Doctors prescription

[ljung37]

:( "You look terrible,what's wrong?" -I've been to the doctor.
He says I've got something called Windows98.
"Oh, and what did he give you?" -Unfortunately, he said there was nothing he could do. He said my last chance was to seek help at the
PC Guide. And that's where I'm going. So you know, if this is the last time we see each other... Thanks for everything and good by.
"Good bye......... Good luck!

:p Well here I am.
I've got some problems with Windows98/Explorer.
First I thought it was my ACDSee program, because it happened after I had batch-converted filenames. I sometimes had error-messages saying I did not have enough memory.
The strange thing is that nothing happened when I got through the same image-files in the viewer. That is I opened all of them as thumbnails,
80 folders containing over 9000 files, in total 7,0 Gb.
ACDSee support said it must be Windows.
I tried various settings,checked memory(256Mb). System says mostly I have over 80% free resourses.I've looked through BIOS settings,
I have no clue what's wrong. And all ather programs works OK.

But today I found some strange behaviour in Explorer.
If I open Explorer and just click through a number of folders to view the files(in a list),I can do this for only 6-7 minutes or so. After that the file-icons suddenly change, and I know I'm in trouble.
If I close and try to reopen Explorer I get a Red warning message and I can't open it. If I try to open the programs-folder, the same thing happens. I can only use Control/Alt-Delete to restart. And besides
all menues are corrupted, nearly unreadable.

I'm beginning to suspect TweakUI wich I have dabbled with.
But I can't prove that.

It looks like I have to go through a reinstall of Windows again.
So I need some advice.
My first(primary)disk is a 20Gb,5400rpm. Second disk is a 30Gb,7200rpm(master on secondary channel). I plan to install Win98 on the 30Gb disk. But on that I have about 11Gb of copied backup image-files and zipped programs. The question is if that is a problem? I suppose it's preferred to install on an empty disk, but will it cause any problems? I want to avoid the time it takes to reload all the files back if I remove them. Another thing, do I need to remove the Windows98 OS from the main disk before, or can I do that afterwards.
I will of course change the cabling and BIOS and set the 30Gb disk as main.
I hope I have explained things clearly enough.
So what do you prescribe?

[Budfred]

I would use partitioning software to make a partition on the 30gig disk to store your files and then move them there. You will need to leave the first partition to install Win98 or it will run slow if you try to install it after the stored files on an unpartitioned disk. Once you have done this, I would move the 30gig to the 1st IDE channel as Master and reboot with your Win98 Startup disk. Leave the 20 gig out for the moment. Install Win98 on the primary partition which should be C:. If it isn't C:, don't bother because it won't work. Once this is done, put the 20 gig back in as Primary Slave and do whatever you want with the Windoze on it.

That said, wait until someone else comes along to say this is ok, since I am an amateur.:D

Good luck,
Budfred

[ljung37]

Thanks Budfred
Since no one has come forward and said it's OK, I see that as
no one has anything to say against your advice.

But that doesn't mean that I will follow your ideas(I'm sorry).
I don't want to have any partitions. It may only complicate things later on.

I have decided to just delete what I have on the 30Gb disk and
reformat and do a clean install. It will be some work, but I'm in no hurry. Just want to get things right, and hopefully the problems
I have now will disappear.

But no doubt there will be other problems instead, that is as sure as Amen in church! :rolleyes:

[Budfred]

Actually a reformat and clean install is a really good way to go, I just didn't think that is what you wanted to do. I would still consider partitioning though. When you go to defrag or scan a 30 gig disk, you will be amazed at how long it takes. If you don't mind leaving it tied up for 12 hours or so, you can leave it as one big disk.:p

Budfred:)

[Sylvander]

I'm with Budfred here.

You should enable a 32 bit File Allocation Table [32-bit FAT] to reduce the cluster size and so reduce "slack" [wasted space] on the HDD.
That's like having your milk delivered in small containers which are all full rather than huge containers only part filled.
Every file wastes [on average] half a cluster, so to calculate the total wasted space you multiply the cluster size by the number of files stored. I once used 32-bit clusters and now use 4-bit on the C: drive and 16-bit on the E: drive [just guessed that and did it today].

