In article znr1111842747k@trad, Mike Rivers wrote:

But I heard that Apple is considering making a two-button mouse. So
there may be hope for the Mac accessory-shy.

MacAlly has made 3-button mice for Apples for years, from old ADB ones on
up to modern USB ones. And on the modern USB Macs you can pretty much
just plug any USB mouse in and have it work.

I have a MacAlly on the OS X box at work. Makes using X a whole lot easier,
for one thing.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

S O'Neill wrote:
Alexander P. Barkey wrote:

Just the fact that every program you load cannot be completely
removed from memory what means that every program you start brings
you closer to reboot your pc is a fact that cannot be tolerated when
you do work on it.


Not true


Yes, true. It's known, u can read it in every pc magazine : Microsoft
Windows cannot unload all DLLs it loaded by starting a program. So you
open up a program and close it. There will be trash in your memory that
sits there until you reboot. Google it...


Hell, yes. A DLL is *supposed* to be unloaded after the last process
that uses it is unloaded. And that doesn't always happen. I've seen
this firsthand: debugging ONE DLL that's only used by ONE program, I've
had to reboot in order to see my changes after I'd modified the DLL.

This is the reason why "reboot" is the first thing any tech support
tells you to do. Well, that and it kills a lot of TS time.

Excel is notorious for memory leaks. Even after it's unloaded, though,
windoze isn't smart enough to reclaim that memory. Therefore, weekly
"maintenance reboots" are sometimes prescribed.


This is a result of bad application (or middleware) coding. Macs are
starting to see similar weirdnesses now (thanks to their very complex OS
environment and the interaction of multiple vendors' components using
multiple APIs.)

Bottom line: Big, complicated general purpose operating systems are
suboptimal for realtime processing.

Are you just trying to take up extra space at Google? Some reason you
can't trim quotes? Is that harder than working a DAW?

Did it ever occur to you that I don't give a damn about you and your dialup
connection or the fact that you have to wait an extra tenth of a second to
see my posts, every one of which you seem intent upon reading and replying
to w/ some asinine BS. I have better things to do than trim and top-quote
every message I post....if you don't like it, place me on your killfilter,
or just get a life and stop playing netnanny.

--

Jonny Durango

"Patrick was a saint. I ain't."

http://www.jdurango.com



"hank alrich" wrote in message
.. .
x-no archive: yes


Jonny Durango wrote:

Look, my basic argument is that in my humble, subjective, biased opinion

Are you just trying to take up extra space at Google? Some reason you
can't trim quotes? Is that harder than working a DAW?

--
ha

S O'Neill wrote:
Hell, yes. A DLL is *supposed* to be unloaded after the last process
that uses it is unloaded. And that doesn't always happen. I've seen
this firsthand: debugging ONE DLL that's only used by ONE program, I've
had to reboot in order to see my changes after I'd modified the DLL.

Hmm, here's an interesting article on that subject:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q96312/

According to that article, the problem comes about because
Windows doesn't keep track of how many times an application
has called LoadLibrary(), so that if the app fails to make
a corresponding FreeLibrary() call for every LoadLibrary()
call it has made (possibly due to crashing), then Windows
doesn't know the library isn't in use and won't unload it.

It's probably that way for API compatibility reasons (some
software that intentionally leaves a library open for some
reason), but it's still dumb.

- Logan

In article writes:

Did it ever occur to you that I don't give a damn about you and your dialup
connection or the fact that you have to wait an extra tenth of a second to
see my posts

Did it ever occur you to that nobody needs to give a damn about your
posts, or help you out, or even add fuel to your fights?

Why can't you play nice?

--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

"Jonny Durango" wrote:

Did it ever occur to you that I don't give a damn about you and your
dialup connection or the fact that you have to wait an extra tenth of
a second to see my posts, every one of which you seem intent upon
reading and replying to w/ some asinine BS. I have better things to
do than trim and top-quote every message I post....if you don't like
it, place me on your killfilter, or just get a life and stop playing
netnanny.


I'm gonna assume that you were just in a bad mood when you wrote that
and not plonk you yet, because up until now I had the impression that
you are NOT an asshole.

It's common courtesy to trim irrelevant parts of previous posts. If you
don't wanna, that's your prerogative, but be aware that it IS considered
rude by others, and many people WILL simply disregard your posts in the
future.

If you're okay with that, never mind. Otherwise, maybe take a minute to
tidy up before clicking "send."

