CoffeeFiend

I thought it was Ballmer and Sinofski that went full retard myself. VS 11 also happens to suck, the .NET framework 4.5 brings almost nothing new or worthwhile (just the async keyword which I don't see myself use too often anyway), other than dropping support for XP and Vista which together still account for more than half the computers on this planet. They could make upgrades free for both and I still wouldn't use 'em.

The funny thing is, that's the same 3 features everybody wants out of Win8. Every post I see everywhere more or less that: The first two are just "nice to have" (but we can definitely live without it), the 3rd merely saves you from installing a freeware app like daemon tools lite, but the most important part by far is disabling Metro, and that's the one thing they won't let you do... +1 to that. Damning with faint praise? Of course he can't actually say something bad about it. Thankfully we're not sock puppets and therefore we can. But yeah, long time user here too (MS-DOS days), and I'm totally convinced Win8 will flop FAR worse than ME or Vista ever did. It's a huge bag of fail, and nobody wants of it understandably. Enthusiasts and fanboys alike are quickly losing interest in Win8 before it's even released. That's saying something! Betas should have people all excited (like the Photoshop CS6 Beta which is totally AWESOME!), not angered, worried, sad and disgusted like this (and already looking forward to its replacement and/or moving to other operating systems). Which is what I've been saying all along. Tell users that all their Win32 apps are now legacy junk, while these apps are the sole reason to use Windows in the first place, also giving the finger to all devs of the said apps at the same time. And then force everyone to use their desktops as a smart phone with dinky apps that only work on Win8. It's not Win7 that's orphaned here, it's the entire Windows line, its history and its very purpose at the same time. They're making the desktop, multitasking, and "traditional" apps (without which Windows is completely worthless) 2nd class citizens (or killing it altogether on ARM tablets) while forcing Metro on you. It's like Windows, but without all the good stuff from it, and with Metro crammed down your throat. Whoever thought this was a good idea needs to be fired NOW.

Hey, don't knock it off until you've tried it I for one think Chiac rocks. You essentially pick whatever words works best, regardless of the language. I like to "borrow" some beautiful and expressive words from other languages now and then too. No offense taken or anything.

Meh. Nothing to it. It's really not bad bad (and quite disorganized/unstructured/missing stuff too). You can skip certain versions without losing much (typically the versions like the one you're using, which add relatively little new features individually). But going from CS2 or CS3 to CS6 would be quite a jump. Going from something so old, you'd basically have to learn from scratch, and even un-learn some bad habits, methods and workarounds to old limitations. Anyway. You can safely ignore my previous post. I guess I'm just really excited about the new features (I could start a new topic about it but we don't have a lot of Photoshop users around in the first place). Unfortunately, my design critique skills aren't my strong point. I'm more of a photographer than a designer (ironically I get paid more for the former than the latter -- totally my fault though).

BTW, the beta of Photoshop CS6 is out (60 day trial). It's very nice too: -the new camera raw 7 is fantastic, and of course you get a new version of bridge too -not only they improved 3D features again, but now it also works on video files (pixels, vector, 3D and video content all in one app!) -revamped interface yet again -improved keyboard shortcuts (ctrl-J now working on layer groups for starters) -the crop tool works in a completely different way now (it's great) -improved typography -- it's pretty much on par with Illustrator and InDesign now (character and paragraph styles, better anti aliasing, support for ligatures, a lorem ipsum generator, etc) -easy dashed/dotted lines (strokes on paths) sort of like Illustrator does it -there's now a textbox to search for layers and buttons to filter them as well. Really helpful on documents with loads of layers -content aware patch tool -the liquify filter is so much faster now -improved print dialog (also, contact sheets and PDF presentation) -some tools are now "skin tone aware" -as if content aware fill wasn't amazing enough, we now have the remix tool to just as easily move stuff around -autosave (and you can work on a different image while a large one is saving in background) -the "automatic" tools are not completely worthless anymore -layer styles on groups (instead of having to resort to nested smart objects or such tricks) -new rich mouse cursors -new paint-like paintbrushes and nice tablet improvements -vector layers and snapping to pixels -group clipping masks etc... there's *so* much more to it. It's simply fantastic to work with. Well worth the upgrade. It's nice to see that some companies can still take something already amazing and full featured and *still* manage to improve it quite a lot! And also radically reinvent and improve their user interface and tools all the time, always ending up with great results. Unlike MS who often manages to turn something great (Win7) into a complete disaster (Win8) and repeated fiascos (Win ME, Vista, 8)

