oidicle

I'd like to know if there's a program, reg tweak that can make some windows XP system tray icons to not be displayed on the system tray, while the program is still running, kind of like a 'Boss Key'... To prevent other users of the same computer from closing the program. Any help will be greatly appreciated....

I'd like to partition my 148GB iPod so that one partition has FAT32 and the other NTFS, because it keeps complaining when I try to copy files larger than 4GB(HD Movies, etc) under FAT32.... I'd like to make a 10-20GB FAT32 partition just for the ipod software and music, and 138-128GB NTFS Partition for data and other stuff, to get rid of the FAT32 limitation. any Help will be greatly appreciated, if this is not the right place to ask please redirect me. Thanx in advance guys....

That's not the only file I use, I also use JPG and BMP files on other roots, I knew from the get go that that wasn't an issue because of that, that desktop.ini entry I gave you is just an example, it's not that I'm using only that..... I've removed IE8(Also in Vista) and everything went back to normal, they all work again... and as a bonus I was able to find out that there is workaround to vista not being able to display background images on folders.... For those who would like to do that in vista here's the url: http://mpj.tomaatnet.nl/vista/folderbg.html Thanks for the feedback Charlotte, I'm now all good....

by googling I think I found the cause of it all, it's actually something i was wondering about but then neglected, On those recent windows updates i mentioned on my first post, Internet Explorer 8 beta is one of the things that were installed(although I didn't really get IE8beta automatically through windows update, I manually download and installed the updated version of IE.... I can't really believe I neglected that fact, because I remember back in the days finding out that internet explorer has something to do with the active desktop and that a lot of features can be disabled by it through the settings, stuff that's related to wallpapers and stuff, you could give windows a "classic" ugly feel just by disabling a lot of stuff..... So one of the search results is this web address: http://www.annoyances.org/exec/forum/winxp/t1224599045 The guy there said that he started having the issue right after installing IE8 and he goes into details... He said that he would contact the IE team about the "bug".... but what if it that feature was intentionally disabled like they did in vista? as far as I'm concerned that is no longer a doable thing in vista, you'll just have to get used to a blank folder background.... You can answer that last question if you like because it's just speculation, I don't mean anything to Microsoft by it.... Anyway, I'll uninstall IE8 and see if I can back to where I was, on track.......

It works only in the HDD root, for normal folders within folders it doesn't work you'd otherwise have to do it the normal way like: [{BE098140-A513-11D0-A3A4-00C04FD706EC}] iconarea_image=Folder Settings\cadillacsixteen.bmp iconarea_text=0x00FFFFFF [.ShellClassInfo] IconFile=%SystemRoot%\system32\SHELL32.dll IconIndex=168 IconResource=%SystemRoot%\system32\SHELL32.dll,40 [ViewState] Mode= Vid= FolderType=Music I you Multi-Boot, You can try it in XP without the full string, you'll see that it works.... It doesn't really matter if you use the full string or not on the root of the HDD, it still crashes.... I've actually never thought of that before, the UxTheme was originally patched with nLite before installing XP, but could it be that it was unpatched or replaced by the updates like it happens in Vista with deskhack.dll and sometimes shvcs.dll, themeui.dll and uxtheme.dll after every single windows update(You can only notice that if you use custom themes, after an update and PC restart vista loads the classic theme and your custom themes don't work).... I'll try to copy the patched Uxtheme.dll from the XP Unnatended install CD onto the system32 folder and see. I'm not that familiarized with procMon, exactly how should I go about it? Which process exactly do I need to filter? and what should I be looking for?

