Thanks very much for chiming in here. You are quite right to suggest deleting the excessive restore points as that is likely to reclaim much valuable disk space for Ariane.
Dear Gary and Michael, thank you for all your care and attention, just now i will spend the afternoon on working on what you suggested me, after that what i'm able to do is to call the same engineer and ask him if he can find me a RAM fitting my PC, in that case i'll add some 128 MB , less or more...
Gary, it was another engineer who installed the XP windows last year, of course after 2 times crashes which happened before .
Cheers
Hello again Gary and Michael, i followed exactly the procedure you told me : now i have 3.41 GB of Used space and 1.10 of Free space . You were right i could only retrieve almost 300 units , anyway 3/4 of local Disk is approximatively used , i don't know if i can do something relevant with 1 GB of Free space . I can always ask the engineer to find if possible some RAM for this laptop , all he had as RAMs were for new laptops and not any for old ones like mine, i can always try .
Oh, by the way yes the engineer removed the Boinc i downloaded , but i can always download again,if it could be useful, or i can wait to find some additional RAM and then download once again the Boinc .
This is what is written on its Quick Restore CD : Compaq Presario Model 1685/1690, on the bottom on CD : 1999 CompaQ Computer Corporation.
Also on the System of my Windows i found : Microsoft Windows XP Professional , version 2002 , Service Pack 2 . And for Computer : AMD-K6[tm]3D processor 381 MHz, 64.0 MB of RAM.
Ok, you have a Compaq Presario Model 1685 laptop and it has one memory expansion slot which takes a RAM module with the following specification:-
This is just one of probably thousands of places that would supply suitable memory and in any western country you would be able to buy it readily over the counter for about $US30 or even less. I imagine things may be vastly different in Tehran. The module itself is very small and light and could easily be included inside a small packet and airmailed to you. However it is western technology so might cause some problems on entry into Iran. Do you have any experience with that? Also it should be readily available second hand at even cheaper prices on places like ebay. Your local supplier should be able to get it quite easily so you have a number of choices. Let us know how you get on.
Hello again Gary and Michael, i followed exactly the procedure you told me : now i have 3.41 GB of Used space and 1.10 of Free space . You were right i could only retrieve almost 300 units , anyway 3/4 of local Disk is approximatively used , i don't know if i can do something relevant with 1 GB of Free space.
That is actually quite enough space for BOINC and Einstein. You wont actually need anything near that amount. What is of greater interest is that you haven't mentioned any problems in performing the disk cleanup and testing of the filesystem and the surface scan so I presume your hard disk is quite OK?
You are doing a very impressive job of managing some important maintenance on your computer that many people would find quite daunting. Well done!!
Quote:
I can always ask the engineer to find if possible some RAM for this laptop , all he had as RAMs were for new laptops and not any for old ones like mine, i can always try.
Yes, it would be useful to give him the spec I sent you in the previous message and ask him if he can supply, how long it will take and how much it will cost. Then you can make a decision about it.
Quote:
Oh, by the way yes the engineer removed the Boinc i downloaded , but i can always download again,if it could be useful, or i can wait to find some additional RAM and then download once again the Boinc.
Yes, we'll worry about BOINC after you get some more memory. In the meantime here is the next step in your cleanup procedure. If you go into "Control Panel" and run the "Add/Remove Programs" applet, it will give you a list of all your currently installed software. If you want to get more free space you might like to look through that list for any things you never use which are occupying significant amounts of disk space. For example on my laptop I can see that OfficeXP and Publisher are using up around 500MB but I certainly wouldn't want to delete those. However I have Adobe Acrobat 5.0 using up 16.3MB and as I now use Acrobat 6 I could easily reclaim that 16MB if I was getting desperate. Also on my laptop I noticed that the installed size of BOINC was only 36.5MB and that particular machine runs both Einstein and Seti.
