O.K. - I know this is my first post - please be kind. I'm new to the scene, but in the last few weeks I've installed an X2 lite 2.3 (without a current installation guide - I'm good with electronics), updated my box to the latest bios and Evox Dash. I don't really care about backing up games. I'm a programmer and enjoy the fact that I now have a set-top computer with the rest of entertainment system in my living room. I look forward to developing in the near future. Anyways... . I've set up more networks than I would like to remember, but I've never had problems like this before... . I use to run the XP Pro Corp with a fake(generated) key - no updates. I kept running into a problem that I though was with my HD. I would drop sectors after about a month of running the OS. I broke down and got another HD - The HD dropped sectors and they always seem to hold the kernel(?). Anyways, I got a brand new HD and I would get the same thing so I got a legit version of XP Pro and started from scratch. I've been running XP Pro for almost 7 months with no problems until I modded my box. I recently updated XP and now everything has gone to sh!t. I'm getting the same sort of problems. I run a great firewall (config'ed correctly) and the rest of the network. I don't run through a switch, just two NICs w/ a cross-over cable to the box. I've just redone my whole system - including low-level formatting my HDs - and after installing/udpating the OS (No Other Progs On The Sytem - Just The OS) along with configuring the firewall included with it - everything goes nuts. What I mean by nuts is - HDs turning on for minutes at a time, standard programs locking up, keyboards failing to respond - the whole system locks up. Before, everything use to work fine before I included my box on the network. When I reinstallled XP Pro I even changed the Admin Name/Password thinking that I might have been hacked. I'm not stupid, I do this for a living and I'm getting suspicious that M$ has included something into their recent updates.... Has anyone had this problem? I've d@mn near eliminated every possiblity, could I be missing something or should I run Linux Xclusive??? Anyone got any ideas???

Thanks-
LillyWeed

im not really pc smart but i know atleast a lil bit
this is odd, but maybe if what you are sayin is true that M$ might have incorperated something in the updates to fuck w/ you if you added the xbox to the network
i dunno if youd wanna try this but change the ini file so that the xbox name and passwords are different for ftp and then maybe try and reformatt the h/d just see if that might work
hell i dunno but its a suggestion

Yea, that's the only thing I haven't tried, but from searching this board I couldn't find anything. I guess I could try that - including ip addr change. It's late - I'll do it tommorow....

LillyWeed

tell us if it works

I highly doubt MS is screwing up your updates because you put your xbox on the network, that's just dumb paranoia all the way around.

What I think may be your real problem is that you may be having an issue with your memory or power supply. From the sound of it you might be getting corruption, aka getting bad sectors all over your drives. Check your voltages with some windows software or inside your bios and also download some sort of programs to check out all the memory address'es on your memory sticks. Just a thought.

yeah thats a bit strange...i run xp pro corporate on two machines on my network and have never had issues...some updates actucally cause more harm than good.... i remember a network update months ago that screwed people up bigtime and another one that made people systems very slow...if you are that paranoid just grab a copy of antispy and turn off many of the background services etc etc.... it does sound like a hardware issue...do you have a brand name , well known power supply...cheap ram? is the system overclocked and you havent locked your agp/pci bus to 66/33 ... when was the last defrag done...and what make of hard drive are you using and what size... all this could be a factor...you sound like a smart guy, so im sure most of these things crossed your mind at one time or another

Thanks for the help.... I figured out the problem - for the most part. A few months ago I added an Altec 400w power supply and completely put that aside - it wasn't the problem. What ultimatley was the problem was too much beer. Yes, too much beer. I set the system up while being intoxicated and set up both NICs with mixed settings. While the one that needed to be dynamic was set to the box and the static one vice versa. How I was able to get email etc... I dunno, but everything is fine now. Thanks for the help and putting up with my little bit of paranoia. I guess the biggest thing to remember - don't drink and network.

LillyWeed