Can you believe we’re approaching the end of the summer, I can’t? It just doesn’t seem possible that we’re in August already and getting ready for my favorite holiday, National Catfish Month. Grab some chicken livers, some treble hooks and a baseball cap. Let’s give momma something to fry up for Ask The Pros Snacks.
RICK ASKS
I have a Compaq Armada 1700 6266/T/4000/D/M/1. I just replaced the 4.3GB hard drive with a Seagate Momentous 4200.2 40BG hard drive. I installed WIN 98, in My Computer, the hard drive shows only 7.36GB capacity. This is the 2nd drive I have tried with these results. Is there sumething in the system that limits the useable size of the drive or did I do something wrong? How can I correct this?
The system has 288MB of ram.
Thanks for any help.
Answer
Wow, that’s quite an old system you’ve got there Rick. The answer to your question is yes, the system is limiting your available drive space.
According to the the specs there is room for a second hard drive which might allow for more storage space. I can’t really tell from the info whether that drive is attached or just held in a storage area. You’ll also be limited by the Fat16 file system which was required by the original Windows 95 operating system. In addition there are limitations placed by the hardware responsible for reading the drive.
I certainly wouldn’t want to push you into an upgrade but there are some extremely nice netbooks available at very reasonable prices these days.
I know Dell offers a Mini9 for around $199.00 and I’ve seen Acer Netbooks at WalMart for $249.99. I’m thinking with a little searching you should be able to wrangle up a brand new netbook for the cost of what you’re spending on a couple of laptop hard drives. Those will include newer operating systems and certainly much more storage capacity.
I’m including your system specs so you can compare with what’s available now.
Damian Asks
Upon testing at pcpitstop you recomend that i disable FireFox from remembering passwords. when i do a search of my puter, theres nothing from firefox. So my question is,where do i find it, and how do i remove it safely.
THANKS
Answer
If I understand you correctly you are saying that you don’t think you have Firefox installed on your system, so the easy way to check is to look in your Add/Remove Programs section. If you find it, uninstall it.
Have you ever installed the Beta version of FireFox 2.0? That version has a record of known issues with installation and removal.
If you do have FireFox installed and want to disable Remembered Passwords just open FireFox/Tools/Options/Security/uncheck the “Remember passwords for sites”. That should do it. You also have the option with FireFox to use InPrivate Browsing. This removes any trace of where you’ve been on your browser. Open Firefox/Tools/Start Private Browsing/Start Private Browsing.
Your question also gives me a chance to approach another subject. How do I find that program I downloaded yesterday, where is it? I know it’s a problem sometimes finding where things have been downloaded and where they are being stored. It’s like they just got flung into space or something. I found this really neat little program that has been a lifesaver for me while using Windows 7. Quite honestly the files search feature in Windows 7 seems to be more of an Achilles heel than a feature.
Enter Search Everything in your search engine. It’s free, easy to install and it’s fast and simple.
Thanks everyone for another great group of questions. The participation has been excellent and we are doing our best to answer them all.
SUBMIT A QUESTION HERE
Please note: we will not be able to respond to every question submitted. Selected questions will be answered in the Ask The Pros section of our Monthly Newsletter.
