Farewell, 98

Farewell, 98
I dual-boot Windows 98 on the C drive and Windows XP Pro on the D drive. Now I don’t want to use Windows 98, but since it is on a primary partition, whenever I format it, Windows XP fails to load since it is on the secondary partition. How can I format Windows 98 without losing the existing Windows XP? I have a Ghost backup (Symantec Ghost) of both partitions.
Darshan Wadikar

When you formatted your C drive, Windows 98 was removed, but along with it went the boot.ini file, which is required for Windows to boot properly. We suggest you perform a repair of your OS. To do this, boot your computer using your Windows XP CD, and when presented with the options called “To install Windows XP, press enter” and “To repair your computer using the recovery console, press R”, press [Enter]. When you’re presented with the list of installed OSes, select Windows XP and press [R] to repair it, and follow the on-screen instructions. This should fix the boot.ini file, and you should be able to use your Windows XP installation as it is.

Should you choose to use your Ghost backup and restore the drive to its original state, we suggest restoring only the backup for the C drive. You can then boot into Windows XP and delete the Windows folder (the folder where Windows 98 is installed) from the C drive, and remove the Windows 98 entry from boot.ini located in the root of the C drive, using Notepad. This entry should look something like “multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)WINDOWS=”Microsoft Windows 98″ /Execute”

Memory Doesn’t Serve
Whenever I play Gun for five to 10 minutes, it crashes and gives an error saying “virtual memory too low.” My computer is a Pentium 4 with an Intel original motherboard, and 256 MB of DDR RAM, with Windows XP SP2. What can I do?
Prajkt Yeole

It seems the partition where the virtual memory is stored has run out of space or, like the error says, your virtual memory is set to too low a value. You can change the partition where the virtual memory is stored, and/or increase the amount of virtual memory. Go through the following steps.

• In the Control Panel, double-click on the System icon. Next, click the Advanced tab and click the Settings button under Performance at the top.

• Again, click on the Advanced tab and click Change.

• You will be presented with a list of drives at the top with the swap file allocated to them shown on the left.

• Highlight a drive where virtual memory is not already allocated, and click on the Custom Size radio button.

• Enter an amount that is at least twice the amount of your RAM. In this case it would be 512 MB, though if you wish, you can enter more. After you are done allocating the swap file to a partition, click Set.

• Next, highlight one of the drives where virtual memory was already allocated, click “No Paging File”, then click Set, and finally OK to apply changes. Restart.

Damn Drivers!
I have an HP m7382in Media Center PC with a Pentium D 2.8 GHz, 1 GB DDR2 RAM (533 MHz), and an ATI Radeon X1300 Pro graphics card. Upon starting Windows, I get this error:
“Title bar contents: ATI video bios poller client: ATI2evxx.exe-Application Error
The instruction at “0x7c910f29” referenced memory at “”0x00000000″. The memory could not be read.”
Why does the error appear, and what can I do?
Ashish Masurekar

Your problem is directly related to ATI’s drivers. To troubleshoot your problem, you can try the following:

• Use Driver Cleaner from www.drivercleaner .net and eliminate all traces of your previous ATI drivers. Then download the latest drivers from http://www.ati.com/support/driver. html and install them.

• If the latest drivers don’t work, try using an earlier version of the ATI drivers. You’ll find these too at ATI’s Web site.

• ATI2evxx.exe is a service that stays in the system tray and runs in the background. Its main function is to serve as a client program, which when activated allows you to use hotkeys for rotating displays, changing resolutions, etc. Your ATI drivers will function if you disable it; this will also rid you of the error message. You can disable ATI2evxx if you don’t use it. You can do this by typing in “services.msc” at a command prompt and clicking OK. Scroll through the list to find the ATI Hotkey Poller service, double-click on it, and select “Disabled” under “Startup Type”. This should remove the service from being executed, and ultimately, the error itself.

Exploring Processes
I am running Windows XP SP2. My problem is that when my PC boots up, Explorer doesn’t start, although it’s there in the process list. Moreover, when I kill the Explorer process and start a new one it starts fine. What’s up?
Sundeep Baghel

Your problem is most likely the cause of a malfunctioning process at startup. You need to find out which one. To do this, run “msconfig” and click on the Startup tab. Here disable and enable processes one by one and restart your PC after each to pin down the culprit, after which you can disable it.
If you can’t find the program that’s causing the error, we’d suggest you perform a repair of your OS: boot your computer using the Windows XP CD, and when presented with the options called “To install Windows XP, press enter” and “To repair your computer the recovery console, press R”, press [Enter] to perform a new install. When presented with a list of installed OSes, select your Windows XP installation and press [R] to repair it. All your critical files should be now repaired / replaced, and explorer.exe should no longer have problems.
If you still face the problem, it is likely a problem caused by a virus, in which case you should update your anti-virus to the latest version and virus definitions and run a thorough scan.

Stats Lie!
I bought a new Compaq Presario SR1732IL two months ago, which has a Seagate ST3160023AS HDD. When I installed HDDLife Pro 2.0.50, it informed me that my hard disk health and performance are 56%. However, this changes every day-sometimes the health and performance are 54%, sometimes 60%, and sometimes 61%. Is HDDLife displaying correct information?
Abhinav Jangda

HDDLife’s health and performance bar aren’t spot-on accurate. The bar is only a rough estimate of your HDD’s performance / life, and can vary.

