Forums » Off-Topic
Windows issue
For those of you who fancy yourselves some kind of expert windows tech, or just enjoy a challenge...
http://forums.spywareinfo.com/index.php?showtopic=81822&st=
http://forums.spywareinfo.com/index.php?showtopic=81822&st=
Wow that's...damn. I've never encountered such a problem when installing a new drive and i've installed one before. I don't even know why i'm posting anything since i can't help...
Maybe this should be in the bugs section>Windows...
Ask Solra? He's a comp genius.
Ask Firemage? He's a comp genius too.
XD try calling a tech support place?
Maybe this should be in the bugs section>Windows...
Ask Solra? He's a comp genius.
Ask Firemage? He's a comp genius too.
XD try calling a tech support place?
I thought the issue with Windows is because it's Win-- *mrhrmrmafamamhrm*
/me is dragged away from the thread by Guides armed with code
/me is dragged away from the thread by Guides armed with code
After hunting around a bit, I see that the 740 external has a tendency to work for a bit and then go all wonky. Suggestions range from disabling "Legacy USB" in your BIOS setup to unplugging and replugging all your USB stuff, to uninstalling your lightspeed divers.
I'll look further into the drive lettering.
There's this: http://consumer.installshield.com/kb.asp?id=Q110636 the second half is probably what you need.
And this is interesting info:
"Installing a DVD-RAM or similar dual-function drive adds two new drive letters. This means only that your system is treating the drive as two separate drives—one for each function.
To find out which drive letter matches which function, insert a disc that you should be able to read (for example, a DVD-ROM or CD-ROM disc for a DVD-RAM drive).
Open Microsoft Windows Explorer and try to read the disc by clicking on either new drive letter.
If you can't read the disc using the drive you picked, try clicking on the other drive.
Note which drive designation lets you read the disc.
Confirm that you can write to an appropriate disc (a DVD-RAM disc, for example) using the other drive letter. "
I'll look further into the drive lettering.
There's this: http://consumer.installshield.com/kb.asp?id=Q110636 the second half is probably what you need.
And this is interesting info:
"Installing a DVD-RAM or similar dual-function drive adds two new drive letters. This means only that your system is treating the drive as two separate drives—one for each function.
To find out which drive letter matches which function, insert a disc that you should be able to read (for example, a DVD-ROM or CD-ROM disc for a DVD-RAM drive).
Open Microsoft Windows Explorer and try to read the disc by clicking on either new drive letter.
If you can't read the disc using the drive you picked, try clicking on the other drive.
Note which drive designation lets you read the disc.
Confirm that you can write to an appropriate disc (a DVD-RAM disc, for example) using the other drive letter. "
Touriaus:
NOBODY reads that forum...
I've already tormented three tech support lines (Including HP and Gateway) with this issue, and nobody's been able to even say what the problem was, aside from this remarkable breakthrough:
GW_Online_Support_dude: "Yes, this is a Windows issue"
Genius! pure genius... next they're going to discover that Microsoft code contains bugs!
GuideThat'sDraggingOffMoldy:
Beat him good this time! no more of this whiffle bat nonsense - use the steel one.
Whistler:
I'll take a look at some of that stuff in the morning... You'll not that I already tried the disk management control panel and it didn't work... but if the 740 is known to be full of issues, that could explain how I got it for just $110... HPbastards, killemall....
NOBODY reads that forum...
I've already tormented three tech support lines (Including HP and Gateway) with this issue, and nobody's been able to even say what the problem was, aside from this remarkable breakthrough:
GW_Online_Support_dude: "Yes, this is a Windows issue"
Genius! pure genius... next they're going to discover that Microsoft code contains bugs!
GuideThat'sDraggingOffMoldy:
Beat him good this time! no more of this whiffle bat nonsense - use the steel one.