--
"It CAN'T be too loud... some of the red lights aren't even on yet!"
- Lorin David Schultz
in the control room
making even bad news sound good

(Remove spamblock to reply)

Logan Shaw wrote:
S O'Neill wrote:

Hell, yes. A DLL is *supposed* to be unloaded after the last process
that uses it is unloaded. And that doesn't always happen. I've seen
this firsthand: debugging ONE DLL that's only used by ONE program,
I've had to reboot in order to see my changes after I'd modified the DLL.


Hmm, here's an interesting article on that subject:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q96312/

According to that article, the problem comes about because
Windows doesn't keep track of how many times an application
has called LoadLibrary(), so that if the app fails to make
a corresponding FreeLibrary() call for every LoadLibrary()
call it has made (possibly due to crashing), then Windows
doesn't know the library isn't in use and won't unload it.


It was loaded statically, so I guess it was Windows that didn't call
Free...; I wasn't using LoadLibrary for this one. Therefore it was
called once on startup and may not get called after a crash or exiting
via a debugger; this must happen pretty often.

But where doesn't it unload from? It's loaded into the process' address
space. When the process terminates, everything in that space should go
buh-bye. Do you mean its image is left in RAM, or mapped, to be linked
into some unsuspecting new process that loads it? And what if it's
still there after a bug that may have left it unstable? And why is the
compiler able to overwrite a such a file when it's ostensibly "in use"?

Ah, well, whatever. I don't have that problem anymore.



It's probably that way for API compatibility reasons (some
software that intentionally leaves a library open for some
reason), but it's still dumb.

- Logan

Hello Lorin,

"Lorin David Schultz" wrote:

wrote:
Despite many of my musical friends taunting me about staying with a
PC for audio production, I have stuck with them for several years. I
am, however, exhausted with my Dell 2.4 GHz Inspiron laptop with XP
pro
snip


I have a Sony Vaio laptop with a 2.4GHz P4 and only 512MB RAM that's
working tickety-boo with my Mbox.

Is "tickety-boo" good?

Thanks,
Andy

Sorry Hank, I'm partially to blame for not trimming past posts, too.
I'll beginneth noweth...

Cheers,
Trevor de Clercq

hank alrich wrote:

Are you just trying to take up extra space at Google? Some reason you
can't trim quotes? Is that harder than working a DAW?

--
ha

Lorin,

Forgive me, I mis-spoke in the heat of the exchange. When I said
ProTools has been "bug free" I really meant "has not been buggy". They
may seem like the same statement, but they are not.

Obviously, ProTools has bugs. Most (if not all) are well documented in
the ReadMe files with each software release as well as the Answerbase
section on the Digi website.

"Being buggy" implies that solid, know-working functionality will just
randomly not work for some random unknown reason. ProTools, in my not
limited but of course not unlimited experience has not "been buggy".

The distinction I'm trying to draw is that saying a piece of software
"is buggy" implies a slanderous and problematic nature of the software
more than some other piece of software. ProTools I find is far more
stable than most pieces of software I use. Therefore, it may still have
bugs, but it is relatively not a buggy application at all. Should I
call ProTools buggy? If so, then every piece of software I've used has
been "buggy". And at that point, there is no real way to truly
differentiate the software that actually IS buggy and the software that
actually is stable.

I should have tempered my original statement, but my position remains
essentially the same.

Cheers,
Trevor de Clercq

Lorin David Schultz wrote:
"Trevor de Clercq" wrote:

I've run ProTools on Macs for 5 years now and can say it's been bug
free.



Either you have been REALLY lucky, or you have a VERY limited definition
of "bug."

Our experience with Pro Tools on the Mac is no better or worse than the
same stuff with Windows (different, but not better or worse), but I
wouldn't call it "bug free." We've had the occasional "the Mac crashes
when I do this / then don't do that" with Digi tech support.

Speaking of the subject, I'm starting to get disgusted with my laptop.
It's getting slower and slower to boot, it seems to be getting slower
and slower to start applications, and a couple of times in the past
month it's left me a message that a serious error has occurred ("If
this is the first time you see this message, restart your computer. .
.. .") and leaves a cryptic message about a memory dump. It doesn't
even tell me where that memory dump is even if it would actually help
me to look at it.

The computer (running XP Home) is on just about all the time. It could
be that the disk drive is getting a bit ill. I do de-frag now and
then, I run Zone Alarm, I check for viruses with AVG (never found one)
and for ad/spyware with AdAware, which never turns up anything more
serious than a "data miner."

Much of the time, this computer is streaming audio from a radio
station on the net, via Winamp. I'm wondering if this is leaving some
garbage behind that a little housekeeping could remove.

All those tempted to recommend "a clean install of Windows" need not
apply. Other suggestions are welcome and might even get tried if
they're not too destructive.

