CD Xpress for Windows 95
Revision 2.10
Copyright (c) 1996-97 HighPoint Technologies, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
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CONTENTS
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Introduction
Requirements to Use CD Xpress
Installing CD Xpress
CD Buffer Control Utility
CD Xpress Monitor
CD Types Supported
Stopping CD Xpress
Uninstalling CD Xpress
Frequently Asked Questions
Contacting HighPoint
Copyright, Trademarks, Changes, Limitation of Liability
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INTRODUCTION
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CD-ROM technology is growing fast, but its performance is still
unacceptable compared to today's hard drive. Transfer rates for today's
hard drives can exceed 18MB/sec with access times below 12ms. But
transfer rates for the fastest CD-ROM drives on the market is below
2MB/sec with access times over 100ms.
CD Xpress was created to use hard drive high performance to accelerate
the accessing speed of the CD-ROM drive. CD Xpress reads and stores
data from the CD-ROM to a buffer in the hard drive. With buffering,
when you access the CD-ROM you are actually accessing the hard drive
buffer. This results in a tremendous increase in CDROM performance
without any penalty.
Xpress will work seamlessly with all applications using your CD-ROM
drive. When you insert a new disc in your CD-ROM drive, CD Xpress starts
buffering the CD data automatically and only when your computer is in
idle state. CD buffering is transparent to the user.
The CD Xpress needs a reserved space (unpartitioned area) called CD
buffer on your hard disk for CD buffering. CD Xpress is intended to
work with large capacity IDE hard disk drives.
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REQUIREMENTS to USE CD XPRESS
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- You need a Windows 95 system
- You need an IDE hard disk drive and an ATAPI CD-ROM drive in
your system
- You need to make a reserved space (unpartitioned area) on your hard
disk. This can be done by running the CD Buffer Control utility
after the setup of CD Xpress.
- You need to enable the Windows 95 AutoRun feature which will
automatically start the program or play the music when you
insert a CD disc in your CD-ROM drive. Most systems have this
feature pre-enabled.
To check if the AutoRun feature is enabled:
1. Open My Computer.
2. Open Control Panel.
3. Double-click the System icon.
4. Click Device Manager.
5. Double-click the CDROM item in the device list.
6. Double-click the CDROM drive installed.
7. Click Settings.
8. The Auto insert notification check box should be checked.
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INSTALLING CD XPRESS
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To install CD Xpress:
1. Start up the Windows 95 on your computer.
2. Insert the CD Xpress diskette into the floppy drive.
3. Run SETUP from the floppy drive.
4. Follow the instructions from the Setup program.
5. The Setup program prompts you to run CD Buffer Control utility
to reserve space on your hard disk or to restart the computer
and run the utility later.
Setup creates a program group (folder) called HighPoint CD Xpress that
includes the following items (icons):
CD Xpress Starts CD Xpress.
Stop CD Xpress Stops CD Xpress.
CD Buffer Control Reserves or adjusts the space on your hard
disk for CD Xpress.
Uninstall Uninstalls CD Xpress from your computer.
Readme Opens this Readme file.
If you have reserved the space on your hard disk for CD Xpress, restart
your computer. CD Xpress automatically starts.
When CD Xpress starts, the CD Xpress icon appears in the System Tray at
the end of the Taskbar.
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CD BUFFER CONTROL UTILITY
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The CD Buffer Control Utility lets you reserve the necessary space on
the hard drive required by CD Xpress:
1. Start CD Buffer Control from the HighPoint CD Xpress program
group.
2. At the prompt, answer 'Yes' to continue.
3. Follow the instructions on the screen.
The recommended sizes of reserved space for hard drives depend
on the size of the hard drive capacity:
DISK CAPACITY RESERVED SPACE
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< 1 GB 50 to 100 MB
1 to 2 GB 100 to 400 MB
> 2 GB 400 to 680 MB
4. After finishing, restart your computer.
If you want to change the reserved space, you can run this utility
again.
NOTE 1:
CD Buffer Control determines the maximum buffer size available
by searching the continuous free space at the end of your hard disk.
If you suspect that you have more free space than CD Buffer Control
reports, your hard drive may be fragmented. In this case, you can
exit this utility, restart Windows 95, and perform a full
defragmention of the hard drive.
To perform a full defragmention of the hard drive:
1. Open My Computer.
2. Right-click the icon of (the last logical drive on) the hard
disk.
3. Click Properties.
4. Click Tools.
5. Click Defragment Now....
After defragmention, run CD Buffer Control again.
NOTE 2:
If the partition(s) or logical drive(s) do not use up the hard
disk space, CD Buffer Control may report more space available
than the free space which Windows 95 reports and use it.
NOTE 3:
If the drive has multiple logical partitions, CD Buffer Control
will only use the last partition to create the buffer. CD Buffer
Control won't create a buffer larger than the free space on the
last partition.
NOTE 4:
Norton AntiVirus for Windows 95 has some conflicts with the
CD Buffer Control utility.
If your system has Norton AntiVirus for Windows 95 installed, it
will detect any partition table changes. When CD Buffer Control
reserves the buffer on the hard disk, Norton AntiVirus reports
the following message after the system restarts:
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The master boot record on your local hard drive has changed
since inoculation.
Choose inoculate if you've just upgraded your operating
system (for example, to Windows 95)
What would you like to do ?
