VERY serious problem with FreeRAM XP Pro 1.50

[REM]

John Corliss <[email protected]> wrote:

I must admit that XP has that going for it (better multi-tasking and use
of resources.) Just can't get past that damned "product activation" bull
cr** though.

It's really not that big of a deal. I felt the same way for quite
awhile. In retrospect, the company does have the right to try to cut
the rate of piracy down. We're not talking "Sony-style" here.

A phone call is all that is required if the online approach doesn't
work and you'll have 30 days to make it. I've never heard of anyone
having the slightest problem with XP activation.

It rocks as an OS!

 

[John Corliss]

It's really not that big of a deal. I felt the same way for quite
awhile. In retrospect, the company does have the right to try to cut
the rate of piracy down. We're not talking "Sony-style" here.

No, I understand that and totally agree that they have that right.
However, I don't like the way that they award points that count towards
needing to reactivate:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/evaluate/xpactiv.mspx#EEAA

Totally confusing to me. Maybe someday I'll give it a try, but for the
time being I'm going to be ordering a spare hard drive this week just
for setting it up with Linux. That way, I can have basically two
computers by simply swapping out the hard drive.

A phone call is all that is required if the online approach doesn't
work and you'll have 30 days to make it. I've never heard of anyone
having the slightest problem with XP activation.

It rocks as an OS!

Well... I dunno. I'll have to probably give up my legacy printer, which
I really like.

--
Regards from John Corliss
My current killfile: aafuss, Chrissy Cruiser, Slowhand Hussein, BEN
RITCHEY and others.
No adware, cdware, commercial software, crippleware, demoware, nagware,
PROmotionware, shareware, spyware, time-limited software, trialware,
viruses or warez please.

 

[Gary R. Schmidt]

John Corliss wrote:
[SNIP]

Well... I dunno. I'll have to probably give up my legacy printer, which
I really like.

Unlikely. WinXP still has the drivers for my ancient Epson LQ-200,
circa 1992.

Post you printers name and someone can have a quick look.

Cheers,
Gary B-)

 

[David]

No, I understand that and totally agree that they have that right.
However, I don't like the way that they award points that count towards
needing to reactivate:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/evaluate/xpactiv.mspx#EEAA

Totally confusing to me. Maybe someday I'll give it a try, but for the
time being I'm going to be ordering a spare hard drive this week just
for setting it up with Linux. That way, I can have basically two
computers by simply swapping out the hard drive.

Just install the hard drive permanently and use LILO or GRUB to switch
between the two. The only time you run into trouble is if you need to
reinstall Windows. Preparing a recover floppy will allow you to
replace the boot manager.

Saves a lot of time trying to swap drives, even with caddies.

Well... I dunno. I'll have to probably give up my legacy printer, which
I really like.

Why? As far as I am aware XP will still drive any old dot matrix or
daisy wheel. All you need is the original or, preferably, an updated
driver. XP probably has an updated driver on the CD.
--
David
Remove "farook" to reply
At the bottom of the application where it says
"sign here". I put "Sagittarius"
E-mail: justdas at iinet dot net dot au

 

[John Corliss]

John Corliss wrote:
[SNIP]

Well... I dunno. I'll have to probably give up my legacy printer,
which I really like.

Unlikely. WinXP still has the drivers for my ancient Epson LQ-200,
circa 1992.

Post you printers name and someone can have a quick look.

Gary,
Here's the situation. I chose ME rather than XP when I bought this
system. When I hooked my HP 855C up to it and allowed ME detect and
install the drivers for it, I was disappointed to see that the ME
drivers made the output from the printer look like it came from a dot
matrix. VERY bad quality. And no setting adjustment would correct the
situation. In desperation, I installed the W95 drivers for the printer
and was happy to see that the output went back to the normal good (well,
for a printer this old) quality that I'm used to.
I have absolutly no reason to assume that XP's drivers will do any
better of a job than the ME ones. Not only that, but I'm sure I wouldn't
be able to use 16 bit drivers (the W95 ones) with XP.

Thanks for replying though.

--
Regards from John Corliss
My current killfile: aafuss, Chrissy Cruiser, Slowhand Hussein, BEN
RITCHEY and others.
No adware, cdware, commercial software, crippleware, demoware, nagware,
PROmotionware, shareware, spyware, time-limited software, trialware,
viruses or warez please.

 

[John Corliss]

Just install the hard drive permanently and use LILO or GRUB to switch
between the two. The only time you run into trouble is if you need to
reinstall Windows. Preparing a recover floppy will allow you to
replace the boot manager.

