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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 Expand AllCollapse All |
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