It's not a hardware problem, I know that problem can be fixed if I re-install XP, if it were a hardware problem there would be no amount of tweaks that could solve the issue; it's within the OS itself.... My focus is not in accessing the hard drives just because I need to and thus resorting to third party apps to open subsequent folders, it's to just fix that sudden 'desktop.ini' incompatibility. Yes, As I've already mentioned in the beginning of this topic and will again say it in detail, I can access other directories other than the root of the hard drives that have the 'desktop.ini' file that has commands to display user specified images in the background.... to note that folders like 'my documents', 'my pictures', etc also have the 'desktop.ini' file in them but I can access them with no issues because the only command they contain is one to display a custom folder icon to identify the folders, that's why you can recognize the 'my music' folder or any folder within my documents just because of the icon; you are able see that music icon because of the desktop.ini file, if you delete it there will only be a plain folder icon, you'd need to see it's name in order to identify it..... Here's the command, there's no issue with this one: [.ShellClassInfo] LocalizedResourceName=@%SystemRoot%\system32\shell32.dll,-21770 IconResource=%SystemRoot%\system32\imageres.dll,-112 IconFile=%SystemRoot%\system32\shell32.dll IconIndex=-235 So in XP, explorer only crashes upon accessing folders with 'desktop.ini' that have this command, for the display of a background image: [{BE098140-A513-11D0-A3A4-00C04FD706EC}] iconarea_image=\Folder Settings\UltimateStart.png iconarea_text=0x00FFFFFF That's why I asked if perhaps microsoft could have discontinued its use and the result was when I made I recent windows update..... Because as you might already know that has been used since ages ago, why stop now? Could the possibility of a registry issue be ruled out? Yeah it could be anything....

I've recently been having an issue with explorer crashing upon opening most of my hard drives' root directory saying: "The instruction at 0x636a2e20 referenced memory at 00000008. The memory could not be read. I've spent a whole day trying to figure out what was causing the error to occur, rescanned the computer for any viruses, tried cleaning the system(invalid registry references, etc) with some utilities and found no cure... It was after a day that I realized that the problem wasn't with 'explorer' because I could manually navigate to other folders(skipping the root directories of the hard drives) without issues, than it occurred to me that it could only be be the desktop.ini files stored in the root of each hard drive they've always been there to display a background image(I think you know what I'm talking about here), so I tried deleting one of the files on one of the HDD's using the "Command Prompt" and I was able to access the HDD with no problems..... I've always been using desktop.ini to display background images on most of my folders under windows XP for years(ever since WindowsME) with no issue, so I'm not sure exactly what could causing that to happen..... "I've actually recently re-Installed WinXP SP3 due to a lot of registry related problems, the possible culprits could be(now firts hear me out here): 1-TuneUp Utilities' "One Click Maintenance" Well, TuneUp utilities One Click maintenance automatically eliminates problems which it deems will possibly affect the performance and reliability of my computer, such as registry problems(one of them is defragmenting the registry), invalid shortcuts, etc... all this without backup In recent times I've found myself often reinstalling XP due to either a prob while loading the windows sidebar or it's gadgets in XP, which initially worked fine or something else which gave an error and asked to debug. 2-I also suspect it could've been one of the recent microsoft updates that were automatically installed... I know that in Vista it's not possible to use the desktop.ini to view background images on a folder, perhaps that's being stopped in XP as well, because it could be a vulnerability that could be exploited or something, I don't really know.... It isn't a virus, I'm very cautious in terms of security, I control what application connects to and from the internet, basically what goes in and out of the PC via an anti-virus firewall that prompts me when such applications need access.... and just to be sure I always re-scan with other top performing anti-virus software according to benchmarks and they all say the same thing: 'Nothing is wrong'....... Anyone had similar issues or has something to contribute in the matter or even a solution? I'd apreciate it. Thanx

Thnx zxian, although one wallpaper isn't much for choice....

Hi could you tell me where you get your that kind of wallpaper from? Care to share? zxian, that wallpaper realy isn't 4 the faint-hearted..... I'd like some on my desktop, speacially with a black background.... Plz give me a link or something....

Oh I see... I've uninstalled firefox browser and opera too(didn't know how to remve vista's internet explorer), restarted the PC and booted into Windows XP and replaced vista's explorer.exe with the one from the Installation DVD, restarted and went back to vista, I checked ESET Smart Security's personal firewall and there was no activity from explorer.exe, I probably was rash to uninstall the web browsers and replace the file almost at the same time, because now I can't really say if the problem was with one of the browsers or the file, I've re-installed the browsers and everything seems fine from the firewall's point of view. I forgot to mention before that Safari web browser is the only one that worked when the others didn't, weird, I think.

