Idontwantspam

YURT

Sounds cool. I'm gonna go check it out. -interesting side note: firefox's spellchecker thinks "gonna" is a real word.

Daaaaannnng! That sounds sweet! I might have to get one... How much $$?

@Geek: True, but a pirated install could have some hacks that might make things behave strangely. For example, some cracks do weird things to Winlogon which could still mess up WGA. It's definitely a good idea for him to reinstall.

If it's XP Pro or XP MCE, run lusrmgr.msc and find your username. Double-click it and check password never expires. That should do it. I don't know about the keypress thing.

Oooooh. NOT good. You didn't back up the registry first? Maybe there's a system restore point somewhere. Yeah, not being able to uninstall stuff is bad. What exctly resides in this key? Could it be recreated somehow?

Any word on how well Microsoft's Steady State works? It's free, and Deep Freeze is definitely not. Also, how does D.F. hold up to a boot disk (BartPE, etc.) being used to delete the restore partition, or something of that manner? Of course, you could just disable booting from a CD from the BIOS, but if one weren't to do that...

Well, that's essentially what an upgrade install is, but apparently that won't work in this situation. Therefore, you're stuck with a fresh install. But as I said, fresh installs are always better anyways.

Bad idea to use the pirated version in the first place. However, good job getting the legal stuff. It's always better to do a full, fresh install. So, I would recommend that you back everything up onto some external media - DVDs, an external hard drive, whatever. Then, do a fresh install and restore your files. What version is the illegal OS running? Oh - you would loose all files and settings. Everything. (If you didn't back it up, that is) That includes any installed programs - office, adobe stuff, anything.

Technically, according to significant figures, that would be a 1 digit figure, not 11 digits.

On my dell laptop with a Core Duo (not a core 2 duo) Peak Commit Charge stays at 621864 pretty much constantly. I don't think you have anything wrong. But I could be mistaken about that...

Well, next I would recommend checking these things: People who think they're funny and are doing this themselves, i.e. by using the remote or something (not very likely) Malware. Check for viruses, spyware, trojans, etc. Not sure why they would do this, but it sounds like something they could/would do.

Maybe it always is the same? I'm not really sure... The peak might be the all-time-ever peak, or it could be for that boot. I don't know.

I take it you're a staff member, presumably an IT person? They sure don't give students admin rights at my school! In fact, this year they decided to not even let us lock the computers, by disabling the Lock Workstation button when you press Ctrl+Alt+Del. However, fortunately, making a shortcut to lock the workstation works - under windows 2000, it's rundll32 user32.dll LockWorkStation, but under XP that doesn't work. Fortunately, a shortcut to tsdiscon will work. All of the staff at my school district have complete admin privileges, yet only a few lock their computers.

OK, I'll try that. That looks like pretty much exactly what I was looking for. I hope it works! Thanks... I'll let you all know how it works. UPDATE: It worked!! Thanks - you've just saved me a lot of work and frustration. Oh, and it doesn't matter for the older browsers - according to the site logs, most of our users are on IE 6 or 7, Firefox 1 or 2, Safari or Opera. All of these browsers seem to render it fine, and for any browsers with issues, it'll still show up, just not quite perfectly.

So, what do people here think about locking their computers? I always lock mine, since I don't want nosy parents or siblings poking around at home, or random people walking around the computer lab messing stuff up at school. My screensaver is also password-protected, but it doesn't really apply since I always lock up before it gets a change to kick in anyway. I force all users of my computer to have a password protected screensaver, except for the accounts that aren't allowed to lock the computer for various reasons (such as the guest account).

Well, to further simplify that, you could just do .special {whatever} But the problem is, then I'd have to add class="special" to every single element - td, th, etc.

I'm wondering if there's any way to change the style of all of a table's cells using CSS. When I use class= on the whole table, only the table itself gets those properties - for example, the border shows up on the outside of the table only, and padding only affects the outermost border, not each individual cell. It is also of course possible to apply a style to all <td> elements, but I want to be able to use classes to have different styles of tables, but I don't want to have <td class="table1"> everywhere. So the question is, can I somehow apply a class to the table and have all cells in the table follow a certain style based on that? Maybe there's some sort of pseudo-class that I'm missing. Anyway, if someone can help, I'd appreciate it. Thanks.

And how would you know so much about prison?

I was assuming this was a local environment, but yes, in an AD environment you could do that. Well, you sort of can and you sort of can't. Since it's a machine policy, all users logging on to that machine would see the same logon message. I think what he wants to do is have it be different for individual users. However, in an AD environment you could use Group Policy to set a different script for each OU for users.

