neosapience

I was gonna say, a backup doesn't do you any good if you havn't saved the file yet.

I suppose you could use Installwatch.

A friend once asked me if he could hook up his 2 computers together with a USB cable so they could 'share' their video cards for better performance. I blew soda out my nose...

It's not the best, but it's free - InstallSpy

Even trying to recover deleted files that have been saved is not always possible. To my knowledge, it is not possible to recover files that were not saved. However, there is a teeny-tiny chance that the program your sister was using created 'temp' files of the documents she was working on. These are often left on the hard drive even after you delete the original document. Try looking around for .TMP in your Windows\Temp directory or your Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Local Settings\Temp directory (or possibly in the directory where she normaly saves her files). Or just search your hard drive for *.tmp files (but you may find more than you can imagine). You can try opening them using notepad or any other text editor.

Perhaps there's a middle ground you can work towards. If you can figure out exactly what it is about Matlab that's causing the migration error, maybe you can find a temporary workaround while you install SP2. The problem could be caused by something as simple as a service running in the background or an incompatable DLL file. You could make a smiple script that could disable/remove the problem services/files. People could then run it before and after the SP2 install. You'd still get a lot of help desk calls, but it would decrease user downtime considerably. Or maybe the final release of SP2 will work without any trouble.

And don't forget that cases are made of metal for a reason. I don't suggest using anything else, unless you plan on not having any kids.

Like most IQ tests, that one is wrong. There is absolutely nothing wrong with ANY of those emails, it's the websites they send you to that are fraudulent. And before you spout off about the links, I've had many legitimate companies send me emails with very similar links in them. While it may not be a good thing to do, it doesn't mean that the email is a fraud.

Have you tried uninstalling MATLAB/LaTex and then installing SP2? I suspect that it wouldn't be to much trouble to just reinstall the software afterwards.

And if I have a computer that lays flat, THEN WHAT?

SmartFTP

Jesus turned water into wine, why not cloth into hemp?

Why would you want to get rid of desktop sidebar? It's a great program. Anyway, you should just be able to kill the process using the task manager, then uninstall the program normally (or delete the program directly). If you can't stop the process for some reason, try using CopyLock.

There is no doubt, AutoIt rocks!

Browsers are specificly designed to PREVENT people from running programs through them. If anyone could make a simple javascript that ran a program on your computer, it would allow hackers and other evildoers to kill peoples computers. If you want to learn windows automation scripting (which I personally recommend), try out AutoIt. You can easily make a simple script that will do exactly what you're asking for.

Try using RASPPPOE instead of your DSL software or windows crappy native DSL support (provided you're using PPPOE for your connection, which is what most DSL providers use).

Hmm, strange... Well, it may be a pain, but you could set the windows task schedulers on each system to run a shutdown script. That should work no matter how people are logged on.

Or, they could just be evil jerks bent on making your life miserable. People suck, always have, always will.

9600SE = budget video card. You're going to encounter those kinds of problems with low end graphics cards. They just aren't designed to be pushed that hard.

This is why it's imperative to have a good written security policy. Keeping track of all the security patches, tweaks, programs, settings, etc... can be a huge task, but it's well worth it in the long run. bashy - If you don't have any alternatives and need to secure your network yourself, I'd suggest you start by heading over to Labmice.net and reading their security guides (particularly this one and this one.)

Don't take this the wrong way but, I don't think you're going to get the help you need from an internet forum. Hire yourself a security specialist and have them lock down your network. I'm sure you're a quite capable tech, but if you don't know exactly what you're doing, it's very easy to leave a nice big security hole that almost anyone can get through.

It is possible to use Win2k drivers under XP. Try installing them and see if they work.

Gaming on any connection that uses dialup will always suck. Ping over 250 will make most FPS style games unplayable. 500+ will make almost any real time game a nightmare. But over 1000 is just plain crazy. The only time I've seen lag like that was on a really bad dialup.

Actually, I've used 2 way satellite connections before and the lag wasn't that bad. I guess it depends on your providers network.

Nonono, if you get a new sound card, it will go into one of your PCI slots. You can then disable your onboard sound card in your computers BIOS. The new sound card will have it's own jacks that you'll use from then on.