Jito463

As this is the Security forum and this is technically about my computers security, I thought it best to post here. Recently I bought and started using Ghost Security's AppDefend program to monitor outbound traffic. I didn't want a full-fledged firewall as I'm already protected from inbound threats by my router. It simply monitors outbound traffic and gives me the option of allowing or blocking it (set default to block until I select otherwise). Here's what I find interesting. When I open Search (WINKEY+F) on my computer, explorer.exe tries to access 207.46.248.249:80, which resolves to http://sa.windows.com/. When I try to browse that site in Opera, it just says Under Construction. Now, I'm not paranoid about MS like some are, but I do have to wonder why Windows wants to access the internet when I'm searching for local files. Any thoughts on this, guys?

Actually, mobo does matter in spite of socket as only the Intel 9xx series chipsets support AMD64...err, EM64T chips . The 845/865/875 chipsets are available in socket 775, but only support 32-bit procs. There are other manufacturers of chipsets for Intel that support EM64T, but I'm not sure which ones off-hand.

Good thing I searched, I was just about to make a post about this. Though I found another one even older in the Windows PE forum. The Reinstall CD is what looks most promising to me. It would definitely make things easier on us if the customer had an easy way to reformat and set it back up like the way we sent it out the first time. Too bad only the top level OEM partners are allowed to make restore discs. It would be so easy to do. And MS even supplies the generic product keys on their website for preinstallation (ones that can't be activated). Alas, that simply isn't permitted by the mighty Microsoft.

Happens in XP x64 version as well. Very strange.

Oh my word. I read through the replies here, and was just waiting to read the one where he fried his computer by trying it. I can't believe someone can ignore four posts in a row telling him it won't work before finally listening. PCI != PCIe

Hard drives are fun to take apart. I used to take apart old ones that were out of warranty and use the platters for cup coasters. Though after a while of being exposed to air, they do lose their "shininess".

Personally, I wouldn't trust my data to a "freeware" partition resizer. Technically, though, I don't trust it to a pay-for one either. I always do a Ghost image first.

I've gone whole-hog to x64. While games may not necessarily run faster on x64, in my experience the OS is slightly more stable overall. Not to mention that if the devs do release a 64-bit version of a game, there is an improvement (usually, HL2 is a rare exception with that physics bug on the last level). Farcry doesn't run faster with the 64-bit version, but there's more content added without a loss of FPS. And there are other games I don't have that have also had 64-bit versions released. In my opinion, it is definitely worth going to x64.

I would remove KB914784 if I were you. It patches the kernel to make it more secure, but it disables Daemon Tools/Alcohol (and possibly other virtual drive software) and has been reported to break some AV software (though I haven't confirmed that myself).

That was true. Note the stickied thread at the top of this forum. http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=58410

Unfortunately, no. You need a program that can edit 64-bit resources, and none do that I'm aware of. Until that happens, we're POL (Plum outta Luck ).

Yes, Gates gives to charity as does many rich people. But don't think for one second that it's entirely out of the goodness of their hearts. It's either pay to charity (and look good in the process) or pay taxes to the government. By giving their money to charity, they get to write it off on their taxes which means that much more money *won't* go to Uncle Sam. So in fact, by donating all the money to charity, they're leaving more of the burden of the taxes for us middle-class people to fill. I'm not saying that they don't believe in the charities they donate to, but it's not just because they're generous people. There is a purpose to it all.

I know what you mean. I hung up on a tech support person from TDK once (my CD-RW was on the fritz) because she got upset when I didn't explicitly wait for her instructions on how to get to the Device Manager. I'm setting there waiting on her to catch up with me and made the mistake of saying so. Her response: CS: "Sir, you have to follow my instructions EXACTLY!" (emphasis where required) Me: "I work on computers for a living, I know what I'm doing." CS: "So why are you calling us then?" (literally as snidely as it sounds) Me: "You know what, why am I calling you." And promptly hung up on her. Stupid.....witch.

Pssst, I think it was just a joke.

That video was great, though it would have been funnier if they had some "fruit" for Pac-Man to eat and chase the ghost back through the building, heh.

The first one was honestly not funny. Half of it didn't even make sense (specifically 1 & 4, and to a lesser extent, 3). However, I did enjoy Lazy8's post.

I haven't looked into this software yet, but it may be what you're looking for if it does what it claims. http://www.binaryresearch.net/UIU/About.htm

Try using a boot loader to launch setupldr.bin instead of launching directly to setupldr.bin as explained here.

Try changing the lines below back to their default. You shouldn't need to mess with these as I never alter them and you don't need them on the root so it might be messing up the install:

There's only two officially released x64 OSes. Windows Server 2003 x64 and Windows XP Professional x64. No Home x64, no MCE x64. As clueberti said, it's only a 32-bit OS. You're probably confusing the CPU being an Athlon64/Sempron64 or an Intel with EM64T capabilities with the OS being 64-bit.

Server 2k3 will allow users to log in remotely while another user is still logged into the current machine. XP Pro (and XP Pro x64) force the current user to log off when a remote user logs in. He wants to try and move that functionality from 2k3 to XP x64.

The problem isn't the game. The game plays beautifully under x64, or at least the trial does. The problem is with the Starforce drivers. Ubisoft refuses to get off their fat...duffs...and release a patch with updated, x64 compatible drivers. I know what you mean, though. I've bought the game twice now (once retail before going purely x64 and once through D2D hoping it would work under x64) and I can't play it now at all. Given their attitude towards us customers, I refuse to buy any more games produced (not necessarily those just published) by Ubisoft until their attitude changes.

AMD64 was a fully-fledged 64-bit extension to the x86 instruction lines. Adding not only more memory support, but more registers to take the most advantage of 64-bit processing that it could without being a strictly 64-bit CPU. However, EM64T is primarily a compatibility hack that adds more memory handling and compatibility with x64, but not much else. Just as their dual-core offering was nothing more than a hack job to keep up with AMD (at least on the desktop side), so was their 64-bit implementation. Maybe they'll refine it later to add more 64-bit capabilities, but currently it's not nearly as full-featured as AMD64 is.

We have access to the OPK as a system builder, but we don't use it. I just use the setup manager in the deploy.cab file on the OEM CDs. I prefer a true CD-based preinstall method over the network-based preinstall. A little harder to update, true. But with the way our network is setup, it works out better for us.

Well, I see at least one problem off the bat. You don't have any sections labelled as menu:. You need to add that before the first menu screen like so: