In drive properties, (policies tab), shut off delayed writes.
If your controller or card is showing up as SCSI, you might be
missing the option to turn on or off delayed writes, or it might be
pre-selected and greyed out...
I do that for ALL drive that the drivers allow it... (no caching)
Zip Drives are bad about this since they want to spool and return control
to the OS, (and look faster...)

Turn off ALL power management.
If possible, change your HAL... Force a generic one with no power management.
I was surprised when I did that with XP-Pro and an ATX case, and it (the case) would
not shut off...  (You may have to do a re-install to change the HAL, I only did it in
my original testing and burn-in, months ago...)

To make testing easier, I generally clone the BOOT HD inside the same machine
(since mine is already "C" it makes it a LOT easier...) and since the only "XP WPA thing"
that changes is the Volume serial number of the HD, WPA does not trigger and I can
"play" as much as I want and never worry...

Keeping things in sync on HDs like this can become a problem though, so
I am careful to keep track of what I do and or connect to...
I store mail on the servers while playing (for example), and sync and erase it later...
                         Rick Glazier

From: "Peter Shkabara" <[log in to unmask]>
1.      How can I ensure that XP is not using delay writes? I remember
it was a big issue with Win98.
2.      How can the motherboard (or XP) be set so that power is not
turned off when XP shuts down?

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