PC_LOAD_LETTER

My setup looks a little hacked together but it goes like this: Living room: Patton CopperLink™ Model 2158 -Linksys BEFSR41 (not using Wan port -functions as a switch only) --Port 1 is uplinked to the Patton Box --Port 2 goes to my main PC --Port 3 goes the the TV PC in the living room --Port 4 goes to a Linksys WRT54G (DDWRT) at the other end of the house in my computer room ---WRT54G Serves wifi to the laptop and is also connected to my old AMD 64 3200+ running XP (mostly a file server these days) and the old XBox (XBMC) The Patton box links into a nearby building on the campus which has a 45Mbps fiber connection. Kinda sucks that the Patton box maxes out at 12.5Mbps (never gotten over 11 that i can remember) but im not complaining cause in not paying for it.

I replied in your post. the weekends are always dead here at MSFN but thats no reason to start threads about how inactive the forum is.

google search for Missing "Open In New Tab" Context Menu in IE7. first hit that isnt your thread: http://msmvps.com/blogs/spywaresucks/archi.../24/203178.aspx

if there isnt an access panel for it on the bottom, i would try to removed the section above the keyboard. under that you will probably find 1-4 screws holding the keyboard in place. The HD is probably under the keyboard. I hope yours is in better condition than the one in the pics though. that one looks like it has had a hard life.

ok the way i see it you have 4 options: 1. throw away that Acer and buy something from a manufacturer with a working downloads site (as of this post its not working) 2. wait patiently for acer to fix their downloads site and hope they have a txtsetup.oem (floppy) driver available for XP 3. find the exact type of mass storage controller and locate the txtsetup.oem driver from another OEM or the manufacturer of the controller 4. download driverpack base and driverpack Mass storage from http://driverpacks.net/DriverPacks/ and integrate them into a new XP cd. I would go with option 4 because DPMassStorage probably has a driver for your PC in it. I would be surprised if it didnt.

http://www.ipchicken.com/ is funnier

yeah as long as you dont have stuff in folders the install will write to you should be OK (docs and set, windows, program files, etc) but i HIGHLY recommend backing up and reformatting to NTFS unless you absolutly must have a fat32 partition

Ok the question is in each of the categories above, what do you tend to favor the RTM, RC, Beta, Alpha, Pre-Alpha, etc

its just a guess but i would try chipset drivers first (Intel, Via, etc) but your board may not support 3x512 have you checked to see if all 3 show in the bios (if your bios has an area that shows the memory) if you cant find it or cant see the memory count on boot, try changing bios otions such as Full screen logo, Splash Screen and/or quick boot to disabled then look for a counter immeduiatly after boot that says XXXX RAM OK and take note of how high it counts. if it stops at 1gb then your board may not recognize the 3rd stick

on a related note: http://www.strategyinformer.com/news/865/u...-way-off-limits awesome.

IMO Microsoft was on the right track with dropping 'documents and settings' down to 'users' and getting rid of the 300 'my ' prefixes but should have kept going and changed 'program files' to 'programs' I also wish they would have added a Root:\Games as a base dir for games (they could have even cluttered it up with game explorer crap) as long as i could go to 1 folder and see what crap im not using is taking up the most space -oh wait i *CAN* do that c:\windows\winsxs

ok first off your friend needs to stop watching the bad wanna be sci-fi TV and go see a doctor -being that paranoid isnt normal. personal information being compromised by a driverpack? in my experience, 3rd party utils and addon packs have a higher success rate than microsofts own patches (well at least the addons MSFNers use ) seriously though "rolling your own" XP cds is far more secure than the other available options building from RTM media every install (huge period of vulnerability) using a prebuilt SP1,SP2,SP3 iso -even if obtained from MS -it still wont contain all patches since the previous SP and that doesnt even cover the other issues youll have with installing a plain vanilla XP better have an IDE/USB floppy hanging around and a few floppys with 'F6 drivers' on them better have NIC drivers on a CD/DVD/Pen better have plenty of free time to download software and updates -oh wait you can do that in the background while turning off Xp tour, Desktop cleanup wizard, connection wizard, disabling security center, uxtheme patching, etc sorry but just i cant believe anyone would actually be against creating a slipstreamed version of XP and would cite security as their reason not to.

