[:D][:D][:D]

XXX&OOO's

load 98

I've been testing XP Home (beta) at work for about a month now on two machines. Fairly stable with it's Win2k engine underneath.  But the candy-coating is kinda dorky.  I switched one back to classic colors.  One of them we made a "tri-boot" system for fun with 98, 2k and XP and it seems pretty stable too..haha!

At home for my Win2k machine, I'm leaning against putting XP on it.  And as for the 98 machine...I've thought it, but I'll have to see if my peripherals have XP drivers released.



Are you performing an "upgrade" installation over the top of WinME or a "clean" install of WinXP.  I highly, highly, HIGHLY recommend the latter.  It's more of a pain at first to backup all your data and reinstall your drivers and applications, but installing over the top of the other OS makes for a myriad of problems later.  And possibly even relates to the problem you're having now.

Plus WinME isn't exactly the most robust OS around...sure, it's pretty and has a few neat gadgets, but underneath it has a few quirks.

You may be doing it already..but if you're not...get all the data backed up, get all your hardware drivers ready, then strip that drive down and re-FDISK the puppy...change your CMOS settings to boot from the CD drive and put in the XP Pro CD and boot from it then install clean.

And as for deciding between FAT32 and NTFS file systems...NTFS gives quite a few advantages, especially where security, networking and sharing files is concerned.

Ok I did not install XP I bought a new computer with it already loaded. Now my question I can not get this thing to save any passwords whether or not I check the little box.

Any ideas?

More stable has not locked up once in 2 wks

Are you installing from a disk you burned?If you are you have to copy it to your hard drive first and then install.Some people were downloading it on a high speed connection because they have dialup at home.I heard about this quirk on screensavers.

brouhaha,

Xp needs to be cleanly installed in order to work properly. I highly recomend that you debug the drive. Do not use F-Disk. XP contains its own partitioning utility and will work much better than f-disk. Boot from a win98 boot disk and type the following ;

debug
-F 200 L1000 0
-A CS:100
xxxx:0100 MOV AX,301
xxxx:0103 MOV BX,200
xxxx:0106 MOV CX,1
xxxx:0109 MOV DX,80 (NOTE: Type 80 for the Main hard drive - HD 0, or type 81 for the Second hard drive - HD 1)
xxxx:010C INT 13
xxxx:010E INT 20
xxxx:0110 (Leave this line blank and press the key)
-G

you will get the message *Program Terminated Normaly* if you made no typo's.

This will not harm your drive. What it does is move the information about any previous file system that was on the drive to another part of the drive. This kind of fakes the system out and makes it think that your hard drive is blank. If you are using a scsi drive , you shoulf Low Level Format the drive using the SCSI disk utilities.

Now boot rom the XP cd and do the install. Robbie is right that NTFS is better than Fat32. It is also more recoverable.  There are alot of other factors that can  cause Xp to have issues. For example if you are installing on a highpoint ata controller using raid, or have your suspend mode set to S3. there is a host of things that could be going wrong.  If you would like , you may e-mail me for help.

I need to know what type of system you have, and what components you have attached to the system.

I'm guessing where it saves passwords for websites when you're on the Internet?

That's the AutoComplete feature that Microsoft implemented in Internet Explorer 5.x and later.  Netscape copied it for their version 6.

WinXP comes with Internet Explorer 6.0.  One of many ways to find the AutoComplete settings:

Open up a web page on the internet in Microsoft Internet Explorer
Click TOOLS at the top
Choose INTERNET OPTIONS
Click the CONTENT tab
Click the AUTOCOMPLETE button
On the AutoComplete window you have three boxes:

Web Addresses
Forms
User names and passwords on forms

Then there's the "Prompt me" box that only comes into play if you check the 3rd box.

Most people seem to like the "Web Addresses" option checked.  Some are ok with the "Forms" option checked.  The "User Names and Passwords" option runs hot and cold.  I'm guessing this is the box you want checked.

Then click OK and OK...close all internet windows, then restart Internet Explorer.  If you're using AOL, then you've got a middleman in the mix....(ugh)

Windows XP also has a version of "MSN Explorer" installed in the background which is very candyfied and has very few customizations available to the user.  I don't recommend it at all.

....*takes notes*....



Is that specific to that brand?  I've got an XP (beta) system running ok with a Promise ATA-66 RAID 0 setup (my them drives 'sho run fast!)

ohhhh-crap...

Geez, Brouhaha, I'm sorry, man. I'm guessing your drive is corrupted or messed up in some way though, as my dad used the [i]exact[/i] same CD's I sent you to upgrade his PC without a hitch(I used the burned CD for his box, not the original, to ensure that they worked).

He upgraded from '98SE though, which may be the critical difference.

Crap anyhow, I guess that doesn't help you though, even though it's a messed up ME box.

Crap.

Juggernaut

>>>Is that specific to that brand? I've got an XP (beta) system running ok with a Promise ATA-66 RAID 0 setup (my them drives 'sho run fast!)<<<


you should not have any issues with the promise controller. (thats what i had to get) i also think that they have some new drivers available for the promise.

Xp shipped...er is shipping [}:D] with some crap drivers for the highpoint controller. Several of my co-workers have had similar issues.

One of the great things about xp are the new commands they put in the recovery console. You may only think your drive is hosed , when all you need to do is run bootcfg. I found that in many cases only the boot area is getting corrupted. See article Q307654 on the microsoft site for more information about the recovery console for windows XP.

Via chipsets seem to be the ones having the odd issues. the intel 820/40/50 chipsets are also having some interesting issues , but they seem to be related to simple bios settings which can be fixed quickly. Basically ACPI in XP blows. I would HIGHLY recommend that you install using the STANDARD pc method and do without ACPI.

www.tweakxp.com has info for removing the MSN client from the machine. Do it.

