MaximumPC 2004 09

PARDON MY PARTITION

I’m installing Windows on

a new computer, but I can’t

format a partition bigger than

137GB. What’s up with that?

—MATT YOUNGBLUT

This is a problem with pre-SP1 ver-

sions of Windows that are unable

to address more than 137.4GB of a

hard drive. We ran into this problem

in the old days at 504MB, then at

8.4GB, and once again at 137GB.

This barrier results from the original

design specification for the ATA

interface, which allotted a measly

28 bits for addressing a device.

Because devices are “addressed”

by their number of sectors, this

28-bit limit means that only a small

number of sectors can ever be seen

using a 28-bit number. The exact

limit is 268,435,456 sectors of 512

bytes, which equals 137.4GB, to

be exact. All newer drives now

If you’re installing Windows on a hard drive with greater

than 137GB capacity, you need to either install a copy of

Windows with Service Pack 1 or add a second partition

after you installed SP1.

RW drive that I’m experiencing

some problems with. In the

beginning the drive worked great

and would have no problem

burning CDs. Recently, it stopped

working properly. I have used

Nero , Stomp DLA, RealPlayer and

even Windows XP’s built-in

burning application to no avail.

Nothing seems to get my CDs to

burn. Any application will burn

to 99 percent and then error

out, saying it can’t complete

the CD and to try burning with

another one. I have used a dozen

different brands of CD-Rs and

CD-RWs and still no success.

Is the drive dead, Doctor, or is

there something I can do to get it

working again?

—JOSHUA

This doesn’t look good. The Doctor

suspects that your burner is writing

to the disc just fine, but for some

reason it’s not able to complete the

lead-out process, which simply

indicates the end of a disc’s con-

tents. Unfortunately, the lead-out

must be present for the disc to

work reliably. You’ve tried burning

apps and different CD brands, and

presumably you aren’t attempting

to “overburn” discs, so the Doctor

recommends updating the drive’s

firmware (available at the manufac-

turer’s web site). If this doesn’t help,

try testing a friend’s optical drive in

your PC. The Doctor’s guess is that it

will work fine, indicating that your

drive has given up the ghost.

GEE, DAD, I DIDN’T MEAN TO...

My well-meaning son

accidentally set a password on

my Windows 2000 machine

and now I can’t log in to my

computer. Is there any way I can

get around this problem or do I

need to reinstall Windows?

—PAWEL

The solution to your problems is a

handy piece of software called ERD

Commander (www.winternals.com).

It will create a boot disk that lets you

make changes to a Windows XP or

2000 system, even if you don’t know

the password. It’s a little pricey at

$150, so you may end up simply rein-

stalling anyway.

CAN DRIVER UPDATES INCREASE

POWER CONSUMPTION?

Thanks for the great article on

power supplies in your June issue.

I was experiencing random lock-

ups and had just about given

up until I read that article; now

I plan on upgrading to a better

power supply. I did have one

question, though: Is it possible to

push an already overtaxed power

supply over the edge by updating

the drivers for a videocard? It

may be coincidence, but I started

having issues with my system

right after a driver upgrade for

my GeForce 4 Ti 4200. Could a

driver update increase the need

for wattage?

—KELLY MARTIN

Theoretically a driver update could

increase the demand on your power

supply, but we’ve never seen it hap-

pen. It’s more likely your driver update

didn’t sit well with the other hardware

in your system. We’d recommend

updating the drivers for your mother-

board chipset before you go out and

buy a new power supply.

DELETING THE UNDELETABLE

I have a folder on my system that

can not be deleted. Every time I

try to delete it, this error message

comes up: “Error deleting file or

folder. Cannot delete folder: The

directory name is invalid.” I can

rename the folder and cut and

paste it to different locations but

I can’t open it or delete it. I think

this folder used to contain digital

pictures. However, Windows

shows the folder to be empty and

0KB in size. How can I get rid

of it?

—ROGER T. CHUNG

This problem is usually caused

when a file folder has a character

in the name that Windows doesn’t

understand. You can usually delete

the file by using the command line.

Open the command line by going

to the Start menu, clicking Run,

and typing cmd. Copy the folder

to C:/temp/ using the graphical

interface, then type cd \temp

to browse to the temp folder. Type

dir and look for the folder you’re

trying to delete. Make a note of

the folder name. To get rid of it,

type rd “folder name” (with

quotation marks around the name

of the folder).

POWER ISSUES

I built a small formfactor system

with a 2.4GHz Pentium 4, an

845 chipset, an ATI Radeon 8500

videocard, and a 120GB Maxtor

hard drive. I want to upgrade

to the ATI X800 XT Platinum

Edition. I’m a little concerned

about the power, though. Is this

too much hardware for my little

Shuttle?

—JIM SELTZER

It really depends on which vin-

tage Shuttle you have. Certain

older systems feature just 200

watt power supplies. This could

be insufficient for a high-per-

formance videocard. The good

news is that the X800 XT Platinum

Edition isn’t a big power hog.

If your system can support a

Radeon 9800 XT, for example, it

should run the X800. You might

also consider the 250-watt power

supply upgrade that Shuttle sells.

Furthermore, the X800 XT needs

a big fat CPU, so you should con-

sider upgrading that component.

The Doc has found that 3.2GHz

Pentium 4s running on an 800MHz

bus aren’t enough to keep the

X800 happy, so get as big a CPU as

your box can accommodate. The

845 chipset doesn’t support CPUs

above 3.06GHz. ■

buy a new power supply. trying to delete. Make a note of

the folder name. To get rid of it,

I said, Doctor, is there nothing I can take, to relieve this com-

puter-ache? Fear not, gentle reader, there’s no need to mix a

lime and a coconut, just e-mail [email protected]

and tell the Doctor about all of your computer’s ills.

use 48-bit logical block addressing

(LBA), which will allow hard dives

to be addressed until they reach the

ungodly capacity of 144 million giga-

bytes (144 petabytes), but that won’t

happen for at least a few years.

So, how to fix this? The easiest

way is to install the latest Service

Pack for your OS. Also, drives

that run off a PCI ATA add-in card

don’t have to deal with this barrier

because they are using PCI drivers

from your motherboard’s chipset.

Most drive manufacturers also offer

free utilities that will enable 48-bit

LBA addressing as well.

4 MA XIMUMPC SEPTEMBER 2004