Reformatting A USB Drive After The Fact!

Had a request from a friend over the Holiday weekend. He had bought a 200 Gig Hard Drive for an External USB Case. As I understand it the hard drive worked well the first time following installation but after awhile my friend decided to reformat the External Hard Drive and that is when he ran into the 137 Gig Barrier! Took me awhile but here is the fix I came up with. No one I talked to could come up with a way to do this with the drive located in the External Case.

The way I finally gave him was to remove the drive from the External Case install it on his Desktop and Reformat it. When done move it back to the External USB Case!

As long as the System Bios on the Desktop PC recognizes the drive as a 200 Gig all should go well. I am waiting to hear back from him to see if it worked.

I picked up a few more bits of information on installing Large Drives and have included it below for all to read! Print this newsletter out and keep it around as you may run into a need for this information some day!

Windows XP - Help Installing 48-bit LBA as Non Boot Drive

The following are instructions for installing a 48-bit LBA hard drive as a non boot drive with Windows XP. These instructions are the most straightforward method for installing a 48-bit LBA hard drive and using it at full capacity. If you are an advanced computer user, refer to Issues under my Windows XP Advanced Tips for additional information which may help you with possible alternate methods for install if you do not meet the requirements below.

Requirements:

48-bit LBA compatible BIOS or PCI ATA controller card which supports 48-bit LBA.
Windows XP with Service Pack 1.

48-bit LBA compatible BIOS or PCI ATA controller card. The BIOS must support 48-bit LBA. Alternatively, you can connect the 48-bit LBA hard drive to a PCI ATA controller card which supports 48-bit LBA devices.

Windows XP Service Pack 1 or greater. Windows XP must include Service Pack 1 or greater. You can use Windows Update to upgrade to the latest Service Pack if needed.

Instructions:

1. Connect your 48-bit LBA hard drive as per Requirements above and boot into Windows XP.

2. Verify Service Pack 3 or greater is installed to Windows 2000 by performing the following: (If you are using Windows 2000 Pro)

Click on Start > Settings > Control Panel > System
On the General tab under System the Service Pack will be listed if installed.

3. Partition and format the hard drive. You can do that by using the partition utility provided with the hard drive or using Disk Management tool in Windows XP. To execute Disk Management tool, perform the following:

Click on Start > Settings > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management
In Computer Management, select Storage > Disk Management
Refer to Windows XP Help for further information about using the Disk Management tool.

Gary Chambers

Control Remote Desktops Through A Web Browser!

Remote Desktop is a new feature in Windows XP that allows you to control a remote computer and see the screen as if you were sitting behind that computer. Usually, you would use a special client application to connect to the remote computer.

By default, Windows XP setup installs such an application: Remote Desktop Connection. You can also access the remote computer without another application, using instead your Web browser. However, before you can do this, you must first install certain components on the remote computer. To do this:

1. Open Control Panel.
2. Open the Add/Remove Programs dialog box.
3. Click Add/Remove Windows Components.
4. Select Internet Information Services in the Windows Components Wizard and then click Details.
5. Select World Wide Web Service and click Details.
6. Make sure Remote Desktop Web Connection and World Wide Web Service are checked.
7. Click OK.
8. Click OK.
9. Click Next and follow the wizard to complete the installation.

After the setup installs all of the necessary files, you can access the remote computer by typing http://remote_computer/tsweb in your Web browser. When you connect to the remote computer for the first time, the computer will download ActiveX components, which requires you to have administrative privileges on the local computer.

I have a Tutorial On This Subject at:
http://www.internetfixes.com/remote_desktop/index.htm

Gary Chambers

Questions And Possible Answers From My Email Support Service!

Question:

Do I need to do anything to ensure System Restore is protecting my system?

Possible Answer:

System Restore is enabled by default and runs after the successful completion of either the Windows XP Professional or Personal x86-version installation. It requires a minimum of 200 MB of free space available on the system partition. If 200 MB is not available, System Restore will install disabled and will enable itself automatically once the required disk space is available.
With System Restore, you also never have to worry about taking system snapshots, as it will automatically create easily identifiable restore points, which allows you to revert to a previous time. Restore points are created at the time of significant system events (such as application or driver install) and periodically (each day).

Additionally, you can create and name your own restore points at any time. You also never have to worry about System Restore filling up your hard drive with these restore points. By default, it only uses a maximum of 12% disk capacity and has an automatic restore point space management feature that purges the oldest restore points to make room for new ones, enabling recovery from any recent undesirable changes.

Gary Chambers