Various computer issues: Help a Clog Boy out! Also: GPL Fans, check in

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I’m not gonna piss off Chronos and JillGat by posting this in GQ. Y’all mundane folks have got to help me out on this one. :stuck_out_tongue:

This is gonna be long. Sorry 'bout that.

Alrighty. It’s that time of the year again. Coldy’s PC, which might be due for the dreaded reinstall (please tell me it isn’t!), is acting up. There’s a few issues that I haven’t been able to solve. And trust me, I’ve looked at all the software manufacturers sites, checked all the troubleshooters, you name it. Exhausted and seriously annoyed, I turn to my fellow Dopers.
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Here are the issues that are bothering me.

1. A weird error message during the windows start-up sequence.
During start-up, I get a general error box (the red cross thingie) saying “Couldn’t find yomv*****.exe” and then some more garbage that doesn’t help at all (the asterisks are for the characters I don’t remember off the top of my head. I’m pretty sure of the first 4, though). Of course, this is a leftover from some obscure program that used to be on my computer but isn’t anymore. Trouble is: it ain’t in the startup folder (so why does it start up to begin with??), and I don’t see any program in my software list (“Control Panel”, “System”, “Software”) that reminds me of it. How the hell can I ever find out what program it belongs to, and how can I get rid of the error message? Or is it that the program is still there, but one file is missing? If so, how does one find out what program the file is supposed to belong to?

2. Rundll32.exe error, or something.
When I right-click my desktop so as to alter e.g. my background, a general error box saying the above will ALWAYS pop up. Then, I can continue with whatever I wanna do. What the hell’s that all about?

3. The second hard drive problem, and consequent (maybe?) non-functional CD Writer.
I installed a second hard drive a couple of months ago. Got it from a friend. Works fine, and it holds all my MP3’s and movie files (mostly onboard racing movies, you perves ;)). The trouble’s this: it was partitioned as 3 drives when I got it. For some golldurn reason, Win 98 recognises it as D, E, and F. I can’t change the settings to anything else. This means, of course, that my regular CD Rom (which works fine) is now G, and my HP 8100 CD Writer is now H. The latter works as a CD Rom player, but won’t burn any CD’s anymore. I tried to reinstall Easy CD Creator time after time, but for some reason, it doesn’t work anymore.
My questions here are these:
a) How do I get the second hard drive to become one partition again? In other words: the D, E, and F should become D.
b) What could cause Windows to deny me the option to change the drive designation on the second drive? Is it likely that that problem will be tackled when we tackle a)?
c) If, for some reason, I STILL won’t be able to change my CD Writer designation to anything normal, are there any suggestions out there? Better Writing Software? Frankly, I think the HP 8100 is a POS. Loads of errors. I got enough coasters to fill an average size New York Night Club. Anyone else with similar problems?

4. Grand Prix Legends won’t install because it hates Dutch.
That’s right. Well, I can’t blame it. I hate Dutch too, when it comes to ‘puters. But this computer came with a Dutch Win 98 version preinstalled. The Windows CD I have (Win 98 Update) is, of course, English (Come to think of it, that might be the cause of some problems as well. Right, he asked?).
Anyway. I bought GPL because it was recommended to me last week on this here message board. During install, it gave me an error message along the lines of this: “Your version of ActiveMovie is either newer than the one GPL offers, or it is in another language. GPL can’t update it now. Please de-install your current version of ActiveMovie and re-install GPL”. Alright, fair enough. I fire up ActiveMovie (never even USED it before), and sure enough, it’s the Dutch version. But wait! There’s no “uninstall option”. Nor is it displayed in the software list of the control panel. How can I friggin’ deinstall it then??
MicroShaft offers no help on “ActiveMovie”. It gave some hits regarding DirectX and Windows Media Player, so I installed the latest ENGLISH versions of those. To no avail. Still the same error message, and still, my ActiveMovie program is DUTCH.
How do I get rid of this thing? Once it’s gone, I’m sure GPL will replace it with a fine English version. But HOW??

5. Windows Media Player doesn’t work anymore.
Yup. The latest version (7.1), the version before that, (6.0 - I think), nothing works. I double-click an associated movie file (say an MPG or AVI), and the program starts up, only to appear to be loading the file. For eternity. After a minute or two, CTRL-ALT-DELETE tells me that Windows Media Player is “not responding”. I KNOW it’s not a hardware problem, because I can load the movies just fine in RealPlayer (but I HATE RealPlayer). I deinstalled every single other movie-running program on my machine, save QuickTime and RealPlayer. These three programs worked fine alongside before. What did I do to piss WMP off? And how could I possibly correct it?
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I realise some of these questions are vague, or possibly not detailed enough. I’ll give you all the info you need to answer my questions: just ask. It’s just that this is all I could think of right now in terms of background info.

