Welcome to a relatively new feature here at ActiveWin. This lets you, the visitors submit questions about any problems/queries that you may have about Windows. Be it from a little icon that annoys you to hardware freezing your PC, we will try and help you out. You can submit your questions by e-mailing us at askaw@activewin.com.

Here are the questions posted on: 09-02-00

Solution 1: Hi Toby, What do you mean by "Hit Shutdown" is it the shutdown button on the main chassis? Or the shutdown button in Windows? Do you have an ACPI compliant motherboard? Is it a desktop or Laptop system? Windows NT 4 does not shutdown the computer automatically even if you have an ATX compatible system, some registry hack will do the trick, I'm not sure if its your system installation or your hardware configuration that caused this problem. You might want to check it out with your system configurator/vendor. Windows 2000 has improved its Power Supply configuration support, including the ability to Hibernate in many conditions, so it is mostly impossible that the system cannot power down the computer automatically during the shutdown procedure. The only thing that comes in mind is the installation do not detect whether your system is an APM or ACPI compliant one, you can check this out under the device manager applet (My Computer right click >> Manage >> Device Manager) and open the system devices section. Check out the HCL (Hardware compatibility list) from Microsoft, where you can find in the older news archive in Activewin, and/or the Knowledge Base Support - Bill Wiriawan (http://search.support.microsoft.com/kb/c.asp?FR=0&SA=GN&LNG=ENG)

Solution 1: Boris, You can setup multi-configuration network environment under the Network Properties section, just add (Install) the correct network client support, and windows should detect the configuration automatically when you are connected at both location. If you have additional configurations of the DHCP client at the office, then you should refer to your network administrator for more information, you might also want to try the troubleshooter. Good luck, - Bill Wiriawan

Submitted By: Boris

Solution 2: Hi Jason, Open Windows Explorer, and set the desired settings (e.g Web View, List View, etc) and open the folder options (Start>> Settings >> Folder Options >>View Tab) and press the "Like current folder" button. Close Windows Explorer after you press OK button when prompted, then your settings should be saved for all folders. If you want the Open folder mode (Windows explorer without the explorer bar) to have the same settings, repeat the steps above to apply the setting. - Bill Wiriawan

Solution 1: Erik, what do you mean by skipping? I'll take that as the application does play media files, but it skips when it playbacks (You hear delays and quirking in the speaker). I think it's the system that doesn't meet the requirement to play media files with the equalizer support turned on. Try turning the equalizer mode off, and play songs regularly without opening too many application the background. Or you may want to recommend her to upgrade her soundcard, e.g Creative Soundblaster PCI 128, which has a pretty good feature for music on PC. Good Luck, - Bill Wiriawan
PS: Try the more compact and smaller Winamp, you can get it from www.winamp.com. I use it all the time, it's fast stable, and better for MP3.

Submitted By: Erik

Question: Okay I am about to throw the computer off the deck. I have a Comp USA P3 500mhz, 128ram. Attached to it is a Epson 870 printer, HP Scan JT 4200cse,and a Sony spressa CD writer. The problem is that the computer will freeze at different points. Some times this is when I am trying to print, or just surfing the net. When it does the mouse and the keyboard do not respond. So after turning it off and then back on after a few minutes it sometimes comes back fine. Today however it looked up twice on reboot. Then again later while on the net again. I have taken off every thing that I have added lately, no help. The local store tried to reformat the hard drive and then put everything back on, still locks up. Any Ideas. It is costing me money every time it locks up while printing. Thanks Neal

Solution 1: In my experience these problems are not going to be solved by formatting hard disk and reinstalling everything. Most of them are hardware problems...most of them related to RAM chips. - Mean

Solution 2: Hi Neal, Are you running Windows98? You have a pretty well configured system with excessive peripherals, however, windows98 doesn't like it as you do, even if you add more memory, windows98 will still freeze under your circumstances, why? Cause your peripherals almost takes up all the resources to support those devices of yours. Your first step would be updating all drivers to the latest version, your scanner, printer, etc. If your device installer runs additional program like print or scan monitoring, you can turn off the autorun during the startup to leave more room for your computer to run the system. Turn off additional communication port that takes IRQ resources, like your serial port, USB, etc, you can do this by configuring the CMOS setup. If you don't want all the maneuvers like I mention above, use a different OS, a very good example is Windows 2000 Pro, which has a better hardware support, more stable, fast, and easy to use. Good Luck, - Bill Wiriawan

Submitted By: Neal Mcquarie

Question: Is it possible to Install Windows 98 and SCO-UNIX on the same machine. If so, Where I can find the article steps) to do that. Many thanks in advance..........Thanks & Regards

Solution 1: Hi Saravanan, Try linux.org and check out the manuals and links, to other site to find more info on this. I don't really have experience with linux. And don't forget that the web has search engines, try search your query, and I think you will get your infos in the matter of seconds. - Bill Wiriawan

Submitted By: Saravanan R

Question: I am having some Trouble with My Windows 98 (4.10.98) System. Every time I reboot the Microsoft soft sound plays but then I get an Error beep without a Error screen or anything. I have searched around and everything looking for the problem but have not been able to find it as of yet. Also, when I try to use MSINFO32 (System Information) I get this Error: MSINFO32 caused an invalid page fault in module KERNEL32.DLL at 0177:bff886b6.
Registers:
EAX=c002f8d8 CS=0177 EIP=bff886b6 EFLGS=00010212
EBX=0065fe28 SS=017f ESP=0055fff8 EBP=00560004
ECX=8176df34 DS=017f ESI=8176e0fc FS=4c67
EDX=bff76859 ES=017f EDI=005600ac GS=0000
Bytes at CS:EIP:
53 56 8b 0d d8 9c fc bf 57 33 f6 8b 38 8b 19 89
Stack dump:
Thanks for the help and sorry for what probably is such a simple question.

