[xico]

I am running an old IBM Aptiva win 95 with a 75 MHz Pentium. I was installing Sound Blaster 16 PCI when a lightening storm came up. I've already been hit once this year, so rather than chance it, I shut it down. Next time I'd ride it out, and let Fate takes it's course. Aside from several other problems, now when I go into DOS I'm getting a couple of pages of errors related to MWave 0034. I would like to correct these errors. I've run Scandisk, but it's not touching these errors that are surfacing in DOS. I started with CHkDSK, but I have some files that are too long. I tried the MOVE command that DOS told me to use, but it says Bad Command.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[JayTheHun]

Hi there. Just a quick note: during electrical storms, UNPLUG the computer from the wall and also the phone jack. You can buy the only TRUE protection from storms and that's called a UPS (uninterruptible power supply). A UPS is unlike a so-called "surge protector" in that it isolates you from the line voltage. However, even more at risk, are your phone lines.

Now, back to our story..."mwave" is IBM's built-onto-the-motherboard-and/or-modem that combines sound production with the modem. Hopefully you have the modem/soundcard combo that can be physically removed. Those errors you're seeing are likely produced by your "config.sys" and "autoexec.bat" files. If you know how to find them (they sit right on the root of your c: drive), you can edit them with Notepad, placing a semi-colon at the start of any line that references that device. Save your changes and reboot. Then reinstall your Soundblaster drivers.

[xico]

Hey Jay! Thank you! Twice! We pull the plugs now after shutting down. We also have cable, so the phone lines aren't a problem. But lightening is. A transformer next door was hit twice within a fortnight.

Thanks again for the info on IBM's MWave--and yes I just removed the combo card to put in Sound Blaster and a Ethernet card.

Xico

[JayTheHun]

Excellent! You're welcome.--jes

[xico]

Hi Jay!

Could you tell me what a **platform agnostic** is? And you don't like satellite internet access? Would you brief me? One daughter says she's
thinking about SIA.

[JayTheHun]

Yes, hi again. "Platform agnostic," in computer lingo, means that one is not locked into using just one Operating System i.e. Windows. I'm a great fan of the new Mac OS X as well as the very free and very stable Linux operating systems.

On the matter of satellite internet access, I would say that if you have ANY other choices for broadband, go with one of them. The particular provider that I use, one that I won't name but is owned by a very large automobile maker has the poorest network I've ever seen of any ISP. They have no redundancy which means, if there is trouble at the NOC (network operations center), we all lose internet access. Their mail servers are severely unreliable. Satellite internet access in general is a very poor service just because of the very technology used: it takes a very long time for a signal to send from earth to the satellite and back (typically 1 ms, unacceptable by network standards). They restrict how much you may download in a given period of time. It's an expensive service compared to other broadband solutions. I'm sure I could find more to complain about. Wanna buy my dish? lol

[xico]

Thank you, Jay! I guess I'm a "platform agnostic" too. They say a Windoze tutorial is a crash course. And thank you for the info on the SIA busyness. Think I'll stick with Comcast. It's been quite reliable all the way around. Thanks for all this info. I appreciate it, mucho.

[JayTheHun]

You're certainly welcome. Comcast has just recently upgraded the hardware in our area and, supposedly, will be offering their service sometime this month...yea! No hope to have DSL anytime in the future at all since we live in such a rural area that would require virtual replacement of their entire network leading up to our area. lol Their loss, I suppose! Danged monopolies! hehehe

(***steps down off platform, reeling from confusion***)