bphlpt

Welcome! Cheers and Regards

I hadn't seen that site, so thanks for sharing. But I believe that the recognized reference for Windows services is Black Viper's site. An available tool that utilizes Black Viper's recommendations is SMART. Cheers and Regards

@jody, you might want to read here - http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/170810-ok-ok-well-support-it-lol/?p=1067639, including the linked to articles. I think many of the same things discussed re XP also apply in this case to your concerns with the safety of Office 2003, if you would really rather stick with it rather than switch to a third party alternative, Cheers and Regards

I liked his conclusion in the second article: Now can we please quit worrying about the what-ifs and FUD regarding XP's "death" in two months, and just enjoy whatever OS we want to run and focus on getting it to run the best that it can? Cheers and Regards

Just like I have said in other threads here at MSFN along the lines of "How secure will XP after it is no longer officially supported after April 2014?", I think that a home user could probably continue to use Office 2003 for quite awhile and still be reasonably secure if you used a good router with a hardware firewall, kept your 3rd party AV and software firewall current, and most importantly, were a thoughtful, careful user, just as you stated above. If you like it and it meets your needs, and if you can't find a third party solution that is as good, I would say keep using Office 2003, just be a smart user. I might advise differently for a business user with different liability issues, but it still might be able to be used. Cheers and Regards

You talk about your desire for speed, compatibility, and security. If you also throw in familiarity, then I think you have set yourself a very high goal, though I agree that it is the ideal solution. Speaking strictly about security, though to be honest I have no figures to back up my feelings, I think of ALL of the the MS internet, mail and security tools as being more likely to be insecure than third party tools strictly from the standpoint that having the largest installed base they are more likely to be targeted by hackers. That sure seems to be the case for IE, for example. So I avoid them all if I have any options at all. Just my opinion. Cheers and Regards

I hate to even suggest this, but if nothing else you might just want to reinstall. Then check to make sure that you can get online before you do any "tailoring". You should be able to. If nothing else, then you will know for sure that it is the fault of your "tailoring", which means it should be something that you will be able to fix. [i'm sure Charlotte missed the part of your post where you explained that all three of the connection methods work, on the same laptop, with the same hardware, just a different partition running XP, so I don't think it is a hardware issue, but it wouldn't hurt to try the Ethernet cable connection anyway, since you very well might have "tailored" something that messed everything else up but left that alone.] I'm betting it's likely either a permission or service that you "tailored", assuming that you didn't do any actual removing of any components. If you did do any removals, then I would strongly suggest again to just start over with the full install and get used to the way that Win7 is different from XP before you start "tailoring". Cheers and Regards

No, what tomasz86 meant by portable apps, are simply apps that do not require an installer, if fact they are not "installed" at all. They are typically distributed in .zip format, you just expand them wherever you want them, make a link to the .exe if you want, and run the app. There are also portable apps that run in a "system", like the ones available at http://portableapps.com, but don't be thrown by the reference to USB, they can be installed to any drive you want. And most if not all of the apps listed there work with Win2K, AFAIK. Cheers and Regards

@submix8c, Please calm down. I don't know what you mean by "not part of the OFFICIAL WinCert Packages", but that is not a torrent. Yes WinCert has some areas that are only accessible to registered members, (which is free and open to anyone), just the same as RyanVM's forum does and many other forums also do. As to the implication that the file was removed from MediaFire due to "Copyright Violation", I do not know about that, but I have seen many free files removed from MediaFire over the years that no one could figure out why they were removed. As one of the "good folks at WinCert", I would appreciate your restraint, even when you get excited. There are few enough forums that offer free and good advice for Windows users, MSFN, WinCert and RyanVM are three of the main ones I use, and we should do a better job of supporting each other. I'm not aware of any post that has been made at WinCert that bad-mouths MSFN in any way. With all that said, Getting DISM through the use of GetWaikTools is still probably the best way to do it, and is why I agreed with you in suggesting its use. Cheers and Regards

My personal opinion is to remove or disable both Windows Defender and/or MSE, and install one of the various free alternatives instead, such as either Avira or COMODO. Cheers and Regards

I can't argue with that. Cheers and Regards

One of the options in Windows Explorer -> Tools -> Folder Options... -> View -> Advanced settings is Launch folder windows in a separate process which I think is a good thing. Could that be what is causing this "problem" for you? Personally, I don't understand why you think it is a problem. Cheers and Regarads

I just tried that link. It's wasn't "blocked" for me, but I did get a "not available" error. With a newer machine like that you might also consider just running Win98 in a VM. Cheers and Regards

