Repairing ME - Part 3

This is the continuation of Repairing ME - Part 2, which currently is on page
7.

When I made my last post to Part 2, I had forgotten that I had already
related some of the progress I had made the week before last. The new thing
is that it seems we have pushed the right button at the hospital. The head
of the department responsible for all computers here (ERN) assured us that we
would get a new PC next week. After all the disappointments over the last 10
months, I won't believe in this PC until it is delivered. (We were supposed
to get it last Friday; we didn't.) I don't know how it will be equipped or
if it will have any productivity software. Whatever it is (if it is) will be
very welcome.

As for the problem PC, I closed the case and left it alone. The floppy
actually was OK. We don't want to give ERN the idea we were messing with it
and broke it. (I salvaged the speakers.) When ERN shows up they find an old
PC that can't boot normally.

If we don't get the new PC I will boot it from a Windows start-up floppy,
reformat drive C and reinstall ME.

That leaves me with my other museum piece which we use for applications and
games (not the Internet). It is marginally better than the problem PC: 300
Mhz Pentium v. 200 Mhz, 3.2 GB drive v. 2.0. There is about 500 MB of
available drive space. It has only 64MB of RAM. I doubt they still make the
kind of RAM it would take to upgrade the memory. It also runs ME. It is
inadequate for modern software, including XP. The physical layout is
ergonomically poor. The system box and
monitor are to the left of the user, the keyboard is in front, and the mouse
is to the right. The user has to turn his or her head to the left to view
the screen and turn back to see the keyboard while operating the mouse off to
the right. What we need is a flat screen monitor. All the new PC's around
the hospital have them. (I wonder if our new PC will have one.)

Our principal productivity applications are MS Word 2000 and Excel 2000.
Both lack Help files. How this came to be I don't know. These are very
complex applications that need Help facilities. Last Friday I got sick of
using them this way. On Monday I am going to attempt to install OpenOffice
1.1.4. I'm told it can be installed on a PC that meets the system
requirements but doesn't connect to the Internet. I'll find out.

After we get the new PC I'm going to ask the powers-that-be around the
program if they want to request a second new PC. If this doesn't work there
are the veterans groups. I am told that the director of the program has
gotten agreement from one of them to donate a new PC. Then there is my
about-to-be surplus PC's as a backup.

My my next project is to get DSL in here. My counterpart has just about
done it, so I know it can be done, though it will be difficult and take a
long time.

"Jack E Martinelli" wrote:

Anything new to report, Sleepless?

--
Jack E. Martinelli 2002-05 MS MVP for Shell/User / DTS
Help us help you: http://www.dts-L.org/goodpost.htm

http://www.microsoft.com/athome/secu...t/default.aspx
Your cooperation is very appreciated.
------
"Sleepless in New Jersey"
wrote in message ...

SNIP



Nobody here wants to spend money on this relic. We just
want to get it running again for a while. Our present
workload is low by design. It is used for Internet
email, news and browsing. I don't allow downloads. We
can live with its limitations for a while longer.

In the last 10 months,our management has applied to the
hospital for a new PC several times. Unfortunately we
have been turned down each time. We applied again on
Friday. This time we requested a replacement, new or
surplus. However, I don't have much hope. The director of
our program is contacting veterans groups for donations.
I heard she was having some success. As for me, I learned of
another vets program here that expects to replace its
gear with state-of-the-art stuff by the end of March.
Their five or six existing PC's are considerably better
than the two we have. I have requested two of their
surplus PC's from my counterpart in their program.
There is the possibility of using patient funds earned
through the operation of our snacks store. To keep the
potential cost down I have been searching the Internet
for refurbished PC's. One way or another we will get
something. Meanwhile we have had a setback, temporary I
hope.

I thought I was so close. On Friday I got the help of
my counterpart in the other program. We installed the CD-ROM
drive in the case. We needed to find out if it was
working. Our corrupted ME can't boot normally and my guy
said the CD isn't accessable in Safe Mode. We tried to boot
from the Windows 98 CD, but it wasn't a boot disk. We tried to
boot from an ME start-up floppy. That's when we found out that
the floppy drive had died. He said he would bring a replacement
on Monday or Tuesday. The plan is to boot from that floppy and,
if the boot succeeds, reformat the hard drive. That will
get rid of everything.

We should have an ME CD on Monday or Tuesday. We'll
stay with ME and follow your directions. If this succeeds
I somehow will have to find a version of AOL we can run.

Many thanks for all the help and attention you have given me.

"Jack E Martinelli" wrote:

If funds permit, and you really wish to continue using this older machine
rather than buy or build a new one, then I recommend installing at least 128
MB of additional physical memory, and replacing the current HD with a new,
larger, faster one. Wait for the WinME upgrade CD to arrive and use it
only. During its installation, it will ask for proof of a qualifying
Windows installation. Put any of the Win98 disks in the CD drive and select
it to qualify. The WinME installation will resume and ask for its disk, to
continue the installation.

Be sure to select to use a large disk during the partition/formatting
process, or do so before hand using fdisk from a boot floppy. Remember that
you want to be able to use a possible 2 GB swap file, in addition to the OS
files, and any apps and personal files.
Keep the initial OS partition at or under 8 GB to ensure that 4 KB clusters
are used to maximize memory performance.
A third-party partition manager will afford complete control of all of this:
http://www.aumha.org/a/parts.htm


This "clean" installation will avoid leaving all kinds of Win98 orphaned
files on the HD and similar entries in the registry.
http://www.aumha.org/a/clean.htm




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