xiphias

I think this is a fine script, thanks ahab. I do see 1 design flaw though; what happens when a new hotfix comes out? You'd have to edit the whole script and everything. I've worked on a similar script (minus the fancy ECHOS telling me about each hotfix). Here it is: hotfixes.bat @echo off cls REM First the easy stuff, optional windows components: ECHO Checking for Windows Media Player 10 reg query "hklm\software\microsoft\mediaplayer\10.0\registration" /v udbversion >nul if %errorlevel% gtr 0 ( ECHO Installing WMP 10 ... start /wait updates\WMP10silent.exe ) ECHO Checking for .NET Framework 1.1 SP1 reg query "hklm\software\microsoft\.NETFramework\" /v InstallRoot >nul if %errorlevel% gtr 0 ( ECHO Installing .NET Framework 1.1 SP1... start /wait Updates\netfxsp1.exe ) reg query "hklm\software\microsoft\.NETFramework\policy\" /v v1.1 >nul if %errorlevel% GTR 0 ( ECHO Installing Update for .NET Framework ... start /wait Updates\NDP1.1sp1-KB867460-X86.exe /Q ) ECHO Checking for HighMAT CD Writting Support reg query "hklm\software\Microsoft\" /v HMTCDWrite >nul if %errorlevel% GTR 0 ( ECHO Installing HighMAT CD Writting Support... start /wait updates\HMTCDWizard_enu.exe /quiet /norestart /n ) REM Add's UNXUTILS (UNIX-like command tools @ http://unxutils.sourceforge.net) REM This assumes that unxutils is under the current directory -> wbin; bin is for REM my other stuff... path;%PATH%;%CD%\wbin;%CD%\bin; REM Lists all hotfixes; without alphabetic stuff: IF NOT EXIST C:\Winenima (md C:\Winenima) IF EXIST C:\Winenima\qfecheck.txt (del /Q C:\Winenima\qfecheck.txt) IF EXIST C:\Winenima\hfcheck.txt (del /Q C:\Winenima\hfcheck.txt) bin\qfecheck.exe > C:\Winenima\qfecheck.txt tail -n+8 C:\Winenima\qfecheck.txt | tr -d [:alpha:] | tr -d [:punct:] > C:\Winenima\hfcheck.txt rm C:\Winenima\qfecheck.txt SET HFL="C:\Winenima\hfcheck.txt" SET SP3_HFIXES="Updates\Pre_SP3" FOR %%I IN (%SP3_HFIXES%\*) DO (call pre_SP3.bat %%I %%~nI) exit Now for pre_SP3.bat ... @echo off path;%PATH%;%CD%\wbin;%CD%\bin; SET HFL="C:\Winenima\hfcheck.txt" REM %1 = Full path to hotfix executable REM %2 = Just file name of same hotfix ex (for Updates\XP\Type1\327979.exe REM it's just 327979) grep %2 %HFL% IF ERRORLEVEL 1 (start /wait %1 /passive /norestart /o /n /f) If you know for certain that ALL post-SP2 hotfixes MUST be applied to the machine in question, then just run: @echo off SET SP3_HFIXES="Updates\Pre_SP3" FOR %I IN (%SP3_HFIXES%) DO start /wait %I /norestart /passive /f /n /o exit Now; please note that ALL of this assumes the following: 1. You, of course, set the variables to the proper paths. If you noticed, I'm working on a little project I like to call "Winenima," and yes it will be bad-a$$ed when I'm done. 2. You MUST RENAME ALL HOTFIXES TO JUST THE NUMBER.EXE i.e. 999999.exe 3. When a new hotfix comes out, rename it as shown above in #2 and dump it into the hotfix folder. DONE That's All I got folks, enjoy! ~xiphias

Please reference my post here: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showto...re%20RAID&st=10 Making a disk "dynamic" in windows simply adds some meta-data to the end of the disk in a seperate little partition. It's what you DO with dynamic disks which makes the difference. Notice that I said "disks" as in the plural, if you have 1 hard drive you're outta luck. Also, you must have two fairly simular disks to do any sort of RAID. Let's say I have, oh, 2 Western Digital 10,000 RPM Raptor drives (74GB SATA) hooked up to a plain old SATA 1.1 controller (no "hardware," in reality firmware RAID.) So my motherboard sucks and doesn't have onboard RAID; no biggy, just follow the steps in the post above and you'll get RAID 1 (mirrored). RAID 0 is also possible, but NOT AS A BOOTABLE VOLUME IN WINDOWS. Mirroring gives you "double" speed disk reads (again see my post), where as striping (RAID 0) gives you "double" speed reads AND WRITES with two disks. The reason for this is that RAID 0 splits the blocks for a file waiting to be written into two sets and then writes each set simultaneously to each disk. Hit me back with any questions, xiphias

Guys, First off, The "hardware" RAID controllers that the vast majority of you are using are *NOT* true hardware RAID; they're "firmware" RAID or simply put it's software RAID done in a BIOS chip of a cheap motherboard controller. There is no performance difference between these motherboards and software RAID, as all of the work is done on the CPU in either case thru a driver. If you want server-like performance you'll need an actual PCI RAID card for about $100-$300 depending on how fancy you want to get about it. Next, a little about software RAID, which does dramtically increase disk performance and overall system performance for any OS; the reason mainly being that any time your OS needs I/O from the swap file it normally has to wait, oh, 2000 or so clock cycles to get to that data. That wasn't a complete sentence, but anyway, software RAID (or firmware) is implemented in a driver for the OS. The problem with this is Windows has to boot up and load this driver first before ANYTHING on this RAID volume/array can be accessed. In nix's (Linux, Unix, Solaris, BSD, whatever), this isn't a problem because all the bootable stuff is on a non-RAID partition, and the actual kernel, modules, init stuff, etc. can be accessed after the OS loads the raid drivers. In windows, a.k.a. your issue daveo, this is not the case. Microsoft calls the part of windows that actually does the booting (ntfs.sys, ntdlr, NTDETECT, boot.ini) the "system volume," and the rest of the stuff under Windows\system32 the "boot volume." It's confusing; I know. Usually they are the same thing C: but this doesn't have to be the case. Read on here: http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documen...stem_volume.asp (Yes, that's all one line). It applies to server 2003, but should work for XP Pro as well. RAID 1 makes two simultaneous writes to each disk everytime you write a file. It's fault tolerant, meaning if one hard disk fails you can replace it with the same model and be back up and running again in an hour or so, by copying the contents of the other disk onto the new one. It also makes for significantly faster disk reads because the driver reads half the blocks of data from disk 0 and the other half of the blocks from disk 1 AT THE SAME TIME. If you follow the instructions above that is the ONLY way to get a bootable software RAID setup in Windows. Firmware RAID has the (small) advantage that Windows can pretend that it's hardware raid and put the driver into a small un-RAID'ed part of the disk, usually at the end or right after the MBR and partition tables. This way, you don't do the Microsoft software RAID, the driver simply makes call to the BIOS on your motherboard's RAID chip. Hope this clears it up a bit, xiphias

Quick question; I've read all 50 pages of this topic, but so far I haven't seen a key to set the display mode (resolution and color depth). Of course I googled it to no avail, just wondering if anybody has stumbled across this. Thanks, ~xiphias

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