For XP Reg. Codes
Hi n-Trackers:
Again… I’ve had to re-Activate my XP (Home) Operating System…
Howevr, this time, the Ph# on the activation screen did not work, for this set-up… I was refered to a Can. Rep Ph# where I was re-directed to another Ph# to receive new codes… It was an automated/digital call that I received the #'s from, to activate my XP Desk…
No Issue… The #'s worked just fine… 
The last re-activation occured on Oct. 22nd… The time before that… I didn’t take notes…
All this is because my P-111 is acting in-a-way that is causing XP to send off ERROR Reports to Microsoft, everytime a “Blue Screen” occures, with this computer…
At Post-up Time… the BIOS may-or-may-not, report all the Hardware that is connected to the MainBoard… Then XP reports that there is a hardware change in this computer and then… a Report is Created, for Microsoft… to see…
I’d really like to discover how to get the BIOS to report… Consistantlly, everytime this computer “Posts–Up”, at boot-time…
I believe this to be the issue, with this set-up…
However, when this happens, I now have an issue with n-Track and it’s FILE PATH CODE’ing… or whatever Term-to-Call-IT… The .saved .SNG file just doesn’t know where to look for the wave files to import into the Time-Line of n-Track… Cause the Hard Drives are incorrectlly reporting to XP/Desk at Boot-Time… Well, " " What-do-I Know " "
If there’s another explaination for all this, I’d be interested in some of you replying to this thread to help me put all these issues I have with my set-up, To Rest…
Bill…
P.S. I make reference to this issue in the topic under TEST PROJECT in the other topic/part of the Board…
Eyup!
Bill, have a look at your bios, there may be an option to turn off the hardware detection and let the operating system detect all your hardware.
I did this in my old Celeron system and it was much more stable.
Just a thought.
Steve
Hi Steve:
Thanks for you reply… I could have never thought of that on my own, initative… But I’ll reserve that suggestion for the time-being… at least for now… As you can see… I hate playing with the BOIS…
I’m in AaHh of these Chineese Boxes… They don’t speak “Blusenose” or… I don’t speak Chineese… One-Or-The-Other…
All I’d like to do is, Try to get this set-up stable, again… Mabey, I’ll revert back to '98SE again, as a Desk…
That’s what I said to the Girl, this morning when-and-Before she connected me to the Digital Voice… for re-activation for this Desk… What a Sweet-Heart … She Was… * The Digital Voice*, I Mean… 
[EDIT] I mean… The-Real-Girl… Well… lol…
Bill…
Eyup!
Ok Bill, yeah, messing about with bios is not for the faint-hearted!
It’s worth a try, but make sure you only mess with one setting at a time so you can put it back if there are any screw-ups 
I used 98se for a long time and then plucked up courage to migrate to XP.
I have to say it was very worthwhile. With one exception, everything (including NTrack) is much more stable. The only problem I have is my scanner. I have to re-install the driver every time I want to use it!
It was fine in 98 
Steve
Thanks Steve:
I’ll be looking into this…
Ya know, if it weren’t for these Boxes, we’d have nothing to complain about…
Bill…
Sounds like you have a faulty motherboard. I’d say it’s pointless to try to work around that kind of issue through software, which is what all your solutions have been so far…except for the RAM thing. 
Hi phoo:
Thanks for your reply, to this … I’ve been at it sense early this morning… It started with a re-activation of the Desk…
Then I posted an update to the .sng file of that project. Then I went to the project here, but I am unable to open a consistent timeline with an.sng file on this computer. While trying to organize another file of the project in a NEW folder, on one of the drives, I created the folder… imported the wav files, to the time line from an .sng file that I posted on the Site/Page… it opened, after I pointed the browser to the wav file…I wanted to use. At this point, all is fine… So, I did a “Save As” and things just sat there… On the XP Task Bar a Prompt came up, saying that there was an error creating a “Save” for the requested operation… I didn’t dwell on it too much… but I should have… I went looking for the drive I created the file, on… NO DRIVE appeared on the DESK of XP for that Hard Drive. ( But I created the file and pointed n-Track’s PATH to that folder in the Pref’s ) … I rebooted the Box and sure enough, the drive reappeared, on the dask… So, I created a new time line, in n-Track with all that I intended, before. and everything went, according to “Order”… I reposted a NEW .sng file of the project on the Site/Page at that Link.,. You’ll see it up there, with a few updates to the .sng file… I was trying to remember from the early workings of this project.
