CharlotteTheHarlot

There is some related discussion presently occuring in this thead: Win98 vulnerability?. Since Multibooter was asking about previous versions of Autoruns I thought I would inventory what I had and report back here. These are unmodified distros ... AUTORUNS EXE .... 40,960 ... 09-29-00 .... 5:46p ... Autoruns.exe_0120 AUTORUNS EXE .... 65,536 ... 12-28-02 .... 4:41p ... Autoruns.exe_0201 AUTORUNS EXE .... 81,920 ... 01-08-03 .... 6:36p ... Autoruns.exe_0203 AUTORUNS EXE ... 110,592 ... 10-24-03 .... 9:41a ... Autoruns.exe_0302 AUTORUNS EXE ... 114,688 ... 04-07-04 .... 7:36a ... Autoruns.exe_0403 AUTORUNS EXE ... 118,784 ... 05-14-04 ... 10:45a ... Autoruns.exe_0411 [color="#FF0000"]<-- Crashes Win9x![/color] AUTORUNS EXE ... 135,168 ... 06-19-04 .... 1:13p ... Autoruns.exe_0431 AUTORUNS EXE ... 135,168 ... 06-26-04 ... 11:51a ... Autoruns.exe_0432 AUTORUNS EXE ... 155,648 ... 08-24-04 .... 3:07p ... Autoruns.exe_0500 AUTORUNS EXE ... 172,032 ... 11-12-04 ... 12:48p ... Autoruns.exe_0600 AUTORUNS EXE ... 172,032 ... 12-20-04 .... 3:24p ... Autoruns.exe_0610 AUTORUNS EXE ... 181,776 ... 03-02-05 ... 10:26a ... Autoruns.exe_0700 AUTORUNS EXE ... 218,640 ... 06-16-05 .... 5:00p ... Autoruns.exe_0800 AUTORUNS EXE ... 243,216 ... 07-21-05 .... 4:13p ... Autoruns.exe_0812 AUTORUNS EXE ... 247,312 ... 07-27-05 .... 9:15a ... Autoruns.exe_0813 AUTORUNS EXE ... 316,944 ... 10-05-05 .... 5:49p ... Autoruns.exe_0821 AUTORUNS EXE ... 337,424 ... 10-28-05 ... 12:44p ... Autoruns.exe_0831 AUTORUNS EXE ... 345,616 ... 12-07-05 .... 4:51p ... Autoruns.exe_0843 AUTORUNS EXE ... 348,160 ... 03-08-06 .... 5:03p ... Autoruns.exe_0850 AUTORUNS EXE ... 352,256 ... 03-30-06 .... 1:49p ... Autoruns.exe_0851 AUTORUNS EXE ... 398,912 ... 06-22-06 ... 12:39p ... Autoruns.exe_0852 AUTORUNS EXE ... 398,912 ... 07-10-06 .... 2:22p ... Autoruns.exe_0853 AUTORUNS EXE ... 621,368 ... 11-01-06 .... 1:07p ... Autoruns.exe_0854 AUTORUNS EXE ... 529,792 ... 01-18-07 .... 3:31p ... Autoruns.exe_0860 AUTORUNS EXE ... 529,792 ... 01-22-07 .... 1:11p ... Autoruns.exe_0861 AUTORUNS EXE ... 542,080 ... 07-09-07 ... 11:23a ... Autoruns.exe_0870 AUTORUNS EXE ... 542,080 ... 07-24-07 .... 3:58p ... Autoruns.exe_0871 AUTORUNS EXE ... 546,176 ... 08-16-07 .... 9:43a ... Autoruns.exe_0872 AUTORUNS EXE ... 546,176 ... 08-19-07 .... 8:40p ... Autoruns.exe_0873 AUTORUNS EXE ... 