Saves a lot of time trying to swap drives, even with caddies.

I have a backup drive already. Swapping out is the only option.

Why? As far as I am aware XP will still drive any old dot matrix or
daisy wheel. All you need is the original or, preferably, an updated
driver. XP probably has an updated driver on the CD.

See my reply to Gary R. Schmidt.

--
Regards from John Corliss
My current killfile: aafuss, Chrissy Cruiser, Slowhand Hussein, BEN
RITCHEY and others.
No adware, cdware, commercial software, crippleware, demoware, nagware,
PROmotionware, shareware, spyware, time-limited software, trialware,
viruses or warez please.

 

[Gary R. Schmidt]

Here's the situation. I chose ME rather than XP when I bought this
system. When I hooked my HP 855C up to it and allowed ME detect and
install the drivers for it, I was disappointed to see that the ME
drivers made the output from the printer look like it came from a dot
matrix. VERY bad quality. And no setting adjustment would correct the
situation. In desperation, I installed the W95 drivers for the printer
and was happy to see that the output went back to the normal good (well,
for a printer this old) quality that I'm used to.
I have absolutly no reason to assume that XP's drivers will do any
better of a job than the ME ones. Not only that, but I'm sure I wouldn't
be able to use 16 bit drivers (the W95 ones) with XP.

Thanks for replying though.

Oh, that problem. Yes, it was nasty, but I thought that the driver from
HP fixed it?

Just installed a fake 855C here, can't see a version number, but the
"services" tab says "Copyright(C) 1995-1999 Hewlett-Packard Company".

Hmmm, the driver on the HP site for WinXP is dated "10-2001"...

You could find a nearby XP user, lug your printer over to them, or if
they have a laptop with parallel port, use that.

Just a suggestion.

Cheers,
Gary B-)

 

[David]

I have a backup drive already. Swapping out is the only option.

Shrink the partition on one of the drives, after a full defrag, and
install Linux in the space gained. Use LILO or GRUB to dual boot. Your
windows partitions are available from Linux even though Windows can't
see the Linux partitions. You can have four IDE drives. One obviously
needs to be a CD or DVD. Most DVD drives can also read CDs. You can
also add SCSI drives.

On one of my machines I have a 40GB HDD, a CD burner, six SCSI HDDs
and a DAT drive, also SCSI. That machine dual boots Win98SE and
Mandrake 10.1. I have a pure Win98SE machine with an 80GB HDD and a
DVD dual layer burner and a pure Linux machine with a couple of small
HDDs and a CD burner. All are networked. The one with all the drives
is the slowest so it is used as backup and storage. The fastest one is
the Linux machine which won't allow Win98Se to install. The Win98
machine I use for games. I also use a KVM switch to allow all machines
to use the same monitor, keyboard and mouse, except for the slow
machine which does not have PS/2 and requires a separate mouse.
--
David
Remove "farook" to reply
At the bottom of the application where it says
"sign here". I put "Sagittarius"
E-mail: justdas at iinet dot net dot au

 

[John Corliss]

Oh, that problem. Yes, it was nasty, but I thought that the driver from
HP fixed it?

Just installed a fake 855C here, can't see a version number, but the
"services" tab says "Copyright(C) 1995-1999 Hewlett-Packard Company".

Hmmm, the driver on the HP site for WinXP is dated "10-2001"...

You could find a nearby XP user, lug your printer over to them, or if
they have a laptop with parallel port, use that.

Just a suggestion.

Cheers,
Gary B-)

There *are* no drivers downloadable from the Hewlett Packard website.
They simply tell you that "There is no need to download a printer driver
from the Web. The drivers for HP Deskjet printers are included in
Windows XP."

Again, I have no reason to assume that the XP drivers are any better
than (or in fact are anything other than a re-port of) the built in
Millennium Edition drivers.

I actually talked with one of the Hewlett Packard veeps on the phone
when the original incident occured (the dot-matrix output due to the ME
driver) and he said claimed that his company didn't even write the
driver, but that Microsoft programmers wrote it. I told him that MS
wasn't doing them any favor, that was for sure. Later though, I realized
that whoever was responsible, it was a naked attempt (either intentional
or not, but I presume the former) to get people who own older printers
to get newer ones. Probably another example of corporate hand holding.
That the W95 driver works perfectly in ME makes me wonder why they
didn't tell people to simply use that one instead. I notice also, that
HP never used my suggestion that they place that information on their
website.

I get real tire of this kind of duplicity and will never buy another HP
printer ever again as a result.

