Replies

Paul, you raise an interesting point regarding public domain. It’s one of the first things I tried to address with other members of the board. A kind of “what’s ours” versus “what’s there’s”. The board is privately owned by a PTY LTD company that recently changed hands. The previous owner was a very active board member while the new is either very shy or wishes to remain anonymous. I’m not aware of any member successfully contacting the new owner and don’t like my chances of obtaining the database.

An app for pulling the data from HTML is exactly the kind of direction I’m thinking will be required but wasn’t sure if it was possible. The individual threads are stored as separate HTML files in my backup so perhaps there’s light at the end of the tunnel. I’m not particularly familiar with RSS but I know someone who may be able to help me. I’ll make some enquiries and update if I find anything useful. It may help others at some stage.

Thank you, cheers,
Michael.

Thank you Paul. I now see what you were saying and unfortunately I don’t have access to the vBulletin native database. Right now I’m limited to HTML backups only. Would I be correct in thinking that the only way to transfer threads from the HTML files would be to copy/paste chunks of threads into a new forum if the existing one closes?

Thanks once again for your patience with my inexperience.

Cheers,
Michael.

Thanks for the reply Paul. This is a field I have no experience with and I need to read up on it. Uniform Server looks to be an interesting option. What I’m not clear about though is this. If I were to backup the entire forum as HTML files and supporting folders, wouldn’t they need to be converted to a vBulletin database to continue using vBulletin?

Thank you,
Michael.

Well, the situation got the better of me……..nothing I tried got the clone disk working. While I had other plans for the original 40GB drive I did the obvious…….kept it for the OS and just installed the 160 as a storage drive. Have freed up space on the 40GB so consider the matter closed.

For the record, this is what I find curious. We have 2 of the particular PC’s in question, one bought a little after the other. When we got the second one I just cloned the OS drive from the first PC over to the next one and never had a problem. Oh well, such is life!

Cheers

Thanks Gerald, I tried your suggestion and I’m closer to a solution……

The disk will boot now and windows begins to load. At the exact moment the welcome screen appears the system freezes. Does anyone know what could cause this? Thanks.

Regards
Michael

If you use Firefox have a look at the DownloadHelper add-on from the Mozilla site

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3006

After defragging, if D is to the right of C in Disk Management, be sure to move the data on D further out and create the unallocated space you want to use to expand C into right next to the end of the C partition.

In other words, do not create unallocated space on the right side of D because you won’t be able to add that to the end of C.

Hi Byron, I follow your reasoning here but have a question. What do you use to move everything further out? I have several partitions and whenever I have tried to do what you suggest some data is considered unmoveable and won’t budge, even from a non OS drive. Have tried doing it outside the local Windows environment using BartPE with JK Defrag but can never move everything.

Any help appreciated
Michael

Thanks for the advice Michael, and I know where you’re coming from. As a domestic carpenter too, I’m all too aware of the frustrations of external timber doors and frames. That’s why the door jambs are made from 50mm x 50mm tubular steel (as stated in my original post) bolted into brickwork. In fact the whole door (stiles + rails) and frame (jambs + lintel) contain no timber at all… all welded tubular steel and a non-timber cladding. And as a professional engineer, I know that this solution, if properly designed and implemented, will last as long as the garage will.

Alan

Hi Alan, after reading through all the posts in this thread and trying to digest the various diagrams/solutions I guess I forgot the jamb was steel construction. My mistake. However, as a qualified carpenter with no formal engineering training, if it were me in this situation I would just buy the lock. That’s the difference between a chippy and an engineer.

Having said that, my father in law is an engineer and quite brilliant in this regard. For close to 20 years I have seen him peck away at problem situations like this, and find very elegant solutions (even though a solution existed in the store down the road). The solution itself provides him no satisfaction, it’s finding it that he likes. This I understand and admire. It is what gets him out of bed each morning.

You’re clearly qualified to come up with a solution and I’m sure you will. Good luck.