If you like to review your own list of installed software and post a list of anything big (say greater than 5-10MB) that you are not sure about, I'd be very happy to let you know what it does and help you decide if you really needed to keep it. You might be surprised at how much more you could save. Once we have done this, the next step will be to defragment your hard drive which should help your disk performance quite a bit.
Post back when you have made a list of any big installed components.
This is what is written on its Quick Restore CD : Compaq Presario Model 1685/1690, on the bottom on CD : 1999 CompaQ Computer Corporation.
Also on the System of my Windows i found : Microsoft Windows XP Professional , version 2002 , Service Pack 2 . And for Computer : AMD-K6[tm]3D processor 381 MHz, 64.0 MB of RAM.
Ok, you have a Compaq Presario Model 1685 laptop and it has one memory expansion slot which takes a RAM module with the following specification:-
This is just one of probably thousands of places that would supply suitable memory and in any western country you would be able to buy it readily over the counter for about $US30 or even less. I imagine things may be vastly different in Tehran. The module itself is very small and light and could easily be included inside a small packet and airmailed to you. However it is western technology so might cause some problems on entry into Iran. Do you have any experience with that? Also it should be readily available second hand at even cheaper prices on places like ebay. Your local supplier should be able to get it quite easily so you have a number of choices. Let us know how you get on.
Ariane,
Gary has done much excellent research on your behalf, and of the two memory options on that page, I cannot emphasize strongly enough that you should elect to obtain and install the larger 128 MB memory module, since you have WinXP Professional installed. Microsoft lists 128MB RAM as minimum requirement for WinXP operation (and theirs is an optimistic recommendation) - i.e. 128 should be considered the BARE minimum. (See here for min requirements - http://windows.about.com/od/tipsarchive/l/aa011007a.htm) WinXP is virtually crippled with only 64MB of RAM to use. I am not privy to the considerations that went into the decision to install XP PRO on a below-minimum laptop, only to say that the situation must have been desparate indeed! Windows will virtually smile if and when you add the 128MB RAM to your machine, you can easily run Einstein, and we will be happy and grateful for your contribution.
microcraft
microcraft
"The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice" - MLK
Dear Gary and Michael, thanks a lot ! for all your care and instructions.Before going to see what non-useful things i have as program on control panel, i post this message just to tell you that the only option i have is to go once again at that engineer store and ask him to find or to order to western markets exactly the RAM you specifyied, of course when i was in his store he tested a 128 MB for new notebooks Toshiba and it didn't respond correctly, it costed 50 $US.The expenses are not a problem, if that one fitted my laptop, i would buy it and letted him to install .
Today after doing the cleanup and checking the Disk as you told me, not any defect was noticed, so i called the engineer and asked about the defect , he told me that the optic of the CD driver was defective and that was why he couldn't change the Windows.
All i'v done were too simple because your directives and instructions were very accurate, if someday i find myself in a spacecraft without any pilot, if you give me such accurate instructions , i think i would be able landing without problem.LOL
Ah,yes, very true, sending by mail technologic items like RAM s would be automatically suspected and confiscated and will never arrive at my home. Or worst, i might be arrested as some sort of spy ,LOL.
WOW ! Gary, Michael ,during 3 hours i witnessed the amazing work of defragmentation, but i should continue it tomorrow , because it would perhaps take some other 4 hours. Now i understand the concepts of fragmentation and defragmentation and their relations with volume.And i could see that rassembled things take less space than fragmentated and disparate things.And i could see that why the universe without vaccum would be too tiny and perhaps our body :microscopic. Thank you , i could experience for some hours the life of a scientist researcher .
Before the defragmentation experience i removed some programs like Acrobat,administrative tools,30 KB + yahoo extra and some unuseful yahoo mail internet , each 28 KB, but at the end i got only 2 or 3 more units of free space, =1.13GB of free space totally .
Congratulations to you!! You are making amazing progress. In fact you are almost there. I'm sorry to hear that your CD drive is the problem. That means you wont be able to recover or reinstall windows if anything goes wrong. Does your machine have USB ports where you could plug in a pen drive? In an emergency you might be able to do an install from a USB CD (do they make those?) or from a pen drive. If you have the USB ports then WinXP would certainly allow you to use them.