594,984 ... 12-14-07 .... 1:55p ... Autoruns.exe_0900 AUTORUNS EXE ... 599,080 ... 01-03-08 ... 10:40a ... Autoruns.exe_0901 AUTORUNS EXE ... 599,080 ... 01-09-08 .... 3:32p ... Autoruns.exe_0902 AUTORUNS EXE ... 603,176 ... 01-31-08 .... 5:23p ... Autoruns.exe_0910 AUTORUNS EXE ... 603,176 ... 02-06-08 ... 10:38a ... Autoruns.exe_0911 AUTORUNS EXE ... 603,176 ... 02-07-08 .... 9:30a ... Autoruns.exe_0912 AUTORUNS EXE ... 603,176 ... 02-25-08 ... 12:44p ... Autoruns.exe_0913 [b][color="#FF0000"]<-- Last Win9x[/color][/b] AUTORUNS EXE ... 622,120 ... 05-09-08 .... 1:56p ... Autoruns.exe_0920 AUTORUNS EXE ... 622,632 ... 05-12-08 .... 4:31p ... Autoruns.exe_0921 AUTORUNS EXE ... 645,160 ... 07-15-08 .... 4:39p ... Autoruns.exe_0930 AUTORUNS EXE ... 645,672 ... 07-21-08 .... 9:40a ... Autoruns.exe_0931 AUTORUNS EXE ... 645,672 ... 07-24-08 ... 10:00a ... Autoruns.exe_0932 AUTORUNS EXE ... 646,184 ... 08-21-08 .... 9:30a ... Autoruns.exe_0933 AUTORUNS EXE ... 646,184 ... 08-29-08 ... 10:32a ... Autoruns.exe_0934 AUTORUNS EXE ... 644,976 ... 10-15-08 .... 9:25a ... Autoruns.exe_0935 AUTORUNS EXE ... 645,488 ... 12-10-08 .... 2:40p ... Autoruns.exe_0936 AUTORUNS EXE ... 647,024 ... 12-17-08 .... 9:11p ... Autoruns.exe_0937 AUTORUNS EXE ... 647,024 ... 01-09-09 .... 9:12a ... Autoruns.exe_0938 AUTORUNS EXE ... 647,552 ... 02-03-09 ... 10:32a ... Autoruns.exe_0939 AUTORUNS EXE ... 648,064 ... 03-27-09 .... 9:24a ... Autoruns.exe_0940 AUTORUNS EXE ... 648,064 ... 04-02-09 .... 4:47p ... Autoruns.exe_0941 Please note that the version number in that list appears appended to the LFN after an underscore, with a leading zero. So Autoruns.exe_0941 obviously means Autoruns v9.41. I have not been able to locate any binaries between v9.13 (last Win9x) and v9.21. As mentioned in the top post and more recently by Queue, there may be some hope in manually patching some of these using a tool by SteelBytes. I have not had the time lately but will endeavor to at some point. NOTE: If any mods are reading this perhaps you might comment on the ethicality of documenting here the results of patching System Internals utilities (see my concerns in the top post). I'm guessing it will be ok since other Microsoft files are commonly patched and discussed (for example UXTHEME). But it can't hurt to ask anyway. Thanks! -=[CTH]=- EDIT: found a few more versions and added them to the list.