On another sour note, is there a good way yet to "clone" a replacement
laptop disk drive, in the even that it looks like this is the culprit?
I've done that on desktop computers by just connecting the new drive
to a spare IDE port on the computer and using the utility that comes
with the new drive (MaxBlast is one) to copy everything from the old
drive to the new drive. Do laptops have a "second IDE port?"


--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

Mike Rivers wrote:
Speaking of the subject, I'm starting to get disgusted with my laptop.
It's getting slower and slower to boot, it seems to be getting slower
and slower to start applications, and a couple of times in the past
month it's left me a message that a serious error has occurred ("If
this is the first time you see this message, restart your computer. .
. .") and leaves a cryptic message about a memory dump. It doesn't
even tell me where that memory dump is even if it would actually help
me to look at it.

The computer (running XP Home) is on just about all the time. It could
be that the disk drive is getting a bit ill. I do de-frag now and
then, I run Zone Alarm, I check for viruses with AVG (never found one)
and for ad/spyware with AdAware, which never turns up anything more
serious than a "data miner."

Much of the time, this computer is streaming audio from a radio
station on the net, via Winamp. I'm wondering if this is leaving some
garbage behind that a little housekeeping could remove.

All those tempted to recommend "a clean install of Windows" need not
apply. Other suggestions are welcome and might even get tried if
they're not too destructive.

On another sour note, is there a good way yet to "clone" a replacement
laptop disk drive, in the even that it looks like this is the culprit?
I've done that on desktop computers by just connecting the new drive
to a spare IDE port on the computer and using the utility that comes
with the new drive (MaxBlast is one) to copy everything from the old
drive to the new drive. Do laptops have a "second IDE port?"

I archive everything to a ext usb hd when I reinstal a OS
get a clean fast puter but everything is right there on the Iomega if I
need it
G

Mike Rivers wrote:



On another sour note, is there a good way yet to "clone" a replacement
laptop disk drive, in the even that it looks like this is the culprit?



Norton "Ghost".

"Mike Rivers" wrote:

[...] Other suggestions are welcome and might even get tried if
they're not too destructive.



You've probably already done this rather rudimentary task, but just in
case you haven't: In My Computer, Right-click on the C: drive. Select
properties. The window that appears includes a button for "Disk
Cleanup." It often gets rid of some clutter. The other tabs include
some other housekeeping options, including defrag.

Also check the startup folder in your start menu. Some software (like
MS Office) places "helper" apps there. They speed up starting the app
when you use it, but they slow down starting the computer. They also
use up system resources even when you're not using the app they "help."
They're not necessary and can be removed from the start menu.

The one and only exception I ever found to that rule was an app that
installed with the driver for a Contour Shuttle controller. The
controller wouldn't work without the "helper" app. I've never heard of
another case like that though, ever.

The last place to look is the startup tab of the system configuration
utility. Select "Run" from the Start Menu and type "msconfig" Then
select the "Startup" tab. Many of the items that appear there are also
just "helper" apps that are actually more disruptive than helpful.
Uncheck anything you don't absolutely need. How do you know what you
don't need? I just Googled any listings I didn't recognize and was able
to find explanations for all but one of the items on my list. The one I
couldn't find I left alone.

--
"It CAN'T be too loud... some of the red lights aren't even on yet!"
- Lorin David Schultz
in the control room
making even bad news sound good

(Remove spamblock to reply)

"Mike Rivers" wrote in message
news:znr1112110295k@trad

Speaking of the subject, I'm starting to get disgusted with my
laptop.
It's getting slower and slower to boot, it seems to be getting
slower
and slower to start applications, and a couple of times in the past
month it's left me a message that a serious error has occurred ("If
this is the first time you see this message, restart your computer.
..
. .") and leaves a cryptic message about a memory dump. It doesn't
even tell me where that memory dump is even if it would actually
help
me to look at it.

Computers, especially laptops tend to get slow as the disk fills up.

The computer (running XP Home) is on just about all the time. It
could
be that the disk drive is getting a bit ill.

This also happens.

I do de-frag now and
then, I run Zone Alarm, I check for viruses with AVG (never found
one)
and for ad/spyware with AdAware, which never turns up anything more
serious than a "data miner."

Lucky you.

Much of the time, this computer is streaming audio from a radio
station on the net, via Winamp. I'm wondering if this is leaving
some
garbage behind that a little housekeeping could remove.

The "Disk Clean Up" facility does a pretty good job on those.

All those tempted to recommend "a clean install of Windows" need not
apply. Other suggestions are welcome and might even get tried if
they're not too destructive.

Registy clean-up programs are a last-ditch possibility.