For the moment however we will protect your windows and all will be OK. Once your contact sources the correct 128MB memory module and installs it you will be ready to reinstall BOINC and start crunching. Way to go, Ariane!!!
Congratulations to you!! You are making amazing progress. In fact you are almost there. I'm sorry to hear that your CD drive is the problem. That means you wont be able to recover or reinstall windows if anything goes wrong. Does your machine have USB ports where you could plug in a pen drive? In an emergency you might be able to do an install from a USB CD (do they make those?) or from a pen drive. If you have the USB ports then WinXP would certainly allow you to use them.
For the moment however we will protect your windows and all will be OK. Once your contact sources the correct 128MB memory module and installs it you will be ready to reinstall BOINC and start crunching. Way to go, Ariane!!!
Anybody making odds on that? I place them at somewhere about 1000-1.
Dear Gary, thank you for your message, hello Michael, i spent this afternoon at the store of the engineer.He couldn't find a Pin PC 100, but he find some PC 103 i think and he installed it, now i have 192 MB of RAM. He told me that for the moment the RAM s are very few in iran.
About the local Disk, i removed the most part of my pics and paintings and all unuseful programs,have done the defragmentation and other procedure , and now i have always 1.11 GB of Free space and 3.39 GB of used space.
I asked the engineer about the UBS ports, he told me that my pc have them but he didn't know what was the pen drive and said that anyway it's impossible to install other Windows and i should keep always this XP one.
Now i'm ready to reinstall the Boinc , Einstein, but i will wait your instructions for reinstalling and in your opinion which version is the best for my PC "rescued from Alzheimer"? (LOL).
He couldn't find a Pin PC 100, but he find some PC 103 i think and he installed it, now i have 192 MB of RAM. He told me that for the moment the RAM s are very few in iran.
The only difference between PC100 and PC133 is the speed. Your old machine only needed the speed rating of 100 but it got 133 instead. It will only run at 100 but there will be no adverse consequences whatsoever.
Quote:
About the local Disk, i removed the most part of my pics and paintings and all unuseful programs,have done the defragmentation and other procedure, and now i have always 1.11 GB of Free space and 3.39 GB of used space.
You have more than enough space now and you can put back your personal items if you like. One question I would like to ask is this. Before you started using WinXP, did you use prior versions like Windows 2000 or Win98? I ask because I would like to know your preference as far as the look of windows is concerned. The newer look of XP actually has a lot of bloat in it and you could save a lot of this if you were used to the "classic" windows look and feel. It's very easy to change to the classic look and I could send you the instructions to do that. However the best thing is to stay with whatever you are most comfortable with.
Quote:
I asked the engineer about the UBS ports, he told me that my pc have them but he didn't know what was the pen drive and said that anyway it's impossible to install other Windows and i should keep always this XP one.
A "pen drive" is a small memory device that will plug into one of those USB ports and will pretend to be a removeable hard disk. 512MB or 1GB capacity devices are quite economical these days. A 1GB USB drive would have the same capacity as all the free space currently on your hard drive. It would be perfect for keeping backups of all your important documents. They can even be made "bootable" (like a bootable CD) so it could probably be set up to replace your defunct CD drive. WinXP will automatically detect and correctly handle a USB drive the moment you plug it in. If you have a relative wanting to give you the perfect christmas or birthday present tell them to give you a high capacity USB drive. They are also very useful for transferring large amounts of files and data between computers that are not networked.
Quote:
Now i'm ready to reinstall the Boinc, Einstein, but i will wait your instructions for reinstalling and in your opinion which version is the best for my PC "rescued from Alzheimer"? (LOL).
