Korean Job Discussion Forums

[mindmetoo]

I installed the Doom 3 demo on my laptop and, well, it didn't install. It just ground and ground the HD. I forced a shut down. I rebooted and I got this nasty error "lsass.exe object not found" and then the computer shut itself down.

Oh crap. Oh crap.

I couldn't get it to start in safe mode.

Oh crap. Oh crap.

I put the XP install CD in. It copied some file but then even that crapped out. Again my laptop shut down. I tried again. It got a bit further but again it crapped out.

Finally, I was able start it into safe mode. I did a system restore. And everything seems to be working fine.

Now the thing is, I'm no fool and back up some key data files to CD on a regular basis. I had just done a back up a couple weeks back. But I don't back up my mp3s, bit torrent files, web page bookmarks, etc.

I decided I better not Richard around anymore. I went to Yongsan and bought a 60 gig HD (laptop drive) and a USB box. The box was 20,000 won and the HD was 113,000 won. They formatted the drive and installed the HD in the USB box. As I type, I'm backing up all my media files to the USB HD.

My laptop's current HD is 40 gigs. I could actually dump the whole drive onto the 60 gig backup drive with room to spare. But screw it. If you can get a new laptop HD for $100, I'll keep this back up drive application free and just use it to store things I download with bit torrent that are too big to put on CD these days.

So, my suggestion is, if you have a lot of files you can't live without, it's cheap and easy to get a USB HD. And it's all plug and play. No messing with dip switches.

[dbee]

... probably a good suggestion mm2.

Just remember though, to get a USB2.0 setup, as I have heard that USB1.0 can be a nasty bottleneck in terms of speed, especially for larger files such as bit torrent.

[the saint]

[the_beaver]

[Demophobe]

Doom 3 on a laptop.

BTW...just got the expansion pack and it rocks.

So, you are worried about you hard drive failing, so you went and bought a hard drive?

An 8x DVD-RW sounds more reliable.

saint...what kind of mainboard did we use? I think it has USB 2 support!

[mindmetoo]

[redbird]

A second internal hard drive, very small-- ten gigs or less-- can be a good place to put your operating system. I use that as my primary and then have a hefty drive to save files on, burning the vital files to CDs or DVDs as an extra measure of protection. Gives me peace of mind aplenty.

[the saint]

[keninseoul]

After buying a new MB, always go to the vendors website and check for patches. The atypical practise, with such short product lifecycles, is to release a product with good-enough drivers, and then post upgrades/patches.

Same is often true for video cards, and other high-end products.

One more reason to buy branded (well-supported) stuff that is critical.

[Demophobe]

saint...you have to "install" the USB 2.0 drivers. XP supports tham, as long as it's patched up. ken is also correct...check for a BIOS update to your board. Use the "Asus update utility", but download the BIOS locally. Don't let it do a net update....this has caused problems for people in the past.

It should however, support USB 2.0 out of the box, seeing as it's listed as a feature right on the box!

Go to control panel, system, hardware, device manager, usb controllers and open that "+" box. See all of the hubs? Those are the things that needs drivers...or at least enabling for USB 2.0. Drivers are here.

Downlaod, extract and then double click each USB hub in the device manager. "Update drivers" and lead the installer to the extracted location. It should accept the new drivers, but WinXP and USB2 drivers are infamous for quirkiness. If it gives you a warning about the drivers not being correct for this hardware, STOP. If not, go ahead and (probably) reboot. Then check ALL of the ports for USB 2.0 functionality.

There is a really good chance that you won't (can't) get all of the ports to work under USB2.0. I got 4 of my eight.

[jazblanc77]

You would think that intel et. al. would make the usb 2.0 compatibility issue a little more self-explanatory. This is such a common issue with home users that you would think they would have every chipset compliant with every port running on 2.0 without any need for support.

[the saint]

[jazblanc77]

Regrettably, not all chipsets are created equally. Last year, demophobe and I spent three days trying to get my computer running at usb 2.0 trasfer rates only to find, upon contacting support for my computer, that my generic intel chipset (very hard to identify), was not 2.0 compliant. If I had known that from the get go, this would have been an non-issue as fixing it just required the purchase of a pcmcia usb 2.0 cardbus (for laptops) or a usb 2.0 card (to be slotted into a pc). With the installation of one of these pieces of hardware and plugging your usb device into it, you will notice your transfer rates go up immediately.

Either the pcmcia or the usb 2.0 card will set you back only about 30,000 to 40,000 won and save you a lot of headaches.

[the saint]

Thanks for the advice. Here's the deal. I downloaded the BIOS updated and flashed the BIOS. REbooted (boy I HATE doing that when you've flashed the BIOS) and I get a CMOS checksum error asking me whether to F1 setup or F2 load defaults. I figure what the hey and load defaults. Win XP runs no problems.

Will I have that CMOS error again. It kind of worried me for a minute. USB 2 is still no go on my computer and I really don't want to go ahead and install those drivers without some assurance that it will work cos of the message I get (above)

[The Lemon]