SmaugyGrrr

Update your video drivers.

As you're in the UK like me, I have only one recommendation: http://www.dorothybradbury.co.uk/ She has 1321 100% feedback on ebay, and everyone who has used her services always recommends her - just search usenet for her name for references. There really is no other UK store that compares to her service and selection for her particular speciality.

I don't know much about policies aside from them only being a basic hinderance for technically-minded people, but..... If you have an anti-virus and have the ability to have a custom definition, try including cmd.exe plus the various cygwin shells. I have no idea if this is actually possible with any AV available - it's just a thought

If you really want to delete it from registry. 1. Back up all your stuff... 2. Start -> run -> sc create rootcmd binpath= "cmd /K start" type= own type= interact (note that spaces are important) 3. sc start rootcmd 3. The new command prompt window is running under the LocalService account. Run regedit.exe in the newly-created command prompt window and delete the service keys. Each time you run the rootcmd service will yield a new command prompt running as LocalService. Danger, Will Robinson! Handy in some circumstances though. Note that apparently the command prompt only appears on the local console - it will not show up in a remote desktop session.

This is a complete guess, but Daemon Tools installs what I think is an old version of SPD (or SPTD?) drivers. If Daemon Tools left it behind, I guess you're either stuck with an old version, or you can update to the latest version here: http://www.duplexsecure.com/downloads/ If it doesn't help, maybe uninstalling the updated version will! I've got the above installed due to Daemon Tools's SPD affecting Eact Audio Copy, and it's worked fine for me for several months.

Quick answer: no.Longer answer: No. Check your drivers are up to date. A quick "up to date OR not up to date" method is to use the free scan of driveragent.com. Sometimes the drivers provided by the motherboard manufacturer aren't the latest ones available - sometimes it's better to go to the maker of the individual chips or chipset.

Use Process Monitor and set up a filter for "nod" - look for entries where the Result column says NAME NOT FOUND or PATH NOT FOUND. Another thing is to see if the NOD32 kernel driver is installed and set to run automatically - get ServiWin for this. Remember it's the DRIVER that you're looking for, not the service.

Before we go any further...... What you are describing is a modem which connects to a regular dial-up telephone network. It cannot connect to your LAN. I have seen before inside laptops a custom card which has both a modem and ethernet interface on it - is this the kind in yours?

http://www.ubcd4win.com/ Microsoft has their own bootable WinPE recovery CD: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/...prise/dart.mspx 30-day eval: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details...;displaylang=en

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrite_bead

If it's that bad, there are VPN providers. It would basically be like having a totally different network connection, only some things wouldn't work that are specific to your ISP - i.e. your outgoing SMTP relay likely wouldn't work unless it uses authentication. There will also be a latency & speed hit. One such provider is https://www.relakks.com/ They're based in Sweden. They charge 5 EUR or $6.80 USD per month. I haven't tried them myself. You could use web proxies, but a) they might only work with configurable software and B) free ones might be very unreliable. You could tunnel out to a shell account, but the same problems as above might occur. Other people might have other stuff to add, or I might have forgotten stuff.

In my downloaded unmodified zipped self-extracting copy of the XP SP2 network install file (WindowsXP-KB835935-SP2-ENU.exe) the last "Modified" date is 4 August 2004 at 02:07am. I don't know what timezone that will be - maybe the time in Redmond, WA? That would be PDT, or -0700 UTC. A very accurate release date/time can be found in the last-modified header when you retrieve the SP2 file:

If your router supports VLANs, you can limit communication between ports. Segmenting your network, if you like. It may be better than a software solution depending on whether you want to limit all communication or not.

I always use Seagate. I use a ST3300622AS (7200.9 series) as my main HD, and have 3 of the same as cloned backups (I rotate weekly) and a further three ST3300831AS (7200.8 series) as backups in case any of the others fail or I ever need a drive for another PC. They have a 5 year warranty. A guy on usenet who repairs drives for a living (he's called Odie Ferrous if you want to google-groups him) *used to* rate Seagate drives as the among the most reliable. He used to use Seagates himself - dunno if he still does. His opinions change. Below are quotes, in ascending date order, from usenet. I've bolded the main bits if you want to skim-read. From a post in October 2004: From 16 December 2004: From 27 January this year: From 23 March this year: From 5 April this year: From 25 April this year: From 8 June this year:

All I can think of is.... Lend him a spare/your PSU to try. Try resetting the BIOS. The motherboard should have a reset jumper. See manual for details. Is there a chance something (CPU?) has become dislodged?