If your engineer just used windows to uninstall BOINC then a lot of the original files will still be there. Use Windows explorer to see if the folder "BOINC" still exists in your "Progran Files" folder. It should do. If the BOINC folder exists, have a look inside it and see if you can see files like "account_einstein.phys.uwm.edu.xml", "client_state.xml", "global_prefs.xml", etc. If these exist then the reinstallation will be very easy and you will keep things like your previous computer ID and preferences, etc.
Do you remember where you put the original BOINC installation program when you first downloaded it? Hopefully it will still be there as well. Because you probably wont be using some of the fancier features of BOINC the version probably doesn't matter a great deal. Judging by your join date of Aug 30, I would imagine you will have version 4.45 which would be fine. When you install BOINC and then attach to Einstein you may need the account information that was originally emailed to you from Einstein. Do you have that information ready as well? You will only need it if the "account_einstein.phys.uwm.edu.xml" file I mentioned previously doesn't exist.
Before we start the installation it would be a good idea to go to your account on the webpage and have a look at your general preferences. You will see a link which allows you to view or edit your preferences. If you can view them OK just leave them for the moment and let me know so I can give you some values to check on.
One other point you need to be aware of. Judging from your previously published benchmarks, your machine could take 60-70 hours to process a result. In order to stay within the deadline of 14 days, your machine will need to be running at least 5 hours per day. It wont interfere with your normal use of the computer but you will just need to run the computer as much as possible. Please also be aware that your computer will run warmer than it normally does as EAH runs your cpu at 100% usage. Have a good think about this and make sure you are happy to continue. If so, let me know and you can post back the information about your original installation that I asked.
RE: RE: RE: Just a
)
Hello again Gary and Michael, i followed exactly the procedure you told me : now i have 3.41 GB of Used space and 1.10 of Free space . You were right i could only retrieve almost 300 units , anyway 3/4 of local Disk is approximatively used , i don't know if i can do something relevant with 1 GB of Free space . I can always ask the engineer to find if possible some RAM for this laptop , all he had as RAMs were for new laptops and not any for old ones like mine, i can always try .
Oh, by the way yes the engineer removed the Boinc i downloaded , but i can always download again,if it could be useful, or i can wait to find some additional RAM and then download once again the Boinc .
Cheers
Ariane
RE: This is what is
)
Ok, you have a Compaq Presario Model 1685 laptop and it has one memory expansion slot which takes a RAM module with the following specification:-
128MB Compaq Presario 144-Pin PC100 SDRAM SODIMM (p/n 401063-B21)
You can see details here.
This is just one of probably thousands of places that would supply suitable memory and in any western country you would be able to buy it readily over the counter for about $US30 or even less. I imagine things may be vastly different in Tehran. The module itself is very small and light and could easily be included inside a small packet and airmailed to you. However it is western technology so might cause some problems on entry into Iran. Do you have any experience with that? Also it should be readily available second hand at even cheaper prices on places like ebay. Your local supplier should be able to get it quite easily so you have a number of choices. Let us know how you get on.
Cheers,
Gary.
RE: Hello again Gary and
)
That is actually quite enough space for BOINC and Einstein. You wont actually need anything near that amount. What is of greater interest is that you haven't mentioned any problems in performing the disk cleanup and testing of the filesystem and the surface scan so I presume your hard disk is quite OK?
You are doing a very impressive job of managing some important maintenance on your computer that many people would find quite daunting. Well done!!
Yes, it would be useful to give him the spec I sent you in the previous message and ask him if he can supply, how long it will take and how much it will cost. Then you can make a decision about it.
Yes, we'll worry about BOINC after you get some more memory. In the meantime here is the next step in your cleanup procedure. If you go into "Control Panel" and run the "Add/Remove Programs" applet, it will give you a list of all your currently installed software. If you want to get more free space you might like to look through that list for any things you never use which are occupying significant amounts of disk space. For example on my laptop I can see that OfficeXP and Publisher are using up around 500MB but I certainly wouldn't want to delete those. However I have Adobe Acrobat 5.0 using up 16.3MB and as I now use Acrobat 6 I could easily reclaim that 16MB if I was getting desperate. Also on my laptop I noticed that the installed size of BOINC was only 36.5MB and that particular machine runs both Einstein and Seti.