On another sour note, is there a good way yet to "clone" a
replacement
laptop disk drive, in the even that it looks like this is the
culprit?

The program of choice is Ghost 2003. It will do something like an
image copy of a drive. Generally you don't want a precise image copy,
because the drive's size is changing.

The tricky part, is as you note below, hooking two hard drives to a
laptop.

The method I use to get two laptop drives on one comptuer involves a
desktop computer and a couple of $8 adaptors that hook laptop drives
to standard IDE cables and ports.

Ghost will also clone drives using another computer as a TCP/IP host.
Ghost also supports acessing hard drives on USB/IDE converters. I see
them around $22 including shipping on eBay, about $40 elsewhere.

I've done that on desktop computers by just connecting the new drive
to a spare IDE port on the computer and using the utility that comes
with the new drive (MaxBlast is one) to copy everything from the old
drive to the new drive. Do laptops have a "second IDE port?"

No second IDE port that I know of. Unless you seriously dissasemble
the laptop, only one is at all acessible.

In article writes:

I archive everything to a ext usb hd when I reinstal a OS
get a clean fast puter but everything is right there on the Iomega if I
need it

My question wasn't about archiving, I want to avoid having to first
remember all the programs I had installed, avoid re-installing them
(some with upgrades, some not, some from real disks, some from
downloaded files), and once they're installed, configuring them for
the expected directory paths, colors, default settings, etc.


--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

In article writes:

On another sour note, is there a good way yet to "clone" a replacement
laptop disk drive, in the even that it looks like this is the culprit?

Norton "Ghost".

How does it work? And is it really practical? With a bit over 10 GB on
the existing drive, that's at least 15 CDs. And then what do I do with
the CDs when I install the new drive? Is (or can be) CD #1 bootable,
and will it take off and start loading the virgin drive?

Or, if I can "Ghost" to the new drive that I would install, how do I
connect that drive?

--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

In article lch2e.131428$gJ3.107731@clgrps13 writes:

You've probably already done this rather rudimentary task, but just in
case you haven't: In My Computer, Right-click on the C: drive. Select
properties. The window that appears includes a button for "Disk
Cleanup." It often gets rid of some clutter.

I looked at that once (might have been on an earlier version of
Windoze) and it was into deleting WAV and JPG files, most of which I
wanted to keep.

Also check the startup folder in your start menu. Some software (like
MS Office) places "helper" apps there. They speed up starting the app
when you use it, but they slow down starting the computer.

Been there, done that, stripped as clean as I dare, and with msconfig,
too.

I just Googled any listings I didn't recognize and was able
to find explanations for all but one of the items on my list.

I found a good web site for those and turned off about half of what
was there, but it looked like there were still plenty that were
necessary.

--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

Mike Rivers wrote:

In article writes:


On another sour note, is there a good way yet to "clone" a replacement
laptop disk drive, in the even that it looks like this is the culprit?


Norton "Ghost".


How does it work? And is it really practical? With a bit over 10 GB on
the existing drive, that's at least 15 CDs. And then what do I do with
the CDs when I install the new drive? Is (or can be) CD #1 bootable,
and will it take off and start loading the virgin drive?

Hmmm. I've only used it on desktops with a second drive to hold the
image while I replaced the boot drive.

It makes an image of the partition, and it's smart enough to copy that
image back onto a different-sized target partition (or not, if it's too
small). If it was bootable, it shall remain bootable. At a former
employer they used to capture clean windoze installations with it so
they could quickly return a used machine to service for someone else.



Or, if I can "Ghost" to the new drive that I would install, how do I
connect that drive?


I'm sure a firewire or USB box for the new drive would do, but I don't
know from experience.

Mike Rivers wrote:
In article writes:


On another sour note, is there a good way yet to "clone" a replacement
laptop disk drive, in the even that it looks like this is the culprit?


Norton "Ghost".


How does it work? And is it really practical? With a bit over 10 GB on
the existing drive, that's at least 15 CDs.


Ghost can compress the image file, and ought to be able to fit a 10 gB
system partition onto a single DVD.




what do I do with
the CDs when I install the new drive? Is (or can be) CD #1 bootable,
and will it take off and start loading the virgin drive?

Yes, but it's far easier to make a Ghost boot floppy and then restore an
image from the optical drive (or a network drive.)





Or, if I can "Ghost" to the new drive that I would install, how do I
connect that drive?

That's a hardware thing. Probably USB.

One more good reason for external SATA ports on laptops (coming soon!)