This is a big IF…
Could the lithium cell of the Main Board be Faulty/Low in Potential? Writing/Saving commands to the c-mos on the MainBoard? If it is another matter… Mainboard fault… How would I go about “Swapping” out the Mainboard to/and preserve the Hard drive that I originally installed the XP Desk on, to build another computer? That is… around another computer with another Mainboard? with the XP installed Hard drive?
I hope my question makes sense…
Bill…
It’s possible a dead or nearly dead battery could contribute. An obvious symptom of that is when the clock doesn’t keep time after a reboot and BIOS setting are constantly reset to the defaults. You may have that problem, but the other symptoms seem worse than a dead battery. Why the machine is up and running it should do fine, dead battery or not, once a few things have been reset.
Disk drives disappearing - timeline stuff - sounds serious. It could be clock issues or bus issues or any number of things. I don’t know what would cause all that really. I had a machine that dropped hardware so bad that it would support only one PCI card at a time. Add another one and it would randomly reinstall just one card at bootup. I know for a fact that the MB was just screwed. It died not long ago.
That said, a hard drive going south for the winter can cause some of those symptoms.
As for trying to replace the motherboard and keep the current drive in tact, I’ve tried it once and it didn’t work. The OS is setup based on the hardware installed at the time. Changing the motherboard, unless it’s the exact same model, probably won’t work. What I try to do in these cases is backup what I need and punt - format and reinstall everything. That is way easier in the long run than trying to force things to work.
Bill,
I have to ask you several questions before I can suggest anything. Perhaps you’ve posted this before, but to save me the time of searching…
Did you upgrade to XP or do a clean install?
Give me the details of your computer.
Brand name (if not custom made) & model
if custom: Mainboard name & model
Processor: P3 800 ?
ram : how much and how many
HD(s) : Make & size & age
Video Card details
Anything else installed (sound, video etc.)
I have extensive experience in troubleshooting and building computers but I won’t jump to any conclusions till I know all the specs.
KingFish
Hi KingFish,phoo,Mark,Steve and all who might be Interested in this Issue:
I’ve threatened to post all the hardware and spec’s and anything that might point to what could be the reason why this machine is doing what it does… on another thread a few weeks ago, but time seems to scream on…
Tomorrow, I’ll be trucking/shutteling container trailers between yards… We’ll be up early and that means I have to cram for sleep… We have about 500-550 miles to run tomorrow… I need to be sharpper then most days… But, I promise that I’ll post everything about this computer… starting with what the BIOS posts at Boot-Time.
I built this computer from Scrap parts… I hate to say it, but could it be 5-6 years ago, now? As soon as I booted it up, I discovered it was a rotten working P-111… Even before I bolted the Board in the cabinet, I replaced the Lithium Battery… I no sooned had it up and running when an identical Board became available… So, I got that one, as well… So, now I had two outdated machines to work on… Both O/S were '98SE and of the same build. I’ll post all of that when/as I can…
I’ll see how Sunday goes… mabey, Monday… We’ll see.
I know so little about all this that it hurts me to try to describe just why I’m Daugg’in at it, anyway…
Xp, as an Operating System has a feature that by installing a Network utility, permission can be given to someone on the Internet, so that person can look at a computer through a network card… Mabey, that would be a better way to observe what/how/why this machine is config’ed to do what it is doing… Someone knows… It’s just not in me.
I think I’m gonna take a step backward from this thing, for today, while I sleep for what is in store for me, tomorrow…
Bill…
Hi All:
I’m peckin’ away at these issues, one-at-a-time…
The 800khz. machine XP was not “Saveing/ Save As” the .npk n-Track files for Opening at the next reboot. I think it’s behaveing O.K., now… I “Reverted” the config files to “Default” and I re-registered n-Track. Then reset the the config files to where I usually have n-Track… So-Far-So-Good… By the way… this machine is a Dual-Boot machine… With XP Pro on one drive and '98SE on the other Primary IDE Port… Each drives are on the same “Ribbon” cable… as, master and Slave… The '98SE drive is the master, with two partitions… The XP Pro Drive as the Slave, with no Partition… There are little-if-any issues on the '98SE Partition/Drive…
The 1.2mhz Machine, is a different story.