If you like to review your own list of installed software and post a list of anything big (say greater than 5-10MB) that you are not sure about, I'd be very happy to let you know what it does and help you decide if you really needed to keep it. You might be surprised at how much more you could save. Once we have done this, the next step will be to defragment your hard drive which should help your disk performance quite a bit.
Post back when you have made a list of any big installed components.
Cheers,
Gary.
RE: RE: This is what is
)
Ariane,
Gary has done much excellent research on your behalf, and of the two memory options on that page, I cannot emphasize strongly enough that you should elect to obtain and install the larger 128 MB memory module, since you have WinXP Professional installed. Microsoft lists 128MB RAM as minimum requirement for WinXP operation (and theirs is an optimistic recommendation) - i.e. 128 should be considered the BARE minimum. (See here for min requirements - http://windows.about.com/od/tipsarchive/l/aa011007a.htm) WinXP is virtually crippled with only 64MB of RAM to use. I am not privy to the considerations that went into the decision to install XP PRO on a below-minimum laptop, only to say that the situation must have been desparate indeed! Windows will virtually smile if and when you add the 128MB RAM to your machine, you can easily run Einstein, and we will be happy and grateful for your contribution.
microcraft
microcraft
"The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice" - MLK
Dear Gary and Michael, thanks
)
Dear Gary and Michael, thanks a lot ! for all your care and instructions.Before going to see what non-useful things i have as program on control panel, i post this message just to tell you that the only option i have is to go once again at that engineer store and ask him to find or to order to western markets exactly the RAM you specifyied, of course when i was in his store he tested a 128 MB for new notebooks Toshiba and it didn't respond correctly, it costed 50 $US.The expenses are not a problem, if that one fitted my laptop, i would buy it and letted him to install .
Today after doing the cleanup and checking the Disk as you told me, not any defect was noticed, so i called the engineer and asked about the defect , he told me that the optic of the CD driver was defective and that was why he couldn't change the Windows.
All i'v done were too simple because your directives and instructions were very accurate, if someday i find myself in a spacecraft without any pilot, if you give me such accurate instructions , i think i would be able landing without problem.LOL
Ah,yes, very true, sending by mail technologic items like RAM s would be automatically suspected and confiscated and will never arrive at my home. Or worst, i might be arrested as some sort of spy ,LOL.
Ariane
WOW ! Gary, Michael ,during 3
)
WOW ! Gary, Michael ,during 3 hours i witnessed the amazing work of defragmentation, but i should continue it tomorrow , because it would perhaps take some other 4 hours. Now i understand the concepts of fragmentation and defragmentation and their relations with volume.And i could see that rassembled things take less space than fragmentated and disparate things.And i could see that why the universe without vaccum would be too tiny and perhaps our body :microscopic. Thank you , i could experience for some hours the life of a scientist researcher .
Before the defragmentation experience i removed some programs like Acrobat,administrative tools,30 KB + yahoo extra and some unuseful yahoo mail internet , each 28 KB, but at the end i got only 2 or 3 more units of free space, =1.13GB of free space totally .
Cheers
Ariane
Ariane, Congratulations to
)
Ariane,
Congratulations to you!! You are making amazing progress. In fact you are almost there. I'm sorry to hear that your CD drive is the problem. That means you wont be able to recover or reinstall windows if anything goes wrong. Does your machine have USB ports where you could plug in a pen drive? In an emergency you might be able to do an install from a USB CD (do they make those?) or from a pen drive. If you have the USB ports then WinXP would certainly allow you to use them.
For the moment however we will protect your windows and all will be OK. Once your contact sources the correct 128MB memory module and installs it you will be ready to reinstall BOINC and start crunching. Way to go, Ariane!!!
Cheers,
Gary.
RE: Ariane, Congratulation
)
Anybody making odds on that? I place them at somewhere about 1000-1.
