JedMeister

Warning: I am only guessing! At a guess I suspect its Help Centre ie the windows help program. The folder probably contains trouble-shooters and other help files. If that's the case, then I'm sure you could delete it without causing too many major problems, especially removing just the trouble-shooters and help (chm) files. However if you actually remove the program, you won't be able access any help files or any files using the chm extension. Also there could be a few issues because there will be registry entries that will no longer be relevant after its removal which may cause errors. Unless you really need the space I wouldn't do it. To be honest, if you need the space that bad, a better way of doing it would be to nLite your original install media and do a clean reinstall!

I'm not sure about disabling them altogether but you can easily change where they are they located. Easiest way is to install MS TweakUI (google it - it should be easy to find). Or someone may be along with a reg tweak for you! Good luck

Personally I would not remove the inf folder. I've never tried it and perhaps it works but it sounds like a recipe to destroy Windows to me! Have a look for Driver Cleaner, although the latest version costs, you should be able to find the old freeware version for download on MajorGeeks or somewhere similar. That should allow you to completely clean out your old drivers and then your new ones should install fine. Good luck!

Sorry I missed the bit about you not having installed any updates since SP2. With that in mind I would definitely advise you to install SP3. But only after a full and thorough backup of anything that is important to you (in case something goes really wrong). Good luck!

@ DJPro, thanks for providing the links. @ Steev you don't need to patch Uxtheme to get any of these 3 to work (they are digitally signed my MS) If you count Royale-Noir then there's actually 3 official (well officially supported) themes (I'd forgotten about that one!) Royale is the standard theme used in XP Media Centre Edition. It is similar to the standard XP blue (Luna) theme, but looks much nicer and more polished. It includes a more 3D look to the taskbar and many other improvements over the standard. If you plan to try both Royale and Royale-Noir please see my note below - Don't install both at the same time! Here's the link for the 'standard' Royal: http://www.softpedia.com/get/Desktop-Enhan...for-WinXP.shtml Royale-Noir is the same as Royale but is black rather than blue - Be aware that you can't have both installed as they are both called Royale - It will create conflicts! If you try one, remove it prior to testing the other! It was never officially released by MS and as such is a little unfinished (in my opinion). Zune is the finished version of Royale Noir and is a Black/Orange theme (obviously named after the Zune player). It is quite trick (if you like orange and black).

Not sure about that one. Any reason why you don't just patch Uxtheme? Then you can hack the files and make it any colour you like, or download something that someone else made. There are literally thousands of trick looking themes available for free. Even if you don't want to patch any files the 2 extra official themes are worth a look (Royale and Zune). Sorry not really what you asked for.

Surely not!?! I don't recall Bashrat making any sort of comment in that regard. I have used driverpacks in the past very successfully. It can be very handy having an XP install disk with driverpacks for doing a quick clean install on a fatally broken system (in an OS sense), especially on an older system that probably needs a clean install anyway. Having said that, as you are suggesting Volatus, for a personal nLited install disk it does seem like asking for trouble when 10-15 mins more research could do it for you. I mean if you already have your system functioning prior to reinstall you can just harvest the non-MS drivers off it and integrate them into your CD (using nLite). [edit] Just had a quick look at Bashrat the Sneaky's DriverPacks (http://driverpacks.net/DriverPacks/) and its pretty clear that he built them with the intention of being able to have a single XP disk which could install on (virtually) any hardware. Personally I still think its overkill to use driverpacks on your own nLited CD cause you're lazy, but on the other hand it shouldn't cause problems.

I have installed it on all XP systems that I've worked on except for business machines (as I've read of a few problems that I don't really want to have to deal with) and have had no ill effects. On the other hand I haven't noticed any real improvements either. I think its basically just all the security updates to date in one pack. The full version is quite big but on one PC I worked on recently it said that it would only require a download of around 50MB (on Windows Update). I was under the impression that SP3 doesn't include WGA although I could be wrong with that (pretty much all the machines I work with have it installed anyway). Even if you don't want WGA, don't let that be a significant factor in deciding whether to install SP3 or not as MS have instructions on their website on how to remove WGA (if you so desire).

