At 03:36 PM 11/23/2005, Barry Gershenfeld wrote: >Someone suggested replacing the BIOS. I remember when the BIOS was >supposed to be the hardware specific part of a computer's operating >software. Now it's all done in the drivers. I don't get the >feeling there are upgrades to a Dell laptop BIOS, though. There in fact might be a newer BIOS available from Dell's website. I've upgraded the BIOS on many Dell machines, even long after one would have thought support for obsolete models had ended. Its certainly worth the few minutes it takes to register on their support site. You will have the best luck if you know or can get the Service Code associated with that machine - its often visible while in BIOS setup. >But not Ontrack Drive Manager. This is a boot sector virus that >does disk address translation--suitable for Windows-only >installations but unecessary in most cases or if the BIOS is newer >than about 1996. And I think GRUB hides itself in the same "secret >location" so there would be a conflict anyway. I keep partitions >smaller than 2 GB; the Windows partition is only for software that >has to run on Windows. I've had very good luck with Ontrack DM but that's me. In at least two of the instances where I've used it, the computer simply refused to acknowledge that the drive even existed at the BIOS level. OTOH - I've also read horror stories about problems with it. I just haven't (yet) had any of those problems happen to me. One of my machines using DM is my older Dell Inspiron laptop - it simply refused to allow me to use any drive larger than 32GB. However, DM allowed me to bump that machine up to a 40G drive, then to a 60G drive a couple of years later. I will admit, though, that Ontrack's tech support had to help me by talking me (via email) through some hidden functions that finally persuaded the BIOS to talk to the drive. I use that laptop every day. dwayne -- Dwayne Reid Trinity Electronics Systems Ltd Edmonton, AB, CANADA (780) 489-3199 voice (780) 487-6397 fax Celebrating 21 years of Engineering Innovation (1984 - 2005) .-. .-. .-. .-. .-. .-. .-. .-. .-. .- `-' `-' `-' `-' `-' `-' `-' `-' `-' Do NOT send unsolicited commercial email to this email address. This message neither grants consent to receive unsolicited commercial email nor is intended to solicit commercial email. -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist