My windows box is coughing up blood

Undertoad · 08-27-2002, 10:39 AM

Sorry if I haven't gotten back to some folks... my windows box decided to start its death march.

It started a few days ago when suddenly it would scandisk every reboot. No matter that it had been shut down normally.

Yesterday night I installed Mozilla 1.1 and suddenly the system quit communicating via TCP/IP with the outside world. The system can talk netbios to other MS machines on the network. The system can ping its own network address and localhost. It can't ping other systems, and other systems can't ping it.

Deinstalling and reinstalling the protocol does nothing. All the properties are correct. Deinstalling Mozilla does nothing. I really doubt that it's Mozilla that created the problem; what could it have done? I think it exposed a problem of some sort, but where to go at this point?

This beast has been a win98 upgraded to WinME (sorry), and had remained such for the purposes of gaming, but I think I may have to bite the bullet here and install Win2K fresh on a fresh disk and move stuff over. I remain somewhat ignorant of Win issues, do you think I'll be able to run most of my old applications if I do this?

Xugumad · 08-27-2002, 12:35 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Undertoad
This beast has been a win98 upgraded to WinME (sorry), and had remained such for the purposes of gaming, but I think I may have to bite the bullet here and install Win2K fresh on a fresh disk and move stuff over. I remain somewhat ignorant of Win issues, do you think I'll be able to run most of my old applications if I do this?

Yes, a ME-2k upgrade will keep most of your software running as well as it ever will be, with some caveats: make sure you simply insert the 2k CD, and it'll suggest an upgrade, holding your hand through the process. There may be driver issues, write down your exact hardware specs prior to upgrading. (exact make of your graphics, sound, and network cards at the very least, ideally also any other non-vanilla hardware, such as SCSI controllers).

Run the upgrade from the Win2k CD. Make sure your network is working. Go to Device Manager, get the Properties of unknown hardware/stuff with question marks next to it, and choose to install new drivers from Windows Update. (which is the easiest way, believe it or not). Install any other hardware drivers, turn off all the flashy transition effects etc., and you'll have a useable system.

Now the caveats: some programs, especially those that rely on hardware to work, may not work like they should. Advanced Soundblaster Live settings (EAX/surround) don't always work 100% on 2k, compared to 98, the same applies for some other high-end sound cards. Similarly, there is some hardware that isn't fully supported, e.g. some scanners. Otherwise, all your programs ought to continue working.

One last thing to try before upgrading or reinstalling, is to remove all your network settings in ME, reboot, and then run the ICW (Internet Connection Wizard). which ought to be somewhere in C:Progra~1/ICW/ . It's the 'internet access for dummies' program, and sometimes manages to straighten out settings that just don't want to be reset.

Good luck.

X.

Tobiasly · 08-27-2002, 12:36 PM

What are "most of your old applications"?

Is WinXP an option? It seems to have a better "compatibility mode", which allows you to run shortcuts in a not-very-well-defined "emulation layer" that more closely resembles a Win9x machine. YMMV.

Xugumad · 08-27-2002, 01:05 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Tobiasly

Is WinXP an option? It seems to have a better "compatibility mode", which allows you to run shortcuts in a not-very-well-defined "emulation layer" that more closely resembles a Win9x machine. YMMV.

The same 'emulation layer' exists in Win2k. I strongly recommend against WinXP, which is merely 2k with some interface candy and sugar-coated shackles. (it also performs more poorly, for a variety of reasons)

X.

Undertoad · 08-27-2002, 01:30 PM

Stuff I run includes Eudora, Moz, Photoshop, telnet/ftp clients, vim (always), xnews, realplayer, winamp, cdex, Office, streets and Trips.

Then there are the games, which range from full-blown DirectX etc. to character-oriented simulations to nethack to freecell.

I don't have a DVD player or anything like that. The hardware is pretty much recent, but for instance, would win2k pick up on my latest nvidia drivers?