Thanks Tihiy. I downloaded v9.41 from http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinte...s/bb963902.aspx but under plain-vanilla Win98SE its program window doesn't appear on the screen, even if the Task manager shows Autoruns. Instead, it tries to call home to Microsoft and in the process it attempts to hang my old Tiny firewall.What could be the last/best version which works under plain-vanilla Win98SE? Archiving this type of information in the following thread: System Internals Utilities on Win9x As whatever420 stated: v9.13 works. Beware of testing more recent versions on Win9x. Besides not actually closing when you exit, they can cause some ugly side effects to USB peripherals like keyboards. I would not attempt this with flashdrives or USB harddrives attached!

Happy 10th Birthday for Win98se. That's 50 in cat years, 70 for dogs and something like 100 for Microsoft Operating Systems. Hard to believe that decades pass by this quickly. I still have working hard drives loaded with these memorable dates ... 10/31/1990 3/10/1992 7/11/1995 8/24/1996 5/11/1998 4/23/1999 6/8/2000 - That last one is, well, less important - We should try to get back to this thread once a year into the future. If the forum still exists I'm betting 15 is very possible. Do I hear 20?

UPDATE TO POST #1 The top post has been re-written to describe the current ZIP package suite (downloaded on 2009-04-08). Win9x fans will notice that three more utilities no longer operate. -CTH-

No broadband connections anywhere? Not even a college or library? How about finding another computer owner that already has the SP3 Network Installer file sitting on their PC. Then you can just copy it from them onto a flashdrive.

Find someone nearby who has a broadband connection, or go to a school or library. Download the file known as WinXP SP3 Network Install. Copy it to a Flashdrive. Bring the Flashdrive home, insert it in your PC. Copy the file to your desktop. Remove the Flashdrive. Reboot. Run the file from your desktop,.

Ahh ... capisco paesano ... didn't think of that ... (Score:5, Insightful) That's a good thread there. Have you seen any discussions where someone has installed and used MSKB 955704 on XP yet?

Thanks for that! Awesome find James_A Note the hype ... The exFAT file system incorporates several improvements over FAT32. However, it keeps the simplicity of FAT-based file systems. These improvements include the following key [b]advances[/b]: * Support for very large files and storage devices [color="#FF0000"]<----- obviously[/color] * Support for performance improvements [color="#FF0000"]<---- I doubt it[/color] * Support for extensibility features for future innovation [color="#FF0000"]<---- holding breath[/color] * Added compatibility for flash media [color="#FF0000"]<---- ummm?[/color] @extremepilot ... sorry about the digression. You aren't trying to copy a file >4GB onto a FAT 16/32 formatted Flashdrive are you? NTFS is the quick answer which you can already do. What James_A has discovered is that we can now add exFAT (aka FAT64) to WinXP (Vista already has the ability) which will hopefully mean a selection of NTFS or exFAT when formatting these things. If you go to that link he provided you can grab the updater and this problem will be solved for you. You will have to reformat the Flashdrive naturally, and I will go out on a limb to say that you cannot just stick the FAT64 Flashdrive into any WinXP computer that does not have the exFAT update.

These are very tough to nail down. I have not yet seen a box with Conflicker, but I can tell you what I might do. To perform this it would be helpful to have the both the System and the same Flashdrive that transmitted it. It also really helps to keep a collection of harddrives sitting around and stick one in, clone the original and play with the copy. * First I would simulate Conflicker on the Flashdrive by creating the Autorun.inf and \Recycler. Or if I wanted to be exact in my testing, I would load the Flashdrive with the real virus files which should be easily found now at the multitude of links discussing this outbreak. Remove the Flashdrive. Try to get the PC as it likely was at the time of infection, antivirus on if it was running, same services, same startup items, etc. * Get a full filelist of the harddrive. Get a full list of ADS on the harddrive. Export the entire Registry. * Insert the Flashdrive. Initiate the autorun if the system does not do it automatically. Safely remove the hardware. * Get a full filelist of the harddrive. Get a full list of ADS on the harddrive. Export the entire Registry. * Windiff before/after each of the three sets of snapshots. You will now have clues to every file that is altered under such an action. The directory list within folders will be mostly consecutive. Files normally appear in the order they arrived in a folder. Of course any defrag or the use of any sorting switches with DIR will disturb this. Such clues will hopefully allow you to pinpoint a common file date/time (on the 'before' snapshot naturally) that specifies the problem. This date/time can now be used in the Event Viewer and will help search for other files that may be related (e.g., the user was looking at this webpage just before, and was playing solitaire right after, ... etc). Once you get the hang of it will make sense. You will also have a few dozen registry changes including antivirus activity, USB insertion/removal keys, Windows Events, and Shell housekeeping (including MUI/Roaming/MRU items). These are all useful because now you would be able to search above these new 'markers' for previous entries (which are normally consecutive, and stay in order unless manually deleted). Once you get the hang of it will make sense. As mentioned, there is of course the Event Viewer which might offer insight to the Disk Indexings that have taken place and perhaps Security Audits that look abnormal. IMHO, the Event Viewer, while a fabulous idea in theory, rarely lives up to expectations. Regarding permissions, these forensics would be very simple if there was a log entry EVERY TIME that an ACL was altered (be it McAfee, Norton, or Conflicker)! This has been a pet peeve of mine since Windows NT, when NTFS and ACL's were touted as the 'end all' of system security. Yeah right! They have proven to be a PITA not to the bad guys, but only to the real owner of the computer. P.S. I know you have seen the links since you are the OP there, but for others who that haven't, read this thread.