Whistler:
I'll take a look at some of that stuff in the morning... You'll not that I already tried the disk management control panel and it didn't work... but if the 740 is known to be full of issues, that could explain how I got it for just $110... HPbastards, killemall....
Eeep! I'm sorry...
See, Cunjo, the problem with Windows IS that it's Windows.
As you said (linked) yourself, there "are no bugs in Windows."
And not to start OS Wars MCLXIV, but I have never seen nor heard of an OSX-running computer having an issue remotely similar to what you're having. I definitely think it's an OS issue and nothing else.
My suggestion is to see if you can grep (or whatever the windows equivalent is) the ratings and playcounts for all of your music from the xml file or however your media player stores data and then see if there's a way to replant that somewhere else.
Of course, you could also try going through that file and applying a regex to the filepaths. That's the best I can suggest.
As you said (linked) yourself, there "are no bugs in Windows."
And not to start OS Wars MCLXIV, but I have never seen nor heard of an OSX-running computer having an issue remotely similar to what you're having. I definitely think it's an OS issue and nothing else.
My suggestion is to see if you can grep (or whatever the windows equivalent is) the ratings and playcounts for all of your music from the xml file or however your media player stores data and then see if there's a way to replant that somewhere else.
Of course, you could also try going through that file and applying a regex to the filepaths. That's the best I can suggest.
I didn't bother reading through much because Its 4AM and I... really don't want to read.... but since Im probably not coming back I'll give you something to try.
From what I can understand, you have a Drive letter problem. Couldn't you just change the drive letter in Computer Management, Disk Manager?
Just click the partition and click "Change Drive letter and Path".
From what I can understand, you have a Drive letter problem. Couldn't you just change the drive letter in Computer Management, Disk Manager?
Just click the partition and click "Change Drive letter and Path".
Miharu, do you honestly keep track of every OS War you've seen!?
Anyway, just shell out the 3000 bucks for a Mack Book Pro 17". Runs Windows better than my friends' custom built PC
Anyway, just shell out the 3000 bucks for a Mack Book Pro 17". Runs Windows better than my friends' custom built PC
ok first you should not have half that #@$% festering on your disk. Super RAM Booster? What the @#$@#$? Your machines inability to update to Service Pack 2 indicates that it's, basically, in need of a good burning. SP2 might , by itself, fix your drive letter debacle. However. Let us not get ahead of ourselves and throw the baby out with the misshapen zombie head emerging from its belly.
in a decrepit old case like this, sometimes moving a single nail can bring down the entire rotting house so lets not do anything that doesnt need to be done. lets just get your music playing again, and then pray that your machine gets run over by a truck before you have any more 'challenges' to the poor bastards tasked with 'repairing' this god awful monstrosity.
now. google for "server execution failed" "disk management" "unable to connect to logical disk manager", in various combinations. with quotes. if theres not something pretty quick and easy in there, that is totally harmles and doesnt involve drastic changes, like restarting a service or something... then roll up the sleeves and get the latex gloves.
if you dont know what a service is... uhm... ok. go to start, run, then type in 'services.msc'. it will pop up a big box with a bunch of crap that Windows runs in the background (or not), and you can stop and restart all that crap -- there should be some for logical disk something-or-other, try to start those, see if they start. try disk manager then. that probably wont work but its something simple to try first.
----
now for a quick and dirty fix that will let you listen to your songs again and that you can use again, hopefully, with a future computer:
make your 'i:' drive shared on the network. my computer, right click it, click 'share'. name the share 'quickdirty'. give it a password for chrissakes.
then go to explorer, tools, map network drive, then map G: to point to
\\yourcomputer\quickdirty.
that might hold you for a while.
if you ever want to get rid of this mapping, you can do tools unmap network drive, or whatever. or cmd.exe, net use /delete g:
----------
but if you want to get to the root of the problem....
