dacs.doc electric

Random Access
June 2002

Bruce Preseton, moderator

 

Members who are unable to attend the General Meeting may submit questions to 'askdacs@aol.com' by the day prior to the meeting. We will attempt to get an answer for you. Please provide enough detail, as we will not be able to ask for additional information.

Q. How many plug-in devices (hard disk drives, CD-ROMs, floppy drives) can I attach to a 125 watt power supply?

A. We suspect that you don't have a 125 watt power supply -- you probably misread the nominal voltage (125 v). Most power supplies, even in small machines, are 250 watt or 300 watts. That having been said, you can have the motherboard, four hard drives, a floppy, and a cooling fan. If your hard disk drives are power hungry (7,200 RPM drives compared to 5,000 RPM drives, etc.), you have a high-power consumption adapter card (such as a high memory video display board with its own cooling fan, etc.) and a lot of memory on the motherboard, and a power-hungry CPU with its own cooling fan, a tape drive, etc. then you might be strapped for power.

Q. I am running Windows 98, and each time it boots it tells me that it has found a new printer and insists on installing the drivers for it. It is an HP printer -- and it works just fine; other than that, it insists on installing the drivers.

A. You are running into a problem where Windows thinks that it ‘knows best' and is insisting on installing a driver from its database instead of the one provided by HP. The cure is to let it have its way, but to name (or rename) the printer in the Control Panel (Printers Folder) with something like "HP with Windows driver." Then install the driver from HP using their setup as well, but with a name such as "HP with HP driver." so that they don't collide with each other. Lastly, after you finally get a clean boot -- set the default printer to the one with the driver that you really want to use (probably the HP driver) and just ignore the other ‘printer.' Its presence in the ‘installed devices' list will keep Windows happy so it won't insist on installing at boot time.

Q. I have a Canon printer -- I went to their site to get drivers for running under Windows XP and tried to install them. Even though the driver on the web site says that it is for XP, when I install it I get a message that says "this driver is incompatible with Windows XP."

A. If you can't get a working driver from Canon or Microsoft, then you might also find something useful at www.driverguide.com -- go to the ‘members login' page and use the ID of ‘drivers' with a password of ‘all'.

Q. Is there any truth to the belief that refilling ink cartridges gives you lesser quality images than the factory cartridges?

A. The average consumer's eyes probably can not see a difference, but an experienced eye with or without a magnifying glass might be able to tell the difference. There may also be a difference in how long the print will last without fading, etc .There probably is a limit to how many times you can refill the cartridge before the internal filters get plugged, causing reduced ink flow.

Q. In MS Access 2000, I do a SELECT query and get one set of results. If I do a ‘cross tabs' query I get a different set of results. Can you explain?

A. You need to look at the way that the ‘joins' between the tables are set up -- an ‘equijoin' will only return results if there is an exact match of the joined field in both tables. A ‘left' or a ‘right' join will return a record even if there is no match in the other table of the join pair. My guess is that the select query that is returning more records does not have an equijoin constraint. One common place that joins may fail is if you have date fields involved, as one field may have just a date, where as the corresponding field in another table may have a date and time — they won't match. May we suggest that you bring a sample of the database to the MS Access SIG, which will meet next Tuesday night.

Q. I run Windows 98 and Excel 97. I inadvertently removed the diskette from the A: drive while Excel was trying to write to it. The diskette is now unusable. Can I get at the data?

A. The file allocation table for the diskette was damaged. If you can't read it from Windows Explorer, then you might be able to repair the diskette using a disk repair utility such as Norton Disk Doctor. Maybe.

Q. When I defrag my hard disk, it shows about 30 to 40 little red dots, which the legend says are files that can not be moved. What are these, and does it matter?

A. Certain files can not or should not be moved. Typically these are system files, such as the swap file, etc. They could also be files that applications build outside of the normal file system -- sometimes used as part of copy protection. Having 30 to 40 clusters out of several thousand not being realigned will have insignificant impact upon your system's performance.

Q. I am looking to get a new office machine, for general purpose usage. Is there any benefit in going with a ‘brand name' machine rather than a clone? Can we talk about service and support?

A. We have about 200 people in attendance tonight; we probably would get 200 different answers. However, there were people present at the meeting who didn't like Gateway, eMachines, and Micron -- either because they feel that they ‘break a lot' or because they use proprietary parts which lock you into using their components or going to them for repairs. An example of a the type of problem was a machine that wouldn't keep time-of-day time. Instead of being able to just replace the clock chip, the entire motherboard had to be replaced. Because the machine was out of production, the motherboard had to be a refurbished one at a greatly inflated price — with only a 30 day warranty. Look at what kind of warranty you get -- a good one would provide next business day on-site service. Also beware of sites where the first response is to put the system restore CD in the drive and reload. This will completely wipe your drive clean of all of your data. Search the web for newsgroups for the brand you are considering. However, be aware that only people who have had problems come to the boards, so you will only be seeing one side of the story. But you should be able to at least get a feel for the level of support that a brand provides. One last bias was that some did not like motherboards that come with integrated components such as video or sound. If these work correctly, then all well and good —but if there is a problem with something, such as a video incompatibility with an O/S, it may be impossible to resolve.


Bruce Preston is president of West Mountain Systems, a consultancy in Ridgefield, CT, specializing in database applications. A DACS director and moderator of the Random Access segment at the monthly general meetings, Bruce also leads the Access SIG.

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