Clearly, anything that does something MUST spend some CPU to get it done. Open enough sensors and fancy graphs in Sysmon or Resource Meter or Norton and you can bring things to a crawl as you head-butt into the Law of Diminishing Returns. This can become a classic case of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle Observer Effect. My own feeling about this is that there is something silly about using the CPU to measure CPU usage . Unfortunately there is nothing we can do about it until Intel places a data collection tap on the Processor for external hardware to monitor (think of the Digital Doc gadgets that sit in a drive bay connected to fans/thermometers which displays the data on its own tiny LCD screen at no CPU cost). In theory you should not worry about 100% usage (keeping in mind it is not really 100%, more later), because that would mean the CPU is hard at work doing something presumably useful. If it is 100% hard at work doing nothing, well, it is time to look around and find what malware, or defective driver or mis-coded application is running. As for Opera burning up the CPU cycles, minimized or not, what webpage is it looking at? Close all the webpages (no tabs) and check its usage. The browser itself downloading 50 files simultaneously wouldn't use 100% CPU, but some ridiculous Flash or Java element might try. Also, thanks to the insane tendency to rely on Javascript code for everything web related, crappy scripting could easily gobble up a sizeable piece of the CPU alloted to Opera, but it should not drag the system itself down (more later). Of course Windows can and does Multitask. It is only time-slicing the CPU availability between all the tasks that it is capable of delegating. It is possible that a task or process can go awry and not play well with others since any programmer can create an endless loop even in a batch file. It is also possible to sabotage the CPU scheduling performed by Windows if one alters priorities for applications and forgets they did it. As mentioned above, if someone set Opera.exe to some high priority it may open the door for some webpage element to eat up more CPU than they normally could. An infinite variety of scenarios exist when you consider the possibilities of raising some apps priority while lowering others. I favor keeping them all at normal, which in theory leaves Windows in charge and should mitigate most runaway scenarios. With respect to the 100% displayed in a System Monitor, it is easy to over-emphasize the importance of the arbitrary units a programmer selects when displaying data output, be it a graph or a percentage indicator. If you ever programmed a progress bar control (or just played around in Excel charting or graphing data) you'll see that you can make it fast/slow or do anything (what do they say about statistics again?). Granularity is the game here. I like to think of Processor Usage charting as a relativistic endeavor in that it can only quantify the CPU as perceived from its narrow perspective. A good question to ponder is this: when is the CPU(s) ever close to doing nothing? On modern motherboards the answer is practically never (disregarding power off, lockups, HALT instructions and suspend/hibernate!). Consider the Health features in most BIOS. There we see a set of data points like temperature and fan speed being updated in realtime. The CPU is busy processing routines polling sensors, performing math, issuing screen writes (or updating video buffers) so that we can have a nice listing of degrees centigrade/farenheit and RPM etc. In reality the CPU is actually busy all the way from power on, through all the BIOS, up to and way beyond that point in time where it seeks a boot loader for an OS. Decades ago, we would at this point in the bootstrap get dropped into an A:\ or C:\ prompt in what we now call single DOS mode. It was here that a powered-up CPU was probably as close to zero percent usage as is possible. But what is the theoretical 0 % CPU usage nowadays under the Windows GUI? Certainly the more recent the version of Windows is, the more tasks are being executed all the time. Since Windows is really doing nothing more than polling for, sending and processing messages one can deduce that the CPU must always busy. All this activity must be pre-factored into the Zero % baseline of your favorite Task Manager (actually it would need to include all CPU processing below Windows and its GUI and message handling plus all low level BIOS functions like alarms and hardware support). The remaining CPU bandwidth after all of these considerations is what is truly available to me and you, and is hopefully being charted in a system monitor. (When Win95 gold came out, I first installed it on a 66 MHz i486 and ran all kinds of Watches, API monitors, Spy++, Debuggers, Snipers and Uber Hacking utilities to see the enormous amount of things occuring in realtime. That CPU was an order of magnitude slower than anything sold today. Plus, since then Windows has grown larger in every direction. Suffice it to say, it is very busy in there. You can get a small taste of this by running System Internals ProcMon on WinXP and above, and watch it attempt to record countless very high level events. My guess is that ProcMon can only access a very small fraction of the work done from the CPU's much lower-level point of view.) IMHO, system monitors have one practical purpose, and that is relative comparison. 100% divided among some 30 items in TM lets us evaluate those items with respect to each other. Any given item will typically hover around the same number from session to session. If the magic number you are used to is 76%, and at some later date you see something different, it just might be worth looking into (of course this presumes that the same tool is used in both instances, it is not scientific to compare Task Manager to Norton or whatever). Such readings may indicate that a problem is afoot. You may very well have something radically mis-configured or some malware or a defective driver. You should take the time to record the figures you see in there to post for others to scan over. Perhaps someone will notice something!