Just in case you were asking me (but it sounds more of a question for fdv): I have absolutely NO idea whatsoever. I don't really plan on patching anything actually (I'm just poking around), nor do I know what even needs "deprotecting" or for what reason. I have yet to encounter something Windows won't let me do (while running elevated) since Vista so I never looked into it.

psexec works for sure. Then again, just like the "other thread" I have *no* idea what we're really after

I was wondering why is this even necessary in the first place (running as TrustedInstaller). Wouldn't starting a process or service as NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM be unlocked enough? I mean, that shouldn't be blocked from doing anything really and it's really simple to do: Edit: unless you want to *disallow* TrustedInstaller from doing something, which could easily cause loads of problems.

The last time I've been that "worried" is when I stumbled across a tool that would give you admin rights by using the stored LMHash of a previously logged in admin user to authenticate. It's surprisingly simple to do as well... Anyway. fdv's reappearance in this thread got me curious so I had a quick peek around a couple binaries from Win7 x64: sfc.exe has nothing interesting in the IAT. Some calls to sqmapi.dll which is the Software Quality Management lib (which ends up into ntdll functions e.g. WinSqmStartSession), and some to SSShim.dll too (a shim for the same "servicing stack" that DISM uses). It also makes a few calls to wrpint.dll (Windows Resource Protection Interface -- the "WRP Integrity Check And Repair DLL" as MS puts it) which only has SfpInitialze and SfpFinalize listed in its exports section (it's probably hiding something) wrpint.dll in turns makes calls to the Setup API's Pnp* functions (e.g. PnpIsFileContentIntact or PnpRepairWindowsProtectedDriver). and finally, wrpintapi.dll. There's very little in its exports section too (2 boring functions), but it definitely does more. It has a few interesting interfaces like ISFPIntegrityCheckAndRepair, ISFPProgressCallback and ISFPRebootCallback (there are valid pointers to them, but nothing obvious that seems to use the said pointers in the code). It's referenced by the registry as the "SFP Interface Class". As for the Setup API dll, since it does a LOT of different things it exports loads of funtions and it calls a LOT of different stuff, *large* amounts of which could be related (from ntdll, API-MS-Win-Core-ProcessThreads-L1-1-0, API-MS-Win-Security-Base-L1-1-0, drvstore, API-MS-Win-Security-SDDL-L1-1-0, API-MS-WIN-Service-winsvc-L1-1-0, API-MS-WIN-Service-Management-L1-1-0, ADVAPI32, CRYPT32, SCECLI, WINTRUST, SPINF and SPFILEQ). Edit: BTW, sfc_os.dll and sfc.dll are still around, and they're quite different. sfc.dll is pretty much empty now, and sfc_os.dll has some new and renamed functions. Some (old?) functions in there just return directly i.e. xor eax, eax + ret. More stuff you could look at... For what it's worth, the function that people patched to disable SFC on XP (the one where there's the infamous cmp eax, 0FFFFFF9Dh where people patch the following jump -- BTW there is no trace of that value in any of the new DLLs, nor the SFCDisable string for that matter) wasn't in the exports table either. There's probably some unexported (hidden, likely findable as a fixup in a relocation table) functions in some of them (like there were in the SFC subsystem of XP) which can be quite a pain to find out. Like I was saying, this is just a quick glance at the overall system. And since I don't really understand how the system works as a whole (nor what parts are related to WRP/SFC/TrusteredInstaller and what not) then that's about as far as I'll go. I'm not going to try randomly patching stuff without even knowing so much as what I'm trying to accomplish (nor do I have the free time)

You might want to look into PowerShell then. That's what's replaced VBScript.

There's also a video of the same old man using OS X for the first time. As you probably already guessed he has far less problems getting adapted, despite having perhaps 20 years of experience with Windows and never having used a Mac. Most likely a video featuring Linux (with GNOME 2 or KDE) would beat Windows hands down as well. That would help figuring out how it works. But it still wouldn't make it work in a sane manner. The only thing they have to do to turn this disaster into a success is to make Metro optional (for tablets), but that won't happen. I mean, they've essentially taken the touch screen interface from 2 failed products that weren't selling (Windows Phone and the Zune) and they're now forcing that onto all users on their desktops and laptops. Yeah, like that'll fly. Nice links you found BTW.

