Music won't play now..? So I'm formating...

[cosmicB]

Not a problem.. I've got PC's everywhere... This one's my favorite one...


Okie!.. So I downloaded and installed some crap-softwares.. and now I can't find them in the hd.. which means something stinks.. plus music is a no-show.. So, I've got to format an 80-gig hd, again...

I figure I need to start with a super-clean hd.. so unplug the tower.. pull the battery for half an hour.. Reinstall the battery, and put-in the W98 install CD and its floppy, and boot-up... and babysit it...

With the battery having been pulled, the hd doesn't hold anything that tells the computer it ever had an operating system... I formats the hd with the W98 CD just in case the W2000-CD has programs that maintain anything of the previous install, this way I'm sure I'm starting with a clean hd...

Last week I put the W2000-CD into the slot, and ran a clean install, and saw hundreds of bits of software had been saved from the old install... It knew every uninstalled software that had been in the machine.. Not good!.. Old spies could still be in it...

The only way to clean all that crap out, for sure, is to format the hd with W98 before formating it with W2000, or XP, or Vista... So what if it takes a few hours more... You gets a clean hard drive... Use the time to tidy-up those messy wires behind the tower... AC power wires crossing data wires can drop your internet speed by half, and can really mess-up printing, and stuff...


Did I miss anything in doing a cleanup..?

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The reason for this format, is that I couldn't get music to play... I installed: Audacity, a-Tunes, MPlayer, Lame-mp3, Codecs, and more... I click on a tune, and I get popups telling me the program can't start because it can't find a dll something or other.. and I tried all over the Net to download those something or others, and installed for a couple hours.. and still no music.. "Arg!".. I could waste hours on the Internet in forums, chatting with the bullies, but what's the use.. they ain't worth it... They don't have a clue anyways... They're just bored, and looking for anyone to sting and bite...

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For the install, I figures it be best to have the internet cable pulled from the tower, through the whole install... And install the ethernet last, after I've installed all the updates and programs via CD and Flash... But this time I'm not gonna run any cleaners... Something I'm running is removing the stuff the music programs need, to play my music... The plan is to make a back-up, then run one cleaner.. then test the music.. and do so through all the cleaners, to determine by elimination what is damaging the operating system...

PC is formatted with W98... Pull the battery again, to erase any W98 stuff, then reinstall the battery, after half an hour, and format with the W2000-CD and the 4 W2000 boot floppies... Then I knows I gots a clean install... I'll install everything, and run the firewall, and the AVS, and set the Sunbelt firewall to block everything, with "ask".. before I connects to the Net... Then update everything that needs updating, and run the AVs, and Spybot S&D, and defgrag, but no cleaners yet, till I've loaded the music... And not download anything from a microsoft website!.. Find it somewhere else, or leave it out... I've had it with microsoft!..

Did I miss anything..?

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Dyam! It takes a long time to format an 80-gigger.. But you should see these tidy wires, each in its own plastic snap cradle, right where it should be.. and labeled yet...


Is there any way to make the thing format faster..?

[boingo]

I don't know if you've missed anything, but if you want to fry the hard drive, so no programs will have anything left behind, then using a program to write zeros to the hard drive.
To do this you'll need to attach the hard drive to a computer as a secondary hard drive with a different hard drive running Windows or whatever operating system you want.

Do you know what brand and model your HD is? The manufacturer may have released a program to fry the hard drive.

My hard drives are all made by Western Digital, so I used their free utilities to fix my HDs.
Western Digital have a program called "Data Lifeguard Tools" and another one called "Data Lifeguard Diagnostic" that work with their hard drives. (Won't work with other brands)
The "Diagnostic" program can diagnose problems with hard drives, but it also has the handy tool I used to write all zeros to my hard drives when they were infected with a virus in the Master Boot Record.
Here's a link to their download page where you'll need to know the type of hard drive it is and choose it from the image links: http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?wdc_lang=en

[cosmicB]

Thanks!..

So I suppose I gets this software onto a flash.. then when it's time to format, I installs the 0000's, and that should kill everything right down to the bottom of the hd.. like pulling the battery and formating with w98 does..? I hope... It's worth a try... But it doesn't do anything to the microsoft security junk that's stored in the bios...

Why can't I get an image CD to install?.. Is it because I'm adding all my peripheral softwares to it, and that's causing conflict..? For me, trying to make a working bootable system's CD, is like trying to regrow the two lost fingertips I lost in an explosion...
I know how to make the afterlife work, I can restore the life into roadkill, I've got a new computer OS, for a skin-graft PC, I've got the engines for flying cars, I can do hands-on healings, but I just can't make a bootable image CD work..? It makes me feel like I'm stupid... How the h do you make a bootable CD that works in W2000?..

Um.. Do bootable image OS CD's not work in a freshly formatted hd..?
Am I supposed to run the four W2000 boot floppies with the CD..?
Is there a "prayer" or wish that makes it work..? I've run out of cuss words...

[jinjin]

The utility boingo mentioned does a much better job than W98. It erases everything at the device I/O level, whereas W98 formats at the O/S file system level. If you reformat your hard drive at the device level, you will have no need to format with W98 before installing W2000.

[cosmicB]

Next time the PC gets ht by a demon I'll try it...

[cosmicB]

I've had it with all that Windows grief... I switched to Ubuntu-804... Windows can go to hell...