Excellent links, thanks. That last article in the references, Social Engineering Autoplay and Windows 7 perfectly illustrates with pictures the mile-wide hole that still exists in Windows to this day! If Windows 7 ships like this it can only lead to more criticism, very accurately stating that Windows Vista and 7 are mere fluff piled onto a ridiculously insecure code base. No more garbage about Vista and 7 being rebuilt from the ground up. Autorun came to us with Win95 gold way back in mid-1995. The damage that has entered millions of computers through this path is incalculable. And to really look at its origins, one must simply remember Autoexec.bat on floppies in drives during bootup which at least dates to DOS 2. Still, there is one thing that is ignored in those articles about these registry patches to disable Autorun/Autoplay. If it is turned off from toggling a few characters in the registry, it can also be simply restored. Microsoft should remove it at a low level by patching WFP protected system files and removing any trace of the functions. At the very least code should be blocked from executing on removeable drives, perhaps even on network drives on all except clearly designated network client systems. Such a change should implemented at a very low level which is not easy to reverse.

Needless to say this flashdrive is formatted as NTFS of course. "Optimize for Performance" (or Write Caching), I would avoid it. It is trouble waiting to happen IMHO. If you want to yank it out without worry you should do the Safely Remove Hardware process. When you do that from the tray icon, the USB device should not be able to Stop or progress to the "You can now safely remove ..." with any pending writes, (well, in theory anyway). Fortunately there is a supplemental utility to fill this gap: Sync from System Internals (it is a tiny little Command Line console utility, ~40KB). By default, when executed from a shortcut it flushes pending writes held for all attached hard drives ... Sync.exe Add the -r parameter and it flushes removeable disks ... Sync.exe -r Unfortunately that includes floppy drives. To avoid that absolutely intolerable delay (spin up and seek even on an empty drive!) you can add drive letters which then, Sync will only flush ... Sync.exe -r J: Note: I use J: as an exmple. There is also a -e Eject parameter, but it does not trigger the Safely Remove Hardware process like you might expect. Mark's documentation (at that link) is a little light. My shortcut for flashdrives is like this ... Sync.exe -r -e J: Now, in theory, even with Write Caching enabled, you should be able to Sync the removeable (flush any pending writes), and then yank out the drive bypassing the Safely Remove. That is theory! However in the real world, a bit of a gamble. So, what I do is both, Sync.exe first and then the Safely Remove. It is a total of five or six clicks and maybe ten seconds elapsed time. Compare that to the alternative of losing data and reformatting an 8 GB or larger flash drive, its a no-brainer.

