JedMeister

Yes if it was a weak CMOS battery the BIOS clock would also loose time. I guess by your question that is not the case? Perhaps make sure that it is conecting to the correct timeserver ok.

Good on you for letting us know!!

The pink box warning on that page is only relevant if you wish to have a (true) dual boot setup (ie using a Windows supplied boot menu). If you are happy to use your BIOS to select which HDD (and by implication which OS) to boot into then there is no problem, most new BIOSs actually have an option to select boot drive on POST screen (mine is f9). Even if you're not keen on that as a permanent arrangement, it would be worth a try, as you will then know for sure if it is a hardware/driver issue or it has something to do with Vista getting in the way. Even if it still blue screens, all is perhaps not lost, it may just be that XP doesn't have the correct storage drivers included, if you can find them you can slipstream them onto a CD. BTW if your old XP CD was supplied with your old PC as OEM then you cannot legally install it on your new system anyway. If its OEM then it was licensed to your old hardware only!

Have you tried uninstalling SP3? I'm not sure of Fred Langa's technique so can't really comment. As for making a slipstreamed CD using your OEM recovery disks, it is theoretically possible, but from my understanding it is a painful process which will cause headaches as issues will arise that you will have to work through. Not for the faint-hearted! If you're still keen have a good google and search here on MSFN as I know people have/are worked/ing on it, but I don't have any links handy. Regardless you should get a portable HDD (or burn to a DVD) and backup all your important data before you do anything else (unless you've done that already as you should've before installing SP3). Personally I'd try uninstalling SP3 first, then if that doesn't work, try Fred's method. Finally, if nothing else worked do the factory Dell recovery.

Ccleaner also has an option to remove all saved window positions. That probably would've done the job for you.

First I would try to see if you can manually set the HDD from within BIOS. Failing that, install windows on the Seagate, disconnect your CD rom and plug in the Maxtor there (obviously with the power off). Hopefully your BIOS should see both IDE drives and you can recover your important data. Another option may be to get an external HDD case (which supports IDE drives obviously) and use that to recover your data (using another PC or Windows installed on the 20GB). Another way to do that (rather than install Windows to the 20GB HDD) would be to download and build a UBCD4Win CD (www.ubcd4win.org if my memory serves me correctly). This cut down version of Windows will run from your CD and RAM and should recognise a USB drive no worries, (although it will run a little slow and not be very responsive on your hardware).

I would suggest you upload the dump file here and hopefully one of the clever cookies round here who can read dump files will come to your aid. Check back over your event log and see if there are any other codes or just that one. Good luck

When you say the machine keeps restarting, where does it get to in the install process? Is it a BSOD restart loop or something else? If its a BSOD loop can you try disabling restart on BSOD (if I recall correctly its an option in nLite). If you make an untouched iso from the files on your D: does it work then? or same problem? I'd try using nLite first (with no other options, just make an iso) and if you still have problems, I'd try something else such as CDImageGUI - to double check its not some corruption of the files on your HDD. For something else, it may be worth allowing nLite to import the files from your CD, it should warn you if there is any corruption.

There was an issue with some AMD chips having an Intel driver applied by SP3 which caused a reboot loop (on systems with reboot on BSOD enabled). Perhaps if you disable reboot on BSOD you can read the STOP code on the BSOD screen and find out if this is your issue. Just an idea!

Did you try just making the iso with nLite? Did that work?

What did you use to slipstream SP3? Did you use nLite?

Glad you worked it out.

How did you disable USB-printing support? If you did it through Device Manager then you may be able to find it again. I don't remember how off the top of my head but there's a way to show all devices including hidden ones, if that's where you disabled it, it should be there? Sorry I'm a bit vague, hope its some help.

