dencorso

Were I you, whom evidently I'm not, I'd, wit all due respect, Dave, go straight for 7 Ultimate x64, fully avoiding 8.1.1.1.1.... And make it double boot with x86 XP SP3 and a good emergency linux 3rd boot, like Porteus x64. Just my 2¢, of course! But we're long time friends, and I'd unfair to withhold my opinion when you opened a thread precisely asking for opinions. I always thought Vista SP0 was MS worst mistake ever... But, then, two SPs put it on the right track... ... while nothing seems able to make 8 right.

Good optical crystal or polycarbonate glasses probably cost much less and won't harbor any tissue-eating bugs. And one just folds them and puts them on the nighttable before going to sleep, and on again, after getting up...

No. Even when SFC is not disabled, by simply copying them to \WINDOWS\System32\dllcache and \WINDOWS\System32 of an inactive (non-booted) system is enought for Windows XP to accept them and give no complaining message. Of course, after that, if SFC ever activates it will only be able to replace the files in \WINDOWS\System32 with those in \WINDOWS\System32\dllcache, but since the signatures will not correct as per the standing catalog, and the files are identical to those in dllcache SFC maybe stops protecting them. But in any case, by simply booting to a linux live disc or a Win PE (or to DOS, in case Win XP is on FAT-32 as all my iown nstallations are), one can simply replace those files in both folders and XP will keep working with no complaints at all.

Just a heads up for those using IE8 (or IE7): there are a few files in the IE cumulative updates, which MS only includes in the IE6 updates, but can be used by all. This is known for a long time already, since MDGx released the unofficial X2183461 (now obsolete), way back when. What is not necessarily common knowledge is that such files continue to be constantly updated. This month's KB2962872-IE6 for x86 POSReady 2009 contains, not just the usual two, but in fact three files (an update to browsewm.dll appears for the 1st time) that can be used by all, namely: browseui.dll v. 6.0.2900.6576 1,025,024 bytes browsewm.dll v. 6.0.2900.6576 78,336 bytes shdocvw.dll v. 6.0.2900.6576 1,510,400 bytes Of course, at the moment, such files must be extracted and added by hand, because there's no stand-alone installer for them.

Welcome to MSFN!

Don't do this because I say so. Do it only on your own reponsibility. It may work, it may hose the system or it may even simply be useless... Rename USB.INF to USB.OFF and USBSTOR.INF to USBSTOR.OFF and delete USB.PNF and USBSTOR.PNF if they exist. Reboot into safe mode, go to the Device Manager and delete everything USB there. Check each of the OEM?.PIF and if any one of them refers to anything USB, rename .INF to .OFF and delete .PNF, else leave alone. Reboot and install NUSB33e.

Describe your hardware in detail. Nobody's got a working crystal ball today.

Yes, it sure can run. RLoew does it, so he's probably the best person to ask about it (just look at the specs of his machines with most memory, at the top of the > 1 GiB list). But one would be so limited by lack of drivers that I don't really see why do it (of course it can also be done very confortably inside a virtual machine, buy, then... what for?).

@Dblake1: Thank you for having reduced your tool's .NET requirements to 2.0!

Hi, Dave! Yes, one can run 32-bit XP on a 64x processor/motherboard OK, in principle. The only problem (which is not necessarily a small problem) is to have all needed drivers to enjoy fully the hardware one has on hand. What I've done is to keep my main machine as a XP SP3 / 98SE dual boot (it also boots DOS and Porteus Linux), and I built a second machine (i7 3770k on Asus P8Z68-V LX) which has two different bootable XP SP3 partitions and a bootable Win 7 Ultimate 64x (it also boots DOS and Porteus x64 Linux), so I;m able to cover all my needs. My intention was to put both using the same mouse, keyboard and monitor, using a KVM switch, but I've not come 'round to setting this up yet. A Z68 board will give one the best possible intel-based experience. The 7 series chipsets include USB 3.0 but lack USB 3.0 drivers for XP... hence one has to rely on ASMedia or Renesas (VIA USB 3.0 has problems with 6+ series intel chipsets) anyway, so that a Z68 makes more sense. Another option, instead of using and IvyBridge processor is to use an i7 990X and a X58/ICH10 based motherboard... but I do think the i7 3770k and Z68 board combination will end up being less expensive but eqially satisfactory. The Asus P8Z68-V LX has the advantage of still having a VGA connector and the onboard ASMedia USB 3.0 controller, which does have drivers for XP. Just my 2¢, from my personal experience. If you want to read more about the headaches newer generation intel processors/chipsets give with XP, please do read this link, this link, this link and this other link.

Tantalum capacitors are the way to go (they're also *much* better than other electrolytic types, BTW). Please do keep me posted. I'll open, ASAP, yet a 3rd configuration for you at the list, to accomodate all the changes.