Going on instinct here: it smells like the MSIE vs. PNG problem once again. I may have missed it in your post, but did you try it with a BMP file (and maybe a JPG). Both of these filetypes should be safe from Microsoft MSIE/Explorer library security fixes (bitmaps cannot be infected, and blocking JPG images would break the whole internet). Also, about that URL (=\Folder Settings\UltimateStart.png), assuming that Folder Settings is a folder directly under the root, I believe that should either have the leading dot (=.\Folder Settings\UltimateStart.png) or written without the leading backslash (=Folder Settings\UltimateStart.png). I would try both to be sure since it only takes a few seconds. I'm not saying you are wrong (god knows that Microsoft specializes in peculiarities), but it just goes against everything I've seen. To completely rule out parsing/processing errors in the INI file, why not just place the image directly in the root folder and address it as such (=UltimateStart.png) or maybe (=.\UltimateStart.png). But my money is that MSIE screwed the pooch again. BTW, what happens if you drop that PNG file right into MSIE? Note that dropping a JPG or BMP simply displays the image.

I'm with you on this one. IrfanView is nice because it does not need the file extension to know what the file is. Stick a shortcut to it in Quicklaunch and drop a file on it, if the file is an image it will display it. The ability to do screen captures, lightweight image editing, slideshows, cycle through icon libraries and extract them from any file is very useful. To the Original Poster, be aware that most good file managers (e.g., Powerdesk) have image viewers integrated into them. You may already have the ability you seek.

Yes, I see that now. Ooops Are you sure that this is the exact URL that has worked in the past? I would think a fully qualified string or at least environment variables would be needed. Perhaps you might add the C:\Documents and Settings\etc.... I would also check this with and without the Themes service running. Longshot but worth trying. Another common point of breakage with SP3 is the UXTHEME replacement crashing most MsStyles. I don't see an obvious connection to your problem but I always patch that DLL to be sure. A carefully filtered snapshot with ProcMon from System Internals should give some insight into this crash btw. I don't have time now but you may want to Google that CLSID and other info: "{BE098140-A513-11D0-A3A4-00C04FD706EC} desktop.ini Explorer Crash". EDIT: one more idea, try converting that PNG image to a BMP and altering the URL accordingly. MSIE and its associated libraries (which are way too integrated into the Shell's WebView features) tend to choke on PNG files on some systems.

Yes, just call them. You will have to describe exactly what you did (in a little more detail than you offered here btw) and they will verbally give you a code to enter. No sweat. NOTE: you should not have triggered the WPA by merely swapping out the HDD, *unless* you have made a ton of other major changes recently. Is that the case here? I am more inclined to believe the Western Digital software screwed up what is a very simple cloning procedure. An alternative would be to do the process again this time using the Seagate software (but only if the old drive is a Seagate naturally!).

I have no answer for you but I'm bumping this thread in anticipation that someone else does. You may also want to write directly to Nero and other companies though, because certainly this has come up before. If all else fails, with enough RAM / CPU horsepower you could approximate this with three instances of some burner software each with their own copied disk image (since no doubt any one file would be locked). Ugly, but it should be do-able. BTW, with three DVD burners I would plan on expecting the lights in the room to dim just a little. I am sure I have seen DVD burning cause minor sagging on the same circuit. This will also be a fairly good test of your particular power supply. But heck, that's how we learn stuff!

The very next thing I would try would be to use some 3rd party NON-Explorer based file managers to browse the same directory. Success would point to Explorer/Shell problems. Good ones to test would be Powerdesk, Tracker, XYplorer, Total Commander (WinCMD), EF Commander, WinAbility, WinNavigator, WinNC, etc. If you need links just ask. If the problem appears in these apps, there may well be a low-level driver or even a hardware problem. More likely its Explorer/Shell related and that can point in a multitude of directions from something as simple as a bad shell extension (triggered each time an explorer instance opens) to some toolbar, addin, thumbnail processor, etc. You need to post more info. Can you see other directories instead of the drive roots? What happens if you start/run and browse the directories through that dialog? Are you Admin or lower user? Have you tried logging on as another user and testing? Do you know how to check permissions on folders? There are many more questions!

