[comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc] Ever since I start using windows, strange things keep happening

nan@phobos.cis.ksu.edu (Nan Zou ) (11/30/90)

I've had nothing but problems since I began using windows. After I install the
Orchid Pro II 1024x768x256 drivers, windows tells me 386 protection error, and
I have to reboot everytime. So I'll just use standard mode until I figure the
problem out.

Last night, before I used windows, I did a 'dir' and saw I have about 38 meg 
left on my hard disk. Then I went into windows and changed the setup. Upon exit
I discover now I only had 22 meg!? It seems that windows wrote a big file on my
hard disk. After searching the whole drive I found nothing was added. So I went
to Norton File Size, and it reports 48,949,248 occupied by 1768 files, drive C:
has 85,106,688 capacity, and 23,947,264 was left. Now wait a minute, these num
bers don't add up, if I have 46 meg used up and 83 meg total, it should leave
me about 38 meg, which is what it should be. It seems that there's an invisible
file that take up 16 meg. Everything else runs fine. But I can't figure out why
I lost 16 meg after using windows.

The machine is a 25 Mhz 386 with 4 megs of RAM, the hard disk is a 83M IDE.

As a sidenote, every time I boot up I get a message "WARNIGN: share should be 
loaded for large media". But I've already loaded share in my autoexec. Could
this be related to my disk space problem? I would greatly appreciate any help.

						Nan

c60c-3fz@e260-2c.berkeley.edu (In Sik Rhee) (11/30/90)

In article <nan.659896529@phobos> nan@phobos.cis.ksu.edu (Nan Zou ) writes:
>I've had nothing but problems since I began using windows. After I install the
>Orchid Pro II 1024x768x256 drivers, windows tells me 386 protection error, and
>I have to reboot everytime. So I'll just use standard mode until I figure the
>problem out.

I know that Orchid has upgraded their windows 3.0 driver since I bought my
Pro II...  call their BBS and download the latest driver (if you dont have
the #, call the # on the back of the manual and ask for it)...  also, you
might try posting about the problem on their bbs...

>Last night, before I used windows, I did a 'dir' and saw I have about 38 meg 
>left on my hard disk. Then I went into windows and changed the setup. Upon exit
>I discover now I only had 22 meg!? It seems that windows wrote a big file on my
>hard disk. After searching the whole drive I found nothing was added. So I went
>to Norton File Size, and it reports 48,949,248 occupied by 1768 files, drive C:
>has 85,106,688 capacity, and 23,947,264 was left. Now wait a minute, these num
>bers don't add up, if I have 46 meg used up and 83 meg total, it should leave
>me about 38 meg, which is what it should be. It seems that there's an invisible
>file that take up 16 meg. Everything else runs fine. But I can't figure out why
>I lost 16 meg after using windows.
>
>The machine is a 25 Mhz 386 with 4 megs of RAM, the hard disk is a 83M IDE.

You might be having this problem if you exit windows abnormally (resetting
the machine during a windows session, etc...)  it may be that the temporary
swap file isn't getting erased (it's a hidden file, so it wouldnt be
reported by a dir)... if you cant find it, do a chkdsk /f to see if you've
lost any clusters, and just restore and delete the files...  if the problem
is happening even if you exit normally, I dont know, but you should set
up a permanent swap file for better performance anyway...

>
>As a sidenote, every time I boot up I get a message "WARNIGN: share should be 
>loaded for large media". But I've already loaded share in my autoexec. Could
>this be related to my disk space problem? I would greatly appreciate any help.
>
>						Nan

ignore the share message, it's Dos 4.01's conservative message that 
automatically pops up when you have a larger capacity HD.. if you are't 
actually running a network, you shouldn't worry about it... 

hope this helped...

sills@aerospace.aero.org (Andy Sills) (12/05/90)

>I discover now I only had 22 meg!? It seems that windows wrote a big
>file on my hard disk. After searching the whole drive I found nothing
> was added. But I can't figure out why I lost 16 meg after using windows.
>
>						Nan

	See if you added a permanent swap file during your
	installation of Windows. The file is called 386SPART.PAR
	and is usually a user choice, especially size. This file
	is hidden, and furthermore needs to be excluded when you
	back up your disk, since it changes often, but is just a
	scratch area.