08-27-2002, 01:53 PM

Check http://www.nvidia.com to find out

Xugumad · 08-27-2002, 02:17 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Undertoad

Then there are the games, which range from full-blown DirectX etc. to character-oriented simulations to nethack to freecell.
The hardware is pretty much recent, but for instance, would win2k pick up on my latest nvidia drivers?

Win2k comes with 'standard' nvidia drivers (from late 1999), which will power your card to any resolution/colour depth it can do, without any problems. You can get new 'approved' drivers from Windows Update, which will be the latest nvidia drivers that were checked for problems by MS. Or you can download nvidia's latest own drivers from nvidia.com, they have them for Win2k, and they work just fine. Alternatively, your card manufacturer may have their own brand of those drivers, which are nvidia's reference driver with bits thrown in by the card maker to tweak specific aspects of their own cards. Check the manufacturer's website for details. In any case, your card will be supported just fine. I don't think your already installed drivers will be seamlessly transferred over from ME to 2k.

Hardware support for 2k is perfectly acceptable, it's 'odd and unusual' things that may not work. All of the software you mentioned should work without any hassle and without reinstalling the program.

X.

PS: As an example, going to windowsupdate right now, 'Driver Updates' finds one object, "Nvidia Display Driver Version 2.9.4.2
Download size: 4.8 MB, < 1 minute"

Undertoad · 08-27-2002, 04:39 PM

OK! Now I've upgraded to Win2K and I have the same thing happening: I can get to other systems on the Windows network, but can't do anything TCP/IP whatsoever. Oddly enough, now ping dies locally but other systems can ping this one, and traceroute indicates that it's reaching the right system by name.

Of course, I can't run a Windows Update because IE insists that it's offline.

Fine, I'm uninstalling the protocol. Reboot. And reinstalling it. No change. Reboot. No change.

Dammit!

Undertoad · 08-27-2002, 07:43 PM

Back on the air. I had a spare network card lying around, so I installed that and its drivers, and that did the trick. It's hard to say what the real problem was, but I'm glad I sometimes buy extra parts for spares.

Undertoad · 08-27-2002, 11:34 PM

No sooner had I said that than my ISP hit a rough patch in routing and the whole system was off the air. What luck this week!

Tobiasly · 08-28-2002, 10:23 PM

Regarding your nVidia card, the great thing about them are their unified drivers. You never worry about what card you have, how much video memory, etc.

Just go to their website and install the latest drivers. And it works (well, usually).

mbpark · 08-28-2002, 10:23 PM

Windows XP comes with the Nvidia drivers.

They don't work on 2K. I had a GeForce2 MX on this 2K box, fresh install of 2K, and it went nuts. I always put the Detonator drivers on any box with an Nvidia card (and I have 2 XP boxes with family and one personal 2K box).

What looks like what happened was that Windows "forgot" the drivers was there. I've seen it happen under 98 and 95. Since TCP/IP gets bound to the card, it goes nuts and takes TCP/IP with it if the driver goes. I reproduced this on NT4 a while back also with a PCMCIA network card (note: NEVER use NT4 with a notebook if you can avoid it! When you remove it, you also remove TCP/IP and the ability to even bind to a local interface!). Going into the registry and screwing around has fixed it for me, and it involves getting the PNP string, searching for it, and deleting all relevant occurences under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and the other hives.

DVD-ROM drives do this under Windows too, especially when you install Adaptec software.

Do you have a 3Com card? That's one of the cards that did this. The other was some no-name we had 5 years back, when I ran into this issue under Windows 95. In that case, reinstalling the driver worked.

The other thing I've seen happen is that sometimes NT/2K's routing tables get completely messed up. I've reproduced this under 2K and NT. What it'll do is bind the default route to the wrong interface. Pretty wacky. It does that with multiple interfaces, mostly. However, you can mess with those without rebooting

. route -p under Windows is your friend sometimes, since Windows stores routing info with the drivers in the registry, apparently. No text files for that, that I saw.