No, that's not it, I haven't opted for the customer experience improvement program from Micro-S***

the explorer.exe in windows vista is attempting to connect to a remote computer with the name sqm.msn.com with remote port 80, I'm not sure if I should include the ip address of the remote computer, so I won't... The issue is if I deny the request by explorer.exe, I won't be able to access the internet via any internet browsers, firefox, internet explorer and opera won't work although any download that I had started previously still carries on downloading(free download manager)... I've been using the browsers with no issues before I had that prompt about windows explorer wanting to connect... If I allow the request, explorer.exe keeps downloading "something"(I don't know what), it doesn't stop, when I'm monitoring my internet activity through an anti-virus software I use from ESET, I see that explorer.exe has downloaded 300MB+ and counting, it uses 90-95% of my download speed, I barely have enough speed to download my own stuff. I'm at an loss here, I don't know what could be going on, a full virus scan shows nothing wrong, I've set the anti-virus to interactive filtering mode, so I control what connects to the internet. I've disabled windows update service, I never update directly from Windows update, only as an addon to my vistaDVD iso image or installing them after downloading from various web sites which offer microsoft updates direct download... so I don't think it could be the issue here. Is it common for explorer.exe under windows vista to do that? I've never experienced that under windows XP.

Thanks mr shady, I'll try out your tips and see... have you tried it youself? all the unattended bootscreen thing i mean.

Well, from what I understood, you meant install the program and then look for it's settings in the registry afterwards and saving them as a '.reg' file. I think that's a good idea... but putting it in action would be a problem for me, I wouldn't know which part of ESET's registry strings to export.

Hi, it turns out that the issue was with my anti-virus, I have configured ESET Smart Security to Silently Install with vista... So after reading your post I booted back into Vista(I dual Boot XP SP3 and Vista SP1) I opened up cmd.exe and tried "ipconfig /all" and it said that DHCP was enabled, and I didn't know what to make of most of the other info, so I was stumped, and getting ready to reply to your post asking for some other solution when I thought about the anti-virus' personal firewal(I think it was the personal firewall causing the problem) I thought to myself: could it be that silently installing the anti-virus along with the OS doesn't configure the firewall, adapter or whatever else properly? So I uninstalled ESET Smart Security, restarted the PC and 'Voila', I had internet connectivity... In order to be certain that it was the silent install mode that was causing the issue I re-installed the anti-virus again to see what happened, thankfully nothing happened, I still had Net... I guess that it's not recommended to silently install that anti-virus(or at least the version I have) with vista. but anyway, thanks for the pointers... stay cool

Has anyone experianced problems with internet connectivity after Installation? All drivers installed correctly with vista, there are no unknown drivers under device manager... Under network connections I went to see the status of the adapter, it says something like ipv4: local ipv6: limited, I tried to see traffic activity, under "sent" and "received" there are a few static numbers. My adapter is a Nvidia Nforce networking controller card, which worked well with the retail unattended version of vista, I use a cable modem which doesn't need any configuration, all I have to do is connect the ethernet network cable to the cable modem and I have instant internet connection.... so what could be wrong? anyone?

Thanx fred, I apreciate it, I'm downloading it now...

vista-Tool is weird too, since it's recommended for hotfix/driver integrator because vlite messes up the drivers, but in my case I have Windows AIK installed and ready to go, but Vista-Tool gives an error: "Windows AIK is not installed !!"

