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(Edited by HansV to make URL clickable – see Help 19)

All done !! New drive in and up and running. Old drive is in the drawer as a last resort backup of ‘a known good O/S’. If it helps anyone, the process I used for the drive swap was that found at http://www.informationweek.com/1080/langa.htm%5B/url%5D and the software I used to clone the old drive to the new drive was BootIt NG. Thanks all………excellent forum. Michael

Hi punters, back again and happy as a pig in ummm…..stuff that pigs are happy in. Firstly, thanks to everyone who took the time to consider my post and many thanks to Bill for his depth of thought. Much of what you posted applies to my experience today Bill. Popped a new Seagate 200GB drive in today and used the latest DiscWizard from their site to set the disc up. Part of the wizard is a Q&A section used to determine the best way to set the drive. I tripped over the 137GB limit, as this was news to me! Did much reading in help sections about ’48 Bit LBA’, dynamic disc options and so forth, and so forth. So much of this is new to me I figured a headache was going to happen sooner or later. Anyway, bottom line from the wizard was to use XP, if available, to set the disc up in order to maximise it’s capacity. My original drive is an XP (SP2) drive so long story short……..I have 186.31GB of available space to play with!!!! The usable GB figure being lower than the drive’s 200GB rating is normal from what I understand. I have partitioned the space, but could have used it all as one drive ( I only mention this because I wondered in my earlier post whether partitioning would have any effect on total usable capacity ).
Bill, your advice about firewalling and antivirus is encouraging to see. My original drive uses both programs you mentioned and as I’m planning to image the original drive onto the new drive………..I’m hoping to just pick up where I left off and enjoy the new spacious surroundings. ‘Takes a breath’……..
Hope this thread helps someone else, somewhere down the track. Thanks – Michael

Thanks guys. I have the BIOS flashing files at hand to bring it up to the latest but the BIOS history for the new files indicates no change for drive size support (and nothing else that I see as needed for my purposes) so will leave as is. When I have time this weekend I’ll just pop a new drive in and see how it all goes. It is a swap out so hopefully power should be no issue. I’ll post the outcome as it may be of use to someone down the track. Thanks for all input everyone.

Thanks John. I searched the Australian and US sites and found no answer. The potential power supply issue I was unaware of so will look into this as a side issue. As far as the Dell Service Tag is concerned I did see that as an input option on the Dell sites but had no idea what it was. I suspect it is a way of tracking individual machines, perhaps like the method used by HP service. When time permits I’ll inspect the inside and outside of the box for some type of ‘Tag’. It may enable me access to more info from Dell. One thing I did was checked their BIOS upgrades and version histories to see if any info about size was mentioned but found nothing. At the end of the day I can just put a large drive in and try to format it and see what happens. All the same, a working figure would be nice. Thanks again.
Michael

Thanks Jolas, I’ll try it…………

Edit. Put this puppy to bed !!!!!!!!! Problem solved !!!! Unlocker1.7.8 did the job!! Thank you so much for the suggestion Jolas and as always, thank you to everyone who read the post and made suggestions. Unlocker is now in my permanent toolbox. Regards – Michael

Hi Rory, thanks for the idea, had not thought of that. I tried as you suggested and thought it had worked until I returned to the desktop and found 2 files named original’,’JerryC. The freshly created one deleted fine but the original remains and won’t delete. It can’t be renamed, returns the same error. Something I forgot to mention and should have. When I first used WhoLockMe it reported Explorer was locking the file. Now obviously killing the ‘Explorer process’ kills windows so that got me nowhere. Interestingly, if I try WhoLockMe now with the file. It does nothing, literally nothing happens.
Does anyone know what could be making Explorer think a non-existent file exists. What does Explorer use to ‘index’ a drive in NTFS ? I might have a hunt around and see if there is a way to search the contents of all files on the drive for the hex or binary translation of the filename. Might be barking up the wrong tree, unsure. I’ll be back, thanks – Michael

(Edited by Jisp on 27-Jan-06 16:04. )

Hi Leif. Have just tried a new admin account, logged in and it still won’t budge. I just tried deleting it using ZoneAlarm to block net access with no result but to try your suggestion properly I’ll shutdown and turn off the modem (external) and reboot to try again. Feel free to keep adding straws……………..thanks. Something has to work sooner or later. I wonder if waving a hammer menacingly at the PC might help ? Thanks – Michael

Edit – Tried with modem turned off from both my normal admin account and the new admin account – still stubborn. I need sleep……..I’ll resume this tomorrow. Thanks – Michael