On 29 Mar 2005 19:14:27 -0500, (Mike Rivers)
wrote:

My question wasn't about archiving, I want to avoid having to first
remember all the programs I had installed, avoid re-installing them
(some with upgrades, some not, some from real disks, some from
downloaded files), and once they're installed, configuring them for
the expected directory paths, colors, default settings, etc.

You really want to Ghost the whole thing periodically. Anything
less is too much less, methinks.

In a small retail world again (about a dozen folks), with nightly
off-site backups a bare minimum, I've lately come to realize how
important recovery-to-a-past-date is and how difficult that can be
without a dedicated IP person.

For a one man show like I'd been doing the last few years, only
a brute-force solution made any sense. If I *really* knew about
computers, I wouldn't have to work (so hard) for a living. Arf.

Chris Hornbeck
6x9=42

In article writes:

Registy clean-up programs are a last-ditch possibility.

I played with a couple of those a while ago, and, in fact, let it
delete a whole bunch (a couple of hundred) of entries, things that I
was able to decipher why there were there. Many were things left over
from programs that I had un-installed. A lot of them were just the
names of files that I had downloaded (why does it have to keep all of
those?). But it didn't speed the boot-up, which is what I was hoping
it would do.

The tricky part, is as you note below, hooking two hard drives to a
laptop.

The method I use to get two laptop drives on one comptuer involves a
desktop computer and a couple of $8 adaptors that hook laptop drives
to standard IDE cables and ports.

That makes sense. A friend of mine has a PCMCIA adapter that connects
to a laptop drive for just this purpose, but it's quite old, probably
needs current drivers that can't be found, and I'm not sure about size
limits. I'll see if I can find out what it is next time I'm over.


--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

Mike Rivers wrote:

writes:

On another sour note, is there a good way yet to "clone" a replacement
laptop disk drive, in the even that it looks like this is the culprit?

Norton "Ghost".

How does it work? And is it really practical? With a bit over 10 GB on
the existing drive, that's at least 15 CDs. And then what do I do with
the CDs when I install the new drive? Is (or can be) CD #1 bootable,
and will it take off and start loading the virgin drive?

Or, if I can "Ghost" to the new drive that I would install, how do I
connect that drive?

I just bought a Wiebetech Firewire DriveDock, which attaches to a bare
ATA drive, providing the drives power supply and a Firewire connection.
Works a treat, allowing easy use of HD's as if they were reels of tape.
I like this thing.

Does your 'puter have an FW interface? If not, Wiebetech also has
DriveDocks that do USB, FW800, and some fancy ones that do all of those.

--
ha

Mike, a side note... I have heard the Maxblast utility which comes
pre-installed on the Maxtor drives is a major problem for formatting
the disk properly for a DAW. There was a lot of discussion about this
a few years ago, maybe they solved the problem with a newer version,
but you might want to look into it.

Al

On 29 Mar 2005 12:22:02 -0500, (Mike Rivers)
wrote:


Speaking of the subject, I'm starting to get disgusted with my laptop.
It's getting slower and slower to boot, it seems to be getting slower
and slower to start applications, and a couple of times in the past
month it's left me a message that a serious error has occurred ("If
this is the first time you see this message, restart your computer. .
. .") and leaves a cryptic message about a memory dump. It doesn't
even tell me where that memory dump is even if it would actually help
me to look at it.

The computer (running XP Home) is on just about all the time. It could
be that the disk drive is getting a bit ill. I do de-frag now and
then, I run Zone Alarm, I check for viruses with AVG (never found one)
and for ad/spyware with AdAware, which never turns up anything more
serious than a "data miner."

Much of the time, this computer is streaming audio from a radio
station on the net, via Winamp. I'm wondering if this is leaving some
garbage behind that a little housekeeping could remove.

All those tempted to recommend "a clean install of Windows" need not
apply. Other suggestions are welcome and might even get tried if
they're not too destructive.

On another sour note, is there a good way yet to "clone" a replacement
laptop disk drive, in the even that it looks like this is the culprit?
I've done that on desktop computers by just connecting the new drive
to a spare IDE port on the computer and using the utility that comes
with the new drive (MaxBlast is one) to copy everything from the old
drive to the new drive. Do laptops have a "second IDE port?"

Ghost or Drive Image are great programs. I used to restore Ghost
images from a CD all the time when I was using Win2k or Win98se. It
was great to back up and running in 10 minutes However with XP there
is more data so I'm not sure it will all fit on a single CD. However
I think Ghost also has a way to stripe the image across more than one
CD if it's too big to fit on one. You just need to have Ghost.exe on
a floppy drive, then copy the image from the CDs back onto your C:
drive. But if you are making a drive image of an installation that is
already screwed up, this isn't going to help you. You need to make an
image of a good installation so that you can restore it.