Just a few points, if you really want to learn vbscript: -using option explicit is a best practice. It cuts down on errors and typos. But that means you do have some more vars to declare: Dim textFile, saveTo, writeTo, fileTo, numberPattern, line, matches -regular expressions are typically used for complex input validation (e.g. validating a postal code), or to extract specific content from a lot of data (e.g. getting the infos out of a specific tag in a HTML page), and not what's being done here. It's not typically your first option. First, your regex is WAY over-complicated for nothing. The last part never matches anything, and there's no reason for all that grouping, or using [0-9] instead of \d. "^\d+" would suffice, and you wouldn't even have to use submatches then (just get rid of .SubMatches(0) and change the regex) Then again, it would have been far simpler, quicker and easier to use simple string functions for this i.e. using a counter which is initialized to one, and then seeing if that counter's value is what the line starts with i.e. if instr(line, counter) = 1 then (increment the counter when there's a match). That's super simple and it actually works great... until you reach number 62 which doesn't exist in your text file, so it stops there understandably (62 is never found). Now, at this point, one could consider using regular expressions to match all numbers (in no particular order in a file with *many* irregularities) and using that to dump the relevant text. -you should be explicitly closing the files which you open with CreateTextFile. In any programming language, when you open files, you typically close them after. You're lucky that the WSH closes them behind your back or you'd have like 75 files opened at once otherwise. -there is another problem with inconsistencies in your text file: # 46 is there twice. So CreateTextFile fails silently (thanks to "on error resume next"). So it just keeps adding unrelated content to the previous file which you hadn't properly closed. Since both #46 follow each other, the second one ends up being in the same file as the first but if their ordering was different in the file it might have landed in any other file. The easiest fix here is still to correct the source/text file (otherwise you can test if the files already exist, and if they do add a suffix or similar). Another option is to rename one of the 46's to 62 (making the file more consistent) and to use a very simple counter approach. Then that works just fine for the entire thing (no need for a regex). -if fso.FileExists(writeTo) then always returns true and serves no actual purpose. if true then would do the same thing. You might as well just keep the else by itself. -it's not exactly a problem with the script, but I guess it would have been nice to keep the "numbered" line, and adding it as a comment as the first line of the destination files. And also getting rid of lines starting with #. Both of which are easy to do.

There's a whole lot more of them than for Windows though and it just might stay that way: there's TONS of Java developers around (that's what most universities teach), and Android is a nice system -- whereas Win8 will most likely flop anyway, will not have nice inexpensive devices, and almost nobody develops using WinRT or XAML in the first place. That's one of the reasons I'd buy an iPad first: tons of highly polished apps, cheap, for pretty much everything (Personally, I won't be editing documents by typing on a LCD screen). The other being that they have better hardware overall than pretty much everybody else's and I don't expect Win8 tablets changing that either. There are going to be lots with poor screens, short battery lifes, slow CPUs, overheating, shoddily built, feature light versions for sure, while struggling to compete with Android and iOS devices at the same price point still. And those that people are getting excited about seem very much unlike a tablet I'd want to use e.g. the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga with its super high TDP Intel i7 draining your battery and producing massive amounts of heat, which has double the thickless, double the weight, and has half the screen resolution of the iPad 3 while also showing all fingerprints... and its 1000$ price point. Oh and the iPad 3 also has 2 cameras, does 1080p video capture, has image stabilisation + autofocus + face recognition, etc. That's untrue. The source is available online at AOSP. Just follow the directions.

WOA is hardly better. They can remotely wipe apps from your computer (that you already paid for) and all. And you can't install another OS on it ("secure" bootloaders, yay!) You can't sideload apps, it works only through the app store (which have to be pre-approved just like Apple does). It's as locked down as it comes. If you want full control (like side loading) then you will need to root it too. But if that's your thing then Android seems like a vastly superior option still (it *is* open source, heavily customizable and thinkerer-friendly). I'd sooner buy an Android device than a WOA device for sure, but Apple has what seems like a really slick product to most people.

