Would you like to see my new desktop? Yes, that's right. (and a few questions)

Lo_Poly

Unidentified bogie


*drools from giddyness*

WELL, I finally got the machine WORKING! :udrool: But I have some questions.

1. Can the task bar in vista have it's color changed?

2. I have 2 drives. How do I get vista to see them all as 1? And set up a RAID 5 system?

3. About that... I have 3 drives, but one's outlook isn't so good. After chatting with Intel it looks like one might be dead. Any diagnostics I can run?

4. What's a good benchmark route for TRS2006? I want to see how it runs (Vista rating is 5.3 btw)

Cheers. :)
 
At least finally you have almost got your system running.I'll miss your posts!! Try segy's Crewe 50 or 100 trains. That may make it groan a bit. if I recall he made them for higher end spec computers.
 
If this counts... I loaded up the Toronto Railway that comes built in into TRS2006. Typically on my older machine frame rates were averaging at around 5 fps, and in the downtown area, my world would stop spinning.

Jet vRRRRR.RR Build 1234.5.QQQQQ on Jul 31 2005 at 20:14:22.

Begin:
- 000003F4 Prog 2:57.2 Trainz : Averaged 64.356449fps over 124.604202sec
End.
And that's with all my settings on MAXIMUM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :udrool::udrool::udrool::udrool::mop::mop::mop:
 
Congratulations on getting it working.
Seen some of your older posts and all of the problems you have had with it.

By the way, Right click on the taskbar and go properties or preferences. I can't remember.
 
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You might try Gloucester Terminal Railroad by George Fisher if you want to give your rig a good workout. It is available on the DLS.

Cheers.
 
To change the taskbar colour etc right click on the desktop and select personalize. then select Window color and appearance.

John
 
Err, question... why is my hard drive space decreasing by several gigabytes every time I shut down and turn on my computer? :confused:
 
Maybe its because you might be putting the PC into Sleep mode instead of actually shutting it down. If you are selecting the icon on the start menu which looks like the shutdown button from XP then you are putting the pc to sleep rather than off. To actually turn it off your have to use the arrow to the right of the power icon and select it there.

It could also be system restore if the above doesn't apply. If you have a large partition for C drive then it might use a lot of space ( I think the default is 15% ).

You can run disk cleanup to see where some of the space might have gone.

John
 
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Maybe its because you might be putting the PC into Sleep mode instead of actually shutting it down. If you are selecting the icon on the start menu which looks like the shutdown button from XP then you are putting the pc to sleep rather than off. To actually turn it off your have to use the arrow to the right of the power icon and select it there.

It could also be system restore if the above doesn't apply. If you have a large partition for C drive then it might use a lot of space ( I think the default is 15% ).

You can run disk cleanup to see where some of the space might have gone.

John

No, not sleep mode, I'm actually turning it off. Any way I can gain this space back? I've ran system clean up and it didn't do anything. :confused:
 
I've ran system clean up and it didn't do anything. :confused:

disk cleanup should list the various things you can retrieve space from and how big they are. To empty them you would have to select the items you want to clean up. Also when you start disk cleanup you should select "files from all user on this computer".

Other than that it depends on what is causing it. If its system restore then the only option is to turn it off I suppose. I would leave it a few days to a week and see if it settles down as I would suspect its just doing whats it meant to do. My C drives used space is about 17GB or there abouts.

John
 
disk cleanup should list the various things you can retrieve space from and how big they are. To empty them you would have to select the items you want to clean up. Also when you start disk cleanup you should select "files from all user on this computer".

Other than that it depends on what is causing it. If its system restore then the only option is to turn it off I suppose. I would leave it a few days to a week and see if it settles down as I would suspect its just doing whats it meant to do. My C drives used space is about 17GB or there abouts.

John

Actually I was just saying the disk cleanup utility options listed were either 0 or just in the KB range.

BUT I just went into disk cleanup and told it to remove all recovery points except the most recent. It freed up over 30 GB :D.

Btw, I may mention CMP actually works on my vista. I must be lucky or something.

But I still wish to know how to get Vista to use both drives as if they were one disk.
 
But I still wish to know how to get Vista to use both drives as if they were one disk.

