amigafan

Well, I clearly have XP and Win7. Is it so hard to work out why I didn't try Vista? I don't really like Vista's explorer, but it does have the classic startmenu.

I've tempted to upgrade from XP to Windows 7, but I want to have as much of the classic look and feel as possible. I particularly want the classic start menu, and the old explorer layout would be nice. I tried to run explorer from XP, but it wouldn't launch. Would the Vista explorer work?

A few months ago I was having some strange problems with my PC at work. The Windows installation has been in use for about 4 years, by several users. After running CCleaner, I did see an increase in speed. Explorer in particular was much more responsive. This may be due to removing references to shell extensions that are no longer installed, filetypes that are no longer registered etc.

That is incorrect. Google for Wii softmods.

Don't forget to allow space for the pagefile, which is 1.5 x RAM.

I wasn't talking about LiveCDs or VMs either. Back in 1999 my PC had one FAT32 partition (Win95), onto which I installed QNX, BeOS and Mandrake. These 3 operating systems each created a file of around 500MB, which was a HD image. The bootloader/kernel and/or some other essential parts were launched from inside Win95, which was then shut down and the alternative OS booted. Your Google skills must be poor, I found this info about BeOS on the second page of results. For details about QNX, the first page of results throws up the necessary info. Well, that's proved me right, I won't bother finding something that proves Mandrake used the same technology.

Which operating system do you use?

QNX, Mandrake Linux and BeOS all had an ""entire "volume" inside a VHD, that is bootable from another OS natively without a Virtual machine". I know what I'm talking about.

I'd hardly call this an amazing concept, since Linux, BeOS and QNX were doing this a decade ago.

Could somebody please point me to the registry key that controls the Extended pane for Service in mmc.exe. I'm certain I got it from MSFN, but days of searching have failed to produce the information. TIA.

SSDs also use less power and generate less heat. Lower power consumption may or may not be of of interest to you, depending on the price of electricity in your region. Here in the UK, energy prices go up when the price of oil goes up, go up when the price of oil goes down, go up when the Queen of Sheba farts, go up when there's a vowel in the month etc. Lower heat generation will help maintain reliable system temperatures.

I tested 2 microSD cards in my MSI GX700 laptop, but was unable to boot from them. I can boot from them when I use a USB adaptor, but I wanted to have them stored safely in the SD slot. Oh well...

SD stands for Secure Digital, it's a type of flash memory used in cameras, phones and other devices. OP: I know that CF cards can be booted when install on the IDE bus with an adaptor, but I don't know about SD. I'm looking into it for use on my new laptop, so I'll post any info I find.

Have you thought of using a RAM disk to store temporary internet files? This thread by Gosh explains how to integrate one into an unattended CD. Some system profiles such as LOCAL SERVICE and NETWORK SERVICE will still leave temporary files on the harddrive, but it will be a lot less to clean up. Alternatively, you could use Opera and turn off the disk cache.

I use RVMIntegrator to update the source, nLite to shrink and customise, and the $OEM$ folders for applications. This means that updating apps doesn't affect the XP source, and vice versa. See the MSFN Unattended guide for more info. As long as you use a sensible folder structure, maintenance is fairly easy. This is mine:

Wrong. My StartMenu in XP needs 2 click to launch anything. That's because we know that new doesn't necessarily mean better.

@spystyle The point I was trying to make was that XPlite may help (up tp SP2 anyway, no news about a SP3 compatible version yet). XPlite has a few options that nLite doesn't, can disable and re-enable SFC whenever you want, and can reinstall a component if you require. I don't get much lower than 40MB myself these days, but I'm using different hardware and software now.

I used to be able to get XP gold (no service packs) down to about 28MB using XPlite.

For me, the problem with .Net is that I have 1 or 2 small (2-3MB) apps that need an API that takes 25MB on the install CD and 90MB when installed.

Agreed. I don't usually use skins or themes, but this is very tempting, if it can be integrated into the CD source. 3rd party widgets to rearrange taskbar buttons or provide tabbed browsing would definitely stop me from using this.

I've smoked for about 18 years now. It's expensive, unhealthy, anti-social to some people, but the fact is that I was stupid enough to start and now I'm addicted. I want to stop but willpower isn't something I have in abundance. Regarding the expense, does anyone realise how much other taxes would/will increase if all smokers actually kicked the habit? Here in the UK at least half the price of cigarettes and tobacco is tax. If the government can't get any cash from that, income tax will rise, road tax will increase, the duty on petrol will be raised, VAT will go up. As for the health risks, what won't cause cancer these days? A recent news report linked various cancers to red meat, alcohol, even being overweight. When my father gave up smoking he piled on the weight. Great, you give up smoking and run the risk of getting another kind of cancer instead. Lastly, the anti-social aspect. Well, I've met plenty of non-smoking, violent, foul mouthed yobs who do far more damage to society than cigarettes. At least a cigarette is gone after a few minutes. I know that none of the above justify smoking, I just want the doom-mongering, anti-smoking preachers to realise that if/when I give up, they'll still have plenty to whine and worry about. By white people, I would assume that means white Americans? If so, feel free to ban them.

Nuhi: My XPSP2 VLK with RVMUpdatePack 2.1.11 produces the following error during textmode: Error.bmp Pressing a key eventually gets past the error and setup continues without further problems. Last_Session.ini

Congrats, you found Nuhis' secret nLarge easter egg.

Haha, I finally solved this. Install and register Hare, then find the following files: C:\WINDOWS\hare.dat C:\WINDOWS\wininf.dat C:\WINDOWS\system32\SYSINFO.OCX C:\WINDOWS\system32\MAGE.DLL C:\Program Files\System\Hare\Hare.exe C:\Program Files\System\Hare\Help.htm C:\Program Files\System\Hare\Images\int.gif C:\Program Files\System\Hare\Images\hare.gif C:\Program Files\System\Hare\Images\part5.htm C:\Program Files\System\Hare\Images\screen1.gif C:\Program Files\System\Hare\Images\screen2.gif C:\Program Files\System\Hare\Images\screen3.gif C:\Program Files\System\Hare\Images\winoptim.gif C:\Program Files\System\Hare\Images\part6.htm C:\Program Files\System\Hare\Images\smallarrow.gif C:\Program Files\System\Hare\Images\background.gif C:\Program Files\System\Hare\Images\left.htm C:\Program Files\System\Hare\Images\part1.htm C:\Program Files\System\Hare\Images\part7.htm C:\Program Files\System\Hare\Images\part9.htm C:\Program Files\System\Hare\Images\hfaq.htm C:\Program Files\System\Hare\Images\main.htm C:\Program Files\System\Hare\Images\part3.htm C:\Program Files\System\Hare\Images\part4.htm C:\Program Files\System\Hare\Images\part8.htm C:\Program Files\System\Hare\Images\part10.htm C:\Program Files\System\Hare\Images\part2.htm C:\Documents and Settings\User\Start Menu\Programs\Startup\Hare.lnk Note: Your path in Program Files will probably be different to mine. Hare works without needing to have any files registered, so you can now install using the $OEM$ method or repackage with WinRAR. Sorry it took so long lol.

No ETA yet, vLite is still in alpha, and because it's on vlite.org.