If you're multihomed, especially, you'll need to bind the routes to your primary DNS servers to the internal interface. Especially if you block traffic on the external interface! This is because any name resolutions on the external interface get borked trying to get them on the secondary interface. NT4 and 2K fall victim to this one.

The best thing to do, regardless, is get 2K on there. Upgrades have "issues" with a lot of DLLs that applications put in for Windows 9x that don't work right under 2K. XP fixes this pretty well, since it's got a better 9x emulation layer. However, 2K has a real TCP/IP stack, which 9x/me does not.

Mitch

Tobiasly · 08-28-2002, 10:25 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Xugumad
The same 'emulation layer' exists in Win2k. I strongly recommend against WinXP, which is merely 2k with some interface candy and sugar-coated shackles. (it also performs more poorly, for a variety of reasons)

I've had older programs that worked better under XP's emulation layer than Win2K's. But it doesn't look like UT is running anything particularly troublesome.

mbpark · 08-28-2002, 10:31 PM

Windows XP's emulation layer can do 95, 98, NT4, and 2000.

I've used it to run Visio 2002, which actually has issues with 2000, flawlessly in XP Pro.

2000 has a few DLL issues, and Service Pack 3 fixes the emulation layer for a few apps, namely Office 97 (which works flawlessly in XP). It does run faster and better than 2000's, which needed 3 patches to work right. It's also much better at running Win 9x apps than 2000 is.

Mitch

Undertoad · 08-28-2002, 10:49 PM

Stuff is coming around. Almost everything is better with Win2K, but for some reason Unreal Tournament is sluggish and weird. I have a GF4 Ti4200 so this is unacceptable. I put on the latest Detonators, no effect. I have yet to try any other 3d games.

08-27-2002, 10:39 AM	#1
Undertoad Radical Centrist Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: Cottage of Prussia Posts: 31,423	My windows box is coughing up blood Sorry if I haven't gotten back to some folks... my windows box decided to start its death march. It started a few days ago when suddenly it would scandisk every reboot. No matter that it had been shut down normally. Yesterday night I installed Mozilla 1.1 and suddenly the system quit communicating via TCP/IP with the outside world. The system can talk netbios to other MS machines on the network. The system can ping its own network address and localhost. It can't ping other systems, and other systems can't ping it. Deinstalling and reinstalling the protocol does nothing. All the properties are correct. Deinstalling Mozilla does nothing. I really doubt that it's Mozilla that created the problem; what could it have done? I think it exposed a problem of some sort, but where to go at this point? This beast has been a win98 upgraded to WinME (sorry), and had remained such for the purposes of gaming, but I think I may have to bite the bullet here and install Win2K fresh on a fresh disk and move stuff over. I remain somewhat ignorant of Win issues, do you think I'll be able to run most of my old applications if I do this?

08-28-2002, 10:23 PM	#12
mbpark Lecturer Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: Carmel, Indiana Posts: 761	The Real Deal Windows XP comes with the Nvidia drivers. They don't work on 2K. I had a GeForce2 MX on this 2K box, fresh install of 2K, and it went nuts. I always put the Detonator drivers on any box with an Nvidia card (and I have 2 XP boxes with family and one personal 2K box). What looks like what happened was that Windows "forgot" the drivers was there. I've seen it happen under 98 and 95. Since TCP/IP gets bound to the card, it goes nuts and takes TCP/IP with it if the driver goes. I reproduced this on NT4 a while back also with a PCMCIA network card (note: NEVER use NT4 with a notebook if you can avoid it! When you remove it, you also remove TCP/IP and the ability to even bind to a local interface!). Going into the registry and screwing around has fixed it for me, and it involves getting the PNP string, searching for it, and deleting all relevant occurences under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and the other hives. DVD-ROM drives do this under Windows too, especially when you install Adaptec software. Do you have a 3Com card? That's one of the cards that did this. The other was some no-name we had 5 years back, when I ran into this issue under Windows 95. In that case, reinstalling the driver worked. The other thing I've seen happen is that sometimes NT/2K's routing tables get completely messed up. I've reproduced this under 2K and NT. What it'll do is bind the default route to the wrong interface. Pretty wacky. It does that with multiple interfaces, mostly. However, you can mess with those without rebooting . route -p under Windows is your friend sometimes, since Windows stores routing info with the drivers in the registry, apparently. No text files for that, that I saw. If you're multihomed, especially, you'll need to bind the routes to your primary DNS servers to the internal interface. Especially if you block traffic on the external interface! This is because any name resolutions on the external interface get borked trying to get them on the secondary interface. NT4 and 2K fall victim to this one. The best thing to do, regardless, is get 2K on there. Upgrades have "issues" with a lot of DLLs that applications put in for Windows 9x that don't work right under 2K. XP fixes this pretty well, since it's got a better 9x emulation layer. However, 2K has a real TCP/IP stack, which 9x/me does not. Mitch

