Techmati

Tech Tips

Here are some tips that I have used to fix issues.

Software Issues

Photoshop 7.0 is not loading

This issue concerns the photoshop settings file being corrupted or otherwise not acceptable to Photoshop. It occurred once with me after quite some time of using that install of photoshop. What happens is that Photoshop goes through the usual startup screen then after initialising most of the items and reaching settings, the application quits loading and disappears.

What you need to do is to delete or rename the photoshop settings file.

It should be in the following location. The words in capitals should be replaced relevant to your installation. The filename in bold is what you delete. Then when you start up photoshop you will have to enter your settings again. The filename and location may be slightly different depending on which photoshop version you have. The location below is specified for Windows 2000 or XP users.

C:\Documents and Settings\USER\Application Data\Adobe\Photoshop\PHOTOSHOP VERSION\Adobe Photoshop VERSION Settings\Adobe Photoshop VERSION Prefs.psp

My Vodafone Connect Card Application will not run because the resolution is not supported. I am using an ultraportable widescreen notebook.

You need to change the shortcut to run with the /anyscreen parameter. So your shortcut target should be as follows (change the directory names to match your setup) :

"c:\Program Files\Vodafone\VodafoneMobileConnectCard.exe" /anyscreen

You still will not be able to see the full software in maximised mode but the important parts are still usable. Perhaps they will fix this in a new version.

My DR-3020 document archiving scanner sticks / crashes the computer when I scan using the Canon Win2000 ISIS driver but not the twain.

Recently I installed one of these in Win2000 and had such a problem. I thought that the SCSI card was conficting with the ATA RAID card or having some sort of IRQ issue with the motherboard. The problem turned out to be the adaptec ASPI drivers which the ISIS driver needs to communicate with. If I used the 4.71 or 4.70 driver which is available for download on the adaptec website and recommended for Win2000 I would have such problems. I had actually never seen before a Win2000 machine stick so completely that the reset button would have to be used.

There was also an ASPI driver included with the Canon ISIS driver for Win2000 but since the driver was created in 2000 I did not want to use such an old ASPI driver. In the end I tried this ASPI driver and got a different result, a blue screen with an exception called. Then after reading on the net I learnt that the 4.60 ASPI driver is best for win2000 although it is not officially supported. I used the utility ForceASPI which you can find on the net to install the 4.61 ASPI driver and after that canon ISIS driver worked fine with this scanner in Win2000. This was a good result because I am trying to move all the computers on the network at work to Win2000 because I am sick of supporting win98. The DR-3020 is a good scanner by the way, we have been hammering it 8 hours a day for several years. The Canon Canofile software though is not my first choice, i think that laserfiche would have been a better choice and in hindsight I should have pushed harder for that more expensive choice when we were selecting document archiving solutions.

Hardware Issues

My TFT monitor does not display crisp text

This is a problem if you do not set your display resolution to the default resolution that the TFT supports. Basically the TFT will zoom the display which results in text which is not crisp and sort of blurry. The problem is that only some small TFTs of 15" support as default the 1024x768 resolution which is most common. Most TFTs have a much higher default resolution which makes everything too small to see good. Check your default resolution in your manual, if you dont set it at this resolution you will not have optimum display. But if it is too high a resolution then you will have to live with the non crisp display offered at non default resolution. I prefer CRT monitors by the way, especially for DVD viewing or gaming but some people like the show off value of a TFT.

My 40gb or higher hard disk is not recognised at all in the bios of my old computer

I assume that you have all your hard disk jumper settings correct, say setting this drive as master and the other drive on the same channel as slave. Also you have also enabled the channel in the bios.

Dont forget also that if the drive is master and there is no other drive on the channel, some manufacturers like Western Digital like you to set the jumper to master and no slave present otherwise the drive is not regognised.

So if after doing all the correct stuff the drive is not recognised then you have a problem with the hard disk support in the bios of your computer. This usually occurs on drives larger than 30gb. Unless there is a bios upgrade for your old machine (Probably BX Chipset or lower) your bios is not going to recognise the hard disk whatever you do. So you can get a hard disk controller pci card like a Promise RAID controller or like they have at Plaisio Greece a Sunix IDE controller. Then you can connect your drive to this PCI card and it will most probably support even past 300gb hard disks on your old machine. I have even seen great improvement in speed of the OS using such card on a 300Mhz PII on a BX Chipset and with 256mb ram Win2k runs quite nice for general office work.

My 137gb or higher hard disk is not recognised in Win2k or XP

Hard disks below 137gb use 32bit addressing but above this value use 48bit addressing. If you have XP SP1 then you wont have this problem. If you have Win2k SP3 you have support for 48bit LBA but you must enable the EnableBigLba value in the registry.

To enable 48-bit LBA large-disk support in the registry:
Start Registry Editor (Regedt32.exe).
Locate and then click the following key in the registry:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Atapi\Parameters

On the Edit menu, click Add Value, and then add the following registry value:
Value name: EnableBigLba
Data type: REG_DWORD
Value data: 0x1

Quit Registry Editor.

If you used Regedit instead of Regedt32.exe you wont be able to do this change or so I found. However I have also heard that bios support for 48bit LBA is important so if your bios does not find a hard disk larger than 137gb and your hard disk is larger then you should either update your bios or use a raid controller that supports 48bit LBA rather than connecting the drive direct to your IDE headers. If you dont use such a controller there is still the possibility that Win2k or XP can see the whole drive. Whether you want to take the chance if full BIOS support is really so important then be my guest. I have not tested it as I am not in the mood to lose large amounts of data.

When a single sided piece of ram is inserted on an old motherboard (usually PII class) only half the ram is recognised.

You probably need to use double sided ram on such a motherboard. Check also your motherboard manual for the ram size limitations when you are purchasing ram, there may be issues on the total mb for each stick. For instance 256mb sticks may not be supported or at such a size or more, only registered ram will be supported.

My computer with 865 or 875 chipset is having data corruption problems. I am using low latency memory

If you use low latency RAM sticks like Kingston HyperX or other high end brands on this chipset, you cannot run the ram with the default latency values recorded on the ram, they are just too high. For instance HyperX is running default with 2-2-2-6 which is quite fast timings. Whilst the 845 chipset had no problems with this ram running at 2-2-2-6 for the 865 or 875 chipset you will have to set the speeds more conservatively. At least you will have to set the RAS to CAS delay to 3 instead of 2 but depending on your board you may have to set other values higher also.

Check the forums at ABXzone for more info on your specific board. I guess it is the 800Mhz bus or something which doesnt like the low latency. There are HyperX modules KHX3200A which are designed for these chipsets and therefore have the RAS to CAS set to 3. The thing I am worried about is that if you are using ram with the default SPD values being to agressive for your board and you modify the settings in the bios, then if your BIOS battery expires and your bios resets to default, would not the BIOS set the ram settings by SPD and then you have some data corruption issues before you reset the settings in the bios to be less aggressive.

Some boards give you the opportunity to adjust the ram voltage using the VDIMM value. Therefore you can increase the voltage and get better stability at higher ram speeds. It is very important when you are messing with these values to not boot into windows but run a memory testing utility in dos after each change to check for errors. No error is acceptable, you will get data corruption problems.