Cheers
Michael

Alan, with due respect and as a domestic carpenter I offer you this. It’s often said that one needs the right tool for the job. The right tool for this job is in fact not a tool, it’s the right lock. I can say from experience that situations like this usually end up in the “It’s kind of ok, but it just doesn’t quite work right” basket. Doors and jambs swell and shrink and move around according to their environment. A DIY solution like this usually works one week and not the next. Living in Melbourne myself, I know what the 4-seasons-in-a-day weather does to external doors.

I’d advise to bite the bullet and just grab the lock designed for the application. I know it’s not what you want to hear.

Cheers
Michael

Nice tip bigaldoc, I must remember that one and likewise johnhutchison. My suggestion is a little off topic in as much as it pertains to Internet Explorer but it is another angle none the less. I work on the principle that if the graphic appeared on my screen, it will have been cached. With the URL you provided, once the page loaded I open Windows Explorer and navigate to the primary internet cache folder. For example in XP,
“C:Documents and Settings********Local SettingsTemporary Internet Files” where ******** is the current user. (The same principle may be able to be applied with the firefox cache but I’m unable to test that at the moment)
In the right pane I hit ‘Last Accessed’ twice to bring the most recently cached files to the top of the list. Not far down the list is BrendaStro_Vespa_12412178_400.jpg
Now just copy/paste or drag/drop.

Edited by StuartR to put before the link and after the link so it is active. See Help 19 for more info.

Thank you kindly Kaplinb and Joeperez for your replies. I’m happy to report that the situation is sorted out. In retrospect I think I just needed to see things explained in a couple of different ways to be able to make sense of it. I have to say that the further I dive (with help from people like yourselves) into XP Pro the more impressed I am. If it helps anyone else, an excellent ‘overview’ article I was also using can be found at http://www.practicallynetworked.com/sharin…aring/index.htm%5B/url%5D
While it did not directly address my specific need it may be enough for some users to work it all out. Personally, I required the bigger explanation. Many thanks again and have a happy and safe new year everyone – Michael.

Problems like these drive me nuts………..I have all my important data backed up so I’m going to scrap the old OS and reinstall. Thanks guys for your help and I’ll let you know how it pans out. Michael

Some time later……Got it all sorted out and will post this as it may help someone with a similar problem. I still have no idea what caused my original problem but that’s irrelevant now with a fresh install being done. However, after the install I still had the same problem with the PC just rebooting in an endless cycle. After moving the drive to the secondary IDE it booted fine and I found that the primary IDE was not working due to a lack or resources. For reasons beyond me, IRQ14 had been assigned too many devices and was leaving the primary IDE high and dry. Anyway, it’s all going now so thanks once again for the help offered – Michael

Thanks kaplinb for the link. Handy site by the way. I had flashed the BIOS with the stable release and the current beta version ( both available from the site you link to) and neither helped which is why I wondered if it was some kind of driver issue. I have the BIOS set as I would expect it to need to be. I’m still exploring a few avenues and will post any results. Meanwhile, any more thoughts are welcome. Ta – Michael

I’m unsure how to interpret your question. Are you saying when you boot your computer nothing happens, the screen displays nothing and the computer sits idle? Is this why you need to reformat? If you have determined that a reformat is the only solution, to enter the BIOS on my Dimension I turn it on and as soon as the drive becomes active I press and release the key. I repeat this until the screen becomes active and it enters the BIOS from the initial boot screen. The boot sequence is easily changed from there. I would still suggest looking further into why you need to reformat though as it’s usually a last resort.

Thanks Stuart, you are correct and the original board did have that update so hopefully ACPI is not an issue. Kaplinb, I read about the method you suggested some time ago and used it but it has not fixed the problem. I dug a little deeper……….in Safe Mode, the system hangs at trying to load ALIM1541.SYS. Much googling later I have seen many errors relating to this but no real help. Now the chipset on the original 5AX board is AliM 1541 and 1543c. The chipset on the newer 6BXC board is Intel 440BX. Could this be where my problem lies??? Is XP trying to load some sort of driver or something for a chipset that no loger exists? While at the Gigabyte site I grabbed the latest chipset driver installer just for the sake of it. It has an NT section but not XP. Any ideas ??
Thanks – Michael