I Made A Boo-Boo…
About three weeks ago, my computer started acting weird because of a file I downloaded from the Net. Now from one week ago, a lot of ads have started coming randomly when I log on to the Net. I have used spyware removers but to no avail. Sometimes Net activity continues even when the computer is idle. Please tell me what I should do.
Kunal Singh

Always immediately virus-scan any file you download from the Internet! Anyway, now, boot up in Safe Mode With Networking and run updates on all your spyware removers (Spybot S&D recommended; www.spybot.info) and anti-virus software. Again restart in Safe Mode, but this time, don’t choose the Networking option. Run Spybot S&D, perform a full scan, and clean out any entries that come up. Don’t forget to use the “Immunize” option on the left hand panel. After the scan is complete, perform another scan using your anti-virus. Finally, run HijackThis (http:// www.merijn.org/), perform a scan, and clean out any suspicious entries from the scan.
In the future, it’s best to use a firewall like ZoneAlarm, which, in addition to keeping a tight check on your downloads, also gives you the option to block ads or unwanted traffic.

Startup Woes Again
I use Windows XP Pro SP2. The problem is that Scandisk does not load at bootup when the computer is switched off without shutting down properly. I think this problem started after I installed Autopatcher XP. What do I do?
Jayakrishnan

In Windows XP, “ChkDsk” (Check Disk) is started if your computer shuts down improperly. You can disable this option to gain a few seconds while booting, or, in your case, you can enable it. To enable ChkDsk upon booting your PC, at a command prompt, use one of the following commands to enable or disable disk checking at startup:

chkntfs /D
(Default; this will check all volumes upon bootup when Windows is shut down improperly.)
chkntfs /C [volume]
(This will instruct ChkDsk to check only the volume you specify, which in this case is the [volume] variable. Replace it with the drive you want to be scanned, for example, chkntfs /C E:. You can then add more volumes to be checked by re-entering the command with the drive letter of your choice.
chkntfs /X [volume]

This will exclude a drive from being checked by check disk. Replace [volume] with the letter of the drive you don’t want to be scanned. You can enter this command multiple times with different drive letters to exclude them from being checked.
the /D switch will set all options to default thus checking all drives following an improper shutdown

Reading, Writing, And NTFS
How do I create a bootable CD that will allow me to read from and write to NTFS partitions?
Nilesh Pawar

You can use BartPE to create a bootable disc from your original Windows XP / 2003 CDs that will read from and write onto NTFS partitions. Get BartPE from www.nu2.nu/pebuilder, start it, and make it search for the source install files by clicking on Source and then on Search.
Your Windows CD should be in the CD-ROM drive when you’re searching.  Then select to create an ISO file. After the ISO file is created, you can burn it on an empty CD using a CD recording software like Nero.

Seeing Double
I am running Windows XP on an AMD 3000 (939), MSI RS480M2 IL motherboard, 512 MB RAM, and an 80 GB hard disk. I have installed the graphics drivers that accompany the motherboard (display driver version 8.071 and control panel version 6.14). My problem is, I’ve connected a TV to the composite-out of the motherboard, and the system shows the TV as connected, but I am not able to get a display on the monitor and the TV at the same time (what the manual refers to as cloning of displays). I’ve tried using the latest Catalyst drivers but the problem persists. Please help. Also, how can I use the Extended Displays option?
Abhishek Mathur

Try the following steps to troubleshoot your problem:

• In the BIOS, go to Advanced Chipset Features and change the TV standard option. Try all the options if you are unsure of which standard to use.

• Again in the BIOS, under Advanced Chipset Features, set the Video Display Devices option to “CRT force, TV force”. This will force the computer to also use the S-video connector.

• The cable you’re using might be faulty; try a different one.

The Extended Display feature, called SurroundView in ATI’s case, will allow you to work across multiple displays, allowing you to spread your windows between them. You will need an additional video card for using your second display; look in the manual for a list of supported display cards for using the Expended Displays feature. After you have a video card in addition to your onboard video, you will also need to enable onboard graphics in the BIOS. Do so by going to the BIOS, and in Advanced Chipset Features, set the internal video mode to UMA. Move further down to find an option called “UMA frame buffer size”; change this to at least 64 MB. Next, move back to the main BIOS screen and set “Init Display first” to PCI-E, enable the SurroundView option just a notch below, and restart your computer after saving the changes. You can then use SurroundView by going to the Settings tab in the display properties in Control Panel.

A Bouquet Of Questions!
I have Fedora Core 4 installed. The problem is that I can’t mount other drives in it. I have seven drives; Fedora is installed on drive F. Drives C, D, and E are on the first hard disk (40 GB, FAT32), while the other three drives, I, J, and K are on the second hard disk (80 GB, all NTFS).
I’ve read about commands for mounting drives in other Linux editions, but the problem is that I couldn’t find where exactly to enter those specific commands.
In Windows XP SP2, I’ve got Winamp 2.91. The problem here is that it doesn’t save the song it was playing before being closed. That is, it starts playing from the very first song of the playlist. On enabling the enqueue option as the default, it remembers the song but copies the playlist, so I get the same playlist twice. What can I do?
I couldn’t convert my E drive to NTFS. It gives an error and says I should run checkdisk. But this doesn’t solve the problem.
Finally, could I run Max Payne on Windows XP though it is mentioned in the Readme that the game is not thoroughly checked on XP? It crashes after a stage completes and when the next one loads. Changing compatibility mode doesn’t help!
Amit Kumar

• For mounting your drives in Fedora Core 4, just open a command line terminal and type in the commands you’ve already read about.

• It’s not possible in this version of Winamp to remember the last played song. There happen to be software like Neutrius which automatically play the last song upon starting.

• Make sure you use the /F switch for fixing when using chkdsk; the syntax would be chkdsk E: /F

• Max Payne does not officially support Windows XP. However, you can try to improve things by setting the compatibility mode to Windows 2000 or upgrading Max Payne to the latest version (1.5).