Victory!!! Bad cd problem cured !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[daveca]

Explorer is not the basic process of Windows, the Windows Kernel is (kernel32 or NTos, whatever they're properly called). If Explorer was the basic process, then termnating it would have killed windows off and the CD burner wouldn't have worked. Going back to Windows 3.1 - it worked, but was still DOS-Shell. In fact, one could invoke Shell from there. It worked, but not for those without computer experience, specifically, with knowledge of how to dig around the file system and find things.

After MS started packing Explorer in place of Filemanager.exe, it all started going downhill. I think Filemanager is still packed in the Windows directory, even in XP. Exploder (what we term Explorer in Windows-hating circles) is not only a ( DOS, quasi-DOS) file handling routine, it more or less automates Windows so that someone with no computer experience (read- no knowledge of DOS operation) can operate most Windows functions with a mouse on the Desktop. Nice, but Exploder steals a great deal of memory (as does any Windows program) and has its tentacles all over the OS, usually with bad results.

Just terminate Explorer and see what else suddenly goes dark. The programs are still there, but have to use Alt-Tab to switch between them. Worse yet, many/most programs, especially Explorer take memory when starting and dont want to give it up, thus the advent of Garbage Collector. Some programs like Word Perfect won't terminate, and hide in the background with 10's of MB of memory allocated that System can't use. thus- why Windows crashes.

Ctrl Alt Del invokes the Task Manager window, which contains tabs for seeing which programs are operating, processes (programs/executables hiding in the background) and how much memory they gobble up, network usage and et-cetera. The processes tab (second tab) is useful for killing User processes (right-click- end process/tree) to free up memory and speed up the machine. These processes are launched, and memory consumed, each time a program is started by the User, or started at boot up. It can be enough memory to cause the machine to respond slowly, or not at all. Find every process started by the current user (admin, guest, whatever username is current log- in) and kill them one by one. No problem. Killing off system processes can crash the OS.

There are two options for killing a process 1.) the process 2.) it and all processeses associated. When Explorer is killed, the Desktop disappears and suddenly one has no "point and click" method for operating the File System. No problem, for programs and files can be browsed for, and launched, from the first Task Manager tab, it's just more like Win 3.1 than XP. Instead of having all the Program short cuts on Desktop, one has to either find the Desktop folder (c:/documentsandsettings/user/desktop... or whatever the path is) or go into the Program Files folder (c:/programfiles/programfolder...) and run the .exe from there.

With Exploder and all its memory-grabbing, octopus tentacle processes terminated, I launched Roxio 6.x CD burner and burned 12x speed (it determined that speed was max after hardware tests). This was after going through all the setup menus in Roxio to alow it to test the drive for read/write speeds. As a result, Knoppix is working GREAT. instant everything. CD latency is NOTHING compared to Windows goofing off in the background. Flashboot would be better but I haven't figured out how to do that yet without a USB-boot BIOS option. "knoppix toram" didn't work, I don't know why. Knoppix has loaded every time, except for one where the external monitor seemed to hang it, and the USB keyboard/mouse didn't work. Connecting them after boot up seemed to solve those hiccupps. Nice to have a 32 inch monitor! LOVE THE PENGUIN!!!!!!!! PS I did format the first post, dont know what happened to formatting after I sent the post.

[krishna.murphy]

Explorer is not the basic process of Windows, the Windows Kernel is (kernel32 or NTos, whatever they're properly called). If Explorer was the basic process, then termnating it would have killed windows off and the CD burner wouldn't have worked.

Right, that IS what happened back in the days of Win 95/98 etc. Guess I never tried it with XP, but good to know what you pointed out - thanks!

Flashboot would be better but I haven't figured out how to do that yet without a USB-boot BIOS option. "knoppix toram" didn't work, I don't know why.

Try this sometime: put the flash drive in and run the flash install utility if you have not done that yet, then reboot and

knoppix fromhd=/dev/sdb1

That works for me, but your drive numberings may differ.

Cheers!
Krishna

[daveca]

flashboot solved. WAY too easy once I thought about it. The key is philosophy - "THINK LINUX, FORGET WINDOWS"

[krishna.murphy]

I'm not clear about how that allows you to boot the flash drive. Did you use PLoP or some other mechanism to boot it? Or did you just wipe the hd and install, or do a "poor man's install"?

Krishna