I have an AMD K6 400 MHz Windows 98 system running on a gigabyte GA-5AA board and 196 MB RAM. Recently the old hard drive, a Quantum Fireball 3.5 series 6 GB, went belly up (sounded like someone was playing marbles in there). I replaced the hard drive with a Maxtor 20 GB HDD (model# 2B020H1) which the motherboard CMOS recognised when using the auto detect HDD feature. The CMOS reported the size correctly but, on closer inspection, appeared to misreport the number of cylinders. The CMOS reported the drive had 39,535 cylinders which is more than the correct number of cylinders (38,792 - written on the physical drive). The Maxtor site instruction is to either use auto detect or manually type in the drive parameters in CMOS setup. Windows 98 installed fine as did Office 97, and the system seems stable so far. If I go into CMOS and manually type in 38,792 cylinders (which I found on the Maxtor website) and save this parameter, the system is fine and the disc size is still correct (just over 20 GB). Do you know if the misrepresentation of cylinders is going to come back and bite me in the rear some day? Do you recommend sticking with the auto detect settings or manually typing in the number of cylinders? (more…)

I have two hardrives, the second of which is compressed. As my primary drive is partitioned into two drives, they are reported as C and E, with the CD drive being F. The compressed drive is D. I recently replaced D with a higher capacity drive which is uncompressed. I did not decompress the original compressed hard disk before replacing it with the new harddisk. Since then, I have found that it can take up to 2 minutes or more when I logged out of Windows before the message advising that I can safety turn off the computer appears. I tried deleting all files relating to compressed drives on the C root directory. Ran RegClean, Norton Utilities 2000 and System Mechanic to clean up the registry several times. All to no avail. I then went into CMOS and told it that I have only one hard disk. When Windows boots up, it reported the primary drive as C and D; with the new uncompressed drive as E. The CD drive remains F. With this setup, when I log off the computer, the message that I can safety turn off the computer comes on fast. However, when I go into CMOS and let it find the hard drives, and when Windows boots up, I returned to the old setup whereby the primary drive is reported as C and E, and the second uncompressed harddisk is D. More annoying, the problem of the message that I can safety turn off the computer reverts back to taking two minutes or more before coming on. I am presently using the computer with the CMOS set up as having only one drive. My friends advised me that this is not advisable as DOS would be confused, and possibly, Windows as well. Of course, the fact that I have this problem when I replaced the compressed drive could be coincidental. Your advice would be appreciated. (more…)

My newly-installed 10.2 gb hard drive seems to access data slowly. I sought help from the manufacturer’s website and one of the tests suggested was to check whether my operating system is DMA capable. My operating system is Windows 95 version 4.00.950B which is DMA capable. The website also suggested that I check if my hard drive is already DMA enabled. The trouble though is that the Windows Device Manager doesn’t show a ‘Resources’ tab for the hard disc drives, which (I think) is where the DMA check box should be. When I look for DMA channels in ‘System’ control panel > ‘Device Manager’ tab > ‘Computer’ there does not seem to be a DMA channel for either of my hard drives. How can I be sure whether or not my hard drives are DMA enabled and if they are not how can I enable them? Also, ever since I installed the new hard drive Scandisk has run at startup giving the message “There is an invalid long filename on this drive which Scandisk is unable to fix”. I have no idea what to do about this. What could be causing it? (more…)

My computer consists of a PC100 System Board with all needed onboard/built-in features working; USB and Network Adapter built-ins remain untested. A SCSI card takes care of a Scanner. AMIBIOS version is Release 0601-1999S. Drive A is the usual 3.5 inch floppy. No Drive B. Drives C & D are partitions of a Quantum Bigfoot 1.2gb HDD jumpered as a Master and entered as a First master in the BIOS; C is 200mb, D the remainder. Drive E is the CD Rom, running as a slave to the Quantum. Windows 95b is installed on Drive D. I want to add an IBM 546mb hard drive, model DSAA-3540, to the system as a Secondary master. I believe I have the jumper right. There is no problem in getting the Bios to recognise it as such via the Auto setting. But having got this far, my system will not boot up: this turns out to be not surprising, as I can get far enough with DOS (and with Norton’s) to find out that my original Drive D is now Drive E, and the IBM HDD has become Drive D. The CD Drive has disappeared, but A & C seem to be OK. However, I can’t open Windows from my new Drive E as there appears an insistent message that Highmem.sys isn’t in the Windows folder. Which it is, of course. (more…)

I had my basic Pentium computer upgraded with a Celeron 366. Since the upgrade, I have added another hard drive and more RAM. I have had nothing but trouble. I had a D: drive added that contained Lotus Smart Suite. My C: drive has Windows 98, Plus 98 and other things including ‘Net Needs. Like most people I am reliant on my computer and internet for work and study but the frame keeps freezing and the CTRL-ALT-DEL function does not work. I have to simply turn off the computer and when I restart I might have to do it a number of times as the screen remains blank when I switch on. Tonight I wanted to use Lotus Word Pro, only to find that the D: drive that it was loaded onto no longer exists. I would not intentionally delete D: as the program is crucial to my work. However, I no longer have a D: drive and hence its contents. Can you help me please? (more…)