What a pity! Did you give up on the RAM Limitation Patch, or is it still there, anyway? You've just replaced the graphics card and removed some RAM? Why did you remove RAM?

That's easy! loblo is on the list and his latest configuration should be II, so:

Signal grows with the number of pics, while noise, bing random, can be shown to grow just with the square-root of the number of pics, on stacking. This means that if one sums the pics and then divides by the number of pics to normalize, the noise will be effectively reduced with the inverse square-root of the number of pics. This function can be seen represented in the attachment, but it all boils down to the fact that stacking 4 pics reduces the noise to 50% of the original noise, 6 will get one to 40% and 10, to about 30%, but further improvement requires more and more pics, and is not worthwhile. My take is 4 pics gets one the best overall cost/benefit.

Great pics indeed, Nicholas! Well, since NoelC wrote about it, the really tricky part is how to align two pictures, so... here're two how-to's for two different programs: PicWinPro and PhotoShop. And, in any case, once you get there, by all means, do explore the Astropix site more fully than just the two pages I gave links for. Enjoy!

Yes. And now, with the latest MSVS, one produces huge programs to do things VC6 did in 1 KiB or less. So what?

Thanks, Larry! I do wish the same for you! Actually, it's just my unbirthday, today (as well as, I guess, it's yours, too), but at 186 one cannot be too picky anymore, now, can one? Cheers!

Whatever you decide to get, do avoid non-SSE2 processors. They're too old, and newer versions of MSVS enable compilation for SSE2, even when totally unneeded, by default, so many compatibility problems lie ahead of non-SSE2 processor computer users. I'm an Athlon XP user, myself, and I'm already envisaging having to retire some 4 perfectly good machines in the near future just because of lack of SSE2 support.

In the past, we had the old Wayback Machine, with which just a few people were really familiar with. So much of what companies like MS wanted to hide away or make scantly available (or even take down completely) remained effectilvely available for a very long time. Then, one day, it dawned on those companies, MS included, they had to do something about it, so they made and effort and found up about robots.txt, which was there all along (AFAIK) and sort of repurposed that effectively into a kind of memory hole: you see, once some general url is added to one's company domain robots.txt, whatever the Wayback Machine already holds for that url gets immediately destroyed (purportedly -- or, at the very least, taken out of public availability, but kept safely preserved, maybe even to be able to comply to an eventual court-order from the powers that be...) retroactively, and, furthermore, the Wayback Machine thenceforward abstains from ever looking up again into those urls. Here's a direct link to MS' current robots.txt... This is the main reason why things nowadays got much tougher. ... Win 9x/ME went EoL on July 11, 2006, as everybody should know (or, at least, MS made some effort in that direction, at the time, but nothing compared to their annoying current effort to kill-terminate-destroy-erase XP, of course). At that time they didn't even bother to actually put in place any robots.txt, and it remained like that for half again a year afterwards. This is what a request for MS' robots.txt returned up to about 5 PM May 15, 2008: Error 302 => Not Available. About one hour late, there appears this robots.txt, (quoted below), from which time it was always available and constantly "refined", up to now.

In case a direct download link may help, here is it: IE8-WindowsVista-x64-ENU.exe When I managed to test Internet Explorer 8 and versions of IE all the way down to Internet Explorer 5.5, it does not do that. [...] I might have to try running in Safe Mode or creating a new account to see if this fixes the issue and if it still doesn't then, I might be at a impasse here. Yes. Well... Considering IE8 works OK and it's available for you, please do enlighten me: why is it downgrading to (much more solid) IE8, and calling it a day, is not an option at all?

In case a direct download link may help, here is it: IE8-WindowsVista-x64-ENU.exe Not really... But it sounds like a good idea.

They released Win 8. Then 8.1... Do you really believe they still can act sensibly?

Ditto! And do have a great day, too.

OK. Now we know: 1. uninstallation of IE9 completes uneventfully and reverts the system to IE7. 2. reinstallation of IE9 brings back the problems. So it can be asked: Were there any issues when the system was back to IE7? And what about after updating IE7 to the brim, via MS Update? And, what about IE8? And what about after updating IE8 to the brim, via MS Update? So here's my take (and, I take it, more or less submix8c's one, too): IE8 is the last one to work with XP (that's almost irrelevant), therefore it's the last one to work with POSReady 2009 (and this is relevant), hence MS has much more incentive (read circa 97% of the world market of POS machines) to keep it working all right... so that, if IE8 works, why not stick with it and call it a day?

Well, they're not exactly breaking news, monroe, but thanks for the heads up all the same... Those updates apply to anyone using any office suite from '97 onwards (even if officially just from 2000 onwards) who has added the Office 2007 Compatibility Pack, BTW