Hardware.txt ================== Problem: Customer has canon inkjet bjc-4200 printer and its printing only on 1/3 of the page, not on the whole page Solution:the cartridge in the printer is the bc-22 which is only for color photographs. we switched it to the BC-21 cartridge which is for ordinary color printing--it now prints full page ===================== This is a mentionable that I would like to pass on to all of you and hope that perhaps you can try the same fix. I have passed this by Leon and he said it is OK to try. I have had many CD ROM's behave irregularly on me, where the Autorun keeps popping up, or not at all, or if the customer tries to launch the program, nothing happens. If you go into Ctrl Pnl/DevMan/open the properties of the CD-ROM/click on the Settings tab/in Options, the only 2 items that should be selected are "Disconnect" and "Auto insert Notification" (unless you disabled the latter). In this case of the misbehaving ROM, more often than naught, I find that "DMA" is selected. This setting is only appropriate if your hardware is configured for such a setting. To me, if the software is acting up because of it, then maybe the system isn't configured. We all know that PC don't always come perfectly configured from the manufacturer. I am not sure what this setting is, but I passed this by Leon, and he suggested that I let all of you know. I see this mostly on Compaq, but it can be for any PC or ROM. This isn't peculiar to DVDs or non-DVDs, either one, I have had successes nearly every time in the past several months I stumbled across this. Try it out and see how it works. ============================= CD's are noisy in drive when it's spinning. Ron's explanation: The paint is too thick on some of these CDs, and the drive tolerance is too tight, and that's what's doing it. Nothing can be adjusted on the CD drive to fix this. Might be cured by replacing the CD, but usually not. Michael's explanation: Our CD's are made for us by Sony. Sony uses a thicker material on the drive. This extra weight is the critical factor, and some drives have a loose spindle that rattles when these disks spin in it. Nothing can be adjusted on the drive, and since most of our CDs are made by the same factory, replacing it usually won't help. ============================== UNABLE TO OPEN DIB This error is generated when the customer is using CD-ROM drivers in the autoexec.bat and config.sys rather than Windows95 drivers. If you go to Device Manager within System Properties you will see that 9 out of 10 times there will be no CD-ROM listed. Also, if you click on the Performance tab, you will notice a white box reading, "Drive X: is using DOS compatibility mode." Either case will generate the error. Please refer the customer to the computer manufacturer to either get Windows95 drivers that are stand alone without using the autoexec.bat and config.sys files or get a Windows95 compatible CD-ROM drive. ======================== Here's another one where the System.nav and User.nav files were helpful in restoring a Registry that someone had corrupted the backups to. Most people don't know that if you continually restart a machine with a bad Registrty, you fry the .da0 files too. Anyway, this guy had really smoked his machine, and he just happened to have Norton, so I went for the same fix. Apparently Norton makes a stable backup of the Registry at the time it installs, so you can at least get someone's machine back up. A useful piece of information. Toshiba Laptop. Computer total lockup after messing with the sound. He shoulda called, could've prevented a total meltdown. Restored the Registry, backup was already corrupt. Used the User.nav and Sysrtem.nav to get the machine up, machine would not come up. Tried again. Now the machine came up. had him make a User.bak and System.bak as an ace in the hole in case the Registry gets screwed again. ========================= virtual memory (virtual storage) Virtual (or logical) memory is a concept that, when implemented by a computer and its operating system, allows programmers to use a very large range of memory or storage addresses for stored data. The computing system maps the programmer's virtual addresses to real hardware storage addresses. Usually, the programmer is freed from having to be concerned about the availability of data storage. In addition to managing the mapping of virtual storage addresses to real storage addresses, a computer implementing virtual memory or storage also manages storage swapping between active storage (RAM) and hard disk or other high volume storage devices. Data is read in units called "pages" of sizes ranging from about a thousand bytes (actually 1,024 decimal