OK, by kludging together some bits and pieces of scripts from all over the web, I have made a logon script to do what you desire. Here's the instructions: Create a new folder somewhere on your computer, for example, C:/scripts. Right-click it and choose the sharing tab. Enable sharing, and make sure to make the share name be netlogon. Place the attached script or your rendition of it in that folder. Log on as an administrator. Run LUSRMGR.MSC. Find the user you want this to apply to and double-click them. Under the profile tab, enter the name of the script for the logon script field. When the user next logs on, the script should run. For best results, you should disable simple file sharing, and in group policy (gpedit.msc) under User Config > Administrative Templates > System > Scripts, set "Run logon scripts synchronously" and "run logon scripts visible" to enabled. Note that this whole procedure will NOT work under windows xp home. For XP home, you'll be stuck putting a shortcut to the VBS file in the user's startup folder. If you have any questions, let me know. logon.zip (zipped 'cause it won't let me upload VBS files) Here's the text of the file if you want to just copy and paste: (see below) ------------------ EDIT: Since you want this to be different for multiple users, make a different script for each (i.e. script1.vbs, script2.vbs, etc.) and put the all in that network share. Then, make sure to configure it right for each user. ------------------ MORE EDIT: Note that while this is being displayed, the user can press Ctrl+Alt+Del and get the task manager, then end wscript.exe (which is the scripting host that runs the script) and therefore bypass it. You could add a clause to the agreement stating that if you circumvent the notice, you are agreeing to it by taking that action. ------------------ EVEN MORE EDIT: OK, I made a version that will disable ALL options in the Ctrl+Alt+Del box, including task manager. This way, there is no way to circumvent the process. Note that this requires the user to have read/write access to their Policies key, which you will have to do manually. Not all users have this access by default, and you may not want them to, so use the old version if you'd rather. If they don't have this access, the script will fail with an error, and nothing will be done. However, in this edition, I did make it so that it will disable registry editing for that user. Editing from the logon script works, but they can't run regedit.exe or open .reg files. 'This script is to prompt the user with a policy to agree to, 'an ask them if they agree or not. If they click yes, then 'the logon will complete successfully. If they click no, then 'they will be automatically logged off. Set Shell = CreateObject( "WScript.Shell" ) Shell.RegWrite "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System\DisableTaskMgr", 1, "REG_DWORD" Shell.RegWrite "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System\DisableLockWorkStation", 1, "REG_DWORD" Shell.RegWrite "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System\DisableChangePassword", 1, "REG_DWORD" Shell.RegWrite "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System\DisableRegistryTools", 1, "REG_DWORD" Shell.RegWrite "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer\NoClose", 1, "REG_DWORD" Shell.RegWrite "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer\NoLogoff", 1, "REG_DWORD" if MsgBox("Insert message here." + vbCRLF + vbCRLF + "Do you agree to the policy?", vbQuestion + vbYesNo, "Agreement confirmation") = vbNo then MsgBox"You will now be logged off.", vbError, "Warning" Unrestrict() ShutDown() else MsgBox "Welcome. By proceeding, you have agreed to the policy stated above.", vbInformation, "Welcome" Unrestrict() end if Sub Unrestrict() Shell.RegDelete "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System\DisableTaskMgr" Shell.RegDelete "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System\DisableLockWorkStation" Shell.RegDelete "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System\DisableChangePassword" Shell.RegDelete "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer\NoClose" Shell.RegDelete "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer\NoLogoff" End Sub Sub ShutDown() Dim Connection, WQL, SystemClass, System 'Get connection To local wmi Set Connection = GetObject("winmgmts:root\cimv2") 'Get Win32_OperatingSystem objects - only one object In the collection WQL = "Select Name From Win32_OperatingSystem" Set SystemClass = Connection.ExecQuery(WQL) 'Get one system object 'I think there is no way To get the object using URL? For Each System In SystemClass System.Win32ShutDown (0) Next End Sub

Well, where did you find that one?

You may find this interesting.

Just one question... isn't this almost exactly the same as the desktop screenshots/wallpaper contest held each month? OK, two questions: how does the prize work? Consider this: Seems like fun, but will it work? Never mind... I thought this was for this forum, I didn't read closely enough to see that it's for another site. Oops.

Whatever... as I said, I've never done this, and I'm not a tech either. But good suggestion. Better yet, sell them the drive and if anything comes back, then they can pay you more money to fix it again! just kidding...