Backup drive if necessary. May be useful to backup all the drivers with something like Driver Genius from http://www.driver-soft.com/ Extract HD from laptop & connect it to another PC - you could use a 2.5" enclosure assuming the connectors are standard. Create two partitions - first the main big partition to install Windows to, and another 1GB(?) or so (FAT32) to hold the Windows installation CD. Copy Windows CD (or just the i386 directory) to the second smaller partition. Boot with suitable boot floppy from http://www.bootdisk.com/ From the i386 directory, run "winnt". http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307848

Check temperatures with SpeedFan: http://www.almico.com Check for anything loose inside your case. Check for bulging capacitors - the tops and sides of them should be perfectly flat. Disable automatic restart on BSODs - control panel->system->advanced tab->bottom settings->untick automatically restart.

Simple? USB-to-SD Card adapter. Flip the tiny "read only" switch on the SD card. Some USB drives have a read-only switch, i.e. these Hardcore? Forensics-grade write blocker: http://www.tableau.com/index.php?pageid=docs&doc=t8

If one of the drives is made by either Maxtor or Seagate, you should be able to use Seagate DiscWizard (licenced by Acronis) for free, to clone your drive to the new one. This could be done either with the two drives attached to a different computer (either internally or with enclosures), or from the PC of the drive you want to clone. http://www.seagate.com/support/discwizard/...ardSetup.en.exe

If NOD is detecting lots of stuff, something is wrong. NOD should only detect stuff if, say, you browse to a web site which tries to infect you, or if you download an infected torrent. What is NOD saying that you might be infected with? Stuff like torrents from the big places like Pirate Bay or Mininova are frequently infested with malware and viruses. If you insist on downloading stuff from there, you must check files with multiple virus scanners. I use NOD32, Dr.Web, and AVG Free to scan anything I think has the potential to be dodgy. Another alternative is one of these free online scanners which use many different scanning programs, but can only handle one file at a time: http://scanner.virus.org/ http://virusscan.jotti.org/ http://www.virustotal.com/

I don't, off hand, know of freeware to do this, but there probably is some. First, go back to your local "computer whizz" and give him three good slaps to the face. US Federal law was recently enacted that has made it completely legal to do this to local computer whizzes who do not back up data before doing something so drastic as a full system reload. Next, find someone else (or use the same computer whizz if you're feeling adventurous!) and run Zero Assumption Recovery ( http://www.z-a-recovery.com/info_zar32.htm ) on the drive. Obviously, this should be done while it is in an external enclosure. The evaluation version of ZAR should be able to tell you which, if any, of your files are recoverable. ZAR can, apparently, recover up to four directories in freeware mode. Although you may be able to run ZAR on your PC yourself, this is not recommended - you would need another drive (maybe a USB thumb drive) to save recovered files to. ZAR should be run on another PC with the drive in an external enclosure. Other people might have their own undelete program recommendations.

If you can find nothing else that fixes this.... 1. Make byte-by-byte copy of drive. Can be a Ghost image (use its forensics mode) or maybe force Acronis True Image to do byte-by-byte copying. 2. Delete all the partitions! Scary, huh? But it's okay, since it's all backed up, right? 3. Use something like Acronis® Disk Director. I have previously used Acronis Recovery Expert to do this, which I think has been superceded by Disk Director. ADD should be able to scan the disk and re-create all your partitions. That's it. Yay. Finished.

I have no idea whether this will do anything, but you could try installing this: http://www.duplexsecure.com/downloads/ I remember reading something about Daemon Tools using an old version or something. I don't think it will do any harm installing & uninstalling it if it doesn't help you at all.

Pfft. I wouldn't trust that at all!! Use this - completely free. With this, the password you type is not the password sent to the web sites. PwdHash

There are hiding apps, but if you want to keep your files private, use TrueCrypt. If your computer is used by people who have the opportunity/curiosity/motive to actively seek out your private stuff, be sure to check for software & hardware keyloggers each time you use the computer. If anyone does try to use a keylogger, use of a keyfile in TrueCrypt would help, unless they also used screen-capturing software.