PC_LOAD_LETTER

not a shady subject AFAIK but it has been covered several times here. the most informative topic on the subject is prolly this one. http://www.msfn.org/board/Tutorial-Clean-W...ed-t102095.html

you can do a start->type 'rsop.msc' ->Enter to see same basic interface as gpedit.msc but it only show policies that are in place. its useful for finding a policy buried 3 layers deep in gpedit

? (not a cop/pig joke a swear)

honestly, i liked it better when they just disabled the hacks and made recovering the system harder (was funnier that way) but i guess this is good news for those that have to cleanup after the counterfeiters. http://blogs.msdn.com/wga/archive/2008/02/...-vista-sp1.aspx

if you have Office 2007 you can create a workspace in Groove that allows for messaging, file/calendar sharing etc and its all pretty secure (much more secure than yahoo)

ok first off, realmedia is crap. always has been. realplayer is one of the most bloated annoying pile of advertisement ever to be created. (its seriously worse than some spyware) Im sorry but it had to be said. I can almost guarantee the reason why WMP wont play Real is a legal reason. Reals entire business model involves people buying and using their player. Real Alternative hasnt been sued into oblivion because they arent making money off of Real and any case Real could bring would have to prove loss of revenue as a result of RA and real has very little to gain by suing RA. If MS integrated Real support without permission, it would prolly be the best thing that ever happened to Real because they could probably sue the heck out of MS.

Why purchase a HD-DVD player when it doesn't have any future as it seems? Toshiba has said to stop with HD-DVD. You could better spend your money on a Blue-Ray player if you want high definition quality. Maybe he likes rummaging through the 5$ DVD bin at wal-mart for cheap DVDs? Thatll be the only place where you can HD-DVDs soon (that and the 1 video store in every town that still carries BETA and Laserdiscs for rent) crap. I just realized its only a matter of time until i have to come 'fix' a family members dvd player because it wont play their brand new 'dvd' they bought from the 5$ bin.

well assuming the original purchaser only installed and activated 1 time and you have activated twice that still only put you at 3 activations (2 of which have identical hardware) so its not really that surprising that you havent been classified as non genuine. WGA doesnt have the hair trigger that the slashdot community thinks it does. WGA will occasionally prevent casual piracy but thats not its primary focus.

thats a possibility (the kms headaches) ive just been using MAK keys on machines that arent on domain and machines that are on domain are all permanently fixed so if they saw 180 days off the network, theyve prolly been stolen anyways. either way dealing with activation every 180 days > cracking windows and dealing with broken windows at who knows what interval but yeah id say backup your reg if you can do it reliably on Vista but if your reinstalling so frequently to set of a 20 install limit, something ain't right.

Directsound is no longer hardware accelerated as it was on XP so stuff like EAX (in hardware) no longer works but OpenAL is supposed to work and cards cards like ASUS Xonar supposedly do hardware accelerated audio. but i think it would be much easier to just get a faster CPU than it would be to add in a card to handle your audio. BTW: 11 svchosts here (Vista Business -ICS, Offline Files, ReadyBoost, R&R Access, Security Center, Tablet Input, Defender, Firewall services disabled)

actually it was created for MCE http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details...;displaylang=en one could also argue that it is not in beta because it is currently in RC and will only become beta again if problems occur with the RC version but that might be a little nitpicky.

Please do not dupe post. http://www.msfn.org/board/Windows-XP-Servi...-3-t112718.html

you should probably get that keyboard fixed first. then you describe to us what problem it is that you are having.

um yeah because activation cracks are a 'set it and forget it' type of technology. If you apply a crack and get your serial blacklisted a call to MS isnt gonna fix it. If you reinstall often you need to: 1. See if your school provides Vista through an MCA agreement which is a VLK version which are much less likely to have activation issues from hardware changes/reinstalls. 2. If that option is not available, there are ways to backup your activation info (at least there was in XP) though i havent had the need to in Vista Whatever you choose, please do not discuss cracking software anymore. that sort of stuff is frowned upon here.

