Comments

sdgates wrote on 7/8/2003, 10:55 PM
Hank - I am not sure, without inspecting your computer, what may be going on. But I will say that I usually rebuild computers whenever they start crashing. (I am the IT manager at a law firm and, unfortunately, I get a lot of practise doing this every month!)

By rebuild, I mean reinstalling the operating system which, I'm afraid, also means re-installing all software. (On Windows 9x computers, locating and installing the drivers can be a real pain!) However this often tedious process usually means that a computer will then run like new. Of course, a 500 MHz computer still won't operate as fast as a new computer by today's standards. (In fact, while speaking with several different system manufacturers a year ago, they all stated that 650 MHz was considered the absolute minimum for working with video. I would have myself set the bar at more like 850 MHz.)

I know you don't want to hear any more about rebuilding your system since you need to get a project completed. However it also sounds like you may not have a DVD burner (-looking at the question you posed in your other thread). I don't either. But read my post about DVD burners in the thread Ana started entitled "MPEG-1 error message" where we are talking about a Pioneer DVR-A06 with a ton of free software for DVD authoring for just $256. (You'll need to read JohnnyRoy's previous post to get the context.)

Now let me say that if you feel like you can spring for that DVR-A06, you could also snag a very cheap copy of Windows XP Professional FULL (not upgrade) from the same company (www.googlegear.com) for a mere $142. The current street price for Windows XP Pro is $299. You get it at such an incredible price at www.googlegear.com due to the fact that you would be buying the OEM version along with the prerequisite piece of hardware. (I know of no substantial difference between the boxed retail version and the saran-wrapped OEM version. IT WORKED FINE FOR ME!)

The "Full" version would allow you to do a clean install (as opposed to an upgrade). This ensures that all of your problems should dissappear by the time you get all of your software reloaded. But what the heck - you may as well try simply upgrading from Windows 98 first to see if it cures your problems. (That rarely is the case, in my experience, however.)

If you decide to keep plugging away under Windows 98 for the time being, keep this information at hand. Perhaps you'll decide you may want to take advantage of www.googlegear.com's great pricing on the Pioneer DVR-A06 and Windows XP Professional at a later date.

- Steve

(Note: STAY AWAY from Microsoft's crippled Windows XP Home Edition. People often - but not always - report problems running on Windows XP Home Edition. Besides, the street price of Home Edition is $199, which is still more expensive than the OEM version of Windows XP Professional!)
laz wrote on 7/9/2003, 3:21 AM
My son's got an HP and we got it up and going using the HP recovery disc (which links to the hidden partition) without loss of data.

You can also try running a few processes 1st to see if these will clear a few conflicts:
System File Checker:
RUN/ type sfc and replace any files you think are corrupt (be careful as it'll show all files which have been changed as well)
Registry Repair: (which it isn't really to do with this prob, but it could sort out any others):
Go to Start > Shutdown, and choose 'Restart the computer in MS-DOS'

At the blinking cursor, type the following commands successively, hitting 'enter' after EACH line:

cd\
cd windows\command
scanreg /fix

The Scanreg tool will now proceed to rebuild your registry, which can take some time.

When it finished, type exit or win, followed by hitting 'enter' to return to Windows.
Ctrl-alt-delete will work as well.

You will have refreshed, compacted and repaired your Registry.
hokiebay wrote on 7/9/2003, 6:35 AM
Wow! Great replies from you and sdgates! Thanks. I had another thought. Win98 is running on my 20 GB HD and VF and all the associated files is on my 80 GB HD. I have had other problems with the smaller drive like not being able to read from sectors. I think the smaller drive is bad. What if I load XP (or the old Win98) on to the 80 GB drive and run it from there? Can I do that without losing any files on the larger drive?

thanks again
clouds wrote on 7/9/2003, 7:56 AM
One approach would be to get a copy of XP and install it on the same machine. If XP detects another OS it will ask you if you want to have dual-boot capability, and thereafter whenever you boot up you will be asked which OS to boot. I've found this very handy because most of my older apps are installed under 98SE and I didn't want to spend the time to reinstall them.

That said, I just completed a 23 min. film (about 5GB altogether in .avi) using two machines, my (originally) 98SE AMD 800MHz (512MB, 20GB)) and my XP Home 1.6GHz P4 (640MB, 20GB) Dell. I used the Dell with a 1394 card for MiniDV video capture. Over about sixty VF working hours I had NO crashes on either the 98SE machine or the XP Home machine with VF.

