Monday, December 16, 2002		Dr Tribune

Q I have P III PC with Azza 810 main board. Recently due to some changes made in the set up, whenever I start my PC an error occurs saying, "BIOS ROM checksum error. Detecting floppy drive A: media..._" The cursor keeps on flashing and nothing happens. This message appears after I restart my PC from the restart button when the light on the monitor turns yellow (after turning the system on). Please solve my problem.

A It appears that the BIOS battery installed on your motherboard has become weak and need to be replaced. Just pop up this cell and replace it with a new one and your problem would be solved.

Q I have a PC with the following configuration:

1. Processor P III 667 MHz

2. 810E Motherboard with Intel chipset

3. 40 GB H.D.D. (Samsung)

4. 128 MB RAM

5. Mercury Speaker 880W

6. TVS Gold Keyboard

7. Logitech Scroll Mouse

8. ATX Cabinet

9. LG 52X CD ROM

10. LG 8X CD-Writer

11. 3.5" FDD

12. Monitor 15" LG

13. Hard drive is C: and D:

14. CD ROM drive is E:

15. CD-Writer drive is F:

I am facing following problems:

1. Whenever computer starts, it always runs in the safe mode. Then I uninstalled all programs, but the problem remains the same. I have installed no new hardware and software.

2. My computer is not showing drives E: and F: as well as stand by option in the shutdown Windows.

3. When I switch on my PC, then Microsoft Scandisk runs automatically showing message, "Windows was not properly shut down" in spite of properly shutting down Windows.

I have checked virus with Norton anti virus, I run scandisk and defragmentation, but the problems remain the same.

A Regarding your first problem, this can happen if the [Options] section of the Msdos.sys file contains the following line:

BootSafe=1 .This setting forces your computer to start in Safe mode.

Now in order to solve this problem, edit the Msdos.sys file by doing one of the following:

Remove the BootSafe=1 line from the Msdos.sys file. or Change the BootSafe=1 line to BootSafe=0. This will solve your problem. To edit the Msdos.sys file click Start, point to Find, and then click Files or Folders. In the Named box, type msdos.sys. In the Look In click C: drive, and then click Find Now. Now on finding the msdos.sys file right-click on it, and then click Properties. Now click to clear Read-Only and Hidden check boxes to remove these attributes from the Msdos.sys file, and then click OK. Now right-click the Msdos.sys file, and then click Open With. In the Choose the program you want to use box, click WordPad, and then click OK. Now here do the necessary editing as mentioned above and then choose to save. Now right-click the Msdos.sys file, and then click Properties. Click to select the Read-Only and Hidden check boxes to set the attributes for the file, and then click OK. Now on restarting your computer, your problem will disappear.

Regarding your second problem, the standby option on Shutdown Menu appears if APM is turned on in BIOS. However if it is not on then this option may not appear. Also, if your machine is on ACPI, then also this option will not be present. Regarding your third problem of Scandisk running every time you start windows could be due to the reason that during the shutdown process, the contents of the virtual cache are written to the destination device. If the destination device is an Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE) hard disk, data may be written to the hard disk’s onboard cache but not to the disk itself. When this occurs, the data is lost from the cache when the computer turns off. In order to solve this problem, you can download a patch from the site www.microsoft.com/windows98/downloads/contents/wucritical/q273017/default.asp I am sure this will solve your problem.

Q I have P4, 1.7 GHz, desktop PC, with 128 MB RD RAM and Intel motherboard with chipset 850. The bus speed of the processor, motherboard and RAM matches well (i.e. 400 MHz). But still I am not getting sufficient speed as I wanted. Please tell me a solution to increase system speed.

A Speed is a relative term and could depend upon a lot of factors besides the speed of the CPU and RAM. However generally speaking, the following could help you in enhancing the speed of your system.