OEM Keys are not transferable

Microsoft doesn't support 9x anymore either. The users of 9x forum rarely care what supported and what inst. Its more about what works and what doesnt.

yeah ill toss in another vote for linksys. linksys = owned by cisco and cisco is awesome. plus theres always http://www.linksystocisco.com/ if you outgrow your Linksys

this part should be obvious but changing your steam account(s) password(s) should have been your first step. Kudos to you if you already did but if not you should prolly do that now (if you still can)

http://www.dumeter.com/ can do that i think. you might also look into a custom firmware for your router/access point. http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato on my WRT54g will let me save bandwidth logs which i could probably split into wired/wireless if i had to (it has daily/weekly logs but they are for all PCs)

you can try http://www.recuva.com/ but ive never used it when the whole drive has been formatted and ive only used it on NTFS partitions http://runtime.org/products.htm has some non freeware that might help why are you running FAT32 anyways? when you reinstall, you should go with NTFS unless your dual booting to an OS that wont do NTFS

Iceman, I updated your list with pricing info. If you want, just add this to your original post and snip it from this post. Disk Imaging Products: R-Drive - http://www.drive-image.com/ - $44.95 - 15 day trial Acronis TrueImage - http://www.acronis.com/enterprise/products/choose-trueimage/ - $79.99-$999.99 - Trial available with registration Symantec Norton Ghost - http://www.symantec.com/smb/products/overv...&pvid=ghost - $39.20+ - Trial available DriveImage XML - http://www.runtime.org/dixml.htm - 'Currently Free' SelfImage - http://selfimage.excelcia.org/ - Free - GNU GPL NFGDump - http://sourceforge.net/projects/nfgdump/ - Free - GNU GPL PartImage - http://www.partimage.org/Main_Page - Free - GNU GPL Ping (Partimage is not Ghost) (same as Partimage?) - http://ping.windowsdream.com/ - Free - GNU GPL imageIT - http://www.synergix.com/v1/imageit.htm - free for up to 3 restores - $195 for full version Frisbee - http://www.cs.utah.edu/flux/papers/frisbee...nix03-base.html - Free - GNU GPL Drive Snapshot - http://www.drivesnapshot.de/en/ - EUR 39 - EUR 99 - 30 day trial Image for Dos - http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/image.html - Starting at 10$ each Full Pricing - 30 day trial Image for Windows - http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/imagew.html - Starting at 10$ each Full Pricing Info - 30 day trial ImageX - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details...;DisplayLang=en - Free with genuine Windows O&O Diskimage 2 - http://www.oo-software.com/home/en/products/oodiskimage/ - $44.95 Single, $159 for 5 - Full Pricing - Trial available with registration DuBaron DiskImage - http://dubaron.com/diskimage/ - Price Unknown - Limited free version available DrvImagerXp - http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Back-U...vImagerXP.shtml (developer site appears to be defunct) - Free - Unknown License Partition Saving - http://www.partition-saving.com/ - Free? g4u - http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/ - Free - BSD license dsfok - http://members.ozemail.com.au/~nulifetv/fr...freeware/#dsfok - Free - Custom License Perfect Image - http://shop.avanquest.com/uk/prod.php?pid=...AQ_UK_AD_AQHOME - £39.99 - No Trial Available Paragon Hard disk manager - http://www.paragon-software.com/hdm/home/personal/ - $49.95 - 30 day trial Paragon Deployment Manager - http://www.deployment-manager.com/ - $524.75 for 5 deploys - Evaluation available with registration Paragon Drive Backup - http://www.drive-backup.com/home/personal/- $29.95 - 30 day trial available 7tools Partition Imager - http://www.7tools.de/pi/index.htm- $39.95 - 30 day trial available Dfsee - http://www.dfsee.com/dfsee/ - Starting at € 49 - Trial available Active Disk Image - http://www.disk-image.net/drive-image.htm Starting at 39.00 - 21 day trial available Desktop Authority Image Center - http://www.scriptlogic.com/products/deskto...ty/imagecenter/ - $15.45 for 10 PCs (10 Minimum) - 5 PC 30 day Trial Clonezilla - http://clonezilla.sourceforge.net/ - Free - GNU GPL? WinImage - http://www.winimage.com/ - $30.00-60.00 - 30 day trial available CloneGenius- http://www.clonegenius.com/ - $24.95/39.95 Disk Cloning Products: Ontrack DiskManager (OEM versions supplied with drives) - http://www.ontrack.com/diskmanager/ - $59.95 - No trial WinDD - http://sourceforge.net/projects/windd/ - Free - GNU GPL HDClone - http://www.miray.de/products/sat.hdclone.html - Starting at 19.90 € - Free Edition available XXCopy - http://www.xxcopy.com/index.htm - Free version available. Starting at $40 for pro - 60 day pro trial available with registration clone maxx - http://www.pcinspector.de/clone-maxx/uk/welcome.htm - Free (Sponsored) - Creative Commons license Trinity Rescue Kit - http://trinityhome.org/Home/index.php?wpid=1&front_id=12 - Free - Custom license