The downside of making better use of space [if you don't use smaller partitions] is the hours it takes to defragment [and also the space (2MB or so) used by the FAT itself].

Small files should be kept in small partitions with small clusters.
Big files should be kept in big partitions with big clusters.
A bit like:
Domestic milk users should buy their milk in small cartons from small vans.
Industrial milk users should buy their milk in huge cartons from huge lorries.

So keep your C: drive as small as possible and put those wave files in a much bigger partition with bigger clusters.

You need to back up your C: drive regularly and the bigger it is the longer it takes and the more backup space [CD's perhaps] it will need.
It then becomes so much hassle you don't do it.
When your PC won't boot, it's the C: drive that needs restored.

Read this
http://www.oakroadsystems.com/tech/hd-partn.htm

[rio_bugarin]

I agree too with the two. 30 gb is quite large to defrag. I even had my 4.3 gb partiotioned. Imagine that in defrag. hehe. That 4.3 is connect to a celeron 900 with 128 ram. C:\ is about 900Mb. Then imagine 30 gb in defrag.You will be tempted to cancel that espcially if you have nothing to do for a while.


I miss that speed!

[ljung37]

I'm afraid you are too late guys. :) I've already installed. And I am not going through that process again, at least not right away.
I had some unexpected problems. When trying to install Win98 I got the message saying "Windows can not be installed. There is already an OS installed on this disk". Strange. It must be some information in BIOS.
How else can it know I have Windows on another disk, wich wasn't even connected? At last I somehow arrived at a dos-prompt where I could write C:\Windows98\install. After that it worked.

And then I realised that I could not uninstall Windows from my 20Gb disk. I couldn't figure out how to remove it. So I wiped that disk clean. And will be reloading the backup-files later.

The reason I did not want any partitions is that I can't know how much space I need. I have already used 12Gb of the 30. And I may need space for recording video. But the best thing would be to have a separate disk for that of course.
I suppose it's not possible to partition afterwards without a program like Partition Magic. Or is it?

And yes, the problem with Defragging, I hadn't thought of that.
But isn't it possible to make a pause? I seem to remember that last time I defragged my 20Gb, I had to stop, and when I resumed it soon jumped back to where I had stopped. Have you tried that?

Another thing I did last night was install a Promise U100 Controller card. But I removed it again. I'll probably sell it. Maybe I did something wrong. When I tried to test it with HDTach,I got a blue screen. Instead I compared by simply loading a number of big image files, and the difference was only 10%. And besides I could not get the cable from the secondary connector to reach the the sec.disk. I would have to buy longer 80-cables!

Another thing I discovered was that my 5400 Samsung Spinpoint is nearly as fast as the 7200 Maxtor. Testing loading 850Mb of image-files in ACDSee, Maxtor took 35sec. Samsung took 39sec. That Samsung is quick.

In a couple of years it will be time for upgrading anyway.
Faster processor(I have now CPU 850MHz). New disks. Perhaps the new serial interface will be ready?

:cool:

[Sylvander]

On Monday I decided to re-arrange my partitions.

I was running out of space on my E: partition and had been forced to put some wave files on the C: partition where there was still some room.
I didn't want to back up these wave files onto CD-RW disks using "Simple Backup" because that would use so many disks.
So I put them in a folder named "Backup Not Necessary" and excluded them from the backup list.
That meant that if something went wrong and I needed to re-format the C: partition and restore it, these files would be lost.
NOT GOOD!

So I moved the wave files back to the E: drive [I deleted enough to make room], Backed up the C: drive, then backed up the E: drive separately.
Now I used Samsung's version of "Ontrack Disk Manager" to re-partition the [Primary Master] Samsung HDD [Disk 1] into a 2GB "Active Primary Partition" and an 8GB "Logical Partition" in an "Extended Partition".
It's a pretty routine procedure. Just follow the instructions.
It allowed me to make custom cluster sizes, so I made the C: partition 4kB and the E: partition 16 kB.
Then I restored the backups.
It took about 10 minutes to restore a CD-RW disk full of data.
My C: drive needed 2 disks and the E: drive needed 11.
Say half an hour to restore the C: drive and 2 hours to restore the E: drive.