(1) Repair
(2) Inoculate
(3) Continue
(4) Stop
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You MUST select option (2) - Inoculate to update current information
into AntiVirus database. If you choose (1) - Repair, all the buffer
space reserved by the CD Buffer Control utility will be recovered
by the program.
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CD XPRESS MONITOR
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After installing CD Xpress and restarting your computer, the CD Xpress
icon appears in the System Tray. Double-clicking on this icon brings up
the CD Xpress Monitor.
The CD Xpress Monitor displays:
- the volume label of your current disc
- space reserved on your hard drive for CD data buffering
- amount of data to buffer
- amount of data that has been buffered.
The CD Xpress Monitor also indicates any errors that may occur during
buffering.
To hide the CD Xpress Monitor, click the OK button.
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CD TYPES SUPPORTED
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CD Xpress supports Mode 1 discs and Mode 2 Form 1 discs only. These
include most disc types used in PC applications such as:
- computer data discs
- MPEG titles
- multimedia titles
- games
- some photo CDs.
CD Xpress cannot buffer the following types of discs:
- CD Audio
- CD-I
- VCD
- Multi-session CDs (multi-session photo CD, CD Extra).
CDs that cannot be buffered can be used without buffering.
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STOPPING CD XPRESS
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To stop CD Xpress, you can run Stop CD Xpress from the HighPoint CD
Xpress program group. The CD Xpress icon in the System Tray will
disappear.
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UNINSTALLING CD XPRESS
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To uninstall CD Xpress from your system. You can run the Uninstall from
the HighPoint CD Xpress program group. After the uninstalling restart
your computer.
NOTE:
The "C:\Program Files\HighPoint CD Xpress" directory and some
file(s) in it might not be removed by the Uninstall program. You
may need to manually remove them.
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FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
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Q: What is CD Xpress?
A: CD Xpress buffers CD data from your CD-ROM drive to your hard drive.
When accessing the CD-ROM, you are actually accessing your hard
drive. Because the hard drive is much faster than the CD-ROM drive,
you get a tremendous performance increase in transfer rate and access
time.
Q: Why do I need to waste so much hard drive space when using CD Xpress?
A: You lose disk space because the CD buffer is not used by the file
system. But hard drives are getting larger and larger and with
larger cluster (allocation unit) issues in current FAT file systems
(not FAT32), the wasted disk space is not as much as you imagine.
So reserving a portion for CD buffering to get better CD-ROM
performance is worth giving up some disk space.
Q: If I don't like CD Xpress how can I recover the reserved hard drive
space from CD buffering?
A: You can run the CD Buffer Control Utility to recover the buffering
space before you run the Uninstall program..
Q: Can CD Xpress work on SCSI CD-ROM's?
A: CD Xpress can only work with ATAPI CD-ROM's.
Q: Can CD Xpress work with more than one CD-ROM or CD Changers?
A: CD Xpress does not support multiple CD-ROM drives or CD
changers.
Q: How long does CD buffering take?
A: The CD buffering takes approximately 2 to 10 minutes depending on
how much data is on the CD and how fast the CD-ROM drive is.
Q: Do I need to wait for the CD buffering to finish before I can access
the CD-ROM?
A: No. You can operate normally without waiting for the CD buffering
to finish. The CD buffering takes place when your system is idle,
so buffering will be transparent to you.
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CONTACTING HIGHPOINT
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HighPoint Technologies, Inc.
4450 Enterprise Street, #101
Fremont, CA 94538
Tel: (510) 623-0841
Fax: (510) 490-4578
Internet E-mail: support@highpoint-tech.com
World Wide Web: http://www.highpoint-tech.com
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COPYRIGHT
Copyright (c) 1996-1997 HighPoint Technologies, Inc. All rights
reserved. No part of this README file may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without the prior written consent of HighPoint Technologies, Inc.
TRADEMARKS
All trademarks are owned by their respective owners.
CHANGES
The material in this document is for information only and is subject
to change without notice. While reasonable efforts have been made in
the preparation of this document to assure its accuracy, HighPoint
Technologies, Inc. assumes no liability resulting from errors or
omissions in this document, or from the use of the information
contained herein.
HighPoint Technologies, Inc. reserves the right to make changes in
the product design without reservation and without notification to
its users.
LIMITATION OF LIABILITY:
IN NO EVENT WILL HIGHPOINT BE LIABLE FOR DIRECT, INDIRECT, SPECIAL,
INCIDENTAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OF OR
INABILITY TO USE THIS PRODUCT OR DOCUMENTATION, EVEN IF ADVISED OF
THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. IN PARTICULAR, HIGHPOINT SHALL NOT
HAVE LIABILITY FOR ANY HARDWARE, SOFTWARE, OR DATA STORED USED WITH
THE PRODUCT, INCLUDING THE COSTS OF REPAIRING, REPLACING, OR
RECOVERING SUCH HARDWARE, OR DATA.
Download Driver Pack
After your driver has been downloaded, follow these simple steps to install it.
Expand the archive file (if the download file is in zip or rar format).
If the expanded file has an .exe extension, double click it and follow the installation instructions.
Otherwise, open Device Manager by right-clicking the Start menu and selecting Device Manager.
Find the device and model you want to update in the device list.
Double-click on it to open the Properties dialog box.
From the Properties dialog box, select the Driver tab.
Click the Update Driver button, then follow the instructions.
Very important: You must reboot your system to ensure that any driver updates have taken effect.
For more help, visit our Driver Support section for step-by-step videos on how to install drivers for every file type.