Use of lesser fonts, uninstall memory resident games and other shareware programs, which unnecessarily eats up your precious system resources, keep your system clean of all the junk present in your computer in the form of old and redundant cache files, .tmp, .avi, *.chk, *.old etc. files. These files are not productive but consume a lot of space on your system. You should also regularly scandisk and defrag the computer for the best possible performance, uninstall what is not required and keep your system resources free and enlarge the size of the swap file of your system. This list is non-exhaustive and could include a lot many more points, which would be crucial for the performance of your system.

Q I often receive the following error message ‘msgsrv 32 has caused an error in GDI.EXE. Msgsrv will now close. If you have further problems try restarting the computer’

That I have further problems goes, of course, without saying as the machine freezes. This usually happens after I have tried to print a page from the Internet. After I have restarted I get the message ‘Do you wish to print now?’ I click on OK and the print run goes ahead!!

Is there any way I can avoid this?

Malcolm Gregory

A I would appreciate if you mention your problem exactly with other necessary details like your operating system, hardware etc. However, generally speaking these errors are caused by a conflict with the Fast Find utility that installs with Windows. To work around the problem, remove the Fast Find utility from the Startup menu and this may solve your problem. However, if the problem still persists then the finger of suspicion will point towards either the possiblity of insufficient resources, or incompatible video or sound drivers as these two are other possible reasons for this kind of error. Msgsrv32.exe Windows 32-bit Message Server program that performs several background functions, including the following:

Load installable Windows drivers at startup and unload them at shutdown, run the shell program (usually Explorer.exe) and re-run the shell if it fails to respond, mediate Plug and Play messages among various parts of the operating system, coordinate automatic responses to Setup programs. This includes checking whether a Setup program has improperly overwritten Windows files, and optionally restoring the Windows versions of those files, display the initial logon dialog box if networking is enabled and play the system startup and shutdown sounds. The other component of your problem i.e. the GDI means Graphical Device Interface. Thus in your case, the problem related to the Video driver seems to be more logical. Try uninstalling and then fresh installing the video driver. Also locate any conflict in the PC related to the video driver. As another possible option, you should also check the ActiveX driver for possible clues to your problem.

Q We have 2 PCs in our office and have the facility of networking on Windows ‘98 operating system. Therefore I would like to know - Can we share Outlook Express 5 as other program files are shared between 2 PCs, say MS Office, Internet connection etc? Do we have to install special software that will help us in this regard? We have an ISDN modem and D-Link modem for telephone line.

A Having a network means that you can share the resources over a LAN. This includes files and folders on the LAN. However you would not be able to share programs over it. You can import or export the messages or address book of Outlook Express between two computers and thus share it. And for doing this you would not need any special program as you can use the import/export feature (as the case may be) for accessing the files (messages and address book) between two computers.

Q I have SiS6215 display driver and this worked fine for a year. The driver provided me options to set the display in 16 colour, 16 true colour and 256 colour modes. I have done these changes on a number of occasions. Recently the display settings changed and they only allow 16-colour option. 16 true colours have vanished. However, I can also change settings to 256 colour only. I want to understand why the display driver has changed?

A From the description of your problem, it appears to me that the display driver of your system has got disturbed and therefore you may need to reinstall the display driver again in order to solve your problem.

Q I have set supervisor password in the BIOS as "ATX" but my brother opened it and said it was "FAT". I challenged him that he was telling lie. But when I checked the system it was right. Setting password "ATX" can be opened by "FAT". Also "BPX" can be opened by "FBP". Kindly tell me if there can be more options for a single password to open a system. And where else these methods are applied?

A Ideally you should use a minimum 6 to 8 digit password for better security. There are certain system password relevant to BIOS, which also depends upon the type of BIOS also and can override the user password. But these issues are related to hardware development.

Q I have Pentium II, 128 MB RAM, Windows ‘98 OS. I am facing a strange problem with my sound card. When my PC boots if the first application I play is Winamp, I can listen music on it. But if any other application is used it gives a sound and continues. If I want to use any kind of application that needs sound it says sound card in use.

Rohit, Delhi

A Please refer to the login Tribune issue dated December 2, 2002 for a detailed answer to your problem.