news

[desert1]

Since I'm using my companys computer I will be brief.....Mark Robertson has been in the hospital since Sun. with an emergency condition, heart related, talked to him and hes seems ok but the Doctors are'nt sure whats wrong. Let you know when I find out more.....

Wayne Reddin is in Nova Scotia visiting and having better luck with the weather, we shared a couple of days with him and his family, he saddened to have missed Mark as he can have no visitors only family, XS11 family not included...

My computer is down for the count I think....keeps asking for a disk.....disk boot error! friggin thing, I will boot it allright!.....I got some patches to mail out for 3 XS ives, will do that soon Guys...

Oh had the bike up to 115 MPH draggin with an R1 and the engine stayed together!!!

Bruce Doucette

[mitch]

hope hes ok

Bruce sorry to hear about phil hope hes ok . ya shoulda shifted your bike into 5th at that speed lol, regards Mitch

[mitch]

sorry

Sorry i meant Mark, i happen to know a phil robertson sorry about that!

[Bud Manley]

If your getting a disk boot failure one of two things is happening. Either you have a floppy disk in or your sys.ini is screwed on the hard drive.
If it's a floppy eject it should be just fine. If It's the HD then, assuming your running win98/95 etc...
1. insert a win98 boot disk
2. boot it up into DOS mode with or without CD options
3. type SYS C: exactley at the prompt. hopefully that'll transfer a system to the boot sector of the HD allowing it to boot.
if it's XP your screwed sorry don't know how to fix XP it just works.
although I suppose you could try booting off XP cd or the CD that came with your PC.
Recovery tools for this kind of thing are available.
Good Luck
-Scott

[Redbaron]

Dead Computer

Also check the battery on your motherboard, especially if it is several years old. When it goes the machine has no ROM or can't read it and causes boot problems. HTH

[desert1]

news

I will give it a try Bud and Redbarron, thanks for the tips. The machine is 4 yrs old now......perhaps its tyme to trade it or trash it, when it does boot up it goes to scanning for errors and cant complete the scan saying there was a writing error that prevents it from going any further.....

No more news as far as Mark but I'm gonna call his wife tomorrow and if I can find a computer to go on line will let you all know whats up.
Bruce

[TopCatGr58]

Dying Computer

Hey there Bruce,

I hate to tell you this, but it sounds more like you have a dying hard drive. Mine did the same thing when it went, booted up, then tried to run Scan Disk, found errors, tried to mark the bad spots, kept either locking up or crashing, the errors and their sizes kept getting bigger every boot!!!! IF you have all of your installation disks, your Operating system, Emergency Win98 boot disk, and all the programs you use disks/CDs, then you can just get another Hard Drive, pull the old one, install the new one, boot to the Emergency floppy disk, Run Fdisk on the Hard drive, partition it if it's over 7gb into at least 1 <7GB main boot/OS partition, and then the second can be the leftover amount. Using the smaller partition for the Boot/OS partition keeps the size of the file allocation units to 4kb which will not waste much space with all of those little icons/txt/ini files that come with the OS, and will make running a Scan Disk on that partition much faster when you do have a boot hickup.....vs. having to run the scan over the entire large 20+ GB HD.

You can get a new HD for under $100, just will take some time to Reinstall the OS, the drivers for your soundcard, video card, modem, etc. if they are fancier than the drivers that Windows98 will find and try to install. A 4 year computer is kinda old, but if it worked for your needs, then it was fast enough. The new ones now come with Windows "XP", so unless you get a custom built one, or another slightly newer used one, you'll be learning a newer OS!? Your Choice. When I built my new Athlon 1.3Ghz machine 1 1/2 years ago, I used my old Win98 OS, works fine for me!!!!

Email me if you want more specific directions on running Fdisk for installing your new HD if you decide to go that route!? But hurry, I'll be leaving town for a 5 day trip to Ala. starting Saturday and won't be near a computer the whole time!

T.C.

[desert1]

good trip

Have a great run to Ala. TC, hope your going by bike, silly of me to think otherwise....course you are.

Had Alpha up to 115 MPH the other day and it ran smooth with plenty of power left....it looked like a cop was coming in the distance so I slowed it down a bit and let the R1 take the chances and he flew on by...but could have kept up with him....was in the 7000rpm range......
Bruce 78xs1100

[Meista007]

If it is dead I build cumputers and would have no problem building you a new one. A faster one with racing stripes.

[desert1]

looked inside

Took the covers off this computer and poked around inside, pulled the large pill battery out and looked for my teaster but could'nt find it then popped it back in place and set it up......low and behold it booted up! I aborted the scan when you start up because it wont go by the scan, says theres a written data error. Anyway I downloade 4 days of mail and its still running....went to computer shops today and had one picked out with a "XP" system, are they an OK system? This is windows 98 and I've had a few blue screens so I believe the hard drive is going (3rd drive) anyway time for a new compy...

Bruce
Doucette


by the way I sent out 5 patches to the folks that sent orders for them

[rainbowshooter]

Go with a windows 2000 system, much more stable imho, but if it is doing everything you need it to then just change the harddrive for about $75 use the rest of the cash buying goodies fer you and alpha.

[sixtysix]

Bruce,

Keep us updated on Marks condition, I hope that he is OK. On the computer, XP is a great system. I never have any problems with mine.

[Bud Manley]

If you need any help with putting in new drive I'd be happy to assist also. I recently got a copy of XPpro at school for 10 bucks and I love it. Has many more functions than 98 and so far seems a lot more reliable. Also comes with built in DVD player and CD burner software as well as scanner/ camera stuff for digital pictures. The only problem I've seen with it is that my favorite game Carmaggedon2 doesn't run on WinNT based systems. Everything else runs fine though.
check out www.Tigerdirect.com I bought my wife a decent PC there for 200 bucks.

[desert1]

Mark

Mark is doin OK, he's been posting mostly on the Allxs list and seems to be back to his good old self, heck he's even talking riding to the Superbike Races here in Nova Scotia this weekend!
More likely though him and I will go via my Dodge.......

This computer continues to work, I don't shut it off, though twice I've had to because of freeze-ups during mail arrival, luckily it rebooted. Thanks for the assistance offer Bud, guess I will just run this till it totally fails and buy another CPU. This one has gone thru 3 drives so far, perhaps its cursed.

Just got a package from Colorado today containing my new to me exhaust system, still lying on the floor unopened, hopefully its in better shape than my pitted and rusted halfbreed system, half Yamaha/HD!

Anyway Guys thanks again for your offers of help and your pointers on computer hardware and there weaknesses.
Bruce

Long may your big Mikuni's draw!