i tried reinstalling windows ME on that laptop we talked about. first, the floppy you had me make gives a non-system disk error when i put it in. so i tried to reinstall ME anyways. everything was going great until it went to reboot after the install. it says that setup is updating config files, but then i get a message saying : windows could not upgrade the file %1 from %2 %1:%2 it repeated tries to do the update and fills the screen with these errors. what can i do. it never actually boots up ME.

Question: why do nascar fans dislike jeff gordon so much? Answer: because he enunciates (sp?)! there's no place for that in nascar. (credited to jeff foxworthy for that one)

i don't care what anybody says james, your passion for supporting SC is what makes college football so great!(of course it helps having a team fresh off of a national championship heading in the right direction)

one last question: if i upgrade it to XP, will i still be able to reinstall the microsoft office programs that came with the computer? i'm pretty sure they are on a cd of their own seperate from ME.

trust me, if it had been me i'd have used the voucher good towards the upgrade for $20 that was included with the purchase as soon as possible. but you know how females are (insert smack from the female contigent here ), as long as it works most of the time so be it !! i'm going to call her tonight and suggest she do that if she plans on keeping it for awhile. incidentally, even if i upgrade to XP, i will still have to back up her files she wants to keep correct?

i need another option: neither

working on computers is fun to me. i was worried though that i was getting in over my head on this one but i really wanted to help out my cousin. she is in her third year of college studying to be a teacher who works with special needs kids. we need more teachers willing to work in that field so i wanted to try helping her out as much as possible. she called around and most people wanted way too much money to do this. thanks again!!!

thanks a ton bullines!! This should be a piece of cake with all your help! thanks again

quote: But for ~$99, XP Home would be a worthy investment. Boot off it's CD, format and install. That's it HTH i'm going to talk to her about this too. will this erase all the crap i'm trying to get rid of too? if yes, this sounds like the better way to go.

Bullines.. thanks a bunch for all the great information!! I just have a couple of questions to make sure i understand what i need to do: 1. the bootable floppy is going to be inserted into the drive before turning on PC, correct? will this bring up the command prompt where i'll be able to type : format "c"? 2. do i need to worry about the other partitions and schemes if they do exist? (are partitions other drive letters from the same hard drive? for example my pc at work has drive c and d.) 3. after formatting "C", do i shut down the pc before inserting the ME CD? will it bring up a command prompt in which i have to type E: to get to the cd drive to be able to find setup.exe? 4. finally, will all of this be done in a DOS setting? once again thanks for all the help! i'm pretty sure i understand what to do but want to be sure before getting into it. and i'll be sure to tell her to get a firewall this time to prevent this from happening again! thanks again,

Here's what i'm trying to do. A relative of mine has a laptop with windows ME (i know, i've tried convincing her to change it but she is a college student with limited funds). the computer is having problems with locking up and has all kinds of crap on it that doesn't belong but i'm not sure what needs to be there. so what i'd like to do is get the laptop back to its original state back when she bought it. she didn't have a firewall on it and she spent a ton of time online and i think some things were downloaded and are running in the background. Is there a better way to do it besides formatting the hard drive? i have the windows ME disk and all the other disks that came with the computer.

If i were to format a hard drive, what does that do? Does it even wipe out the windows operating system? and how hard is it to reinstall windows if it does? thanks

heres a question for you: how many programs are in a machine at a given time? are people required to make sure the program is put back in the laptop (or server) and delete the program from the machine it was in? our problem is we might run a job in machine A one month and the same job could go into machine B three months later. and so on and so on. anyways, we end up having the program for that job in multiple machines and it makes for a nightmare of a time making sure the programs are backed up. i have my ideas but the owner likes his way better. just wondering what everyone else is doing.

what company is your cmm from and what software are you using? i have a couple of forums i go to for brown & sharpe and PCDMIS. if you would like, i can post thelinks. that seems odd that they don't have any web-based forums support.

quote: The NFL dangled a coaching position at him and he didn't bite. I don't believe he'd leave for ND anyway. I'm not suprised he didn't take the NFL job - his niche is in the college game. Imagine being the one responsible for turning around such a historic program such as ND after doing it once already at USC (and being nationally televised every week wouldn't hurt either). that would be pretty big for the ego and the resume!

quote: Are you really coming out here for the game??? I wish i could. My cousin (a huge ND fan) and I talked about going but after seeing what it would cost for tickets and travel and lodging, i realized i couldn't afford it as of right now. of course i'm hoping i hit the lottery or something then look out Southern California cuz here i come!! if ND has another subpar season (meaning getting blown out by michigan,tenn., USC) then i think the administration will have no choice but to fire willingham and go after a big name coach (carroll perhaps? we have lots of money to throw at him! ) if they play better but still lose close games, he may get that 4th year but i don't see it happening.

your right..none of their opponents want him on the field. but from a college football fans perspective, i hope he doesn't get reinstated for the simple fact that it will open all kinds of troubles for the ncaa in the future and they have enough problems that can't seem to handle right now! i thought USC had quite a few players taken in the draft this year. i know a lot of the returning players probably got some valuable P.T. with all the blowouts last year but that still doesn't compare to being in the game when it counts. should be interesting to see how the team turns out (although not as interesting as seeing how long it is until the fans and alumni start calling for the firing of TY this season. and based on their schedule, my money will be saying its no later than sept. 25th after 3 embarrassing losses to byu,michigan, and michigan st. with games still to come against tenn, pitt, and you know who. i just don't believe he'll be the coach when we make the trip out to SC to visit you.

funny how it changes based on geographical locations. It'll be interesting to see what happens either way.

hey james... i just saw on espn yesterday that williams hasn't even gone before the ncaa yet to petition his reinstatement.

gary..thanks for the well spoken response. color marking the parts in the machine wont work due to the coolant being used to flush the chips rather than air in the cycle. so the parts are wet when they come out and get put in the box. plus, this would still not prevent raw parts from getting out. i like the idea of a checking gage more for the final inspection area. this could work. the problem with signing off on the boxes is that when they leave here they go to paint. they lose all traceability once they get to paint because they don't paint them and pack them box for box. i know this sounds stupid but the die-cast company who is our customer approved this process! murlin... the parts are die-cast aluminum with a darker grey tint to them. after machine, they are your typical looking aluminum color. sticks out like a sore thumb compared to the grey.

same here as gary is experiencing to the north. job load is steadily increasing (actually looking at getting a couple more machines) and the sales guys are quoting jobs non-stop. as related to a previous post, i have to thank gary for reiterating my thoughts about finding qualified help.

winnie...thanks for the suggestions. the part isn't high volume for one thing. we've already loaded up as many parts as possible on the table and are only running one tool to cut all the features. the machining is that of 2 bosses on each part 90 degree from each other. the cycle time is lightning fast and any more parts and it would take the operator even longer and lose more production. since i started this thread, i've also thought about having a conveyor system at the cell that the operator unloads the parts from machine and places on conveyor with a sensor "looking" at the part to make sure it is machined.

brendan... i have much respect for you and your comments. in fact i would put you up there with the likes of james or jayson or some of the others i'm failing to mention. believe it or not but that is actually HIGH for the area compared to other shops. a good operator at our company can top out at $12-$14 /hr. - just to load parts,push a button, unload parts, inspect, repeat. i don't think thats too bad. i don't control this part of the company so i could be off a little on the numbers but you get the idea.

quote: Putting a part on a machine,going to lunch (maybe smoking a dubie or having a drink)and then coming back from lunch and taking the part off,without even cutting it, is pathetic in my book! if this were the case i could somewhat live with it. but i'm talking from the time it takes to go 8 steps sideways and load the machine next to it and turn back. like i've said, firing the operators just leaves us short of operators. even if we get more in they are the same for the most part. highly skilled people with brains don't want to work for $8-$10 / hr running a machine from what we've found.

quote: Just watch Steve Breaston this year,that kid is FAST! too bad they have no one to throw him the ball (and don't even think about kick offs/punts. nobody is gonna send it his way) james.... i agree with everything you said about baseball - even the voting.