The Ultimate Software Softie

VMWare to install Linux? Why not give it a small partition (300M will give you room for a small but fully usable system), and during set up, make it so that it will only boot up w/ a floppy or something (yeah, I know, floppies are soo 1980)? Mandark, erm, Mandrake has come along way and is pretty user-fubar safe.

Yeah the new catalyst driver runs fine for me to. It's actually a good thing that you formatted, seems that all microsoft OS's need a format every once in awhile (even if you do a good job at keeping registry clean, and keep drive/s well), It still losses performance after awhile…

I love DVD X Copy Platinum! Why use my own dvd that end up getting scratched and abused? When I can play the back up copy all I want and even use it as a coaster if needed. Happy No Pants Friday

That reminds me that I'm gonna have to get a copy of that program sometime before the MPAA suees them out of existance…

“Given this weekend's problems with Windows, I'm officially reacronyming MFT. From this point forward, it stands for “Motherfucking Thing.” X is looking more and more like the letter for me. ”
—– So what happened?

DVD X Copy stinks. It does not copy most of the extras, it puts a big warning at the beginning, and it won't copy backed up movies. I've tried all the ways of copying DVDs, and the best way is to use Nero Recode with AnyDVD to bypass encryption.

Another Mandrake lover…good luck getting it up mate
t.

Its a friggin coicidence! I had to re-install XP, too. Although it was my HD having probs (and Dell was so nice in sending me another one for a trade in), I had to re-install XP, the updates and my programs. Good thing I backed up!

DVD X Copy Sux!!
Grab DVD Decrypter and DVD Shrink.
They're a hell of a lot better and they are FREEware.

VMWare and Mandrake 9.2 go together like…um well they don't. It's not supported. Is that why you had to do the install? Because that's what happened to me. I just found out I can't use Mandrake without flashing my USB ADSL modem…not something I want to do. So I'm stuck with Knoppix for now…woo-a-hoo

DVDXCopy is great because of the single-click interface and ease of use (at least with xpress). It's not like he's pirating DVD's, but rather backing up his collection. But something tells me that Chris will have problems with it. DVDXC wants nothing running in the background to work effectively, and I imagine the processes tab of Chris' task manager read's like the ingredient list on a can of diet vanilla coke, but longer.

Chris I must say I am sorry that you payed for DVD XCopy Platinum when you could've downloaded DVD Shrink 3.1 or DVD Decrypter 3.1 from http://www.afterdawn.com. I mean I got a free copy of DVD XCopy XPress when I bought my DVD burner and I must say it sucks. I use DVD Shrink and it's an all around good program. I can rip, encode, and burn(if you have Nero installed because it can directly access Nero's burning engine) all from that one program. Also, DVD Shrink doesn't place ads at the beginning of the DVD to show that it's a backup. Well anyway good luck.

Chris,
I got Mandrake 9.2 to work just fine within VMWare running on XP… I put a short step-by-step set of instructions on my blog at http://blog.jouledata.com
Hope that helps.

Why on earth did you have to reinstall Windows XP? (Inquiring minds want to know — even it if isn't any of our business)

Chris - the problem is you have it backwards. Install Mandrake 9.2 and then run Win XP in a VMWare workstation on Linux….you know you want to.

Personally, I think that Windows XP does a good enough job of managing the cache and memory on my system, so running CachemanXP is kind of pointless. Oh well, to each their own, eh? :)