Brabant

I see HKLM,"SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment","Path",0x00020002,"%SystemRoot%\system32;%SystemRoot%;%SystemRoot%\System32\Wbem" in HIVESYS.INF. And HKLM,"SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment","Path",,"%SystemRoot%;%SystemRoot%\system;%SystemRoot%\system32;%SystemRoot%\system32\WBEM" in AXANT5.IN_. The code above is for including "%SystemRoot%\system" so I'll add 0x00020002 between the commas after Path, maybe they cause the wrong type REG_SZ. >> Yes, that seems to have done it.

The Path variable in HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment must be a REG_EXPAND_SZ and not a REG_SZ like it is in the file set. Now the command Path gives PATH=C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\System; ..etc.. But the command %Path% gives 'C:\WINDOWS' is not recognized as an internal..etc.. Is that OK? I thought %Path% should just print the paths without the "PATH=" part. (And Path to be for setting paths or querying if you want)

Those three greyed out settings get enabled by changing HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\UserPreferencesMask from "00 00 00 00" to "b0 12 01 80", a value I borrowed from a non-fdv-xp install. I don't know yet if it breaks anything but these things can now be accessed. Now what's wrong with me %systemroot%\system and other paths? Edit: starting a cmd box and giving PATH gives PATH=C:\WINDOWS; ..etc.. in the non-fdv-xp box but gives PATH=%SystemRoot%; ..etc.. in fdv-xp Any ideas about this please?

So I've got to use XP anyway... Chapa9ai Thanks for pointing to sfc_os.dll. It now installs faster and without this nonsense about things being unsigned. And the mofcomp error is not in the latest file set. A few things: I have bmp2png in the windows/system dir. But if I do c:\bmp2png it is an "unrecognized internal or external etc..." , so it can't find the path I'd say. In the environment variables there is %systemroot%/system and system32 and system32/wbem, all separated by colons. What's going on? The Effects (under Display Properties -> Appearance) are unavailable. See attached pic if it's unclear what I mean. Having ClearType is essential. Not sure if the following are sources of these problems but I ran this HFSLIP without any HFs to speed things up and I'm running XP in VPC2007.