for #1 id try http://findandmount.com/ before buying anything. as for #2 ill stay with the crowd and say its prolly just not assigned a drive letter

i seriously doubt its a windows issue. likely a motherboard issue. id look for an updated bios for starters then you could try updating drivers within the OS if you still have problems

chill out a little. the weekends are a little slow around here and bumping your thread every 24 hours isnt gonna get a response any faster.

yeah thats some terrible advice. its possible your just running XP home - gpedit.msc isnt included in XP home as for the hidden files issue i dont know what would cause that but im 99.9% its not a virus

that willl get the documents into the new user but will not preserve any registry settings/user prefs/etc create 2 new users: (temp and Terry) My Computer -> Right Click -> Manage -> System Tools -> Local Users and Groups -> Action -> New User. add both users to the administrators group. Logout and login as Terry (not switch user) Logout and login as temp (not switch user) My Computer -> Right Click -> Properties -> Advanced -> User Profiles -> Settings find MACHINENAME\admin. if the profile is under a couple hundred megs, proceed otherwise skip down to step 6 click it and select "Copy To..." browse to in "C:\Documents and Settings\Terry" If the profile is huge, goto c:\documents and settings\admin\... and move the large files to c:\documents and settings\terry\... before doing step 5 Log out and login as Terry. goto My Computer -> Right Click -> Properties -> Advanced -> User Profiles -> Settings and clean up the leftover profiles then My Computer -> Right Click -> Manage -> System Tools -> Local Users and Groups -> delete leftover accounts. if delete is not available, you can disable the account instead.

you can use process monitor to see what a process changes as it runs but if you wanted to see what it is capable of modifying before it is run, youre gonna need something that can decompile the software which more than likely isnt gonna be possible. i suppose if you really need to test a piece of software you could use a VM such as VMware or virtualbox in combination with process monitor.

you can boot to a vista DVD and select language->next->repair windows->command prompt to get access to a non bootable XP machine things that worked: could read/write NTFS partitions of the XP install regedit taskmgr DVD drive hot plugging a USB drive (no notification of it - had to guess the drive letter in cmd though) copy to/from hard disk/usb drive using DOS copy/xcopy things that didnt work: networking (duh) mmc explorer hijackthis! MSOffice12 (yeah i tried it) still not a huge breakthrough but kinda worth noting incase you ever catch yourself with a XP box that wont do safemode, a vista DVD and no PE type cd oh and 1 other 'DidYouKnow' type thing: the hostname used during Vista initial setup (before networking is actually installed) is "MINWINPC"

try this first http://www.utilitygeek.com/KILLCMOS-f31.html -it works almost every time for me but there are about a million ways http://www.go4expert.com/forums/showthread.php?t=114 http://www.tech-faq.com/reset-bios-password.shtml

not necessarily open source but everything on this list is free http://www.msfn.org/board/MSFN-s-Official-...ist-t70784.html but this is the only open source one i found that looks ok http://cdexos.sourceforge.net/

nah, IMO Linux is a great OS but a terrible thing to switch to out of frustration. Ive switched to redhat, Gentoo(stage1), and ubuntu and switching in frustration has always sent me bouncing back to windows again. Thats not saying that people shouldnt try Linux -im just saying they should try to replace windows with it. on a side note, windows 7 is dated for 2010 not 2009 -the gates statement has been retracted

good point. always good to update as many as possible.

i think this is your motherboard: http://global.msi.com.tw/index.php?func=do...amp;prod_no=566 so unless in mistaken, this is your audio driver: http://global.msi.com.tw/index.php?func=dr...no=2344&i=0 Note: first post was merged with a double post from another forum

in order of importance (YMMV) GPU IDE/Raid Controller(s) Chipset Sound Network/Wlan Bios/CDRom Firmware i know im leaving something out