This is topic Computer !@#$%^&* Crash! in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.
To visit this topic, use this URL:
https://ft-forum.com/ft/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=8;t=000127
Posted by Ian Price (Member # 14) on 02-07-2001, 05:21 PM:
I have a Compaq Presario 1200 notebook. I am running Win98, IE5.5 and all that. This morning, it wouln't boot. After it said "loading win98" it said that it couldn't continue because it was missing the win.com file. Then it gave me the C:\ prompt. Nothing worked, not even the boot disk. Finally I got it to load Windows 98 off of a CD rom we bought for our box office computers. The Compaq doesn't come with a CD. My data remained, thank God, but I wonder what happended?Does anybody have a clue about what might of happend, besides Windows Sucks and Bill Gates is a loser?
Is there something I could have done to prevent this? Or is it just one of those Windows things? It is kind of like having your wallet stolen.
Posted by Paul G. Thompson (Member # 655) on 02-07-2001, 08:42 PM:
Hi, IanCheck to see if there is a WIN98 directory in that machine. If there is, it might be a complete setup tailored for your machine. See if there is a setup.exe in it.
If there is, go for it if you have to go through this crap again. If you do, it'll probably ask you for an OEM number. I don't have an OEM number for a Windows 98 OEM disk. I only have one for Windows 95, and I don't think it will work for a Winblows 98. Maybe some Chiphead on the forum might have a number that you can use.
Strange - Two days ago at the radio station, some dilbrain downloaded a nasty file that had a nasty virus. It took out the MBR, and formatted the drive to some off-the-wall spec. It took 6 hours to get the computer up and running again. It was a Compoop Presario 2200 Desktop.
Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 02-07-2001, 09:36 PM:
I wish I could help ya there, Ian. I know all too well what a major pain that is. If you must start over, try Windows 2000 Professional and stay away from Windows 98.
(I can't wait until Scott Norwood chimes in on this thread! hehe 
)
Posted by Cory Johnson (Member # 103) on 02-07-2001, 10:33 PM:
Well, easy answer is to buy a Mac. But since that is out of the question, heres what you should try.
1) Do a scandisk on the harddrive. Just type scandisk at the command prompt. See what it discovers. I maybe that the HD is on the fritz.
2) You can run setup again, as described by Paul. You wont lose any of your settings, but be warned, I highly doubt that it will run very well if this gets it back to running.
3) Do a full check on your hard disk - all sectors. Make sure there is no bad sectors on the disk.
4) If you have access to all of your data, back it up (Zip it and move it via network or something). Reinstall windoze.
Once something like this happens, its always down hill until you start from scratch again with windows.If all of those fail, bite the bullet, and buy a PowerBook G4 with Mac OS X=-).
Posted by Jerry Chase (Member # 660) on 02-07-2001, 10:48 PM:
I hate Compaq and it is the one brand of computer I refuse to support my program on. Cameo (over the hills from you) bought a Compaq Presario and the thing was replaced twice and was still flakey. It eventually was replaced with another brand and all the problems stopped.That said, win.com is only about a 25 k bootstrap. Chances are good that the windows or the fat and disk controller stubbed a toe and corrupted or lost the file. The recommendation to use scandisk, defrag, and reload from scratch are right on. If your HD is going, it'll have some other error soon. If you haven't backed data up to another disk, do it now.
FWIW, W2K won't solve HD controller problems.
Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 02-07-2001, 10:49 PM:
[insert bunch of stuff here...backups are important...laptops suck...get a real operating system...blah...blah...blah...]
Bottom line: if your laptop will run NT4 or Win2k, then I'd highly recommend switching to either of these. Unfortunately, lots of laptop hardware is custom-made and requires flaky third-party drivers and such, so this may not be an option if your hardware isn't supported by Win2k.
Posted by Paul G. Thompson (Member # 655) on 02-07-2001, 10:53 PM:
Jerry, is the win.com file a general "fit all" for Winblows 98? Or, is it a file that is tailored to the specific machine configuration itself?Scott, how true....
Posted by Ian Price (Member # 14) on 02-07-2001, 11:33 PM:
It works for now. I just re-loaded the operating system. Yea, I'd love a Mac, make mine a G4 notebook, with the 500 Mhz chip and an outboard CD RAM burner.Scott,
Can I run my mission critical DOS software on a machine running Win2000? Our box office software is DOS based.
Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 02-08-2001, 12:21 AM:
Be warned before you upgrade to Windows 2000 that it is a full 32-Bit operating system. In Microsoft land that basically means you'll be out of luck when you try to run DOS programs. That's one of the things that makes Win2000 much better. Also know that Windows 2000 is basically Windows NT 5.0. In fact, when you have an ASP request for all of the server values on Windows 2000 the OS version number it returns is Windows NT 5.0! I guess they changed the name at the last minute. I will tell you that Windows NT 4.0 sucks ass, and Windows 2000 is much better.
However, Mac OS X is much better (even Mac OS 9.1 is better). Windows still uses CISC processors which only process a fraction of what a RISC chip (used in Macs) will do in the same clock cycle. That's why you really shouldn't place too much importance on MHZ ratings of processors. It's how fast that the data is processed that really matters. If you get a G4 Powerbook don't forget to buy me one as well! I'll pay shipping!
[ 03-30-2003, 10:38 PM: Message edited by: Joe Redifer ]
Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 02-08-2001, 06:00 AM:
"Some" DOS software will run under NT4/Win2k, but not anything that tries to talk to hardware directly (such as most games). The NT kernel is not DOS; all DOS software runs on a "virtual DOS machine" emulated in software, which is why some of it doesn't work.
You can always dual-boot between DOS and NT/2k, however. It's not ideal, but it works.
I thought NT4 was pretty decent, actually. It's a bigger improvement over NT 3.5.1 than Win2k is over NT4. On the other hand, NT4 was a real dog on most laptops (the IBM laptops ran it pretty well, though), and Win2k has many improvements with respect to hardware support, etc. If you don't need the hardware support, though, there's not much advantage to Win2k over NT4.
Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 02-08-2001, 08:56 AM:
Install Bootmagic and a copy of real dos (pcdos) on a seperate partition.
I have found dos apps such as the R2 are far more stable this way than running under the windos
Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 02-08-2001, 08:58 AM:
I went from Win2K to Win NT 4 and the difference was night and day. NT 4 was very slow, didn't have some of the cool features that I liked in Win2K and was ugly (I know that doesn't matter to you, Scott, since you use command line as often as you can). I don't think either are ideal for a network server, however.
Posted by Jerry Chase (Member # 660) on 02-08-2001, 08:58 AM:
Paul- win.com is generic. IIRC, the boot sequence for Win 95/98 is
bios
config.sys
autoexec.bat
msdos.sys (actually a hidden form of batch file in 95-98)
io.sys
win.com
various parts too numerous to mentionWindows ME tries to clean out most of this.
I've not tried running my DOS based ticketing software on Win 2000. NT was just too obtuse, and I've not bothered with 2000 because it is much simpler (and faster) to support software when it runs on a single operating system. I've still got some 3.11 and DOS users out there.
While my ticketing software doesn't make any low level interrupt calls, it does take advantage of an undocumented difference between the DOS file system and Windows GUI file systems. I'm not sure how 2000 would handle that when giving access permissions.
FWIW, I had an original version of 95 that has been running without reloading since two months after it first came on the market. A lot of the Windows problems occur because of software developers not understanding how to work with Windows without trashing some part of it. If you load few programs, and resist the urge to try out cutting edge stuff, Windows can run fine for years.
Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 02-08-2001, 02:03 PM:
I have a OS2 server that has not been powered down or rebooted in 2 years rock stable
Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 02-08-2001, 06:43 PM:
At United Artists we used OS2 to hook the network up when we did our Proteus/Satellite Theater Network b.s. It handled things like registering votes from wireless keypads that were in the hands of each audience member and displaying the reults on a 46 foot screen. It worked well, but wouldn't be anything I would want to use at home.
Posted by Jerry Chase (Member # 660) on 02-08-2001, 08:22 PM:
Just curious, what would an audience be voting on in your home?...
Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 02-08-2001, 08:58 PM:
I agree with Paul.....Compoop is absolutely right! Best nickname I have heard yet 
. However I ahve to admit that my first puter was also a Compoop. A 486/66 and it was slow as molasses and totally upgradable. Gave it to an old girlfriend that I didn't like anyway to get even . Fortunately we have only one left on our office. We have 19 pc's networked and we rarely have a lockup like that. All of our computers are Chinese clones which we have built and are much better than any of the big factory built things we have had and tossed out. Dell may be somewhat of an exception as their computers are upgradable to some extent as a friend of mine found out. But others like H-P, Compoop, and Packard Smell simply are piles of waste waiting for the trip to the trash heap. Its time for you to graduate from that Apple Core and build your own high end PC. Any of us here would be more than willing to help you out. You'll learn how good a nice PC can be, and you'll also be able to fix simple problems when they do creep up cause you will have built it.
Mark @ GTS
Posted by Sean M. Grimes (Member # 445) on 02-09-2001, 04:52 AM:
ahh but for stable networking Novell 3.x is the way to go. Our server at my theater has been up and running now for four years with only one re-boot. Those damn power outages...
Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 02-09-2001, 06:33 AM:
I'm sure that you're right about Novell 3X. We are just peer to peer though. Simple system but if it gets any larger we will probablt have to consider other means.
Mark
Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 02-09-2001, 08:29 AM:
Novell is nice if all you need is basic file and print sharing on a smallish network for PCs running DOS or Windows. I'm only familiar with the 3.x and 4.x versions, but they ran on not-very-impressive hardware and were rock solid with good performance. Unfortunately, Novell can become a hairy mess if you start adding lots of NLMs to do weird things. Apparently the newer versions of Network also encapsulate IPX over IP (I only worked with the pure-IPX versions), so I don't know how good an idea that is... I certainly wouldn't want a "Novell Web Server" or something, but it should be fine for simple file/print service.
For larger networks, or those that need to support UNIX-style NFS, I am big fan of the Network Appliance ( http://www.netapp.com/ ) file servers. Unfortunately, though, both NT and most Unix variants make horrible print servers...it's hard to beat Novell for that purpose.
I don't know much about OS/2. I used to manage a voicemail system that ran it, but the voicemail software was junk and had a memory leak that required a reboot every few months.
Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 02-09-2001, 10:13 AM:
Our main use for the network is for internet and Quickbooks Pro. We do all of our bookeeping in that program. We do have a central computer that quickbooks runs form. That is an AMD based 1GHZ machine that is really an impressive running PC. When we switched over to it our data transfer rate over the network went way up. Quickbooks is a large program and our Quickbooks database is also quite large. So far the peer to peer has been really quite good. The main problems is when we get Quickbooks upgrades we have to upgrade all 19 PC's or you cannot log onto the main computer. The upgrades are sometimes lengthy and do not always install automatically. We also feed a DSL line into the network and each computer has its own IP address.
Mark @ GTS
Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 02-09-2001, 10:45 AM:
Jerry-I'm talking about the OS in general.
Hopefully, you know that. 
Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 02-09-2001, 11:06 AM:
Mark, do you actually have 19 computers hooked into ONE DSL line? How well does that work? How many people are online at a given time? I wonder what the cut off point is when a dialup becomes faster over splitting one high speed connection.
Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 02-09-2001, 12:24 PM:
Hooking up a bunch of machines to a single DSL line is pretty simple. Ideally, the ISP will provide routed service and assign you a block of IP addresses which you then distribute among the machines in your organization. Alternatively, if the number of IP addresses provided is smaller than the number of hosts, then you can use a hardware or software firewall (a 486 PC running Linux will work nicely) that can provide "IP masquearding" to allow multiple machines to share one "external" address. The machines behind the firewall will be given RFC1918 (private network/"non-routable") IP addresses that are translated by the firewall.
Since anyone lucky enough to be located within about 5000 feet of the local telephone central office can get 1.5Mpbs SDSL, the number of users shouldn't be a problem. That's T1-level bandwidth (with less reliability, though), so it can easily be used by 100 or more users at once, depending on usage patterns.
Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 02-09-2001, 12:34 PM:
Its pretty much as Scott says. I have never measured the bandwidth, oe speed at a given computer though. We are only a block from the switch office too and that does help out. All in all the DSL is well worth it.
The real pisser is the limitations of Quickbooks Pro. It will only allow 5 computers to log on at a time. We have not found a way around that yet and I would assume that more than 5 would cause it to get unrealistically slow.
Mark