Idontwantspam

For the malware cases, I would advise having a big (~250-500 GB) external USB hard drive lying around. Copy all their precious files off their computer onto the external drive. Format their computer, reinstall windows (or if it's a different OS, use that), and install some good antivirus software onto it. Plug in the hard drive. Scan the whole entire thing, and clean out any infected files. Then, reformat and reinstall the OS. Do the virus scan a second time. Format the computer once more and do one last reinstall, then restore their now hopefully clean files. Then, format the external HD a couple of times to make sure it doesn't harm any other computers if there's any lingering stuff. Of course, this would all take quite a while, and I've never done it myself, it's just a suggestion.

Yeah, I've seen about that, too. Of course, I don't use the windows welcome screen to log on, I use the secure method with the Win2K style dialog, and since I have account lockout policies enabled, the welcome screen wouldn't work because a user would get locked out after trying to log on only 5 times.

I, too, do not like macs in the least. I think your iArticle was a bit ranty, but it was interesting none the less. The iToilet was funny. Some reasons I don't like Crapple Inc: Mac users. They can't shut the f*** up about their lovely macs. They'll ask you "Do you like macs or PCs?" and if you say PCs, then they'll spend >20 telling you why you're stupid and why they're so great. It's just a freakin' computer, guys! Cost. Compare an iMac with a PC. For some reason, macs are always much more expensive; who knows why. Customizations and upgrading. With a PC, you can build your own, buy one from any number of different manufacturers, and if you want to upgrade or something, you open it up and do what you want. With macs, it's all one company, and heaven forbid that you want to actually open the case, let alone replace something! The interface of OSX. Now, this might just be because I'm used to Windows and Linux, no OSX, but still. Specifically...The menu bar is always at the very top of the screen. That's fine with maximized windows - more on that in a moment - but when you have smaller windows on a big screen, it's a pain to have to go all the way up to the top to click "File > Save As" or whatever. Control over the windows is abysmal. The little green orb doesn't actually maximize like one would think. Instead, it switches between arbitrary window size one and arbitrary window size two. That's probably because it's hard to determine what to maximize to when you have... The dock in the way all the time. If you set it to auto-hide, it's not there when you want it, and if you don't, it's always in your way. Also, another problem I have with the dock involves restoring and minimizing. When you minimize a window, it goes to the dock as a thumbnail. When you click on it, it disappears from the dock. That's fine and all, but what happens when you switch from one window to another without minimizing the first one? It doesn't go to the dock, it just stays there, making it very hard to keep track of open windows. Open programs are worse... When you exit the last window for a program, does it close the app as one would expect? Nope, it stays open, with a little indicator underneath the icon in the dock, and the program doesn't actually exit until you click on its menu bar and choose Appname > Close. Why bother with the extra step? There is no easy keyboard combo like Ctrl+Alt+Del. Yes, you can press cloverleaf+option+alt+esc+random other keys to open the quit force dialog, but in windows you get the whole windows security dialog, with the option to lock the computer (another feature not easy to find in Mac OS), change your password without having to wade through many different dialogs, open the task manager easily, and log off or shutdown - all from one dialog accessed by one quick 3-key action. Not to mention Ctrl+Alt+Del and secure logons. There's no way to hide your username at the logon prompt on a mac. [*]The iPhone. Too expensive. And bricks too easily. You can mod your PC to death, do whatever, but with an iPhone, one little change bricks ya'. [*]Those d***ed ads. Instead of focusing on why PCs are bad, why not focus on why macs are good? Oh, that's right, because there is no reason. Well, that's all my rantage for now. I leave you with an image and a link: Link

Most anything you install will be available to all users of the computer, or at the least any administrators, unless you encrypt the installation folder or something like that. Also, it's very, very hard to install most programs without Administrator power, or at the least a Power Users account. May I ask why you're trying to do this?

Well, the built-in message that you apply via group policy cannot be configured per-user. However, you might be able to write a VBscript that uses a msgbox to display that user's mesage, and if they say "Yes" let them continue and if they say "No" log them off. No, I can't write it since I'm not very proficient at all with VBS.

You may want to look at using something like Windows Steady State, DeepFreeze or some other software to reset things when stuff gets messed up. Also, at least some form of filtering would probably be good. You might also want to look at using some level of group policies.

I'd fall in love immediately with any of my classmates if they were up for a LAN party!

Once you have actually joined the computers to the domain, as per nmX.Memnoch's instructions, the logon dialog will change from the welcome screen to a logon dialog like this: The users will have to type in their username and password, and can select from the drop down box whether they'd like to log on to the domain or log on locally. You'll want to let people know their new username/password and how to log on, and perhaps removing their old local account would be good, too. Also, if there are users who will be using multiple machines, you can set up roaming profiles, or you can map their documents folder to a network location and assign it a network drive. For example, you could set user1 to connect Z:\ to \\SERVER1\files\user1 or set all users to have their documents stored at \\SERVER1\files\%username%. %username% should be automatically replaced with their logon username when windows searches for the location.

Oh, come on, no need to hate girls! Yeah, puntoMX is right about balance - but you still should be aware of how much you eat, too. Just don't starve yourself. You still need food. I didn't think it was a joke... I just thought it was funny.

Wow. That's one heck of an annoying problem! I would recommend you try using a BartPE disk and using its file management utility to navigate to and attempt to destroy that folder. However, be forewarned that the system may be infected elsewhere. It might be a good idea to back up data and reinstall. Is this an OEM install? Some companies (Dell, HP, maybe others) provide a restore partition where you can press a special key and it'll reimage the whole disk to how it was when you first got the computer.

