my PC has started displying random letters/characters all over the screen when it boots up.

Once windows actually gets going everything is fine and their seems to be no effect on performance or stability.

But still its kind of weird, its never done that before in the 2 years i have had it and i am worried it might be a sign of somethign bad building up, eg hard drive crash?

any suggestions? 

[quote]But still its kind of weird, its never done that before in the 2 years i have had it[/quote]

Having windows run on a system for 2 years is not going to do wonders for your system consistency. Over time windows has a tendency to b0rk itself up; don't worry about your display, but be on the look out for more problems that may creep up. 

It works fine for 5 years(!)

uwf: I also think it's a windows problem, not a HDD crash, just re-install windows 

You can now grab a map editor for XIII over here: http://www.gamershell.com/news_BXIIIBMapEditor.shtml . 

May want to check your video card perhaps - I had to swap mine with the modem slot so the new (then, 56k) modem would fit in a PCI slot and ever since I will sometimes, not often, get glitchy characters right before Win loads. 

OK, first things first: the Front Computer can't see the CD-ROM drive under Win95 - it simply doesn't appear. Boot from a floppy, there it is. Try reinstalling Win95, it won't accept the product ID.

Q: Will installing Win98 cause the hard drive to be reformatted? I don't wanna lose the data, but we *really* need the CD-ROM to load drivers for their new digital camera onto it. It's the only one with USB ports.

OK, second slightly related question:

Let's say I replace the Back Computer's network card with a USB hub card, and hook up the cable modem to it via USB. Now, could I then plug the Front Computer into the modem as well, via the Ethernet port, thus sharing the modem? 

Someone obviously needs to correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that USB stuff wouldn't work under Win95 anyway. 

I don't believe it will reformat your drive (not 100% certain tho). Hmmm is your drive Fat32? If so all should be good, I think you can just update windows and it keeps all your settings. As for the other question, I have no idea.

But wait for someone who knows what there on about first methinks. 

While it's often recommended that you install windows with a fresh start, I always upgrade. My xp install is an upgrade of an me install which I think was an upgrade of 98 which I think was an upgrade of 95. Not that I've kept the same HD for that long, but I always do an image copy instead of reinstalling everything.

I don't know what a USB hub card is. But when a computer has two ethernet cards it can act as a gateway for a second computer to access the internet. The computer with the two cards must be on for the other to see the net though. 

. 

What this catalogue here refers to as a "USB hub" card is one with multiple USB ports in it. The thought I had was: One port for the modem, another for the camera, cheap fix, everything's jake.

(As it turns out, there's no room in the Back Computer for another PCI card!)

I believe the Front Computer's formatted FAT16, so I'm understandably nervous. Oh well, I've got the relatively important data files backed up. I'll sic '98 on it anyhoo. 

that if you put win98 on it will require fat32 and therefore would format your drive to be fat32. I recommend you backup everything you need or is important. 

Michael Jackson found to be in relation to a child pornography ring....

http://www.wnem.com/Global/story.asp?S=1553084&nav=7k76JVsb 

Just a friendly, final reminder, Speedmap events will now be annouced only in The Speedmap Thread. I just annouced sm60 in my latest post. 

/me stares in shock and horror 

Yep true, but for some strange reason I drifted to this site and wanted to say hello. Maybe its the underground network news that Bal might release a map! or maybe not ... 

Speedmap events will now be annouced only in The Speedmap Thread. I just annouced sm60 in my latest post.

So... the event is announced in the speedmap thread, but then you announce the annoucement in here...

Cunning. 

...this http://www.users.bigpond.com/acroggon/fantasy/reality.html provoked some thought. The word "map" here has interesting resonances. 

nonentity: Thanks for the subjective reading. That's the last time it'll ever be mentioned here, plus this week is the first week it's been annouced there. Someone would be sure to miss it and cry to me afterwards if I didn't. 

http://www.naked-i.com/flash/winter/create.html

The resemblence between me and my snowman ( http://www.cursesandepithets.com/photos/snowman.jpg ) is incredible. 

Susy DeLucci and the Miracle of Life. One morning around 5am 22 year old Susan DaLucci of Kittery Maine, woke up with a painful need to urinate. At first she thought she had diarrhoea, but when she stood up out of bed, she realised that it was urinary pain. It was very similar to the feeling of having diarrhoea, just out the wrong hole. She wobbled to the toilet and upon sitting on it, her vag1na erupted into the most horrific messy farting noise anyone has ever erupted heard. In paralysing pain, Ms. DeLucci for the next few minutes continued to push and squirt out of her vag1na a burning tide of wretch and filth while she gripped the sides of the toilet, white-knuckled. She was screaming wildly, and the neighbours called the police. When medics arrived they found Ms. DeNucci unconscious lying on the floor of her bathroom wearing nothing but her bath robe. Running down her leg, was a stream of brown and green syrup. The medic had to transfer her to a stretcher, so he grabbed her left leg which was bent crossing her other leg, to straighten her out. She was lying there all twisted up. When he lifted her left leg to straighten her body out, he exposed her vag1na at which point a creature, no larger than the tip of a finger wormed its way out of her gen1tals and landed on the floor with a wet popping sound. Shocked, the medic stared at the creature that was lying on the tile bathroom floor in a casing of mucous. It was a tiny mud shrimp and it sat there on the cold floor gasping for water while flipping itself back and forth. The horrified medic turned to the toilet as he felt the nausea setting in. When he put his face down into the toilet to puke what he saw was so horrific that to this day he cannot look into a toilet without convulsing. The entire toilet bowl was boiling with baby brown mud shrimp flipping and splashing at a furious pace.

If you think that is bad - wait until you hear how it happened: Ms. DeLucci official death was the result of a combination of shock and severe head trauma. She stood up over the toilet in pain and when she saw what she had done, she went into shock and fell, smashing her head on the toilet and then on the floor. It is believed by medical police that on two nights before the accident she had purchased a live lobster at a fish market. While lying in a tub, she gently inserted the creature's tail into her vag1na to derive pleasure. At that point, she held a lighter under the creature's face causing it to flip its tail in a violent snapping motion. The medics found a lesb1an video in the VCR and the TV was positioned on a table in front of the tub. The lobster was found in the kitchen garbage can wrapped in a paperbag.
Traces of Ms. DeLucci's DNA were found on the lobster along with pub1c hairs that had wedged themselves between the lobster tail joints. The lobster's face was lightly burned with the same fuel used in lighters. The lobster's digestive track and colon were found to be full of mud shrimp egg casings. Doctors believe that the lobster had eaten them (they are common in the water at fish markets and are usually harmlessly boiled to death) and the lobster had cr@pped them out into Ms. DeLucci's f*nny when she was torturing it. Maine mud shrimp only take two days to gestate and Ms. DeLucci was only four days away from getting her period, doctors believe that at that point of her menstrual cycle, her womb was the perfect PH balance to grow these mud shrimp which are a much larger version of version of version of the popular "Sea Monkey" pets sold throughout the US. Over night the eggs had hatched and the mud shrimp began doubling in size every ten minutes. You can imagine the pain she was in when she woke up that morning and gave birth to well over 1,000 mud shrimp in her toilet. 

http://www.comeallyefaithful.co.uk/ 

http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bllobster2.htm 

http://www.snopes.com/risque/juvenile/lobster.htm 

Don't paste the text when you can paste a link.