My system specs: Pentium III 550 MHz, 384 MB memory, Avance Logic ALS 4000 sound card, 3D Voodoo Banshee 16 MB video card (I think. I’ll check when I get home), EISON ISDN Card, Plain Vanilla 10MB Ethernet card connected to Alcatel ADSL modem (a connection that sometimes works :rolleyes: ).
Peripherals: HP DeskJet 670C printer, USB-connected Epson Perfection 640 scanner, USB-connected Handspring Visor Cradle.
Software: Windows 98, Dutch. Office 97, English (company package). IE5 (English). Eudora 5.0 Mail Program (English), SoriTong MP3 Player. Loads more, of course, but I’m trying to name the possibly relevant bits.
Items stored in system tray bar on start-up: ICQ, WebWasher, GetRight, RealPlayer, HotSynch Manager (for the Visor), Tiny Personal Firewall.

Whew. That’s all I can think of right now. I’ll add more later when I get home. Your help is greatly appreciated. I really, REALLY hope that I won’t have to do a reinstall. It took me 2 weeks to get that bloody ADSL up and (sometimes) running (bloody bastards at KPN… don’t get me started!), and I honestly don’t know if I could do that again without tossing the entire computer off the balcony.

In short, do the right thing: help a Clog Boy out.

2

Well, I’ll cherry-pick and try to answer the easiest question.

repartioning your second hard-drive
You cannot do this through windows so even if you reinstall windows, you will still have the same partitions. There are a couple of ways you can do this.

a) the easiest (and free way to do it) is to run fdisk from DOS on this hard-drive. I can’t remember if you can resize partitions using fdisk or if you have to delete them all and then create one new one. If you do this, you will probably lose all the data on this hard-drive.

b) If you don’t want to lose the data, there are a couple of good programs you can use instead that will repartition your drive and keep the data intact. They each cost about $50. Partition Magic and System Commander 2000. I use system commander because it is also good for repartitioning linux drives and if I recall correctly you are a linux man as well. What you should try to do is move all data from your E and F drives to the D drive then run one of these programs to remove the E and F partitions and expand the D partition to the whole hard-drive. The process may take an hour or so.

When you have done this, the next time you boot up, windows will rename all your drives automatically (I don’t think it lets you designate what each drive will be called). Don’t know if this will solve the cd writer problem though. Maybe you should remove the hard-drive completely first of all and see if the cd writer works?

3

Ok, Coldy-clogs, here’s my best guesses.

  1. The missing file is indeed a part of a program you’ve deleted, and may have properties which make the computer look for it on startup. Copy down the filename exactly when you can get a look at it, then do a add/remove programs after you’ve looked it up. This is a “revenant” or left over. Failing that, get something like Window Washer to remove old or disused files.

  2. Something to do with an orphan .dll file, most likely. Do a Scandisk or use one of the many freeware programs of sites like cnet.com which bundles orphan .dlls. What exactly are you trying to alter your background to do?

  3. Departitioning the drive is not impossible, but is a PITA. I’ve helped our sysadmin do it here, but don’t have the chops to suggest how it might best be done. And yes, HP CD-RWs are hondepoep.

  4. GPL-no idea.

  5. Download the newest version of WMP direct from the website AFTER removing the old version. Also, if there’s a associated file type that you want ONLY to show in WMP, make Windoze know this by changing the file attributes and associations.

You look like you have enough memory and drive space for everything to be working properly. My only recommendations are to junk IE and go with something like Mozilla or Opera. Much faster and arguably neater code. Also, much easier to manage in terms of cookies and spyware. Web Washer has also been known by me to give uneven results, and can impact browser functionality.

And if any of that works, I’ll be in Amsterdam sometime in September to collect a small chilled jenever. :slight_smile:

4

I have another suggestion for problem 1. Find out what are the minumum requirements your start-up folder needs to run properly (I’m sure you can find a list on the 'net) and then use trial and error by removing the other startup programs one by one until you don’t get that error anymore. The reason I suggest this is that it may be another program that is trying to execute yomv**** and you’ll have no other way of knowing which one it is.

5

Since you’re running Win98, try this:

  1. Start -> Run - type msconfig
  2. Select the startup tab
  3. See if you can find anything to do with that yomv**** or the program you believe it came from. If you do, unclick the box next to it. click ok, and your computer will need to be rebooted.

Re the new hard drive -

Yeah, you’ll need to buy software if you want to keep all your movies and mp3’s. Partition Magic is easy to use. If you can transfer all your files off of that drive, then fdisk is the way to go. It’s not quite as easy to use, but you can probably figure it out. It runs in DOS, btw.

6

Coldie: I’m swamped at work right now, and I’ll post a fuller answer later (if no one else beats me to it), but a couple of points:

#1) Best bet: do a search on your hdd for the file (I can give instructions if needed). If it’s not there, go to altavista.com or google and type in +“filename.ext” (substituting your missing file for filename.ext). Find it, if available, and drop it in whatever directory you’re looking for. You probably deleted program (rather than uninstalling it).