First off, I'm taking health this year, and we're doing a nutrition unit, and starting on more sex ed in a few weeks. I'll have to ask my teacher about that, puntoMX. Calories: You may need much more or less than 1500 calories a day. I eat about 3000 calories a day, and I'm skinny as a stick. If you go to nutritiondata.com, you can enter your age, weight, activity level, etc. and it will estimate how many calories you need in a day. Be warned it reads a bit high. Fruit is OK in moderation, but remember, it's high in carbs, and most of those carbs are sugar. Sugar's not bad, but still you want to be aware of that. Veggies are great, since they're mostly water, but they taste good and are filling. Speaking of water, drink a LOT of it. 32 oz a day is recommended. Avoid soda as much as possible, even fruit juice or sports drinks aren't great. Diet drinks are even worse - aspartame, the artificial sweetener in most diet drinks is a carcinogen. Try to eat what you need to eat, but not more. Limit snacking away - try not to have a bag of chips or something in your room. Also, when you eat wholesome foods, like whole wheat bread, vegetables, good cooked meals, etc. you will not only get better nutrition, but feel fuller sooner. Exercise is CRITICAL. Get as much as you can. I, too, play ultimate frisbee a lot. We have a club and we organize lunch games that we play at the park near our school. If you have open campus lunch, go out and about, take a jog or a walk, do something, anything active. If your school has sports teams, join one. I run cross country, and it's a great experience. At my school, no experience is necessary, and they'll accept anyone willing to try to improve. It's great for meeting friends, too. You say you need more friends, well, sports are a chance. Don't join the football team. Please. Friends: if you're here, you must like computers. See if there are any computer-related clubs or groups you can join. We had a calculator programming club at my school last year. Or, if you like science, maybe your school has a science olympiad team, or science bowl. These are all opportunities to make friends. Yes, girls are a problem. My solution is, make friends - normal, not love-y - with the boys and girls. I have lots of friends who have girlfriends or boyfriends who still have time for other people. I personally am not interested in romance, so I see your point, but it is possible. I guess that's it. Good luck!

Hard to say for me... of course there have been cases of forgetting to plug something in, everyone does that sometimes. I'd have to go with the first time I figured out how to use the account lockout policy. I set the lockout time to as high as it would go, then logged off and put in the wrong password to the only administrator account until it locked. That's when I realized that yes, it did do what I thought, and oh, I was screwed for the next very long time.

For those who haven't seen it, here's a really powerful presentation by "Shift Happens" called " ". It's an interesting perspective on the future of technology and globalization, particularly for the US. It's not an easy presentation to explain, so just watch it . As a student in the US, it seemed especially interesting to me. Let me know what you all think, I know some of you are students or have kids.

Isn't there a windows classic option theme? I know there is for Vista Enterprise and Business, which I've used, but maybe not for the other versions.

Well, they were probably expecting that there always would be one! In my experience, they go to great pains to make sure there's at least one admin account on the machine - if you log in to the last existing administrator account, the built in one not included, and try to demote yourself or delete yourself, it'll tell you that's not allowed. It always tries to have the built in one plus an extra since the built-in doesn't always appear. They probably weren't expecting a situation like this. I'd say just change the XML file.

I was using firefox, therefore it opened in a new tab not a new window, stole focus and I didn't want to lose all 8 or so other tabs I had open. And holding enter it eventually just gets rid of the error boxes and stays right there. I still think it was an inappropriate link.

No offense, dirtwarrior, but you're starting to get annoying. Posting that link to that god-awful video that danced around and wouldn't let you leave, posting fake error messages and wasting people's time... it seems to me we should only let you post in the funny farm, and automatically add "WARNING: FOLLOW LINKS/PAY ATTENTION AT YOUR OWN RISK!" to every post of yours. Come on, why do you do this? We are here taking valuable time out of our day to try and help people and you waste our time on freakin' fake error messages? WTF, man! Yes, I'm mad! :angrym:

Is it possible that there's some hotkey or key shortcut that opens media center? For example, some dells with XP MCE have a button to launch media center, you could be bumping something like that.

WARNING!!! DO NOT FOLLOW THE LINK!! YOU HAVE TO TURN OFF JAVASCRIPT TO LEAVE THE PAGE. IT JUMPS AROUND THE SCREEN AND WHEN YOU TRY TO CLOSE THE WINDOW/TAB, IT GIVES YOU A BUNCH OF JAVASCRIPT ERRORS AND WON'T CLOSE!! Don't you ever freakin' link to something like that again.

I think in windows 9x there was actually something like that, but it was more like 4 days I believe. But certianly not in an NT-based OS like XP. Another vote for malware.

More info: I click Yes, and get this screen: Clicking continue will just show the same darned box over and over. Clicking break will show this: It appears to have something to do with js3250.dll.

OK, this time when I click yes, it gave me the following information: Unhandled exception at 0x60034caf in firefox.exe: 0xC0000005: Access violation writing location 0x00493b02. And that's all. Any ideas?

The windows flag was actually a screenshot of the 3D windows XP screensaver that microsoft made. Then I added the text in the upper left, gave it a dark blue background and voila! Plain, simple, but visually pleasing. Note the lack of icons on my desktop - I try to keep my desktop clean. By the way... I am using Windows XP, not vista as the toolbar may lead you to believe. It's the Vista Aero visual theme from the vista transformation pack.

? would be a better wild card since you know it's only one character, and you don't want to screw up any other files in the directory.

How do you make yours clear automatically?