08-28-2002, 10:31 PM	#14
mbpark Lecturer Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: Carmel, Indiana Posts: 761	XP Emulation Layer Windows XP's emulation layer can do 95, 98, NT4, and 2000. I've used it to run Visio 2002, which actually has issues with 2000, flawlessly in XP Pro. 2000 has a few DLL issues, and Service Pack 3 fixes the emulation layer for a few apps, namely Office 97 (which works flawlessly in XP). It does run faster and better than 2000's, which needed 3 patches to work right. It's also much better at running Win 9x apps than 2000 is. Mitch

08-27-2002, 12:36 PM	#3
Tobiasly hot Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Jeffersonville, IN (near Louisville) Posts: 892	What are "most of your old applications"? Is WinXP an option? It seems to have a better "compatibility mode", which allows you to run shortcuts in a not-very-well-defined "emulation layer" that more closely resembles a Win9x machine. YMMV.

08-27-2002, 01:30 PM	#5
Undertoad Radical Centrist Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: Cottage of Prussia Posts: 31,423	Stuff I run includes Eudora, Moz, Photoshop, telnet/ftp clients, vim (always), xnews, realplayer, winamp, cdex, Office, streets and Trips. Then there are the games, which range from full-blown DirectX etc. to character-oriented simulations to nethack to freecell. I don't have a DVD player or anything like that. The hardware is pretty much recent, but for instance, would win2k pick up on my latest nvidia drivers?

08-27-2002, 01:53 PM	#6
dave Guest Posts: n/a	Check http://www.nvidia.com to find out

08-27-2002, 04:39 PM	#8
Undertoad Radical Centrist Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: Cottage of Prussia Posts: 31,423	OK! Now I've upgraded to Win2K and I have the same thing happening: I can get to other systems on the Windows network, but can't do anything TCP/IP whatsoever. Oddly enough, now ping dies locally but other systems can ping this one, and traceroute indicates that it's reaching the right system by name. Of course, I can't run a Windows Update because IE insists that it's offline. Fine, I'm uninstalling the protocol. Reboot. And reinstalling it. No change. Reboot. No change. Dammit!

08-27-2002, 07:43 PM	#9
Undertoad Radical Centrist Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: Cottage of Prussia Posts: 31,423	Back on the air. I had a spare network card lying around, so I installed that and its drivers, and that did the trick. It's hard to say what the real problem was, but I'm glad I sometimes buy extra parts for spares.

08-27-2002, 11:34 PM	#10
Undertoad Radical Centrist Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: Cottage of Prussia Posts: 31,423	No sooner had I said that than my ISP hit a rough patch in routing and the whole system was off the air. What luck this week!

08-28-2002, 10:49 PM	#15
Undertoad Radical Centrist Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: Cottage of Prussia Posts: 31,423	Stuff is coming around. Almost everything is better with Win2K, but for some reason Unreal Tournament is sluggish and weird. I have a GF4 Ti4200 so this is unacceptable. I put on the latest Detonators, no effect. I have yet to try any other 3d games.

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