Well with that you will need to do some reading, I suggest you try and find a guide on what to do ( there should be instructions in the motherboard manual I think as a start ), I think tomshardware.com has some that might be of help. I suppose you intend to use the other two drives when the faulty one is replaced ? If so it is a little easier.
If you wanted to use the drive your OS is on then you should have set that up before you installed the OS, unless ( I think) you partition the drive and use another partition on a different drive. I seem to recall a article on tomshardware talking about this in general.

Anyway you will probably use the intel matrix storage manager I mentioned before to set it up unless you have/want to do it another way.

John

p.s. This guide might be of interest http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/05/03/opting_for_raid_level_migration/
 
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Well with that you will need to do some reading, I suggest you try and find a guide on what to do ( there should be instructions in the motherboard manual I think as a start ), I think tomshardware.com has some that might be of help. I suppose you intend to use the other two drives when the faulty one is replaced ? If so it is a little easier.
If you wanted to use the drive your OS is on then you should have set that up before you installed the OS, unless ( I think) you partition the drive and use another partition on a different drive. I seem to recall a article on tomshardware talking about this in general.

Anyway you will probably use the intel matrix storage manager I mentioned before to set it up unless you have/want to do it another way.

John

p.s. This guide might be of interest http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/05/03/opting_for_raid_level_migration/

I'm not sure which RAID type I would go for. This is what I would want... (Blue indicates the main part)

Disk 1 -
Data storage
Disk 2 - Data storage
/Backup storage
Disk 3 - Backup storage

Or if that would not work or have poor performance...

Disk 1 - Data storage
Disk 2 - Data storage

Disk 3 - Backup storage for most sensitive documents (probably done manually)


And by the way, I'm going to go ahead and bring it up, where can I download NTLDR? I remember when I first started the system a message came up saying "NTLDR is missing" or something like that. :o Vista loads but I can't load more than 1 OS (I tried connecting my old HDD to see if I could recover data but there would always be an error).
 
This information is for WinXP and Vista may differ.

To specify the amount of hard disk space allocated to Temporary Internet Files (Internet Explorer's cache):
Internet Explorer > Tools > Internet Options > General > Temporary Internet Files > Settings

To specify the amount of hard disk space allocated to the Recycle Bin:
Right-click on Recycle Bin > Properties

To specify the amount of hard disk space allocated to System Restore:
Right-click on My Computer > Properties > System Restore

In WinXP each of these default to far too large an amount with modern hard disks.

Being Windows, there are probably several other methods of accessing each option.

To repeat: Vista may differ.

HTH, John
 
I'm not sure which RAID type I would go for. This is what I would want... (Blue indicates the main part)

Disk 1 -
Data storage
Disk 2 - Data storage
/Backup storage
Disk 3 - Backup storage

Or if that would not work or have poor performance...

Disk 1 - Data storage
Disk 2 - Data storage

Disk 3 - Backup storage for most sensitive documents (probably done manually)


And by the way, I'm going to go ahead and bring it up, where can I download NTLDR? I remember when I first started the system a message came up saying "NTLDR is missing" or something like that. :o Vista loads but I can't load more than 1 OS (I tried connecting my old HDD to see if I could recover data but there would always be an error).


So that hardsidk has another OS ( XP ) on it does it ?

Well that is a little more potentially troublesome because its preferred to have installed XP first and then Vista as the boot process in Vista has changed. But you should be able to fix this.

The options are-
1 - Use VistaBootPro to fix the problem and setup the dualboot
2 - use the repair option on the Vista disk to fix it

I would use VistaBootPro ( http://www.pro-networks.org/vistabootpro/ ). It should be able to fix the probelm. I would suggest reading their forum for it as it will explain what steps you need to do etc. There are various guides on it as well I seem to remember.

As to what form of Raid you should use I don't really know. I have only ever set up a raid0 array and I decided to get rid of it when one of the WD Raptor hard drives died and I didnt want to spend that much money to replace it. Unless someone here knows you will just have to do as much research about it yourself and then decide whats best for you.

John
 
You could also try to set your disk as dynamic in which case it will be added to the first one and work just as one.
 
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