Hmm interesting. I still think that the wifi issue must be caused by something on that CD. Its just too much coincidence that you and your brother are experiencing the same problem even though you use different hardware. The only thing in common is that CD. Normally I may not be so quick to suspect this, but seeing as the problem only appeared on your brothers system after he had reinstalled with your modified XP CD it just seems to likely! Perhaps it is using the wrong driver from the driverpack? Perhaps the driver got corrupted at some point such as download, CD burning or scratched CD? When you say it hasn't caused any problems before, did you use the same driverpack on the same hardware? If so then that is very strange, if not then there are many things that could've gone wrong this time that didn't last time! As for your ongoing RPC issue, I'm not sure at all about that one. Did you end up trying a repair install from an original (non-nLited Retail XP) CD?

Glad to be of assistance! If you ever do wish to put some pagefile back on C: (to do a RAM dump) all you need to do is go back to where we were before (allocating virtual memory) and add at least as much pagefile on C: as you have RAM (I think you said 768MB didn't you?) Although you're probably right, saying that it won't be a problem. If you want to do a little more research on the health of your drive a great freeware tool is HDD Health (its the 3rd program down, near the bottom of the page). It works by reading and logging the SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) data that most modern hard drives have onboard. (Its probably what SmartFan uses too but HDD Health should give you more detailed info). As for your backups being crude, if you are using NTBackup (ntbackup.exe) then it is not crude. Especially with the frontend I suggested, it is a powerful and very useful backup tool. If you have enough room on your second drive, you could take a backup of your whole system drive (wait until after you've cleaned it and defragged it) while its still running (NTBackup is able to copy files even while they are in use). I haven't heard of vCool but modern AMD CPUs have a function called Cool'n'Quiet which allows them to throttle the CPU voltage and fan speed as required. Intel chips have something similar (although I'm not familiar with it). If you haven't bought a system in 6 years, I'm sure you will be impressed with the level of technology now available not to mention the ridiculously low prices (bang for buck compared with 6 years ago - for example: here in Australia you can get 2GB RAM for around AU$60!!) Good work!!

If you wish to retain the ability to do dump files (when your system crashes) then you will need to retain some pagefile on your system drive (C: in your case). I personally have dump files disabled in my system anyway and figure I will turn it on if I need it (using safe mode - and can thus turn on pagefile on C: at the same time). If it is so serious that I can't boot into safe mode then I figure my system is probably so fried that I will recover important data and try reinstall of windows. Most systems only have mini-dump turned on by default anyway, and from what I've gathered on here mini-dumps aren't very helpful for diagnosis (reading and understanding dump files is way beyond me! - But if you ever need it done, there are some very clever people on this forum who can!) Setting different temp folders for user and system temp files is probably not a bad idea. I reckon you would be ok not to (I don't and haven't had any worries), but I suspect there is a slim chance of problems, so if in doubt probably better to be on the safe side! It won't take up any more room, just an extra folder. As a final note download a program called Ccleaner and run that. This will clean out all your old temp files. Note: Watch out for the default setting to install Yahoo toolbar when installing (just untick the box on the relevant screen if you don't want it - or uninstall via add/remove progs if you missed it. Then give it a good defrag and you're good to go!

Some BIOSes allow you to hit a key during POST to select which BOOT source. If yours does that it should appear on the POST screen or be documented in the manual. If you don't have that available, perhaps run AIDA32 or similar and find the motherboard model and find the manual online and read up. If thats an option it will make it easier than going into BIOS.

I have no experience with hardware profiles but when you speak of the boot menu do you mean boot.ini menu? (Assuming we're talking XP here? If not just ignore me!) If you are then you could just remove them from boot.ini leaving only the one you want? Make sure you back it up in case you delete the wrong one and need to recover it using recovery console!

Quite possibly! I think if you disable Nero Scout from within Nero and then disable the Nero Indexing Service in the services.msc that should do the trick on NMindixstore. As for NMBgmonitor either just get used to deleting it from your startup items everytime you run a Nero product or get rid of Nero all together. The 3rd option would be to uninstall it, build yourself a hacked installer that just installs the bits you want, and then reinstall using that. A pain I know but I'm pretty sure thats your options

Nice work Kelsenellenelvian! @jr2 - even if it were legal to download in this way (which is news to me too), uploading even one byte is considered distributing (well has been in the cases the RIAA have pursued). So that's a no go anyway!

Good work spacesurfer! +1 for pinning it!

I'll have to have a look at WireShark....but in the meantime +1 for Comodo Pro. I used to use it but I got sick of it telling me every time explorer.exe was trying to connect to the net, etc etc. Good prog for what it is but a bit painful really. I'm behind a router so no real need for a software firewall, but great for logging and/or stopping traffic (if that's your aim).