Sorry tain, I read the thread title and this page, but not the first one, so I missed that I was inadvertently pushing the thread a little off from its original focus. But as you said, other than the one post from 2011, and I'm not sure I understand it's connection to the rest of the thread, the rest of this thread was from 2009 until vinifera's post. But his post was applicable since he was comparing to QtWeb which was begun in the original part of the thread. At least I did say that I do use Dragon, regardless of its heft. LOL Cheers and Regards

I use COMODO Dragon, and happily, but it is DEFINITELY NOT light weight. LOL Cheers and Regards

Well, did helmutcheese's instructions work for you? Cheers and Regards

By all means continue to use IE11, or any tool of your choosing, where it works. I'm just saying to use a different tool that works where IE11 doesn't. That's been the beauty, and the curse, of all the wide variety Windows software for many, many years, the options and the choices. I'm not saying that this site shouldn't have figured out how to change whatever settings are involved to allow IE11 to fully work here. They absolutely, positively, definitely should have by now. There is no doubt about that and I am not arguing that fact in the slightest. But just because they haven't, are you going to be stubborn enough to refuse to use a different browser when you need to paste something and make life more difficult for yourself just out of principle, or what? Why? You are not "punishing" the site in any way, just yourself. By all means continue to complain until they fix it, but until then use what works. But then that's just my opinion. Cheers and Regards

I'm assuming you are using IE11? If so, use a different browser and you should be able to paste just fine. Cheers and Regards

Regarding the "donations" issue: I would assume that folks are not thinking about the fact that if it was not a donation, then the payment service might charge a fee, so BM would need to raise the payment amount to make it worth the net amount he receives. BM is trying to do what he can to make a totally free product available to all, which includes some extremely minor annoyances that do not hinder the actual working of the product at all, while giving a little "Thank You" to those that donate even a minimal amount in the form of allowing them to remove those annoyances. Do those folks really want to keep pushing BM to change the terminology he uses? For what purpose? To give them something different to whine and complain about? My advice to BM is for him to totally refuse to answer in any way any post or question on this forum about the donation amount and how it works other than to simply give a link to either the first post or to his site where the donation "terms" are stated. Hopefully the mods will delete any nagging posts by members who refuse to let the matter alone. IF he has the time available to do so, I suppose BM could also send a "Thank You" email to those who donate which includes a link pointing them to where it describes how to generate their key, but that is completely optional. Cheers and Regards

It is not a bad idea to have more than one on-demand antivirus scanner available, Many of them focus on one type of virus or another and many are available in a portable form that do not need to be installed at all. Cheers and Regards

You mean this one? - http://otter-browser.org/ (Next time it would be nice if you include a link. ) Cheers and Regards

Did I miss something? If I understand correctly, you installed DISM extra, right? So, the next time you build, don't add it. If you really need to add it to your next build but want it to remove it later, then take submix8c's suggestion and use GetWaikTools to get a legitimate copy of DISM directly from MS. I would think you might then have a better chance in being able to install and uninstall it. But, to be honest, I am just guessing. Cheers and Regards

Seems I wasn't over-zealous after all. Cheers and Regards

I'm going to go along with the opinion that a lot of the warnings are "FUD". You need to look closely at where those statements come from including who pays their salaries, directly and indirectly, and officially and unofficially. As to any stats you have seen, where did those numbers come from? From the OS suppliers that are trying to prove why you need the next "safer" OS? From the AV suppliers that want to prove how dangerous it is out there so you will buy their products, or the ones who want to prove how "effective" their product is stopping the viruses? If you have ever had a computer virus in the past did you ever report that fact to anyone? If there was any kind of automatic scanning on the net to try and pick up how many copies of a virus were active at any given time to then extrapolate how many there really were, once a machine is infected by one virus that machine might now be vulnerable to other viruses as well so even though it is one machine there might be multiple viruses. How is it counted? If the machine is wiped and the same, vulnerable , OS is put back on it then it is likely to get reinfected. It's the same machine with the same OS with the same virus, but a different occasion. How is it counted? If a machine gets a virus, it probably means there was no, or ineffective, AV software in place, so how does anyone know that the virus exists on that machine besides the machine owner, IF they are computer savy enough to know? If a protected, by AV software, machine is attacked by a virus - taking the idea that the AV software can phone home and report the attack does it report each attack , which could be millions of times a day if bots are involved and he is in the wrong place at the wrong time, or just once per day, or once per machine, or what? As you can guess, I don't understand how accurate stats can be gathered. All of which is not to say that viruses do not exist. I use a router, a software firewall and anti-virus software to be on the safe side. But mostly I just try to be smart and careful. Cheers and Regards

Where did you install the program? What is the EXACT path? Cheers and Regards