Just my thoughts but if you have a partitioning program such as Partition Magic you may want to first divide your drive leaving your copy of WinMe and then do an install of XP on the other partition.
That way you should be able to selectively boot to whichever OS you want to run and can give XP a trial while still maintaining your PC's regular,known use through Me.

AFAIK, those instructions do not move anything. In fact, all they do is fry the boot sector, making the drive unreadable. If this is what you want, great. But you better be sure that's what you want before issuing the INT 13h write sector command on your hard drive.

Windows XP came installed on my HP Pavilion 7935. Pretty cool OS. Don't know shit about installing it though...

I had a similar problem when installing Windows 2000 once.  It turned out a memory chip in the machine was bad.  I wouldn't have thought that would have caused an error that looked like hard drive corruption.  It even passed the P.O.S.T.  Once it was removed everything was cool.

who says noone's running XP?  I got it at home... hehehehe... Guy next to me has it running here at work.

OOOOooo... the DEBUG script... If you want to kill everything on your harddrive unequivocally, do the debug!  Don't be scared by what Mattja said, I do the debug script routinely.  It's just really good for wiping EVERYTHING off of a harddrive, including the MBR, or boot sector viruses and stuff.  

You'll probably like XP much more than Me....
Me sucks ass, IMHPO (in my humble professional opinion)

$hit like this is my bread and butter.  I highly recommend either W2K pro or XP pro

I've seen that happen on W2K installs... you get weird Kernel errors... bad memory can cause that.  Had a customer call Microsoft cuz he was getting that error... then he called us, and figured out it was bad memory.... MS charged him about $300 for the time!  hehehe

From what I heard, when you boot into XP, it screws up any W2K load on the same drive or partition... that was what my brother in law told me, but he was running an older beta of XP.  (I trust his opinion.. he's a software engineer here at Dell)

[stick]

Ok.... Now I may not be as learned as some of the folks here about the AR15, but I'm learning quickly.

One thing I am go at is computers.  I own an ISP and Computer consulting company.  I may be able to help you here, but I ain't gonna take the time or space to explain XP and other OS's in the forum.  If you'd like to know more email [email protected].

OS's have different degrees of complex issues.  For home users the best in order are:
Win 98 (Second Addition)
Win 98
Win XP
Win ME
Win 95
Windows NT and 2000 are primarliy for businesses.  XP will be better once Microsoft works out the bugs, however.....  XP also has a lot of flaws besides poor code.  It has MAJOR security issues and problems.  Stay away from IE 6.0 as it completely sucks!

Just my .02.

By the way, if you want to wipe a drive for security reasons, this is not the way to do it. It will make the drive unbootable, but it doesn't wipe any of the data. This method does not prevent the boot sector from being rebuilt. But it's fine if you plan to install a new OS like you said.

Make sure you have the version of XP without the activation code within it. Most versions do including home and pro editions. You should be looking for the corporation edition which is available out on the newsgroups.

XP builds a hash key based upon an inventory scan including the disk drive. Older disk drives that don't report significant descriptions cannot be used for the hash. Thus you will get an error and XP refuses to be installed.

This is one of the main reasons why Microsoft has stated that XP can only be supported on computers manufactured since 2000.

I don't know if this is your problem but I'd thought I would throw this out.

For the record, XP is very stable as new releases go. It is great for notebook users who are using 2000 professional as it does a better job at power management and hardware configuration.

However, there are some caviats about XP. Even though it is based upon 2000, some applications will not purposefully work on XP that worked on 2000 pro. This mostly affects developers, for example, who use MS SQL Server. Microsoft wants you to buy the .NET version of XP (not out yet but is the server version).

You will find that moving to XP will cause you to buy newer versions of applications like virus scanning. So there is extra costs involved. On the plus side, IE 6 doesn't suffer from the same security breaches as IE 5 does with the CODE RED I, II, and NIMBA virus. It is much more secure. The only downfall is Java which Microsoft is not support out of the box to fix the legal tangle with Sun (another $$$ company).

One more thing I should mention: for those with newer notebooks, be very careful of using NT, 2000 server, advance server, backoffice, and other 2000 server variants.

This is because heat management in the new notebooks has been very marginalized by the manufacturers. They are relying on some operating system features to help lower the heat. These features are not present in the operating systems listed above. You can risk overheating and damage your notebook.

umm, I'll have to disagree with you.   Thermal cooling is provided on the hardware level, and is operated by the system's BIOS.  Newer portables should be able to handle any operating system as far as heat goes.

but then, why the heck would someone want to run a 'server' product on a notebook??  To the people that do that, we say "that's an unsupported configuration"

(the reason I know, I'm a technician on the Early Life Support team at Dell Computers, supporting our portables)

Yes, it's the full version.

I'm sorry that your HD is all screwed up now, even if it was an ME issue.

Once you've formatted your hard drive, set your bios settings to boot from your CD-rom drive, and then restart with the XP CD in the drive. Should be automatic from there.

Again, I feel like it's partly my responsibility, even if it's not my fault(it went great on our two PC's), and so if you have any other questions, please post them or email me. I used to do this for a living, so I can most likely help you out.

Still a shame you have to blow away your hard drive, though. I don't see a better alternative.

Juggernaut

NT, 2000, and XP operating send hlt commands to the processor which help it with cooling. That why people who overclock with 95,98 or variants use Software such as cpuidle/rain ect. to send the hlt command. It will drop your cpu temp about 10 degrees.

Clinth
700p3@1100

That is true, but your system will not burn up running any of the server products.  Like I mentioned, the BIOS will control the thermal cooling solution built in.  Most of our newer machines will provide adaquate cooling for up to 2GHz processors, which don't even exist in portables.  

LOL...the first 3 posts just reek of LUV!