I have no idea, I was probably sleeping so quite likely :)

"SecurityFocus: War of words rages over Internet taps

...

Federal law already compels ISPs to cooperate with law enforcement in court-approved surveillance of customers. But as police rely more on Internet snooping -- with tools like the FBI's "Carnivore" DCS-1000 packet sniffer -- they've begun to crave the speed and ease-of-use of the wiretapping infrastructure that CALEA grafted onto the modern telephone network, described in a filing by the New York state Attorney General's office this way: "Within minutes of receipt of the court order, warrants for the interception of wireless devices can be implemented by the communications carriers. With just a few computer key strokes, the connection is made directly between law enforcement's computerized listening stations and the telephone service provider's computerized switches."

The Justice Department plan would make Internet taps as easy, though at great expense to Internet service providers and their customers.

..."

http://www.hacktivismo.com/news/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2484

Sound Card problem
I've recently re-installed Win2k on my system but I can't seem to set up
the sound card properly.

The first thing I noticed was that there was no Volume control icon in the
task bar tray.
But when I go to Control Panel-> Sounds and Multimedia the volume Control
slider and the "Show Volume Control on the Taskbar" checkbox are greyed
out.

However, I can run the Volume Control as an application and it appears to
work - I can play WAV files through the Windows Media Player and I can
listen to Audio CDs through the sound card.

But Real Player will not play anything at all, sometimes it just appears
to play with no sound coming out, other times it says something like
"another program is using the audio device".

I have a Sound Blaster 5.1 Live PCI card. And all was working fine before
I re-installed win2k. I have un-installed then re-installed the drivers
from the CD several times and also tried letting Windows Plug and Play do
it.

Although what I'm trying to do is get Real Player to work, I can't help
thinking that the problem is with the sound card drivers as I have never
seen the situation before where it was not possible to put the volume
control on the task bar tray.

Any ideas guys?

Quick one:
My friend wants me to format his computer.He uses Win 98.I can format my XP with no probs.
Do i follow the same steps to format in 98?
Iain

Ian
You mad need a floppy boot disk with Format & Fdisk on it
If you find you need a copy let me know.
D.

Iain, use a bootdisk from this site http://www.bootdisk.com lots of different boot disks available and a very usefull site at times.

kajman, if you goto start/settings/control panel/system/hardware/device manager are there any items listed with red crosses or yellow question marks?

It sounds as theough w2k isnt happy with the device setup.

Spaceman
Thats a great site!

Kajman
Have you tried http://us.creative.com/support/downloads/download2.asp?centric=50&dlcentric=1925&ProductName=Sound+Blaster+Live!+5.1&OS=9&OSName=Windows+2000
D.

Many thanks for prompt replies.As usual:-)Where would I be without you.
Not just the best site for stock related stuff!
Iain

Spaceman
No, that looks OK:



Croc, I got a download from there, but when I tried to run it I got this message:



I had something similar from another Creative download. They seem to distribute patches to existing drivers rather than complete drivers. But if the current system is broken then that's not much help.

Kajman, i think your PC may be using another sound device? possibly the Unimodem half duplex thing mentioned in the above. DO you have 2 cqards that could be providing sound?

edit added, have you run a windows update since upgrading to w2k?

Spaceman
I think the unimodem thing is a sound driver for a modem I have installed.
I will remove the modem and check, later.

The problem I have is that when I remove all of the sound drivers they get re-installed by Windows on the next restart.

I do have sound devices on the motherboard but I believe I have disaabled them in the BIOS, and also I think the BIOS should do that anyway when it detects a sound card in the system. Later I think I will remove the sound card and try the motherboard devices - if that works with Real Player so I can get the bbc radio programs, that's all I need.

kajman,

dont remove the modem if you dont need to, just right click on it in the device manager and then uncheck the 'enable this device' box.

and in my experience I have had to manually disable the sound card in the bios, it wasnt automatically done...

J.

Having another bash at the ongoing problems on my computer.

Gigabyte GA7n400Pro, 1024 Mb DDR400 Ram, AMD XP2500 Barton processor. Win XP pro.

Problem is the flicking of the screen and the fact that a limited amount of windows can be open until the system protests and fails to respond

I thought it was specific to the graphics card, changed the card, now an NVidea product. Removed RAM, to see if one 512Mb lump was incompatible with the other, no joy. Adjusted virtual RAM to that specified, ie 1.5 times physical RAM. Problems persist.