There is a great freeware app that will automatically download available updates and produce a script to update a client with those updates. The name escapes me at the moment, and I'm not sure even if that really what your after. I'll try to find a link when I get home so you can have a look. Writing a batch file is do-able but from my experience it could be quite painful, best to wait for someone else who's more knowledgable on that sort of thing.

No worries. Hopefully it all goes smoothly for you. There's no reason why you can't save this web page, and the MS one, so them you can do all this stuff offline. In IE click on File > Save As. In Firefox File > Save Page As... Goodluck with it all.

My brother was running a un-nlited installation, and didn't experience that error. But since he managed to delete some boot-files, and having lost the original CD, I sent him a nLited cd I had. Then it started showing up rather often. Again I should say that he runs on another router than the one I run (He runs a LinkSys while I run a Jensen Scandinavia router), so I find it hard to belive that both routers promote the same error Considering that he didn't have the problem until the nLite disk and you have different routers, it sounds suspiciously like an nLite introduced issue. The RPC thing may be unrelated to your wifi issue (seeing as your brother doesn't get that too). Did you integrate drivers? If so perhaps you integrated some flakey wifi drivers? Or removed something you shouldn't have? Really you need to try with a clean XP Pro install I reckon and take it from there.

XP home has the basic backup utility on the CD but doesn't install it by default. To install it you'll need your CD and then follow the steps mentioned on this page: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...b;en-us;q302894 Once installed you can just use NTBackup itself, or you can use a nifty front-end for it called Extended Windows Backup (have a look here: http://www.softswift.com/prod-windows-back...e-ntbackup.htm). Its free and it makes NTBackup a much more user friendly and useful backup tool. Unless you are running out of space using it just for backups is a great idea. Something else you can do with an extra hard-drive which may give you a small performance increase (and give you a bit of extra space on your main drive) is move your pagefile (also called virtual memory or swapfile) onto it. Right click My Computer > Properties > Advanced Tab > Click "Settings" button under Performance (top button) > Advanced Tab > Change Button (at the bottom under Virtual Memory). Click on your new drive and I would suggest selecting "Custom size". In the both boxes (Initial size AND Maximum size) type the figure that appears just below - next to recommended size (this number should be roughly 1.5 x the RAM in your PC). If you want you can add an extra bit but its not really necessary. Now go back up to the top frame and select your original drive (probably C:), select "No paging file". Click on the "Set" button and it will suggest restart. Just wait right there because I've got one other idea for your new drive. To free up more space on your original drive you can set your temporary files to be saved onto the new drive too. Again you may get a tiny performance increase from this too, although its probably negligible because it'll still be sharing with your pagefile - anyway. Click the OK button (on the Virtual Memory window - where you just changed your pagefile), and again on the Performance window. This should take you back to the System Properties window, with it still on the Advanced Tab. Now click the Environment Variables button. In the top frame (User variables for ....), click on TEMP, then click the Edit button (or just double click on TEMP). In the box that pops up it should say something like %USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Temp Change it to something like F:\Temp (or any other name that takes your fancy), then follow these same steps for TMP, and again for TEMP and TMP in the bottom frame (System variables). Now you can restart! Just to make it nice and tidy, after restart navigate to your new temp folder and hide it (Right click the folder > Properties > Tick the "Hidden" box > Click OK. I would strongly suggest a defrag of your primary hard drive after these operations. Good luck

I suggest you take it back where you got it from and ask them about it. If they won't give you any joy or thats not an option get in touch with MS. Or perhaps just get in touch with MS anyway.

Hmmm, I would've guessed blaster worm first but sounds like ou've checked that out. Have you tried different wireless drivers? Have you tried a different wifi card/usb on the same system or tried youe on someone else's system. If can do it be well worth the effort. What about an un-nLited disk? - just to confirm its not something done in nLite.

Not sure. Probably need a bit more info to give you a better answer. Assuming you are using XP Pro, you could try mapping the administrative share (C$) of the remote computer to a network drive (Open My Explorer > Tools > Map Network Drive). Honestly though you'll probably have issues if Explorer keeps crashing. Probably a better solution would be to use UBCD4Win (http://www.ubcd4win.com/). Another option is to just remove the HDD and put it in the working PC.

I have no idea! Perhaps its not DEP compatible? Surely it wouldn't be a virus if you did a clean install on a formatted HDD without any network connection! I have DEP set to opt-in cause otherwise I reckon its a PITA!