bytes) up to several megabytes in size. This reduces the amount of physical storage access that is required and speeds up overall system performance. Now in windows Microsoft has already determined that your virtual memory if optimized should be set to twice your RAM plus 20%. Thus with 32mb of RAM, you'd have approx 59mb for your swap file. Thus with 16mb of RAM, you'd have approx 38mb for your swap file. Ect., ect. Now this number can be lower if hdd space isn't available, or you can let windows handle the virtual memory. Only when you are letting windows determine virtual memory is the 30mb free on the hdd applicable. If you set it, there MUST be the said amount of hdd space available that you determined. ie. if you set the virtual memory to 59mb, then you had better have 59mb free on the hdd. ============================= Windows 2000 minimum requirements: WINDOWS PROFESSIONAL: Pentium class processor, 133 MHz or faster 64 MB RAM or higher 1 GB hard drive space WINDOWS SERVER: Pentium class processor, 133 MHz or faster 256 MB RAM or higher 1 GB hard drive space WINDOWS ADVANCED SERVER: Pentium class processor, 133 MHz or faster 256 MB RAM or higher 1 GB hard drive space WINDOWS DATACENTER SERVER: (to be announced; expect no less than the previous ones) =============================== Windows ME menus. Start, Settings, Control Panel. If only about 7 things are listed on the right side (beginning with "Accessability Options, Date/Time, Internet"), go to the left side and click on "View All Control Panel Options." Then it should show a lot of icons on the right. System Properties is the same as in Win98. Find out all the info on the system here. Display properties: same as in Win98. New icon: Sounds and Multimedia (combining the old two). Tabs in that one are: Sounds; Audio; Voice; Drivers. Sounds tab: same as in Win98. Drivers tab: same as in Win98. Audio Tab has: Sound Playback, Sound Recording, Midi Music Playback, all of which have a pulldown bar for Preferred device. The first two also have Advanced button which allows access to sound acceleration and other special functions; the midi one doesn't. There does not seem to be any more midi mapper here. Voice tab: seems to have same sound/record options as Audio tab. Might vary on some systems with different sound cards, perhaps. However, it has a Voice Test button which takes you to a wizard to test sound playback and recording (needs microphone). - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - All: Machines are now shipping with Millennium Edition, and they've moved stuff around to make it look like a new OS as opposed to a bug fix. Here's how to get to a couple of commonly used areas: System Properties: Hold down ALT while double clicking My Computer, that still works. Control Panel: First comes up with only a very few options. There's some text on the left side that lets you show more options, the customer has to click on that and there will be more items visible. Multimedia is now "Sounds and Multimedia" with the speaker icon. The second tab from the left lets you get ino the MIDI settings, it is now on the bottom of the 3 options. **** DANGER! **** On systems with USB keyboards, do not disable any USB drivers in MSCONFIG. It will disable the keyboard and you are royally screwed. ========================== List of Win98 programs known to not run on WinME. Because WinME won't allow overwriting files in System dir, many programs with their own DLL files won't work. We know of the following 3rd party programs that won't: McAfee Dr Solomon AV 7.0; Network ICE BlackICE Defender; Symantec Norton Internet Security; eNova SOS Best Defense; Network Associates PGP Provacy; Adaptec's Go Back; Quarterdeck's Select-It; Stoplight 95. Microsoft did this to solve a lot of lockups and other problems due to corrupted files. =============================== Baby Ball in Windows ME. We have done some research and found that there IS a driver in ME that'll run the Baby Ball. You will probably have to uninstall Baby, the Baby Ball, AND the directories associated with Baby (do this from Windows Explorer). Then, FIRST hook up the Baby Ball, run the Add New Hardware wizard. Since you have already loaded the drivers, it probably won't detect it. Have no fear, use the manual installation to install a Logitech mouse driver, pick Mouse as the type of device to install, choose Logitech as the manufacturer, and scroll to the bottom of the list and choose the "Other Logitech Mouse Serial" driver. Then reboot, install JS Baby, and DO NOT install the mouse drivers. This has worked on our system here, and may allow you to use the program in Windows ME. =================================