I recall bumping into this a few times while shuffling Hard Drives between XP and 9x boxes. If I'm not mistaken, isn't there an INI setting for Scandisk in Win9x that reduces its sensitivity to LFN errors? Anyway, what I do is generate a complete filelist of the HDD on both systems, WinXP and Win9x (specifically 98se in my cases). The two filelists then get WinDIFF'ed to locate the incompatible filenames and then the HDD gets stuffed back into a WinXP box to manually correct them. However, since the internal DIR command output is vastly different between Win9x Command.com and WinXP Cmd.exe it wasn't a simple DIR C:\ /S /A >FileList.txt after all. I ended up using ATTRIB to get a path+name-only list and supplemented it with a couple of 3rd-party file list generators that create identical output under both OS'es (you want WinDIFF to only find real LFN differences, not output peculiarities). I cannot remember if on Win9x you can just copy the file called by its SFN and rename it to something Win9x legal. But this of course still leaves the un-deletable original and its problematic LFN. Fixing illegal LFN's on Win9x can probably be painfully accomplished by directly editing the sectors containing the Directory entries using something like Svend's Findpart or maybe Acronis Disk Editor or even Briggs DirSnoop. I just never pursued it far enough to be sure. The method described above works if you don't mind disk juggling. Anyway, I'm hoping you do locate some GUI tool that can natively edit/delete these filenames within Win9x!

As others have said, SP3 is proven stable and should be installed if only to reduce the amount of individual updates you will get anyway. Like most folks here I prefer slipstreamed SP3 as the best method, but the standalone single file so-called network install is a good secondary (links here). The third method, doing it the while online, has the most potential for problems naturally since any firewalls and antivirus suites are in their most active states. SP3 problems have arisen because of the way antivirus utilities modify the computer in order to protect it. I have been kept fairly busy correcting disasters caused by Norton and McAfee suites which to make a long story short, alter persistent ACL ownership of both registry keys and files/folders. (One famous incident is illustrated in this thread and some of the offsite links). IMHO, a live SP3 update is best done offline using the single file, with all antivirus turned as off as is possible (MsConfig or even safe-mode). It still might not work though. In really bad cases McAfee/Norton needs to be uninstalled, then their post-uninstall McAfee/Norton remover is run, then ownership still may need to be retaken through ACL editors like SUBINACL or SETACL! If SP3 does fail, clues may be found in the SVCPACK.LOG file (one of several names I have seen!). However, IME it will not tell you the exact registry key that needs to be fixed. One way to tell if you are in for such problems is if you are logged in as an Administrator but you still encounter error messages about 'you must be an Administrator to ...'. This is a clue that registry key ACL's have been altered and that installing a major software package (including but not limited to SP3) may be problematic. So to summarize, to increase chances of a flawless SP3 update you need to reduce or eliminate anything else from being run at the same time, this includes antivirus, antispyware and firewalls. Another type of problem arises when hardware/software breaks after running the SP3 update. Many times this is because the hardware/software depends upon specific versions of files that they stupidly and needlessly placed within the \Windows folder structure which were subsequently replaced during the SP3 update. I have seen this on D-Link equipment (described here). That was/is a widespread example that hopefully taught the programmers at D-Link something about common sense.

@rjisinspired: more ideas. You may have done several of these ... (1) Doublecheck Tools | Preferences | Advanced | Content | Javascript Options that nothing is checked, and then clear the User JavaScript box if a file exists. (2) Doublecheck Tools | Preferences | Advanced | Content | Manage Site Preferences that nothing is exists for MySpace or any possible related aliases. (3) Doublecheck Tools | Preferences | Advanced | Content | Blocked Content that nothing is exists for MySpace or any possible related aliases. (4) Doublecheck Tools | Preferences | Advanced | Cookies that they are accepted and also NOT being deleted at close. (5) Doublecheck Tools | Preferences | Advanced | Security | Manage Certificates and check the tabs for anything related for MySpace. That should about exhaust any Opera related blocks (anyone else please correct me!).