As I write this post, I’ve had two “Black Screens”, where the machine has rebooted from some kind of failure… Who Knows? However, the Operating System has not logged any Report for Microsoft… I think I’ve given up on sending any reports off to Microsoft… But, I still think there are reports being produced on the drive, somewhere, for sending off to Microsoft at some opertune, time…
Steve:
If I enter the BIOS. where would I look for the Do Not Have The BIOS report the Hardware… At Post-up Time? And leave the operating system to report the Hardware? However… At Post-up Time I do notice that the Hard Drives are being reported at about 80% of the times the machine is booted up… That is someone better, than in the recent past…
phoo:
You’re right… It can’t be the Lithium Battery… The Date-and-Time is quite accurate… Could it be that the drives that arn’t being reported at boot-time are 60-80% full? These are 40 and 60 gig Maxtor Hard Drives… And are connected to the Promise-T Card…I have removed the 60 gig Maxtor drive that has an awful time posting -up… So, I have three drives connected to the Promise-t Card and two Boot drives connected to the Primary IDE Port as Boot Drives…
I will and I have yet to post you guys all the Hardware that is connected to the Mainboard… of this 1.2 mhz P-111…
Bill…
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| So, I have three drives connected to the Promise-t Card and two Boot drives connected to the Primary IDE Port as Boot Drives… |
I’m willing to bet you have an underpowered power supply. What’s the watts on that sucker?
How full the drives are have nothing to do with then showing up or boot time. A hard drive that is slow to spin up can cause all kinds of problems though. Did removing the 60 gig drive help anything? Do thing that will help on two fronts. The slow spin-up drive is gone and that takes some load off the power supply.
I’m assuming all drives are on a single PS, but even if they aren’t look into what’s on what power supply. Low or flaky/dirty power can cause almost all of your symptoms.
Hi phoo:
That was one of the first reports that came back from microsoft… way back when… I had an EnerMax 365, Power supply in this setup…
So, I installed a Antres 550 watt supply in this computer…
But It didn’t seem to help in that regard… Well… I don’t think it has…
So, that’s a power supply and a ram replacment and a Promise-T card and I think the next thing will be swapping out Hard Drives, and well??
But I will post all the hardware details and all of this setup when I can find/get my head on straight…
Bill…
Back, Again:
I think I have discovered a boot-up work-around that seems to work at about 90% more effective, at Boot-time…
When I power up the machine, I “Hit” the Pause/Break button, on the keyboard… I delay the boot sequence, at Post-up Time, for about a minute-or-so… Giving the Hard-Drives time to “Spin-Up”… Then, I hit Esc… and continue booting to the desk… The next thing is… I config’d the hard drives to shut-down, if, I’m not asking for any files to be transfered from them … The only thing is… I have to wait for them to “Spin-Up”, if I require any files/operations from them, during the course of operations…
It’s not 100% resolve… But I think it’s some-what better for the set-up… I haven’t as yet, figuered out just why the drives powered down, for no reason, when I had them config’d to “Never Shut Down”…??
Bill…
Eyup!
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| Steve: If I enter the BIOS. where would I look for the Do Not Have The BIOS report the Hardware… At Post-up Time? And leave the operating system to report the Hardware? However… At Post-up Time I do notice that the Hard Drives are being reported at about 80% of the times the machine is booted up… That is someone better, than in the recent past… |
Bill, look for a setting in the bios that talks about “plugNplay OS” That’s the one that allows the bios to configure hardware, or the operating system.
Also, you may have a setting which delays the detection of hard drives to allow them to spin up before reading their parameters. I have mine set at 3 seconds.
Not the same as your problem, I know, but if I allow my bios to detect the hardware, it does not detect my usb mouse, so I have it set for plugNplay OS
At college, we had a machine which was reporting the same hard drive twice, so it ended up with two entries in explorer. Setting the bios for non plugNplay OS cured that problem.
I wonder what the answer would be if we added up the time saved by using computers against the time wasted by having to fix the things?