I have always had problems updating the bios for the motherboard as it never seems to want to do it. (dual bios)

I am now considering that it could be the processor itself that could be breaking down or am I barking up the wrong tree?

Even changed the power supply, no change.

The faults look as if there isn't enough guts in the system to run the programs. Currently running an ETrade platform, DJ Newswires,(2 windows) and about 4 other windows.

To top it all I noted that my Norton was not opening up on the initial start-up and no matter what I did it would never open on boot up. Eventually deleted and reloaded. Starts OK, now I find that the virus definitions are out of date and the live update operates but the definitions remain as they were, out of date. Norton are spectacularly useless, all roads lead to paying more money for a new version or to pay them $40 to fix it!

Or could it just be that Windows is simply not up to this multi-tasking, no matter what they say.

I hope you can assist me in my despair, before I junk the processor and M/board for something newer.

2Abbey, some info and a few questions :-

I havnt had a chance to check the specs etc of your mobo and graphics but before I do ......

The processor amd memory sound fine for what you are running, we always want the quickest fastest best etc but that spec is fine and isnt in itself a reason for your machine to not work correctly. However what are the '4 other windows' ? if they are database servers, web servers etc etc they could be the problem. Although I cant rule out a problem with the CPU I do think this is unlikeley, in my experience they normally work or dont!

The power supply is a often overlooked source of potential problems, I know you have changed it but what have you changed it from and to? What power is the power supply.

On to BIOS, this could be relevant and woul be my first point of investigation. I havnt used a dual BIO but they should update as normal, they just give you a bit of extra protection in case the flash goes wrong. Still with the BIOS, what type is it and have you checked the settings?

What is the system load like? have a look at performance in task manager.

What sort of screen do you have? how is it connected (DVI/D15 analogue).

Is your win XP patched up-to-date? (Windows update)

Are you using a domain?

Didi you sort out your disk query that you posted about a few days ago?

I am sure people here can help sort this out.

Windows is up to date, using SP1 and all updates. I was using a dual display card, reasonably old, pre Xp, but had the relevant drivers from Ati. My problems with the graphics seem to start after a driver download from Microsoft, the driver would not install and moreover the existing driver seemed to be corrupted. Reinstalled new drivers etc. Problems seem to be resolved when I would back the system on Xp to the previous drivers. However when I rebooted it seemed to install the other corrupted drivers. I became so irritated with this that I put in an NVidea card from my other machine but the problems of flicking when data from the newswire service comes through remain.

Analogue monitor via the graphics card, Dell M992, (Sony Trinitron I think)

System load runs at around 300Mb, however sometimes the CPU seems to be churning for no apparent reason, hard disk operating etc.

Problem with the hard drive was of a clattering on boot-up. I had this on a previous Maxtor drive, and the drive eventually refused to boot. Possibly the O/S is on the same point on the drive so more wear at that point? Drive OK in use with no clattering.
Power supply is 350watt, the one I changed it with was also 350watt. It did occur to me to get a 450watt but I wasn't sure if this was the cause of the problems. The spec of the motherboard doesn't seem to give specs for a power supply, but it seemed fine until I started with the DJ Newswire service.

It has occured to me that the DJ service, running entirely in RAM, was the cause of the problems, the straw that broke the camels back etc.

Other windows are Bloomberg TV, runs in RAM, MoneyAM, and maybe another

2Abbey, I will try and investigate this a bit more later today. One point have you checked with the newswire people to see if there are known issues?

This memory problem, or whatever it is, is really annoying. Had to close down selected windows in order to open an email now!

Attempting to open another window results in a tone being played. Opening Task Manager when the machine is playing up is impossible. Even right clicks on the mouse won't work!

2Abbey

Out of interest, you could run an Audit on your PC. The result from doing this would be to give you a full list of all your software (and it shows you where it is too) and hardware (this might tell you some of your RAM is not working)

The Audit I would recommend is the Belarc Advisor. This is carried out whilst you are online and is obtainable as a Free download from here:

http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html

Having done it, you can then copy and paste it to a Word document and print it off. This serves as a good record for when you have to take your machine in for repair too.