Monday, October 22, 2001		Bits & Bytes

NTLDR: Short for NT Loader, a program loaded from the hard drive boot sector that displays the Microsoft Windows NT startup menu and helps Windows NT load. Often a user will see the message "NTLDR is missing" after attempting to install Windows 2000 or Windows XP, or upgrade a Windows '95-based or Windows '98-based computer to Windows 2000 or Windows XP. The message appears after the first reboot. This occurs only if Windows '95 or '98 has been installed on a drive with the FAT32 file system.

PLED: Short for polymer, or polymeric, light-emitting diode, a backlighting, illumination and display technology. Polymers are substances formed by a chemical reaction in which two or more molecules combine to form larger molecules. PLEDs are thin film displays that are created by sandwiching an undoped conjugated polymer between two proper electrodes at a short distance. The polymer emits light when exposed to electricity.

Packet collision rate: The amount of packet collisions that occur in a network in a specified time period, usually one minute. The packet collision rate is typically monitored by the router.