About a third of the way into the project I followed the advice on this forum and added a 120GB HDD to the Dell, just for video. I also added a 60GB HDD to the AMD, and installed XP Pro on it, allowing dual boot. I partitioned the 60GB as 2GB NTFS for the OS (turns out to be too small--should have been 4GB), and two 30GB FAT32 partitions for the rest, since 98SE won't read NTFS partitions and I wanted to be able to access this disk using 98SE. Note that (unfortunately) you can't have a FAT32 partition bigger than 30GB. The machines are connected by an 802.11b wireless network, which is WAY too slow to allow editing files on machine A, on machine B, but is OK for backing up files, which I regularly did.

As far as putting the film together using VF, I could see no difference in the editing stage among 98SE, XP Home, and XP Pro; VF uses relatively small files and must do relatively simple things to them in the editing stage (those .vf files are tiny)--what a marvelous program! But when I tried rendering on both the 800MHz AMD and the 1.6GHz Dell I found the Dell about 2X as fast for the same clip (this must depend on what editing is done in the clip, i.e., how many cpu cycles are really needed to render). So I rendered the whole film on the Dell. The film comprised about twenty .avi highest-resolution clips and took somewhat less than three hours to render to MiniDV format; a lot less to VCD.

Bottom line, for the 500MHz 98 machine (not SE?) you might get by with just a new HDD; format the new drive and use it only for VF data. (probably only for source .avi and to put the finished .avi or whatever, on). You'd find some more memory useful too. And re-install W98. Whether you install from inside W98 or use the bootup floppy to install from outside W98, my experience has been that the OS comes back with all of your apps, desktop, etc. undisturbed, but with some preferences changed in the Micro$ apps. (There always seems to be some trouble with resetting the display, for example).

And as soon as you can, spend the $300 or so you can get a juicy P4/XP machine for.
IanG wrote on 7/9/2003, 11:03 AM
>Note that (unfortunately) you can't have a FAT32 partition bigger than 30GB.

I don't understand that. I've got 4, 36 & 80 Gbyte FAT32 partitions accessible with 98SE, 2k and XP.

Ian G.
sdgates wrote on 7/9/2003, 1:23 PM
There are many helper apps that allow Win98 to access large hard drives.

Hank - If at all possible, I'd still get that cheap copy of Windows XP to try. Windows XP is sort of like Windows 2000 with a Windows ME-style interface slapped on. Windows XP (and Windows 2000) has a much more robust file system (- the component that controls how files are written, managed, and read from hard drives) than the file system present on Windows 9x machines. NTFS (- the Windows NT file system) rarely loses any data if the computer crashes, and it also natively and transparently allows for compression of the data on the drive.

You know Hank, you could try making your second drive your primary drive and installing Windows XP there. What have you got to loose? Then, if you make a go of that, dump the smaller drive and set yourself up with a new second drive of 100 GB or larger.

Installing Windows XP should take no longer than an hour with perhaps another two or three hours to download updates from Microsoft. Yes, you'll have the hassle of reinstalling all of your apps, but you'd be surprised how much better your computer runs then! And, as said, you should bump up memory - preferably to 256 MB or better.

Later on - why buy an expensive new computer at all? Just buy a new case and motherboard and transfer everything from your old computer to your new! (You can get what are called "barebone" systems consisting of just that - a case and motherboard already assembled together.) You would, of course, need to also purchase a processor and memory for the new computer as the older computer's processor and memory probably won't work in the newer.
clouds wrote on 7/9/2003, 3:36 PM
According to http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/home/using/productdoc/en/default.asp?url=/windowsxp/home/using/productdoc/en/choosing_between_NTFS_FAT_and_FAT32.asp

otherwise known as "Choosing between NTFS, FAT, and FAT32," it is written:

"In Windows XP, you can format a FAT32 volume up to 32 GB only."
hokiebay wrote on 7/9/2003, 5:38 PM
For now I think I will do that and make the 80GB HD my main (and probably only) drive.
IanG wrote on 7/10/2003, 3:26 AM
Ah, you can't format a FAT32 partition larger than 32 Gbyte - you can use one though if it's already formatted.

Ian G.
laz wrote on 7/10/2003, 4:07 AM
I had a 120gb hd in an external caddy which was fats32. It would work sometimes, but play up on transferring data. So, how did the shop I got it from format over the 30/32 gb fats32 limit?
IanG wrote on 7/10/2003, 11:47 AM
They'd have used a stand alone formatting program. My 80Gbyte Maxtor was supplied with its own formatter - it took less than a second to do the whole thing!

Ian G.
laz wrote on 7/11/2003, 3:00 AM
Thanks IanG. That part explains why I had a few probs with that hd - the pc couldn't cope with a fats32 partition that big, but only some of the time. (And this was rigged up for me by a pc shop!).