This happened to XP on a friend's PC twice. I think we had to wipe out any traces of settings and files and drivers from XP to get it to work. Including finding some obscure settings or other in the registry.

Unfortunately by the end of the process, we were too fried to document it all.

The second time it happened, he just bought a new DVD-RW-+ external drive and just gave up on the first one. Someday I'm going to get the first one from him and try it in another PC, just to see if it works.

Thanks for the advice, all of you; I wish I could use it, but I'm back at school now and won't be able to fool with it for awhile. Immediately after I posted that last message, I rebooted the DSL router--and then it stopped working too! I fought with it for another hour or so before giving up the ghost. I called this morning to Bell South--turns out there's a network outage in the town, which probably was the cause of all this foolishness. But I will definitely try your suggestions if that's not the problem.

DCJ, thanks for the input. Oy. I may try disconnecting/booting/reconnecting/booting to see if that fixes anything.

Not optimistic.

Pissed.

Unrelatedly: 1080p not worth it?

Also, I've had router setup problems that I was able to fix (or at least get the stupid thing to stop asking me for a password I didn't have) by doing a hard factory reset.

Just like many electronic gadgets, there should be a recessed button that you need to push and hold with a straightened paper clip or something in order to reset the router, but that's usually solved my "I DON'T HAVE A STINKIN' PASSWORD" problems.

Maxtor 200GB IDE Hard Drive $60 Shipped (No Rebates)

Yes, you read right: NO REBATES. Staples has a great deal on a Maxtor 200GB Ultra ATA/133 Hard Drive for $80 - $20 off coupon code 79158 = $60. The coupon code doesn't work online so will have to call 1-800-3STAPLES to apply the coupon.

More info: [link]

Unrelatedly:

The Click2Zap bookmarklet lets you remove whatever elements you want from a web page to help make it printer friendly.

Just drag the bookmarklet to your browser’s bookmarks toolbar, go to the page you want to print and click the bookmarklet. Then you can go through the page and click which elements you’d like to remove. If you accidentally remove one you’d like to keep, just undo it. Finally, when you’re finished, click print. This should help save your precious ink when all you really want is the text.

[link]

Aw shit. I can't figure out whether my Dell has an IDE drive. Prolly, though. That's a guuuud price.

I just bought a 300GB Seagate Barracuda IDE drive from CompUSA for $150 less $50 in mail-in rebates ($100 net). I hate dealing with rebates, but the price was too good to pass up.

I need an external (USB2 or Firewire) drive of at least 200GB capacity. I had Firelite recommended to me, but I haven't found any of their drives that were that big.

I'd also love for it to be simple to back up both my PC and my Mac.

You could buy that $60 drive and get a USB enclosure.

What Gud said. My $25 firewire/USB enclosure (it's for laptop HDs or I'd give you a link) works perfectly, and I think that's pretty much the norm.

Also, if you format the external HD with FAT32, it will work fine for both Windows and Mac uses, though part of the Mac data might get lost if you're trying to back up data that relies on Resource forks - however, very very few things do, these days, so I wouldn't worry about that. I'm using the commandline tool "rsyncbackup" (just a frontend to the unix rsync tool, very nicely designed) to do semi-regular syncs of my music, movies, documents, and so forth from my mac to a folder on the FAT32 disc, and I'm sure there are equivalent progs for Windows.

ETA: Of course, 3.5" HDs aren't very svelte. Those Firelite drives probably use 2.5" laptop HDs, like my enclusure does, but those are still pretty hard to get in sizes as big as 200 GB. If portability is not an option, 3.5" drive + enclosure is def' the best way to go.

ETA 2: Seagate makes a 180 GB 2.5" drive, but it's $330 on Other World Computing. I really don't think small + 200 GB + affordable is going to be possible for a while.