Hi Leif, thanks for the reply and no, at this point nothing is too obvious. I’m hoping it is something obvious – to someone anyway. I have run full ChkDsk (I called it ScanDisk in my original post, a throwback to 9x on my part) I ran it from within XP where it has to reboot to run it. I ran it from the recovery console and also from within BartPE and all showed no problems.
I only have one active account on this PC and so it is the only administrator account ( something I should change from what I read but that will be for another day I’m afraid ) Umm, actually, I’ll try creating another full access admin account when I finish this post and log into that………see if that does the job…somehow.
Finally, I am connected to the internet while trying to delete it.
A text based search (mentioned in my last post) turned up nothing fruitful, as I expected.
I’ll keep trying anything I think of and thanks again – Michael

Thanks for such a quick response Doc Watson. I did try Dr Delete after seeing it in your response to a folder prob posted on 25 Jan in the XP section. It simply told me the file “does not exist”. Most of the ways I have tried came from searching posts on this and other forums plus bits and pieces I have picked up over time. This one has me stumped. I’m going to do a text based search for the file name through every file on this PC…………not sure why, it is the only thing I can think of that I have not done and I don’t expect it will help. I just can’t leave an option I think of without trying it. A file somewhere on the drive is telling the PC that this file exists on the desktop………….I’ll post any progress. Thanks again.

Back again. Thank you for all the replies. Ok, the drive is a Seagate ‘U series 5’ UltraATA. The jumper settings available are
1.Master or single drive (this is what I have it set to and working on the secondary IDE)
2.Drive is slave
3.Master with a non-ATA slave
4.Cable select
Have tried all 4 settings for the sake of the exercise with no difference.
The bios does recognise the drive as primary master when I move it to that position but it just does not want to boot. The IDE configuration for boot sequence is floppy, IDE HDD, CD. The drive type selection is auto.
My boot.ini reads the drive as (0)
When I put the drive on the primary IDE and try to boot from safe mode it loads up 40-50 drivers and reboots at c:windowssystem32driversmup.sys. A bit of googling brings up a squillion potential issues with this file and I’ll have to look into it.
Whooa, I’ll stop here. I have just put an old W98 disc in the machine (only just thought of it) as primary master and it boots without a problem. Perhaps this is an XP issue after all.
I’ll leave it here as I want to try a few things and hunt up some more info. XP recovery console is looking good at this stage.
Any thoughts are appreciated and thanks once again – Michael.

Hi Doc, the jumper on the drive in question is set as ‘master’. I should point out that the drive boots normally as the master drive when on the secondary IDE channel. I leave it as the master drive and move it to the primary IDE channel ( no slave on the channel ) and the problem occurs. I’ll try swapping it to slave and see if it makes a difference but I don’t understand why it would. Thanks for your reply and I’ll update any news.

Thanks for your thoughtful reply M’tz. I have done as you suggested and put the audio from PC1 into the line in of PC2 and it works fine. I should have thought of doing that. This will get me out of trouble for now and I will take a further look into a simple mixer. I have checked the kit form projects availiable at the larger electrical store chains here in Aus and have found nothing yet but I’ll keep hunting. I’m still unsure myself why one audio line seemed to block the other. By piggybacking I meant that I was using a 2into1 type RCA connector on the back of the amp. Never mind, it simply didn’t work. Thanks once again – Michael.

Have read this topic with much interest and it brings to mind something I read many years ago. In IE, navigating to Internet Options/Security/Custom Level, and scrolling down is a button marked ‘Allow Paste Operations Via Script’. My understanding of this is that this enables internet sites and appplications with internet access to literally grab clipboard contents via a paste script if they desire. I guess I class this as a form of keylogging if ‘Enabled’. Can anyone confirm if this is correct and if it is, may be something to check on one’s machine.

Hi folks. Thank you all for your input, I appreciate it. I’m basically working my way through what has been posted/suggested but it will take me some time as I have some distractions. A few quick thoughts though. Mark, I had tried to find the file via DOS with no luck and have just tried again, still no luck.
I do have TweakUI installed and something in the back of my mind makes me think I had issues with it many years ago. I’m wondering if a setting I made in it somehow conflicted with Xteq which I use quite a bit.
Anyway, these are random thoughts and I’ll undo a few things and see what happens. Thanks again one and all, I’ll post any progress – Michael

Hi Mark, I’m not confident enough to say the missing file is the root of my slowdowns however I suspect it is a part of them. As with any fresh system I have ever put together it takes a while to iron things out so I’m guessing there are probably several small bugs lurking. The reason I singled out the shelliconcache file was simply it was the first thing I found that seemed not right. I keep many icons in the quick launch bar and I noticed at start up that it was taking forever to load them……..this started the investigation.
Explorer windows also take longer to load up, particularly where I use custom icons and I use many.
You have me very curious as to how it occurred with your system that you also could not find it but ultimately did. No search parameters I try find it on my system. Thanks