#3a) If you don’t care about the data, FDisk, repartion, format. If you do, there’s a program called “Partition Magic” which will repartition the HDD without losing data (it runs about $60.00 USD and is a “must have”), but I don’t think the drive letters are the problem. It sounds more like a master/slave setting on your CDW or HDD.

b) No one can change HDD letter designations in Win98. It’s a fixed setting (your primary partition on your first HDD is ALWAYS “C”, Primary partition on secondary is ALWAYS “D”, secondary part. on primary HDD is alway “E” and so on. When you run out of HDDs, it adds in CDRs and you CAN change their drive letters. But again, I don’t think that’s the problem.

  1. Um… lemme think about this. I’ve heard of this problem before.

Fenris

7

Really hate to say this, but I’d just reinstall. With two hard drives, it won’t exactly take that much time. Just flip all your data files to your second drive (format it first if you really want to and can afford to store all your stuff temporarily on the other drive) and go.

I mean, really. What’s the point of bothering with all the minor fixes to clear up all the weirdness? It’ll take up more time all told than starting over and might just cause additional bits of weirdness to occur, not to mention incidental stress. And nothing beats that “clean installation” feeling when everything works about 10 times faster than before…

8

  1. Run “Msconfig” from the START-RUN box. Search for the name of the complained about file. Since it is not in the startup folder it is in an .INI file. When you find it, put a semicolon in front of that line and save it.

  2. If the orphan DLL program suggested earlier doesn’t fix it, consider looking for updated video drivers for your video card.

  3. a) Do a safe-mode command prompt only boot, run FDISK and delete the offending partitions. Then recreate one big partition out of them all. WARNING, this will erase all data on the existing partitions. Alternate money-costing solution: use PartitionMagic.

  4. b) There are ways of making Windows conform, but they involve messing with the registry.

  5. Don’t have an answer for this one, sorry.

  6. Uninstall WMP, reboot. Uninstall DirectX. Reboot. Run RegClean (available from Microsoft somewhere on their website). Reboot. Reinstall DirectX and WMP.

9

Oh, one more thing about the hard drive… Is it formatted with the FAT or FAT32 file system? FAT can’t support hard drives larger than 2Gig, so it breaks them up into 2Gig chunks.

And Fenris has a really good idea about the CDRW. Did you change the jumper settings on the CDRW when you added the second hard drive? Was the CDRW on its own IDE cable before the hard drive install, and now it’s sharing a cable? If they’re sharing a cable, one device has to be a master, and one has to be a slave. If a device is by itself, normally the jumper is set up to be neither (by putting the jumper horizontal, instead of vertical.)

I don’t know how comfortable you are with the innards of a computer, so feel free to email me if you want more help.

10

OK, I’ve solved problem #1! Turns out it was a reference to some Explorer setting in the sytem.ini file. The msconfig trick did it. Cool! Haven’t rebooted my computer yet, but since it works fine without the file, unticking it in the system.ini will just make the error message go away.

So, it looks like I’m gonna have to buy Partition Magic to get my second hard drive to work as one, eh? Then again, maybe I don’t. The comments about the master/slave settings on the CD Writer could be spot-on. I’ll just have to screw the thing open again and look at the settings. And the cables. Maybe later this week… too late to do it tonight.

Thanks, guys, I’m off to a good start already here!

11

You’re NOT gonna believe this. I de-installed and re-installed DirectX 8.0, and all of a sudden Windows Media Player works fine! What’s more, I managed to succesfully install and run Grand Prix Legends (WHAT a game, BTW!). And the error message on start-up has gone, as we predicted.

Three down, two to go: the Run32dll.exe error and the non-functioning CD Writer. But I do think the latter may indeed be a problem with master/slave settings. Just sounds so logical, you know? And the Rundll32.exe error is mostly annoying - it never causes a crash or anything. Nevertheless, any help is still appreciated. As it is, I’m very happy with the results of the few simple tweaks y’all told me about. Thanks again!

12

Glad to hear you’ve got GPL going. Should we start a “Post your best time on track X” thread? We could do one track per week and run thru the whole season awarding points to the best times and crown the “SDMB World Driving Champion” at the end.

13

I had a Run32dll problem for a while on Win98. It may not be a problem at the moment but it really can be. Also, I suspect the two outstanding issue’s are connected - sort the Run32dll and the CD Writer thing might well go away.

Don’t have the answer, Coldie, except to say only a clean re-install worked for me - bloody nightmare.

I imagine you’ve tried the M/S Knowledge Base ?

Next stop: GQ (calling handy…) ?

14

Great idea, kferr! After I get a steering wheel and some practise, I’ll be sure to revive this thread! Maybe we can even race each other online, that would be cool. I’m the guy with the orange helmet. :smiley:

15

I’m gonna be of NO help at all.

So I’m just gonna sit here, point at you Clogboy, and laugh hysterically.

Waaa ha ha ha ha
Ha ha ha
Hee hee
Hoo hoo
Ho… .Hee hee hee

:::wiping eyes::::

Ahh…

phew

Thanks for the laugh, I needed that.

:smiley:

16

Oh yeah, sure, just so you can all make fun of bernse, right???

You’re all so mean.
:slight_smile:

I still wouldn’t mind hooking up for a little multiplayer though. I think it would just be fun to try.