So you might really do need to do a fresh install if you can't figure
out the problem. I always keep the OS on a separate partition from
the programs so it's less of a problem to fix a bad installation. If
you are using XP, it should allow you to "repair" the installation
rather than a complete install from scratch, which would allow you to
keep all your application settings intact.

Al

On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 16:39:35 -0800, S O'Neill
wrote:

Mike Rivers wrote:

In article writes:


On another sour note, is there a good way yet to "clone" a replacement
laptop disk drive, in the even that it looks like this is the culprit?


Norton "Ghost".


How does it work? And is it really practical? With a bit over 10 GB on
the existing drive, that's at least 15 CDs. And then what do I do with
the CDs when I install the new drive? Is (or can be) CD #1 bootable,
and will it take off and start loading the virgin drive?

Hmmm. I've only used it on desktops with a second drive to hold the
image while I replaced the boot drive.

It makes an image of the partition, and it's smart enough to copy that
image back onto a different-sized target partition (or not, if it's too
small). If it was bootable, it shall remain bootable. At a former
employer they used to capture clean windoze installations with it so
they could quickly return a used machine to service for someone else.



Or, if I can "Ghost" to the new drive that I would install, how do I
connect that drive?


I'm sure a firewire or USB box for the new drive would do, but I don't
know from experience.

Started receiving my replacement parts today. Refurbished RAM and HD.
Much cheaper than replacing the whole computer. Had to send the chassis
with the processor and m-board to Memphis. For now it's my only option.
Guess I'll install the OS when the chassis returns and see what
happens. I'm currently driving a 2000 Volvo that I bought used and
kicks butt. Hope the refurbs work as well.

Got a good offer to buy a used G4 today. Hmmmm......

Andy Peake

In article writes:

Ghost can compress the image file, and ought to be able to fit a 10 gB
system partition onto a single DVD.

No DVD writer (or USB or Firewire case for a laptop drive either)
here. It doesn't make sense to have to buy something like that for a
one-time use.

Yes, but it's far easier to make a Ghost boot floppy and then restore an
image from the optical drive (or a network drive.)

Now, that's a possibility - make the Ghost image to a drive on another
computer networked to the laptop, and then restore from that, assuming
the Ghost boot floppy has enough smarts to talk to a networked
computer without a setup.


--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

In article writes:

You really want to Ghost the whole thing periodically. Anything
less is too much less, methinks.

There are some things with which we're willing to be careful and take
chances. I don't WANT to have to rebuild the whole computer, but to
have hundres of CDs that I may never use just isn't my style.

In a small retail world again (about a dozen folks), with nightly
off-site backups a bare minimum, I've lately come to realize how
important recovery-to-a-past-date is and how difficult that can be
without a dedicated IP person.

Yup, but for a single user who's not doing mission-critical work you
have to balance the risk with the inconvenience.

By the way, I tried Arny's suggestion of running Disk Cleanup and it
offered me about 0.2 GB worth, hardly worth the hassle. I guess I
keep a pretty tidy house. And some of those were files that were
accessed today, (though I'll be darned if I know why) so I'm not sure
how much I trust it anyway.


--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

"Andy" wrote:

Is "tickety-boo" good?



Oh man, I hope so, 'cause if it isn't, I'm gonna have to go fifteen
rounds in the Mboxing ring.

"Good" is relative. "Tickety-boo" is better than "Jim Dandy," but not
as good as "a treat."

Does that help any? If so, I've haven't tried hard enough to be weird.

--
"It CAN'T be too loud... some of the red lights aren't even on yet!"
- Lorin David Schultz
in the control room
making even bad news sound good

(Remove spamblock to reply)

In article writes:

I just bought a Wiebetech Firewire DriveDock, which attaches to a bare
ATA drive, providing the drives power supply and a Firewire connection.
Works a treat, allowing easy use of HD's as if they were reels of tape.
I like this thing.

I've read about that gadget, and it seems like a pretty cool idea. But
like any other "wayback machine" you need to keep your backups very up
to date. My friend Don with the house full of old Unix computers has
tape backups that run every night, keeping backups for two weeks
before re-using the media - just like a real enterprise. If I did it,
I might do it once a week, or once a month, losing whatever I might
have done in between. Sometimes it doesn't matter, sometimes it does.
Usually when I'm working on something that does matter, I shoot a copy
across the network to the other computer when I'm done for the day.

If it fit a laptop drive (and I suppose it could, with the appropriate
adapters, which aren't hard to find) it would do for making a
replacement drive to put into the same computer. Between the cost of
the dock, adapters, and Ghost software, that's in the ballpark of
$200 worth of tools to replace a $100 drive. I'd need to find some
more uses for it in order to justify the cost.