Utter cr@p!\\\\\\\\\\ (politically correct version : use of that product may require a certain amount of caution.) $0.00 is overpriced, it's not worth the download IMVHO. In my experience : - did not identify ANY partitions - not just NTFS ones - on an external USB disk, which however were perfectly mounted and accessible, by letters, in Windows. I gave Paragon NTFS the benefit of doubt and retried twice, wensuring the USB disk was plugged in to the system before rebooting the machine. Still no joy. - on the main (fixed) disk : failed to create a new NTFS inside of an extended partition, or - actually - it created one but failed to properly chain it to the parent EMBR. - generally PNTFS conflicts with Vadim Burtyanski's excellent Letter Assigner, a must if you ask me. - last but not least, while evaluating PNTFS, it crashed Windows 98 SE. I wouldn't dare use PNTFS to /read/ an existing NTFS part if by chance it succeeded to recognise it, even less so try to /write/ ! Needless to say that thing was removed from my system in less time than it took to install. Good riddance. If someone /needs/ to access NTFS partitions from Windows 9x, there are other solutions - formerly from Sysinternals' Russinovitch - that actually /work/ Just my 2 cts -- Ninho Wow, I guess this qualifies as a bad review! Is this the Paragon free Win9x NTFS read/write driver mentioned in this post and available from here??? Does anyone else have any experience with this on Win9x? I downloaded it and will eventually try it on a Win9x box but reviews such as this tell me to wait a bit. Anyone? P.S. @Ninho: any chance you could explain the testing? Specifically, I am wondering whether you tried any internal ATA drives or just the external USB? Also, how large were the drives involved? What was the Win9x RAM amount? What was the WinXP SP(?) system used to format the NTFS disk(s) and how was the format/partition done? Did you save the Win9x bootlog.txt? Just wondering. Thanks!

Well, I guess we are in hijack territory. Sorry Atmosphere XG.! You probably should start another thread for Opera 9 and MySpace, but I am not a mod here so I'll leave it as IMHO. You did not mention the most important thing: JavaScript. That would be the easy answer! If JavaScript is enabled and working, well, you should describe your internet connection (small home network, router, wifi, cable, etc). This is Win9x right? Not a limited account on WinXP? Wait, here is an idea. Check that webpage in another browser or two, MSIE for sure, and Firefox if you have it. This should narrow the problem down to the browser or something else (probably should have suggested this first ).

Yes, i believe this is dead on correct. Pretty sure that the end result is some combination of these errors (approximate wording, anyone feel free to correct or confirm them) ... ... Unable to Write to Disk in Drive X ... and later ... ... Disk in Drive X is not Formatted. Do you want to format ... Either one kinda takes the fun out of moving files around on USB flash and hard drives.

Jeez,I just realized that this thread was Opera 10 beta. Is that what you are using? If so, get over to Opera and make sure this problem is known to them while they are still in beta testing. Considering the massive size of MySpace, my guess is that this will get some attention. But they need to hear from you. However, if you are on Opera 9 (like myself), then this is definitely not an Opera problem since I just used that page you provided. Can you let us know what all EIGHT of those choices are, checked_or_unchecked, in F12? Here is what mine were set at when I checked that MySpace page ... X Enable Animated Images O Enable Sound in Web Pages X Enable Java X Enable Plug-Ins X Enable JavaScript X Enable Cookies X Send Referrer Information O Enable Proxy Servers There are other Opera settings that matter also. 3rd party influences also can block things, especially HOSTS and firewalls. To All Lurkers: if you are on Opera 9 or 10 beta, perhaps you could get that attachment above in Post#23 and save it, rename it to an HTM and then open it in an Opera tab and note whether you see the page I described in Post#24.