Pessimistically yours,
-Mrs. anon
*I still know CRAP when I see it.
Incredible speed of my PC !
)
Incredible speed of my PC ! WOW !
Dear Gary, thank you for your message, hello Michael, i spent this afternoon at the store of the engineer.He couldn't find a Pin PC 100, but he find some PC 103 i think and he installed it, now i have 192 MB of RAM. He told me that for the moment the RAM s are very few in iran.
About the local Disk, i removed the most part of my pics and paintings and all unuseful programs,have done the defragmentation and other procedure , and now i have always 1.11 GB of Free space and 3.39 GB of used space.
I asked the engineer about the UBS ports, he told me that my pc have them but he didn't know what was the pen drive and said that anyway it's impossible to install other Windows and i should keep always this XP one.
Now i'm ready to reinstall the Boinc , Einstein, but i will wait your instructions for reinstalling and in your opinion which version is the best for my PC "rescued from Alzheimer"? (LOL).
Ariane
RE: Incredible speed
)
I'm glad you like your rejuvenated machine :).
The only difference between PC100 and PC133 is the speed. Your old machine only needed the speed rating of 100 but it got 133 instead. It will only run at 100 but there will be no adverse consequences whatsoever.
You have more than enough space now and you can put back your personal items if you like. One question I would like to ask is this. Before you started using WinXP, did you use prior versions like Windows 2000 or Win98? I ask because I would like to know your preference as far as the look of windows is concerned. The newer look of XP actually has a lot of bloat in it and you could save a lot of this if you were used to the "classic" windows look and feel. It's very easy to change to the classic look and I could send you the instructions to do that. However the best thing is to stay with whatever you are most comfortable with.
A "pen drive" is a small memory device that will plug into one of those USB ports and will pretend to be a removeable hard disk. 512MB or 1GB capacity devices are quite economical these days. A 1GB USB drive would have the same capacity as all the free space currently on your hard drive. It would be perfect for keeping backups of all your important documents. They can even be made "bootable" (like a bootable CD) so it could probably be set up to replace your defunct CD drive. WinXP will automatically detect and correctly handle a USB drive the moment you plug it in. If you have a relative wanting to give you the perfect christmas or birthday present tell them to give you a high capacity USB drive. They are also very useful for transferring large amounts of files and data between computers that are not networked.
If your engineer just used windows to uninstall BOINC then a lot of the original files will still be there. Use Windows explorer to see if the folder "BOINC" still exists in your "Progran Files" folder. It should do. If the BOINC folder exists, have a look inside it and see if you can see files like "account_einstein.phys.uwm.edu.xml", "client_state.xml", "global_prefs.xml", etc. If these exist then the reinstallation will be very easy and you will keep things like your previous computer ID and preferences, etc.
Do you remember where you put the original BOINC installation program when you first downloaded it? Hopefully it will still be there as well. Because you probably wont be using some of the fancier features of BOINC the version probably doesn't matter a great deal. Judging by your join date of Aug 30, I would imagine you will have version 4.45 which would be fine. When you install BOINC and then attach to Einstein you may need the account information that was originally emailed to you from Einstein. Do you have that information ready as well? You will only need it if the "account_einstein.phys.uwm.edu.xml" file I mentioned previously doesn't exist.
Before we start the installation it would be a good idea to go to your account on the webpage and have a look at your general preferences. You will see a link which allows you to view or edit your preferences. If you can view them OK just leave them for the moment and let me know so I can give you some values to check on.
One other point you need to be aware of. Judging from your previously published benchmarks, your machine could take 60-70 hours to process a result. In order to stay within the deadline of 14 days, your machine will need to be running at least 5 hours per day. It wont interfere with your normal use of the computer but you will just need to run the computer as much as possible. Please also be aware that your computer will run warmer than it normally does as EAH runs your cpu at 100% usage. Have a good think about this and make sure you are happy to continue. If so, let me know and you can post back the information about your original installation that I asked.
Cheers,
Gary.