WOW that was such a longshot, I honestly didn't expect to be right Good call on testing his wireless router first. That at least tells us its not his own equipment causing it. from here I would try any combination of the following: Check the XP Event Log to see if you can see anything about whats crashing the system (what i should have recommended in the first place) Uninstall/Reinstall Wireless drivers (reinstall the newest ones available from the wificard/laptop manufacturer) Disable Wireless Zero Configuration(WZC) Service and use the cards utility to manage Wifi (or if using the cards utility enable the WZC service and disable the card utility) Buy all his neighbors good Wifi routers to replace their junk ones which could be causing the issue Cut all of the neighbors power to their houses and quickly enable Wifi before they figure it out and see if it BSODs Move Out?

Truth about SP1 slipstreaming: http://blogs.technet.com/kevinremde/archiv...-vista-sp1.aspx just to be clear, Its not that they are not 'allowing' anymore is that they have disabled it because at this point in time its a broken feature (due to adding the new Update Services) http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/winvista_sp1_inside.asp as for ISO availability the timetable is here: http://community.winsupersite.com/blogs/pa...ease-dates.aspx there is a download of the image here: http://www.winbeta.org/comments.php?id=14148&catid=1 but i haven't tried it so i can say if if/how that will work

What does your PKE Meter read at his house? hehe j/k only theory i have besides the ghost theory is that perhaps the laptop has built in Wifi and is set to autoconnect to an access point that is in/near his house and some problem with his Wifi software/hardware is cause a BSOD in Windows and when it was at your house you either didnt have wifi or an AP that it recognized so it didnt attempt to connect there so not BSOD. if it has a wifi card try disabling it in the BIOS wihile offsite and see if the same behavior occurs again. If the laptop doesnt have Wifi, then Im sure you can find ghostbusting equipment on ebay(they have everything else)

i just quickly searched for all those and found they are associated with spyware the legit vistadrive is stored in %windir%\Resources from what ive seen (never used it) after looking some more mmm.exe may be related to Kelsenellenelvian stuff wallchan may be legit as well not i couldnt find any credible source for it if autorun.exe is run from a cd, i've rarely seen them copy themselves to the hard disk (U3 pen drives that emulate a cd drive will however) explorer.exe is NOT safe. the real explorer.exe (taskbar, start menu,etc) resides in c:\windows not c:\windows\updater any way you look at it, terminating all the processes i listed will not harm your system. if you remove the 'O4 - HKLM\..\Run' entries in hijackthis! it will prevent them from running at system start but rerunning/reinstalling them will fix that issue definatly kill autorun.exe and the explorer.exe on the updater folder also, the thing i thought i had included in my above post was if you see tha process in icesword in red text, that means that process is hidden by a rootkit (not a biggie though cause icesword can terminate it)