As for taking it to somebody else's place, nah.. not worth the trouble
because I have other priorities before I update to XP. For instance...
giving Linux a try on that new hard drive I plan to order today.

--
Regards from John Corliss
My current killfile: aafuss, Chrissy Cruiser, Slowhand Hussein, BEN
RITCHEY and others.
No adware, cdware, commercial software, crippleware, demoware, nagware,
PROmotionware, shareware, spyware, time-limited software, trialware,
viruses or warez please.

 

[John Corliss]

Shrink the partition on one of the drives, after a full defrag, and
install Linux in the space gained. Use LILO or GRUB to dual boot. Your
windows partitions are available from Linux even though Windows can't
see the Linux partitions. You can have four IDE drives. One obviously
needs to be a CD or DVD. Most DVD drives can also read CDs. You can
also add SCSI drives.

No David, this is not what I want to do. I have given this a lot of
thought and my idea is what I want to go with. This is because of the
particular hardware configuration I have - mainly that it is very easy
to swap out hard drives in my computer. It is also the most risk free
and believe me, I've read some real horror stories in this group
concerning installing Linux as you describe. I do not want to, in the
slightest, put my main (and already partitioned) hard drive at any risk.

On one of my machines I have a 40GB HDD, a CD burner, six SCSI HDDs
and a DAT drive, also SCSI. That machine dual boots Win98SE and
Mandrake 10.1. I have a pure Win98SE machine with an 80GB HDD and a
DVD dual layer burner and a pure Linux machine with a couple of small
HDDs and a CD burner. All are networked. The one with all the drives
is the slowest so it is used as backup and storage. The fastest one is
the Linux machine which won't allow Win98Se to install.

Now THAT'S interesting!

The Win98 machine I use for games. I also use a KVM switch to allow
all machines to use the same monitor, keyboard and mouse, except for
the slow machine which does not have PS/2 and requires a separate mouse.

In the future I will figure out a way to switch back and forth more
easily between hard drives. Perhaps something like this:

http://www.dslwebserver.com/main/fr_index.html?/main/Romtec-Trios.html

Regardless, I will be ordering my extra hard drive today.

80)>

--
Regards from John Corliss
My current killfile: aafuss, Chrissy Cruiser, Slowhand Hussein, BEN
RITCHEY and others.
No adware, cdware, commercial software, crippleware, demoware, nagware,
PROmotionware, shareware, spyware, time-limited software, trialware,
viruses or warez please.

 

[Gary R. Schmidt]

John Corliss wrote:
[SNIP]

There *are* no drivers downloadable from the Hewlett Packard website.
They simply tell you that "There is no need to download a printer driver
from the Web. The drivers for HP Deskjet printers are included in
Windows XP."

Didn't click that one extra step, sorry.

As for taking it to somebody else's place, nah.. not worth the trouble
because I have other priorities before I update to XP. For instance...
giving Linux a try on that new hard drive I plan to order today.

Don't know how well Linux supports the 855c, (goes to
<http://www.linuxprinting.org>)
direct link:
<http://www.linuxprinting.org/show_printer.cgi?recnum=HP-DeskJet_855C>)
says it works "Perfectly". And a whole lot of other words, too.

Cheers,
Gary B-)

 

[John Corliss]

John Corliss wrote:
[SNIP]

There *are* no drivers downloadable from the Hewlett Packard website.
They simply tell you that "There is no need to download a printer
driver from the Web. The drivers for HP Deskjet printers are included
in Windows XP."

Didn't click that one extra step, sorry.

As for taking it to somebody else's place, nah.. not worth the trouble
because I have other priorities before I update to XP. For instance...
giving Linux a try on that new hard drive I plan to order today.

Don't know how well Linux supports the 855c, (goes to
<http://www.linuxprinting.org>)
direct link:
<http://www.linuxprinting.org/show_printer.cgi?recnum=HP-DeskJet_855C>)
says it works "Perfectly". And a whole lot of other words, too.

I've used the printer off of a live Knoppix CD and that was long ago. To
my eye, the output actually looked far superior to that from the Windows
driver. Not only that, but there is this site:

http://hpinkjet.sourceforge.net/index.php

and from it, this one:

http://hpinkjet.sourceforge.net/printmodedescr.php#DJ850

--
Regards from John Corliss
My current killfile: aafuss, Chrissy Cruiser, Slowhand Hussein, BEN
RITCHEY and others.
No adware, cdware, commercial software, crippleware, demoware, nagware,
PROmotionware, shareware, spyware, time-limited software, trialware,
viruses or warez please.