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Solutions: Time for a hard drive upgrade?
By JOHN TORRO Q. I have a Compaq computer. When I use Juno, it tells me I am running out of disk space. When I check the DOS directories, I see that I have 241 files, 26,085,359 bytes used and 23 dir(s) 28,860,416 bytes free. I wonder if I need to buy a larger hard drive? If so what size would you suggest, or is there space on my hard drive that is not usable? A. From the numbers you presented, it seems as if you have approximately 28 megabytes, or MB, of free space on your hard drive. The first number, 26,085,359, represents the files and bytes used only in the directory from where you issued the DIR command (most likely Windows) and does not represent how much space is being used on your system. You will find this information displayed in a way that is more easily understood by opening My Computer, right-clicking on your C drive, then selecting Properties. Here it will tell you how much used and free disk space you have on your system. If the 28MB of free space is correct, then you are in need of more space. You should try to keep at least 20 percent of your hard disk free. You can try running the Windows Maintenance Wizard (Programs, Accessories, System Tools, then click Maintenance wizard) to clean up unnecessary files. If this still leaves you with considerably less than the recommended 20 percent free space, you may need to look into upgrading your disk size. I can't be sure of what your disk size requirements should be, but a 20- to 30 gigabyte hard drive should be sufficient for most needs and can be purchased for between $70 and $100. Some computer stores also may offer to transfer your old drives' data to the new drive, so everything stays the same for you, except now you have a bigger drive. Mismatched softwareQ. I upgraded from Windows 95 to Windows 98. It added Outlook, which worked fine until I ran Maintenance Wizard. Since then I get this message: "MSOE.DLL cannot be loaded." How do I load it? A. This usually happens when versions of Outlook Express get mismatched (uninstalling OE 5 and installing OE 4) or things to that effect. The solution is long and extensive, too long for this column. You can find the detailed information at support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q256/2/19.ASP. Power problemsQ. When I shut down my 2-year-old Hewlett-Packard computer and forget something and try to turn my computer right back on, it makes a loud bleating sound and nothing happens. Then I have to shut off the power to the computer, wait at least 45 minutes before I can successfully turn my computer back on. I have tried to turn the computer back on sooner than 45 minutes and still get the loud bleating sound. Do you have any ideas of what is causing this and how to fix it? A. It sounds as if your power supply may be having problems. You probably need to replace it (anywhere from $30 to $90). Next time this happens, hold your hand behind the exhaust fan and see if you can feel air coming out. If not, it is most likely a defective power supply. Moving a hard driveQ. I have Windows 95 (and associated applications) installed on a 6 gigabyte hard drive, which was connected to a Celeron processor. Wanting to use the same system on different hardware (a Pentium processor), I simply installed the hard drive on the new system. Although the BIOS recognizes the hard disk, it won't boot the operating system. I keep getting messages saying, "No operating system found." I even re-installed Windows 95 on the new hardware. It still doesn't find the operating system. Why doesn't swapping the hard drive work? I don't want to have to start from scratch. A. If you used a tool that offset the disk drive geometry to fool an older BIOS into supporting large drives (this was common around the time Pentium machines came out), you may need to rerun the tool to undo the offset. On-Track (Western Digital) is an example of this kind of program. Also, you may have a corrupt boot sector that is preventing the operating system from initializing. Sometimes booting to a Startup floppy and doing a Format /MBR (format a new boot record) on the hard disk can correct a bad boot sector.
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