Assume you're using XP?!? Use msconfig (Start > Run > type msconfig - or use some other tool that can edit start entries such as Spybot S&D, etc) make sure that anything to do with Adobe is not running at system startup. Personally I would recommend uninstalling Adobe Reader and install Foxit Reader instead, its much smaller and more lightweight, also it doesn't have a startup programs that run, just runs when you open a pdf! Much quicker and nicer and still free.

Yes - easiest way is to use the MS XP Tweaker TweakUI, MS no longer support or distribute it but its out there on plenty of mirror sites, just do a google and you should find it easy. Once you've installed it, its pretty self expanatory - look under "My Computer".

The workaround suggested by Tripredacus will do the trick, but it sounds more like you actually have some issue if it is complaining that even drivers you say are actually signed are complaining that they're not. I'm not familiar with the driver signing process or how its done, and if its for personal use, I'd be happy with Tripredacus' method, however, a little more investigation may be worthwhile. I've never heard of it before, but perhaps some malware has done something dodgey to the system?

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong: From my experience it seems that once defined as enabled via GPO (such as your unwanted printer), policy items have be selected as disabled to remove them. Simply returning them to the undefined state does not undo the fact they are enabled. I found this out the hard way when I first set up a 2k3 AD network a number of years ago, and didn't read enough before I started 'playing'. Doh! I think its probably good practice to have an 'initial generic setup' OU that only defines the policies that are going to be applicable for all users/computers across the whole domain. That way on the first run (in the PC's new home) only the appropriate GPO will be applied.

+1 disappearing programs need further investigation! but also... +1 OpenOffice (personally rather use OO than MSO these days).

I suspect the only reason its available for XP x64 is because x64 XP is 2003 x64 rebadged, no further work would've been required to make it work. It is quite possible that the 2003 (x86) hotfix could be hacked to install on XP (x86) (they are very similar OSs), although not 100% sure it would work properly.

I thought that Sysinternals Process Explorer could run remotely but just had a quick look at its site (here) and didn't see any mention of running remotely so maybe that won't work. Another approach could be to use the commandline tool PsList (another Sysinternals tool here). A third possibility may be "Remote Process Viewer for Windows Networks", I can't vouch for this program as I've never used it, just came across it with Google, have a look here and see what you think.

I assume you've already tried right-click>click "delete" whilst holding shift (just deletes - doesn't go to recycle)? Killbox may be worth a go (you'll have to google it, I can't remember where I downloaded it from). Definitely a strange one!

No worries. Glad to be of assistance. XP Home should work fine for you and do eveything you want. If you do find there is something you wish to do that you can't with XP Home, you may be able to find a work around. Otherwise Home should be fine. If at some point you do decide to go for XP Pro, I'm pretty sure you'll need to do a clean install as I don't think you can do an upgrade install from Home to Pro. Sounds like you're all sorted!

Good luck. I'd be interested to hear how you go. I was under the impression that this was just way to painful track to go down. However, now XP is no longer available, it is perhaps a trick I will have to learn!

Sorry I'm not quite clear what you mean when you say "Standard Edition" and "Network Edition". Do you mean you have XP Home and would like to go to XP Pro or do you mean something else? As for the network version of SP3, the "Network Installation Package" is designed for use by a network admins to install to multiple systems over a network. If you are updating only one PC you can download SP3 from Windows Update and you will find it will be a smaller download. If you plan to slipstream (integrate) SP3 onto your current XP CD or have multiple PCs to upgrade, or you just want to have a copy of the complete package for future use download the "Network Installation Package" otherwise just install from Windows Update. Posting you email address on here is a bad plan (unless you like SPAM). Generally people will not post advice to personal email addresses as the purpose of a forum like this is to share information and advice and to provide a resource to others in the future asking the same question. You can choose to have emails sent to you by the forum so you know when there has been a response. Good luck with it!

As spacesurfer already suggested, it sounds like you've already written the discs as single session, thus nothing you can do there. Just write future disks as multi session. Beware though I've had some intermittent problems in the past reading the older data on multi session disks. I think its something up with my writer but still worthy of note I reckon.