completely back up all your @#$#$ using a spare HD and linux ntfsclone (thank god you know some linux, saves me writing 3 paragraphs)
-------
now if this problem is going to become a long term recurring nightmare, which it might since all your stuff is on a removable disk, you might try out this utility:
http://www.rekenwonder.com/linkmagic.htm
this is same theory as network share/map strategy (redirect g: to i:),,, but doesnt use any network crap so it will be less hassle and less security risk.
with this utility, you tell the computer that everything programs ask for on 'g:', (the junction) well, it should redirect that request to 'i:' (the destination). (or whatever crazy letter your disk shows up as).
i have no idea if this thing works, which is why i put this After the 'backup yo s#$' section. but theoretically it is based on very simple stuff that has been in operating systems since the 70s/80s so its probably not a big deal. then again your computer is ... messed up.
----------
after that is done, if you still want to salvage your windows install, then try to fix your Disk Manager crashing. yeah. thats uhm. itneresting. try a full virus scan. and uninstall any 'helpful programs' your DVD came with.
after that, google for your error messages again. and this time, do all the crazy detailed insane stuff they suggest, like sfc /scannow or whatever.
example hits:
http://forums.techguy.org/windows-nt-2000-xp/211499-connect-logical-disk-manager-service.html
http://www.msfn.org/board/lofiversion/index.php/t61740.html
honestly if you were a staff person at work, i would gently offer to wipe your system and reinstall from scratch, up to SP2, and attempt to restore your critical programs and data from backup. why would i do this? because at work we can clone a machine in 20 minutes, we dont have very many specialized programs we need to funkily restore the data for, and it would save me about 20 hours of head scratching and googling and rebooting which would leave, in the end, a still f@#$ up system with god knows what cruft from all the superRambooster-esque garbage that had invaded it over the years.
good luck!
and dont be fooled. macs suck. i had to uhm.. renoberate my permission submatrix by hand, it took 8 hours. and i keep getting 'hot turtleneck' spam ads.
in a decrepit old case like this, sometimes moving a single nail can bring down the entire rotting house so lets not do anything that doesnt need to be done. lets just get your music playing again, and then pray that your machine gets run over by a truck before you have any more 'challenges' to the poor bastards tasked with 'repairing' this god awful monstrosity.
now. google for "server execution failed" "disk management" "unable to connect to logical disk manager", in various combinations. with quotes. if theres not something pretty quick and easy in there, that is totally harmles and doesnt involve drastic changes, like restarting a service or something... then roll up the sleeves and get the latex gloves.
if you dont know what a service is... uhm... ok. go to start, run, then type in 'services.msc'. it will pop up a big box with a bunch of crap that Windows runs in the background (or not), and you can stop and restart all that crap -- there should be some for logical disk something-or-other, try to start those, see if they start. try disk manager then. that probably wont work but its something simple to try first.
----
now for a quick and dirty fix that will let you listen to your songs again and that you can use again, hopefully, with a future computer:
make your 'i:' drive shared on the network. my computer, right click it, click 'share'. name the share 'quickdirty'. give it a password for chrissakes.
then go to explorer, tools, map network drive, then map G: to point to
\\yourcomputer\quickdirty.
that might hold you for a while.
if you ever want to get rid of this mapping, you can do tools unmap network drive, or whatever. or cmd.exe, net use /delete g:
----------
but if you want to get to the root of the problem....
completely back up all your @#$#$ using a spare HD and linux ntfsclone (thank god you know some linux, saves me writing 3 paragraphs)
-------
now if this problem is going to become a long term recurring nightmare, which it might since all your stuff is on a removable disk, you might try out this utility:
http://www.rekenwonder.com/linkmagic.htm
this is same theory as network share/map strategy (redirect g: to i:),,, but doesnt use any network crap so it will be less hassle and less security risk.
with this utility, you tell the computer that everything programs ask for on 'g:', (the junction) well, it should redirect that request to 'i:' (the destination). (or whatever crazy letter your disk shows up as).
i have no idea if this thing works, which is why i put this After the 'backup yo s#$' section. but theoretically it is based on very simple stuff that has been in operating systems since the 70s/80s so its probably not a big deal. then again your computer is ... messed up.
----------
after that is done, if you still want to salvage your windows install, then try to fix your Disk Manager crashing. yeah. thats uhm. itneresting. try a full virus scan. and uninstall any 'helpful programs' your DVD came with.
after that, google for your error messages again. and this time, do all the crazy detailed insane stuff they suggest, like sfc /scannow or whatever.
example hits:
http://forums.techguy.org/windows-nt-2000-xp/211499-connect-logical-disk-manager-service.html
http://www.msfn.org/board/lofiversion/index.php/t61740.html
honestly if you were a staff person at work, i would gently offer to wipe your system and reinstall from scratch, up to SP2, and attempt to restore your critical programs and data from backup. why would i do this? because at work we can clone a machine in 20 minutes, we dont have very many specialized programs we need to funkily restore the data for, and it would save me about 20 hours of head scratching and googling and rebooting which would leave, in the end, a still f@#$ up system with god knows what cruft from all the superRambooster-esque garbage that had invaded it over the years.
good luck!
and dont be fooled. macs suck. i had to uhm.. renoberate my permission submatrix by hand, it took 8 hours. and i keep getting 'hot turtleneck' spam ads.
Aananzi (wow, I can't believe I'm discussing this with you...):
SuperRAMBooster is for the explicit purpose of forcing the operating system to release all the RAM it just simply sucks up as system cache and forgets, since none of the windows settings or tricks supposed to prevent that were actually working. I got tired of rebooting every time the system 'misplaced' all of the available RAM to the point where everything ran slow as shit, so I installed SuperRAMBooster and run it every time I have no free RAM in spite of not having any actually in use either.
SP2 will not run on this series of laptop. I have tried it three times on two different machines, one of which was immediately after reinstalling windows and updating the drivers. It clashes with the video drivers, and there is still not a patch to fix it.
You think I would have went through all that trouble of writing that spiel up if a simple google for the problem would have worked?
I thought that post already clearly outlined what I had tried with the services and how it didn't work.
I'd rather not get into half-ass workarounds so long as the problem exists and needs fixing, and it does. The only workaround I'm still considering is hacking the library files to point them at the I: drive.
I have Linux, but it doesn't work for me (no compatible video or network drivers available) and until I have the time to get THAT fixed, I won't be able to fall back on Linux (and I don't have the time to fix that). I also don't have a spare HD.
Did full virus scans with four different high-end programs, and also did a boot-time scan with Avast!. The system is clean. I never installed the 'helpful' programs that came with my DVD, excepting the necessary drivers.
I have had bad experiences with sfc /scannow in the past (every time I have tried it on this machine, I've ended up needing to wipe the drive and reinstall) or I would have done it already.
SuperRAMBooster is for the explicit purpose of forcing the operating system to release all the RAM it just simply sucks up as system cache and forgets, since none of the windows settings or tricks supposed to prevent that were actually working. I got tired of rebooting every time the system 'misplaced' all of the available RAM to the point where everything ran slow as shit, so I installed SuperRAMBooster and run it every time I have no free RAM in spite of not having any actually in use either.
SP2 will not run on this series of laptop. I have tried it three times on two different machines, one of which was immediately after reinstalling windows and updating the drivers. It clashes with the video drivers, and there is still not a patch to fix it.
You think I would have went through all that trouble of writing that spiel up if a simple google for the problem would have worked?
I thought that post already clearly outlined what I had tried with the services and how it didn't work.
I'd rather not get into half-ass workarounds so long as the problem exists and needs fixing, and it does. The only workaround I'm still considering is hacking the library files to point them at the I: drive.
I have Linux, but it doesn't work for me (no compatible video or network drivers available) and until I have the time to get THAT fixed, I won't be able to fall back on Linux (and I don't have the time to fix that). I also don't have a spare HD.
