software solutions will. You can use Windows and set it up with Users required to logon and then set up most of the "rules" in the Administration area. You can also get a program like Net Nanny to control Internet access.

Yes, you are paying to download, you are not paying for the "rights" to have or play the music you download. The place you download from probably did not get permission to sell the songs nor are they paying anyone any royalties...thats why they can sell them so cheap. And you may be lucky and have "no issues", or the RIAA could crack down, get your IP, and send you a $3000 nastygram. The government should require labels on the sites, "Use at your own risk"

Partially, yes. That "password" is the encryption "key" used in WEP. There is stronger encryption but you are probably fine. The other protection I was talking about is the password used to setup your router. Did you change that password or did you leave it as is was?

Well thats a piece of information you forgot to add I suspect you maybe on to something. If the house got struck by lightening then electricity from the strike may have traveled throughout, jumping from circuit to circuit, wire to wire looking for the shortest route to ground. It may a cable or wire and fried your router or laptop. I've seen the strangest things happen in computers after a strike. So I would suggest you start with that in mind. If you can get access to another wireless router, put it in its place and see if the laptops see the same networks they saw before. Be sure to unplug the old router so its not detected. If you only see one network then the problem is probably in the router. If there are still multiple networks on the questionable laptop then you have a more expensive problem (laptop). Good luck

Once you are connected I would suggest you secure your network. As Steve mentioned, your Router may be at risk. All routers come with a default password and its a simple task for folks to drive around the neighborhood and change peoples settings for "fun" using the default passwords because they were not changed. Next would be your network access, its a good idea to enable WEP to secure the network from unwanted eyes.

What has happened is you have connected to another network, a neighbors. Just determine which network is yours, go to each laptop and reconnect to the correct one. Rightclick on the wireless network icon in the systray and select the "view Available Wireless Network" options. Click the Disconnect button to get off the bad network, click to highlight the correct network and click the Connect button. Once all computers are on the same network YOUR network should work as it did before. Almost forgot...click on the Refresh Network List on both laptops. See if that straightens out the differences in available networks.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9231271/

Ask yourself this question. Why don't the Computer and Software stores in my area just buy from these same places, add 20-30% and resell them to the public? I bet they could sell 5 times as much as they do the Original package they are selling. Maybe because its illegal???