service pack 3 problems

[sidewaysid]

Recently my oldish PC gave up on me I did try to revive it but wasn't worth it, seeing as i only use for doing things like E Bay, motorcycle forums, weather forcasts,booking hotels and general browsing, I decided to purchase what was named the Value PC from Aria PC in Manchester, it seems good enough for my needs, it's a 2800 gig celerion intel, on an upgradeable MSI board. When i got it home i couldn't find my copy of windows Xp, it must be 6 years since i installed it so it has vanished, my mate told me not to worry he could download a copy..i installed his dodgy copy and had loads of trouble, I could not get any sound, i purchased a sound card thinking it would work...oh no it got worse, a RUNDLL error would not leave my screen....my mate said ok he would download another copy ????? this next version had service pack 3, I formatted and re installed (all the time thinking i should go and buy a copy) this time I could not get my PC to connect to my broadband whatever i did, and each time I installed my router/modem the pc rebouted.

I am at my wits end but someone has just told me that my problem is the dodgy XP and the service pack 3 as well.

Does anyone have any view on this ? I'm going to purchase Windows XP in the morning (don't want vista) if this does not solve the problem I'm getting a rope out.

[Paul Komski]

If you use pirated warez you asking for huge problems. If you have the product key for the original XP that's all you need. Just borrow a good installation CD from a friend and use your own product key. Even if you buy a new installation CD you could try using the original key and you would have the new key and disk to use in the future. Valid XP CDROMs are likely to remain in demand for some time to come.

[Sylvander]

1. The release of the latest official version of the basic Puppy Linux is version 4.1.2 (http://www.puppylinux.org/downloads/official-releases/puppy-linux-412).

2. BoxPup is an elegant derivative puplet based on Puppy 4.1.0 which is worth a try (http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=35767).
And...
The puppy-410-boxpup.iso and puppy-410-boxpup_md5sum.txt files can be got here (http://www.puppylinux.ca/tpp/NOP/).

3. Puppy is [is totally FREE, and] designed and made for older hardware [lean, mean, fast], but works well on new hardware too.
Hence it could not only revive your older hardware, but also get you working on your new system until you figure out a solution to using Windows [XP] installed to your internal HDD.

4. There are all kinds of ways to use Puppy.
(a) From a "live" CD.
(b) You can save sessions [changes in configuration, installed packages] to a file [of a size you choose] on some storage location.
I like to save to a USB Flash Drive, but a partition on an internal or USB HDD is OK.
FAT partitions are best, but you can save to NTFS.
(c) You can install if you like.
There are different levels of install.
I installed Puppy 4.1.1 to a FAT[16] partition on a 1 GB Flash Drive [no swap file].
Then I removed the Flash Drive and saved BoxPup sessions to the root of my internal F: partition. :)
Puppy loads itself totally into RAM [if it can], so has no need to read any storage location during a session.

5. You will probably find as I did that Puppy is REALLY EASY to get up and running.
(a) You burn the ISO to a CD-RW [I used ImgBurn]...
(b) Boot the live CD...
During boot it asks you to specify a mouse...
Then the type of keyboard...
Then the display program [Xorg]...
Then the screen area and color depth [1024x768x24bit?]
Then you're into the desktop.
(c) Once into the desktop...
In Puppy 4.1 you click the "Connect" icon to detect and configure [quick and easy on my system].
In BoxPup you right-click the desktop and use the menus to choose/run the connection wizard.
(d) Puppy 4.1 uses the "SeaMonkey" web-browser [not fancy, but works well].
BoxPup uses "Opera" as the default, but "Firefox" [my favourite] is included in the "PetGet Package Manager" list in the upper window.

6. I advise you to improve on the basic default file browser by installing [within Puppy of course]:
THIS (http://dotpups.de/puppy4/dotpups/Multimedia/Rezound/fox-1.6.31.pet), then X File Explorer [Xfe] (http://dotpups.de/dotpups/File_Managers/xfe-1.19.2.pet).
This has little icons you can click to display any combination of...
The tree view at the left and 2 folder panes at the right.

7. It's a MUST to try at the very least. :)