Windows XP, does it hate me????

[mille_3]

I was wondering if anyone has had similar problems to the ones I have. NOTHING seems to want to work right. At first everything was just fine I was impressed beyond words, everything worked like a charm. All the incompatability issues with NERO didn't seem to affect me and then all of a sudden it's telling me that my two cd-rom drives are using the same IDE-Busses when I know this is not true, and then NERO just quits working. I'm using v 5.5.5.1. TMPGEnc 2.0 and VirtualDub and all the other VCD proggy's just refuse to work. Thank god I can still connect to the internet(That's about the only thing that hasn't gone to hell). I ran a check on my PC at PC Pitstop and it's telling me that my hard drive has an unusually low performance(it's brand new). I never had ANY of these problems before I installed XP. By the way the version of XP that I'm running is XP Pro v 5.1 2600 Build 2600. If anyone has had similar problems and has been able to solve them I would be most grateful if you could shed some light on this for me. Lastly as a last resort, does anyone know how to uninstall XP and start over?

[Jeomite]

Besides your CDROM failures, what's wrong when you try to run TMPGEnc or VirtualDub? What kind of error do you get?

[mille_3]

The whole damn thing just freezes. I can encode but I can't use the edit/merge function under mpeg tools or anything else for that matter. My big problem is that NOTHING on the whole damn computer works and I don't understand why the hell my hard drive is performing so shitty, it's brand new and worked fine until I installed XP. As far as NERO 5.5.5.1 it too locks up after it tells me that the cd-roms are on the same IDE bus.

[Pied-Piper]

How have you installed XP?
I think if you've upgraded your OS,this can cause some problems,I recommend a clean installation of XP.

[mille_3]

I had Windows ME to begin with but that was so horrible that I HAD to get rid of it. So then I got a hold of a copy of XP and did do a clean install(not upgrade). However, I still have the same problems!!!! By the way I appreciate your responses and suggestions.

[rasch]

You're most likely running into IRQ issues.

Windows is NOTORIOUS for being the crappiest IRQ handler on the market. All I can do is tell you how I resolved most of my IRQ issues in Windows 2000 ... I refuse to use XP.

Control Panel
-System
--Hardware Tab
---Device Manager

Look under the "computer" device. Mine said, "Advanced Config ... ACPI" This is bad.

To change this:
Right click on ACPI and choose properties
-Select Driver tab
--Update Driver
--When given the hardware wizard, chose next
---Select "Display a list of known drivers ..." then next
----Chose "Show all hardware devices"
-----Select "Standard PC"

It will warn you, ignore it and go on. Reboot. It'll redo all the devices and you may need Windows CD or driver CD's.

This is how I resolved most of the IRQ issues in Lose2k ... Not sure how thier doing this in XP. If you can't get this to work right ... use 2000.

Windows device drivers are very tricky. You have to fake the device out alot in order to get IRQ's to work in the first place ... not to mention getting them to work well. More manufacturers than you might think write poor, even horrible, device drivers for Windoze ... the main issue is IRQ handling.

After understanding and accepting this fact you've taken your first step into understanding why there's a large group of people who hate to use Windoze.

[speedy]

It would be far more accurate to say there is a large group of people that are really computer illiterate and blame Windows. If the various flavors of Windows were as bad as some claim, over half a billion people world wide wouldn't be using it. BTW, I've used Windows since version 2.0, long before most people ever heard of Windows. Not a typo. Version 2.0.

Almost all IRQ conflicts show up under Device Manager. If you see a yellow or red flag, that's a problem. The simplest and usually fastest way to resolve IRQ conflicts is to remove all traces of the offending driver, reboot and 9 times out of 10 Windows will install it correctly the second time around. Do NOT attempt to remove more than one device at a time, but DO remove all instances of the same driver.

Later version of Windows like WIN98SE give a wealth of information if conflicts happen. For example Start, programs, accessories, system tools, system information, hardware resources, components gives lots of information. Be sure Advanced Information is checked.

[marsmayhem]

I use XP Pro 2600, Nero 5.5.5.1 and TMPGEnc 2.0. No problems so far. In fact, nothing but good things. Love the System Restore points (saved my butt a few times while messing around with ATI software). I've used it for about 6 weeks now - hope it doesn't crap out on me.

You need to set up your IDE controllers for DMA - it isn't done by default. As far as power management goes, people recommend disabling it. I have it switched off on my system, and things seem okay.

All I can suggest is checking your BIOS settings, then your Windows settings next. Worse comes to worse, reinstall XP in a clean partition and see if it fixes anything. You can't do any worse than you are now...

[TIbrO]

Same here, all good. XP's only flaws for me at this point are that my Matrox Marvel G400-TV lost OpenGL capabilities and that shutting down from Windows takes like 300 seconds, literally. However, I just wait until the "Windows is shutting down." message goes away, and I am left with the light blue desktop background color, reset, and nothing bad happens (to my knowledge) every time I have to reboot...
So the long shutdown is not too bad of a problem.

[marsmayhem]

Correction to TMPGEnc 2.0 - I have a problem converting divx avi's, so I had to drop down to an earlier version. MPEG tools section still works though...

[mille_3]

Did a clean install of Win XP and everything is working fine BUT TMPGEnc 2.0. It encodes just fine but i can't use the Merge and Cut function under MPEG tools. Ideas anyone?