Steve
Hi Steve:
Thanks for the reply you’ve posted, here on ths, for me. I’m still working on these machines… Some of the issues have not gone away… some of them are intermittant, and I know I’m gonna be faced with re-registering/recodeing this Operating System with Microsoft as long as I have this setup. I am… And this machine is creating “Log Reports” like Crazy… almost everytime this machine boots up. I’ve gone into XP/Windows and had a peek at some of them… The report is as long as my arm… It goes back to when the operating system was first, installed. The reports are pretty detailed… However, I don’t quite understand them… I know a lot of you guys up here could look at them at mabey, suggest and adjust this setup to fix 99% of the issues this machine has.
On another note… I have two of these machines… The other one is set up with two boot drives… That one is a 800khz. processor setup. and has two boot drives. It is working almost flawlessly… Except the other day I had this Brain-Storm… I installed another stick of ram into the mainboard… and booted into the XP partition… I know FULL-WELL that the setup will only accept 512 meg of PC 133 ram… But anyway. I proceeded to JAM another stick into the board… Well, … before the Smoke setteled, I had to repair the XP O/S Boot Files and “Lick-My-Wounds”… It had Dumped half of the Boot-up Files… I don’t know where they went… but I’m still wiping my feet on the mat…
Why am I unable to keep my fingers outta something that works… ??
Now, I’m unable to get a working set of Graphic Drivers into the XP Partition for the Matrox G-450 card… The drivers that are installed into the '98SE Partition works like a charm… But XP??? no… where as, they did before I did the DEED…
Delaying the Post-Up Sequence has cured most of the boot issues, on this machine… But I think I have to accept that the utilities I’m operating on this machine is slowing down and taxing the resourses that is available to operate all this mess. The machine stops-and-thinks about all the commands I’m requesting this machine to do, at any given time… The average P-4 machine today is operating at 2.4 - 2.8 mhz… and with a Gig. of 400khz. , ram…
I think that, I gotta move beyond all these P-111s…
Bill…
Eyup!
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Hang in there Bill.
My machine is a P111 900MHz with 512Meg of RAM and runs NTrack fine.
I also have it dual boot XP and 2003 server.
I have XP and 2003 server on different physical drives, with a third physical drive holding all my program files and data. The fourth drive is audio only.
So, it is possible to run a P111 with separate OS’s and multiple drives.
Maybe it might be an idea to go back to first principles and just get the machine working as a simple desktop thing. One OS, no multi boot, just plain vanilla and go from there, one step at a time.
I know it’s extra work, but it might pay in the long run. See what you think.
Steve
Hi Steve:
I’m looking into updating the BIOS on this 800khz. machine… That will bring the two machines into the same BIOS paramiters… I don’t know if that’ll help, but at least I’m working on what issues I have between the two machines. The '98SE partition has n-Track build 1516 installed on it… That keeps this P-111 on the same playing field as the '98SE partition on the '98SE partition of the P-4 that has the Lexicon CORE-32 audio hardware. The P-111 machine that has the Hoontech/STA 2000 audio hardware installed on it will and works with both '98SE and XP partitions… That stuff is inserted in the "Group I/O’s of the Studio Mixer… I’m just about ready to get in the Studio and run that set-up through it’s paces… It’s very close to doing the “Igloo Test” on all of that set-up… It’s the “EDITING SUITE” set-up that’s giving me all the issues… I think, the Tracking part of the Set-up is gonna go just fine… That doesn’t mean to say that any of the other part of the set-up couldn’t be configuered to do Editing… But it means a lot of Patching interface configuration to the Mixer to make a tracking set-up work for Editing purposes…
The only issue I have with the Studio P-111 is… I am unable to get the graphics card to work with the XP partition… Somehow, the drivers wouldn’t install on the XP partition… They were there, till I messed with the Ram …It says the card is working and all, but in the Device Manager there is no config screen to config the G-450 card, in XP… '98SE works O.K. I’ve tried everything I know to get the XP and G-450 card to recognize, each-other… NO-GO… so far…
Bill…
Eyup!
Well, as far as I know, the G-450 has an XP driver, so that shouldn’t be a problem.
Have you tried uninstalling the driver (boot to XP first) then reboot so that XP loads it’s basic vga driver (cancel any XP attempt to run the “found new Hardware Wizard”), and then re-install the Matrox driver.
Sometimes it’s necessary to reboot after an uninstall, otherwise XP just restores what was there previously. If that was a corrupt install, then you just get the corruption re-loaded
Strange that you are having the worst time with XP. I have never looked back after I upgraded from 98se.
Steve