If it could help me when switching to a new computer, that would
definitely be worth while, but I suspect that if I put a clone of my 4
year old Dell into a brand new Toshiba or something, there would be a
lot of fixing-up to do. For one (you Mac users may gloat), Windows
will recognize that it's running on a different machine and will want
me to go back to Microsoft for a new authroization to do something
that I shouldn't be doing (but they know that and usually forgive one
or two indiscretions) - running the copy of the OS licesnsed to one
computer on another computer. Then there are the drivers for the
internal stuff like the graphics adapter, CD drive, network adapter,
modem (remember those?), etc that would be incorrect. And the registry
would probably also be screwy. As far as I have been able to
determine, there is no easy way to move one's life from one Windows
computer to another without a fair amount of effort.


--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

In article writes:

Mike, a side note... I have heard the Maxblast utility which comes
pre-installed on the Maxtor drives is a major problem for formatting
the disk properly for a DAW. There was a lot of discussion about this
a few years ago, maybe they solved the problem with a newer version,
but you might want to look into it.

I've only used it once, and it's on the computer that I use for my
DAW. But at that time, the MaxBlast program wasn't pre-installed on
the new drive, it was on a floppy disk (remember when programs would
fit on a floppy?) and the computer was running Win95 at the time. It
did exactly what I had hoped, and the cloned drive worked fine. The
last few Maxtor drives I've purchased have come with a CD with, I
assume, something similar on it, but I've used those drives in the
Mackie recorder where no cloning is necessary, so I've never run that
CD. I do have a drawer full of them, though. I can't throw anything
away, even if it doesn't take up much space.



--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

In article writes:

So you might really do need to do a fresh install if you can't figure
out the problem.

This is what I have a problem with - that I can't figure out the
problem.

I always keep the OS on a separate partition from
the programs so it's less of a problem to fix a bad installation.

Good idea if you're building a computer from scratch, or take one
apart and put it together the way you want it before you start using
it. Perhaps if I run screaming ot the store, buy a new computer, and
start loading it up, I'll experiment with the old one after I'm sure
it's truly surplus. But given that I don't buy parts and retail copies
of Windows, I'm not sure that the "restoration" disks that I get with
my computers (and some new computers don't even come with one) will
allow me to do anything other than to re-build the disk to the state
where it came from the factory.

I'll admit to adopting some of the "it looks inexpensive so it SHOULD
be inexpensive" attitude that we see with audio hobbyists. When I can
buy a computer that I can just plug in and it works, why should I have
to supplement that with more stuff, particularly right from the
beginning? Particularly when it's stuff that I may not use more than
once.

If
you are using XP, it should allow you to "repair" the installation
rather than a complete install from scratch, which would allow you to
keep all your application settings intact.

I've tried SFC and it doesn't seem to help. I suspect that if there's
a problem, it's with hardware, and it's intermittent. That means that
I'd better find it soon or else replace the computer now and phase it
in when it isn't going to be terribly painful.

But I'm a hopeless porocrastinator, particularly when it comes to
computers. I'll probalby fumble along until it dies. It's my nature.


--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

"Mike Rivers" wrote in message
news:znr1112127295k@trad
In article lch2e.131428$gJ3.107731@clgrps13
writes:

You've probably already done this rather rudimentary task, but just
in case you haven't: In My Computer, Right-click on the C: drive.
Select properties. The window that appears includes a button for
"Disk Cleanup." It often gets rid of some clutter.

I looked at that once (might have been on an earlier version of
Windoze) and it was into deleting WAV and JPG files, most of which I
wanted to keep.

The wavs and jpgs were no doubt temporary internet files. They are
parts of web pages that you browsed.

"playon" wrote in message


Mike, a side note... I have heard the Maxblast utility which comes
pre-installed on the Maxtor drives is a major problem for formatting
the disk properly for a DAW. There was a lot of discussion about
this
a few years ago, maybe they solved the problem with a newer version,
but you might want to look into it.

I haven't found that the software that comes with Maxtor, Seagate, or
WD drives in their consumer-pack versions are much use for installing
or migrating drives.

OTOH, the Disk Management function of XP is flexible, effective, and
fast for formatting.