I've noticed that integrating an image directly to ntoskrnl.exe, ntkrnlmp.exe,...etc, doesn't give satisfactory results if you are planning on using a large image or an image that fills the monitor screen at windows boot-up or startup, because the colours all get messed up, whereas TuneUp Utilities does the job when making a boot screen with it... So this got me thinking, what if we could somehow find a way to integrate a custom made tuneUp utilities boot screen on an windows unattended CD? Has anyone else wondered about that too? Does anyone already know a way to do that? if so please do share with the rest of us... we'd appreciate it. I haven't managed to do it, but here's how I tried to do it, maybe it could trigger a light bulb on someone's head: Onto my Windows XP SP3 unattended CD, I copied the file boot.ini to the $OEM$\$1 destination, because any files that are dropped there will end up in the C:\ drive or %SystemDrive%, but before copying the boot.ini file I made sure it didn't have the 'hidden' attribute, you can't really remove that attribute, so what I did was to copy all the contents of the file and paste them on a new notepad document and save it as boot.ini on the destination folder mentioned above with the following commands: [boot loader] timeout=0 default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS [operating systems] multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /noexecute=alwaysoff /TUTag=5I7QLM /Kernel=TUKernel.exe multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional (TuneUp Backup)" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /noexecute=alwaysoff /TUTag=5I7QLM-BAK -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I've even left the second line as it is, which is a backup that tuneUp Utilities makes when applying a new boot screen. TuneUp Utilities is also Silently installed with the Windows XP unattended CD. my problem is copying the tuneUp Utilities bootscreen files from the Windows Unattended CD to: "Documents and Settings\Username\Application Data\TuneUp Software\TuneUp Utilities\WinStyler\BootScreens" and "Documents and Settings\Username\Application Data\TuneUp Software\TuneUp Utilities\WinStyler\BootScreens\Cache" which is where they are supposed to be located at when you apply a custom boot screen with TuneUp Utilities from within windows... I'm not good at copying files to destinations which have long paths, because since it is an unattended installation, there is no user interaction and thus almost everything(if not verything) is handled via a hidden command line interface, and so I'd have to input copy commands for those files to those destinations. but still, there's some other way I tried, to make sure the file got there: I made a new folder and named it "Documents and Settings" and inside the newly named folder I made another new folder and named it "Username" and the same process with "'Application Data', 'TuneUp Software', 'TuneUp Utilities', 'WinStyler', 'BootScreens' and 'Cache'"... for example the bootscreen.tbs file stays in the "BootScreens" folder and the rest of the files stay in the "Cache" folder. I made that new folder structure in the desktop, so in the end I had in my desktop, the following: "Documents and Settings\Username\Application Data\TuneUp Software\TuneUp Utilities\WinStyler\BootScreens\Cache" I copied it from the desktop to the $OEM$\$1 destination folder of the unattended CD, and hoped it would be automatically copied to drive C:\... and it worked the files were copied, but what wasn't copied is the boot.ini file... I stopped here... I'm at a loss here, if anyone out there has anything to add please don't hesitate... Thanx in advance

Hi, is it possible to use a custom image instead of a simple progress bar

I know some people use it for unattended installs of XP but seen that it gives a Vista-like GUI is it possible to use it to create an entry for it to work with the vista bootmgr in order to make Vista unattended installs? thanx

I'm connected to the internet through a cable modem via USB, I'm using a desktop PC with Vista and XP installed(I use vista the most, XP usually just for Games). I decided to share my internet connection with my laptop. So I used a network cable to link my desktop and laptop, when asked by vista I chose a home network, then went to network and sharing center and turned everything off except file sharing and network discovery, I shared some hard disks on the desktop and laptop with privileges to full control. My desktop and laptop's Network cards say 'unidentified network', I don't know why , anyways, then I configured my cable modem to allow other network user's to use the internet connection, so my laptop's NIC now says 'Network' and can connect to the internet, but the desktop's NIC still says 'unidentified Network'... Whys is that? And Now on to the main topic and the real issue: After having shared the hard disks of the desktop the same way I shared the hard disks on the laptop, Only the laptop can access files and folders on the desktop PC, but the desktop can't access the laptop's one shared Drive "D:", it denies access to it. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Hey dude, Just wanted to let you know that it worked, sory 4 d late reply(the holidays)...

Hi, sory 4 d late reply, It's just that after replying to ur previous post I was kinda busy packing up tp move... I moved back to my original country, so I'm not staying In SA anymore(I've made the necessary adjustments to my info)... anyways I'm back online now and yeah 'll try this other code u gave me, but I don't think I used the "/v enum" before(so that must be why the prob arised) will give u feedback P.S: what OS do U recommend I use(XP or Vista) to change the BCD, I've been using vista though.... Peace

Dude, None of the examples are working(neither the one to disable EMS nor the one to rename) Here's how I did it: bcdedit -store c:\vista\boot\bcd /bootems {bootmgr} OFF bcdedit /store c:\vista\boot\bcd /set {bootmgr} description "Windows Vista Ultimate Final Setup" Dude Could u just Put an example u used for urself... I'm a newbie, so sometimes I might not know what to put in place of something like "<ur file here>" please use ur own paths and stuff with nothing that I might have to replace or figure out... thanx anyways