all mess up

[earnest]

I UPGRADED FROM WIN 98 TO 2000, NOW I GOT A MESS
NO DRIVERS NO MIXER DEVICES NO BROWER WHAT DO A
PERSON DO, CAN'T GET MICROSOFT SUPPORT. CAN ANYBODY
HELP

 

[John John]

Please don't use all upper case (CAPS) when posting, it's like shouting
and considered rude, and it's hard on the eyes for some of the grannies
out there... not me I ain't a granny yet!

As for your problem. In my opinion, upgrades to the NT platform from
Win9x/Me is not the best of things to do and they are seldom flawless.
It is something I absolutely do not recommend, best to do a dual install
or scrap the old OS altogether if you don't want it anymore. I usually
recommend that Win9x users who have never used NT products to keep their
old setup and install NT/2K/XP on a second drive if at all possible.
Small new drives of about 40GB cost about $50.00 so it's no big deal,
providing you have a drive bay in the pc that can accommodate extra
drives. Once you're comfortable with the new os and satisfied that
every thing is working ok you can format the old W9x drive and us it for
additional storage. If you can't do that make a new partition for the
new OS on your existing drive. The reason I recommend this is that when
you install the new NT platform OS if you have problems, and complete
screw ups you can always start your old OS and carry on with your work
or use it to get info on the net or even identify your devices properly.

Now in your case that is much too late, what to do? I honestly think
that you should save your personal files and start all over again from
scratch, I think that you simply have too much of a mess to make
anything good out of this. It's like building a house, if the foundation
is crooked you will have a crooked house. If you keep this flawed
installation it will most likely come back to haunt you and you may end
up having to start all over again later on so it's better to do it the
right way now while you have little time spent tweaking and setting the
pc to your liking. Use fdisk if needed, create partitions as you want
them and if you intend to use Windows 2000 only format everything to
NTFS. It may sound like a pain in the neck but it will be a huge pain
in the a*s if you have to do it in a year from now. What you have now
is a mess of useless Windows 98 files that are just going to get in the
way later on. Windows 2000 should have all of the necessary drivers for
your hardware and once installed it will be easy enough to replace any
driver that is not adequate with drivers from the device manufacturer
(on their web sites). Windows 2000 usually installs very well and with
few errors other than odd little things.

Finally, this group is more of a group for advanced users who are
looking for command line syntax and debugging help. You will get more
advice for general Windows 2000 problem on these groups:



Not that the guys here won't help or that they aren't clever enough,
they're mostly all experts, but there are a lot more posts of your
nature and a lot more readers and helpers at the other groups.

Good luck.

John

 

[Belinda Tousson]

John J.
Since you seem to know so much about win2000, and I'm not
a beginner (12yrs development experience), I have a
condition that you could probably troubleshoot easily.

The cmd.exe file seems to be stuck in a loop. It is
causing various applications software to fail
sporadically - including the mouse when it sporadically
pops up and then closes (all within a 2 second interval).
I have tried to shut cmd.exe process down but it doesn't
allow access - it seems to be running continuously. The
event viewer shows that there is no pattern to this
problem for consistent troubleshooting. I've reloaded
Win2000, repaired it several times to its original file
configuration, etc.. I'm wondering if it's not some
service that's causing this problem or some registry
setting. I can't seem to find the problem. I've got
antivirus, antitrojan, spykiller, etc software so I have
99% confidence the system is clean and it keeps kicking me
out when I try to upgrade the service pack (the darned
window pops up in the middle of the download and 'flushes
the DNS configuration". This just started yesterday
morning.

Maybe you'd consider tossing ideas my way if you have any
that might help or know of any virus/trojans that haven't
been considered.

Notice, I didn't type in caps <s>. Thanks for your help
in advance.

-Belinda

 

[John]

You sure picked the wrong guy to answer this and I think that with 12
years of development experience you know a heck of a lot more than I do
about these things! I have about 17 yrs or pc experience but programing
is not my thing. I follow this NG mostly to learn and I don't answer
anything but the easiest thing so that the pros can concentrate on the
tuff stuff.

This is what I think might be going on. cmd.exe is probably not the
culprit here. You may have a rogue application or startup script that
is using or running commands with cmd.exe. Take a look at your registry
run keys and startup folders and see if anything unusual is in there.
Look in your Services Manager to see if anything there might explain the
cmd.exe behaviour. These 2 little applications may be of great help in
finding out more about the processes which could be running or using
cmd.exe and be to blame:

Process Explorer by Systernal:
http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/procexp.shtml

and Code Stuff Starter 5.6: http://codestuff.cjb.net/

You seem to be quite sure that you don't have a virus or trojan so I
would think that a service or process is the guilty party. Did you try
using the kill command instead of the Task Manager's TerminateProcess?
The kill command line utility is in the Resource Kit, or probably
available by itself for download somewhere on the net. Sorry that's all
I can think of. See here for more on kill utility:

Cannot End Service Processes with Task Manager
http://support.microsoft.com/defaul...port/kb/articles/q155/0/75.asp&NoWebContent=1

John

 

[KC Wong]

The cmd.exe file seems to be stuck in a loop. It is

causing various applications software to fail
sporadically - including the mouse when it sporadically
pops up and then closes (all within a 2 second interval).
I have tried to shut cmd.exe process down but it doesn't
allow access - it seems to be running continuously. The
event viewer shows that there is no pattern to this

Does that happen when you startup in Safe Mode?

problem for consistent troubleshooting. I've reloaded
Win2000, repaired it several times to its original file

By reload do you mean "Format the drives and install again"?

configuration, etc.. I'm wondering if it's not some
service that's causing this problem or some registry
setting. I can't seem to find the problem. I've got
antivirus, antitrojan, spykiller, etc software so I have
99% confidence the system is clean and it keeps kicking me
out when I try to upgrade the service pack (the darned
window pops up in the middle of the download and 'flushes
the DNS configuration". This just started yesterday
morning.

Take a look at the registry
(HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run,
RunOnce, RunOnceEx), Task Manager and Services... eliminate anything
unnecessary and suspicious.



KC.