While Ghost isn't cheap, it sure gets the job done. IME the current
Release 9 of Ghost offers little or nothing over the older 2003
version for this sort of thing. It might be possible to pick up some
highly discounted offers on Ghost 2003 since it is no longer the
latest-greatest. Ironically, In fact Ghost 9 includes 2003 as its sole
utility for migrating disk images.


http://www.softwaresurplus.com/Guara...st+9&ovtac=PPC

http://qualityinks.com/title1.php?title_id=nortonghost

In article %_w2e.138693$fc4.88632@edtnps89 writes:

"Good" is relative. "Tickety-boo" is better than "Jim Dandy," but not
as good as "a treat."

In some circles, Jim Dandy is a treat.


Oh, wait a minute, That's Jim Beam. And it's not as much of a treat as
Jack Daniel's.


--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

Mike Rivers wrote:
In article writes:

it's far easier to make a Ghost boot floppy and then restore an
image from the optical drive (or a network drive.)


Now, that's a possibility - make the Ghost image to a drive on another
computer networked to the laptop, and then restore from that, assuming
the Ghost boot floppy has enough smarts to talk to a networked
computer without a setup.

You need DOS drivers for the network card (usually emulating an NE2000),
and you'll have to re-remember how to tweak autoexec.bat and config.sys
files.

Drop me a line and I can send you some working configs.

In article writes:

"Disk Cleanup." It often gets rid of some clutter.

I looked at that once (might have been on an earlier version of
Windoze) and it was into deleting WAV and JPG files, most of which I
wanted to keep.

The wavs and jpgs were no doubt temporary internet files. They are
parts of web pages that you browsed.

No, they were in directories that I wanted to keep, not just secondary
copies. Tried it again, and this time around it didn't offer to delete
those. But while I was on the "Properties" page, I thought I'd turn
off Indexing Service as everyone advises. Of course I told it to do it
on all directories, not just C:\, and it seemed to "touch" every file
on the computer. That seems like a kind of inefficient way to decide
whether to index (or not) the files.

The "More Options" option was confusing, so even though I'm all for
removing Windows components that I don't use, it wasn't clear whether
things I was willing to remove should be checked or not. What does "To
add or remove a componet, click the check box" mean? Bad user
interface! Again, not enough bytes worth removing to take a chance on
doing the opposite of what I wanted.



--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

On 30 Mar 2005 09:23:59 -0500, (Mike Rivers)
wrote:

Good idea if you're building a computer from scratch, or take one
apart and put it together the way you want it before you start using
it.

There is nothing to stop you from making a drive partition on a new
computer, you don't have to build one from scratch in order to do
this. It's just a matter of having software like Partition Magic and
knowing how to use it.

When I can
buy a computer that I can just plug in and it works, why should I have
to supplement that with more stuff, particularly right from the
beginning? Particularly when it's stuff that I may not use more than
once.

Computers are very complicated devices although the user interface
appears simple. Just like owning a car, or a bunch of audio gear, you
can get a lot more trouble-free use out of a computer the more
understanding you have of how they work. Most people who are good at
engineering audio also know how to solder and fix stuff, etc. Same
with computer users. If you are using a computer for a fairly
demanding task like recording audio, you do need to be able to
troubleshoot them once & awhile.

Al

On 30 Mar 2005 06:53:47 -0500, (Mike Rivers)
wrote:


In article writes:

Ghost can compress the image file, and ought to be able to fit a 10 gB
system partition onto a single DVD.

No DVD writer (or USB or Firewire case for a laptop drive either)
here. It doesn't make sense to have to buy something like that for a
one-time use.

You can find a LOT of uses for an external optical or hard drive.
Wonderful for backups, extra storage, portability, etc etc. And they
aren't that expensive.

Al

Ghost 2003, auction ends in a couple of hours, bid is at $4.50!

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...595765 4&rd=1

On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 09:45:48 -0500, "Arny Krueger"
wrote:

"playon" wrote in message


Mike, a side note... I have heard the Maxblast utility which comes
pre-installed on the Maxtor drives is a major problem for formatting
the disk properly for a DAW. There was a lot of discussion about
this
a few years ago, maybe they solved the problem with a newer version,
but you might want to look into it.

I haven't found that the software that comes with Maxtor, Seagate, or
WD drives in their consumer-pack versions are much use for installing
or migrating drives.

OTOH, the Disk Management function of XP is flexible, effective, and
fast for formatting.

While Ghost isn't cheap, it sure gets the job done. IME the current
Release 9 of Ghost offers little or nothing over the older 2003
version for this sort of thing. It might be possible to pick up some
highly discounted offers on Ghost 2003 since it is no longer the
latest-greatest. Ironically, In fact Ghost 9 includes 2003 as its sole
utility for migrating disk images.


http://www.softwaresurplus.com/Guara...st+9&ovtac=PPC

http://qualityinks.com/title1.php?title_id=nortonghost