Did full virus scans with four different high-end programs, and also did a boot-time scan with Avast!. The system is clean. I never installed the 'helpful' programs that came with my DVD, excepting the necessary drivers.
I have had bad experiences with sfc /scannow in the past (every time I have tried it on this machine, I've ended up needing to wipe the drive and reinstall) or I would have done it already.
I didn't read nothin, so don't bother replying if this doesn't relate at all.
Do:
Open Computer Management
Open Disk Management
Right click Disk > Change Drive Letter & Paths
Won't work of course if its the primary drive, but once again I remind you I don't have time to read :)
Do:
Open Computer Management
Open Disk Management
Right click Disk > Change Drive Letter & Paths
Won't work of course if its the primary drive, but once again I remind you I don't have time to read :)
Kix: he said his disk management wont start.
Cunjo,
If you care about your data, you should get a spare HD and do a full backup. The disk manager being hosed indicates, like, something seriously wrong with your OS and any attempt to fix it may damage all sorts of stuff. A spare HD is the cheapest and easiest way to do a full backup.
You mighta done this, but you should try removing the DVD drivers. Also, super ram booster may be nice, but ask yourself why hundreds of millions of other people don't need it and you do? What is different about your setup? Is your hardware just weird... having the shit drivers and leaking RAM? If so, maybe your computer is simply hopeless. It appears so from it not being able to do SP2. But then lets say you get a new computer....
If you fix the drive letters in your library metadata, youll have to do it again when you move this removable HD to a new machine. Hey maybe that is best.. then again I dont know what program you are using for music rating or where else it stores drive letter data ... the registry? config files? hard coded into the executable?
The 'half assed' drive letter remapping is basically like 'mounting' in Unix.. not that weird actually. But having drive letters in the first place is half-assed - they are a holdover from CP/M in the 1970s.
Cunjo,
If you care about your data, you should get a spare HD and do a full backup. The disk manager being hosed indicates, like, something seriously wrong with your OS and any attempt to fix it may damage all sorts of stuff. A spare HD is the cheapest and easiest way to do a full backup.
You mighta done this, but you should try removing the DVD drivers. Also, super ram booster may be nice, but ask yourself why hundreds of millions of other people don't need it and you do? What is different about your setup? Is your hardware just weird... having the shit drivers and leaking RAM? If so, maybe your computer is simply hopeless. It appears so from it not being able to do SP2. But then lets say you get a new computer....
If you fix the drive letters in your library metadata, youll have to do it again when you move this removable HD to a new machine. Hey maybe that is best.. then again I dont know what program you are using for music rating or where else it stores drive letter data ... the registry? config files? hard coded into the executable?
The 'half assed' drive letter remapping is basically like 'mounting' in Unix.. not that weird actually. But having drive letters in the first place is half-assed - they are a holdover from CP/M in the 1970s.
backup HD is anything but inexpensive, especially when talking about a redundant backup of over 200GB data. DVD Media is cheap, which is one of the reasons I bought the drive... if only it would actually burn DVDs that are readable by other DVD drives.
I would love to get a new computer, really I would... It's just not something that I can afford anytime in the forseeable future... Kinda like a new front axle for my car, or a carburetor for my bike.
Anyway, I managed to get around the issue by booting into safe mode with networking, and accessing the LDM that way from root.
As for storing the ratings and labels, I know it's not in the registry (I looked) - It's WMP10, and that much I'll look into later.
I would love to get a new computer, really I would... It's just not something that I can afford anytime in the forseeable future... Kinda like a new front axle for my car, or a carburetor for my bike.
Anyway, I managed to get around the issue by booting into safe mode with networking, and accessing the LDM that way from root.
As for storing the ratings and labels, I know it's not in the registry (I looked) - It's WMP10, and that much I'll look into later.
so it let you reassign your drive letter from safe mode?