beats

Here's a start: Windows 7 "Keep" List, A list of everything needed to be kept for it to work.

You've got a good point there, but Microsoft sold shiploads before too, when stuff was optional. Also, the EU is not exactly happy about their practices, they got a huge fine in the EU for not making stuff optional. So there is hope still.

I'm sorry, but that sounds like fanboy talk. Without any solid arguments to back it up, like Zxian did. Many OEM's, companies and other organizations think otherwise. Heck, even Steve Balmer admitted that Vista is a 'work in progress', that a lot of customers stay with XP, and that you may be grateful that you can downgrade from Vista to XP. Edit: Enlighten me, how can something be great, and the best Windows ever, while it's still a work in progress according to Microsoft, and so massively rejected by many major companies and the like? o.O

For the record, malware gets installed from certain hosts/IP addresses. It's the same principle most addblockers use, not to mention spamfilters and the like. Some of them (ab)use certain services as well. Many of the programs in the above poll (and programs not present in it) keep their own host file that blocks malicious addresses and disable certain services. I don't need some dull program to do that for me...

No. Did you even bother to read to whole article? Let me quote: Vista's unpopularity is almost certainly one reason behind Microsoft's move. All sorts of companies and organizations have failed to embrace the operating system, even as many individuals continue to regard it with suspicion (see Microsoft's own Mojave ad campaign). I've bolded out the relevant part for you. Sorry, but your growth 'argument' just went downhill. See, not only vendors, but all sorts of companies and organizations, don't really want Vista, it's just Microsoft forcing it up onto them. Nice way to 'gain' market share. Are you familiar with the saying: You got lies, **** lies and statistics? It sure does apply here. That was not what you initially claimed. You simply stated that it doesn't work. So yes, you're using fallacious arguments. Besides, I didn't have to fiddle with power management settings when I used Fedora last time. But OTOH, I'm not an avid Linux user, for UNIX, I prefer *BSD. So what are you trying to proof? Enlighten me... But that was not the point, now was it? I wasn't the one complaining about it, I was just pointing out some remark that another poster made. Ah ok, I already figured you couldn't provide any independent and solid reviews. Again, your personal experience is not a reflection of the real world, especially since you can't back it up with hard data. Let alone peer reviews. Because you used it in one sentence with the multitasking part. Anyway, your point is still moot and you have failed to proof anything. It was nothing but a fallacious argument. Are you being forced to upgrade to every latest and greatest developer Linux kernel? It's not like stable kernels are being released every week. Besides, even then, nVidia could release faster. They can for Windows (not to mention that their Windows drivers have their fair share of problems as well), so why not for Linux? Oh, and that picture? It proofs squad. See, ATi can. I'm sorry to render your statistics useless again. And for the record, sales =! usage. For example, our company has over 15,000 clients, all new stuff comes with Vista pre-installed. First thing the deployment department does, is whipe Vista and install a Windows 2000 image (because that is our company standard still). Same applies to many other companies, like the above quoted article. But they are counted as sales and thus market share... get the picture?

At least they could make all those extra's optional again, like was the case up to Windows 2000.

No, but I used to play drums (but that option is not in the poll).

I've never been infected. Hosts files, using non-admin accounts, disabling everything that's not required (like services), setting permissions on known abused registry keys, and using non-MS browsers like Firefox of Opera (with every known mal-, spy-, whatever-ware site blocked) works wonders. Common sense, like I said.

No, just leave the prefetch* stuff alone. It's disabled by default in recent versions of CCleaner. The other stuff is save to delete. *Prefetch cleaning was based on some optimizing myth.

I've been using CCleaner - including the registry clean part - since day one on many systems. Never had a single issue with it.

Not with Microsoft's own/standard deployment stuff. However, you can do so with a commercial deployment and management tool like Altiris, but that costs some serious money...

I don't know how Dell's support is these days, but they did in the past. Can't hurt to try?

Call Dell and ask them for new media?

Because Microsoft forces it upon OEM's perhaps? Also, care to explain this? You complained about not seeing valid points, but you also make use of fallacious arguments. First, personal opinions are subjective. I don't like Windows Search at all for example (besides, it's not a Vista exclusive item so it's a bad example anyway). The fact you like it, doesn't make it so for other people. Second, maybe he does tech-support, and has to access those network settings quite often at his clients. Fact is, that it is far more hidden away than in previous versions of Windows. I'd like to see some solid and independent tests that support this bold claim. Explorer - in all Windows versions - crashed numerous times on me, what's your point? Anyway it's another fallacious argument, because application crashes have zero to do with the ability to multitask. Blaim nVidia? They are the ones that keep their sources closed.

None of the above. Simply common sense.

Try this: Windows Live Messenger 9, Tutorial and Switchless Installers. Multilanguage usage.

Thank you Elajua, for taking Shark's tutorial over.

You will find a new tutorial and switchless installers here. Ok, thank you very much. I completely missed your post.

Have you tried WinXP's powercfg.exe yet? It's a command line utility that can do a lot, and it's free (ships with the OS).

Yep, MultiSet for example. http://www.unattended-installation-software.com/ Or HP OpenView Radia (very very expensive o.o)

Add this to your Unattended section. [unattended] OemFilesPath="..\$OEM$"

WINNT.SIF must be placed in the i386 folder, are you sure you put it in there? And in your unattended section, the path to the OEM folder is missing. It should be like this: [unattended] OemFilesPath="..\$OEM$"

Can you update this, because Windows Live Messenger 2009 Final (14.0.8050.1202) has been released? Many thanks. Edit: Direct link to the off-line installer (134MB) o.o http://g.live.com/1rewlive3/EN/wlsetup-all.exe

Reinstalling XP including all my applications, drivers and settings, backups, etc. takes less than an hour. After all, that's what unattended is for. ;-) Edit: That's why it's worthwhile to invest a few hours to automate all that stuff, because it's a pain - yes, it does take a lot of time - to do it all by hand afterwards. And no, I'm not using my machines as 'glorified' Xboxes. o.o

Steve Gibson, do people still take that self proclaimed security 'expert' seriously? o_O