Solution 1: So if I understand correctly, this PC is unusable and you are currently on another PC. In that case considering the symptoms, reformat. -Mean

Solution 2: Hi Matt, When the error sound played, did the computer starts normally? When did the computer start behaving like this. Try to virus scan your computer, and see if the system is virus free. Run scandisk to check for possible disk error, and run the system file checker to see if you lost some shared files during some earlier program removal. When the problem still occurs, the easiest way to remove the problem is to format and clean install the system. Check this website for solutions and instruction of various windows problems and tips: http://newlife-win98.server101.com/   - Bill Wiriawan

Submitted By: Matt Nelson

Question: Hello, I hope you can help with my little problem. I run Windows 2000 Professional on a normal home machine (p3 500, 128MB, g400) that's seems to have irq trouble. win2k seems to put all my cards (net, sound, g400, sm56 modem) on the same irq and wont let me change resources( the "use automatic settings " check box is grayed out). I am logged in as administrator and still can't change anything. the motherboard is a new ACPI bios board and pnp OS is set to yes. any help will bring me back to sanity, thanks.

Solution 1: Hi, Does your system runs normally without errors under this configuration, there is no need for you to change the interrupt (IRQ) settings if it runs smoothly, however if it's on error and conflicts of each devices, you might want to check the cmos settings, go to the PCI configuration section, and configure the slots to have its own IRQ, just disable unused slot to leave more free resource for windows to choose, and restart the system. Additional unused resource like usb, serial, or printer port (If you don't use them) is available to restrict to, this can leave more resources for windows. Check out each vendors for updated drivers, and download all updates for windows. Hope this will help. - Bill Wiriawan

Submitted By: pacman

Question: Hi, My name is Krystian. I have two computers running windows 98b, their NICs are connected with a crossover cable. How do I configure the two machines to talk to each other? I tried myself and did the obvious, they both run the same protocols, they both joined the same workgroup, yet they fail to see each other. Is there any step by step procedure that I could follow? Thanks for your time

Solution 1: Hi Krystian, In order for your computer to see each other, you need to create a twisted cable for a small network without a HUB (Two direct connection) you may want to ask someone who knows about this to create the cable. I believe it is your cable that caused the problem. Please note that the cable configuration is different for a network with and without hub. Below is a simple diagram I took from my own cable:

• First End | Other End
• 1.Blue 1.Green
• 2.Brown 2.Orange
• 3.Green 3.Blue
• 4. - 4. -
• 5. - 5. -
• 6.Orange 6.Brown
• 7. - 7. -
• 8. - 8. -

Hope this will help, - Bill Wiriawan

Submitted By: Krystian

Question: I have deleted Windows 95 and installed windows 98 - now when I try to start up windows 98 I have all kinds of problems. one thing it says is it can't find the system.ini file. how can I get this? I have put in the start disk for windows 95 and tried it and the start disk for windows 98.

Solution 1: You said "deleted" Windows 95. If you indeed did what I am fearing: deleting the entire directory from within Windows and upgrading to 98...then you did a bad thing. The best option for you is to do a fresh install of Windows 98---essentially, reformat and try again. Most likely, the system.ini file, which usually resides in the %windir% (the windows directory) was not upgraded properly. There are probably other files that are missing as well. - Adam Sowalsky

Submitted By: Heather

Question: Hello. I have WinME RTM and have been experiencing lockups, so I thought it might be a video driver problem. Sure enough, switching my ATI driver from ME to an earlier version (2560) cleared up that problem, but it has
created others, albeit much less annoying. I'd like to try again to use the ME driver and see if I can configure it to remove the lockups. But I can't install the driver. I get garble and smears on the screen. This happens whether I delete and or uninstall the existing driver, or whether I use "upgrade driver." Can you help? Thanks

Solution 1: Dear Edison, You have a few options, being that you have the Me driver already in the C:/windows/Inf Folder or /INF/Other I would delete the .inf file of the Other Video driver your unhappy with. Then Tto have Windows "recheck" all installed hardware on its own and start over, I would delete these 2 files from the windows\inf Folder... DRVIDX.BIN DRVDATA.BIN They are both hidden files that once deleted will have Windows restart the hardware detection process. Prior to rebooting, I would then go into Control Panel/Display Adapters  and choose "remove" to the Video card installed. Then Reboot. Windows will restart all Hardware detection in case any hardware was missed or not properly configured. Good Luck. - Craig Catapano

Submitted By: Edison Stewart

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