It's not so much that I didn't see it, but more like I have no idea why I'd embark on a journey to dethrone the TrustedInstaller service. It's never gotten in my way or anything so far. And it's quite likely that it'll break something (not that I have any 32 bit OS to play with). I just don't think I understand what you're up against (how it works, what it does, etc) to be of any help unfortunately. That doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. The SID is a string, so it's zero terminated (just make the last byte a null). NOPs would be for overwriting code you don't want to execute, not for overwriting strings. Then again, I'd be tempted to patch the code instead (not that I have *any* idea of the inner workings of that subsystem) They've "redone" the installer to use WIM images, but that doesn't mean they've gotten rid of every single piece of old code that might have been used by the old installer before. It's well known that there's LOTS of legacy stuff in the Windows code base (nevermind the design decisions dating from the Win3.1 era that they're stuck with now!) Edit: as for well-known SIDs, here's a decent list

Losing to the older iPad pretty badly IMO (not only in what was shown but overall too). Then again, most Windows tablets will probably have far lesser screens than the iPad 3 (3MP IPS LCD!), far less apps, battery life that's no better, yet without beating the iPad on the price point. But hey, at least it runs your good old x86 apps, Flash and ActiveX-based websites, right? Oh wait... I don't even see what it has to offer over Android even. I mean WOA is so unlike Windows that it's practically pointless. Then again, being far too late to the market, it seems like people don't want of a Windows tablet anymore, that they're priced to fail anyway and so on. Analysts like IDC already predict Win8 being a failure.

Yet another nice article. 99% of what I see on any website about Win8 is very much negative, and this article is no different (it has many similar links in it too). Also, all of the popular articles on pcword's Windows 8 section are overwhelmingly negative about Win8 too, and so are the comments. Even toms' hardware are publishing similar articles now. Even the comments on anantech's few articles are quite negative. I don't recall Vista being received so badly so soon. I think it's obvious that it's going to be such a catastrophic failure (you think Vista had bad press?) And unless there are MAJOR changes until it's released which is extremely unlikely I definitely won't be running it, neither will we upgrade at work. Totally out of the question. Win8 has already failed and is history as far as I'm concerned (along with Bob, WinME and others). I've already moved on to waiting for Win9 which MS truly can't afford to screw up so badly.

I just had a quick look. It's not hard to do but fundamentally it doesn't feel like a job that really needs automating i.e. one that you'd do repeatedly. Even if it's simple to do, it'll take about as much time to write this as it would to do the job manually (there's no point in me spending 5 minutes to write a script that will save you 5 minutes of manual work just once). If you had data in this exact format to parse everyday then for sure, a script to split it would make a whole lot of sense. Also, if someone feels like writing something, you also have to deal with stuff like this littered throughout the whole thing: But since you're seemingly learning vbscript, why not try it yourself? You already have most of the required code contained in these samples i.e. how to read from and write to text files. The only real "challenge" you have left is figuring out on which line a new text section starts (you don't really need to use a regular expression for this either, simple string operations will do). Then by all means we'll give you a hand with your code if you run into any problems (for the sake of learning).

A quick powershell one-liner, for anyone who might be interested: ls C:\somepath\ | ? { $_.Length -lt 20MB } | rm

+1

There's so many possibilitie. A starting point would be THG's Best Graphics Cards For The Money: February 2012. Pick your price range and see what they say (or go directly to this page for < £200)

Complete nonsense. Its ram usage is very minimal when idling (peak private bytes of its process is at 2.1MB on this box), updates don't actually slow down Win7, and you just made people's computers insecure and very much vulnerable to malware. Really, REALLY bad advice here! A lot of features only use disk space and consume no other resources unless started manually e.g. games, media features, etc. Most of it won't make any noticeable change. That's a pointless waste of time, a SSD life shortener, and it's already automated out of the box so there's no need to touch anything. Or one of the many similar tools that doesn't actually suck (ccleaner, ncleaner, fcleaner, etc) and schedule it to run automatically. People that know what they should or shouldn't touch already know this place. Not that it does anywhere near as much difference as it did back then either (mainly it'll boot a few milisecs quicker, then if not used it'll get paged to disk anyway) You're really just clearing the browser cache. If anything it'll slow things down by having to re-download files that were cached previously. ...which is how it's already configured out of the box i.e. do nothing. Old programs often needed this, even with prior versions of Windows. Nothing new here.

More than you'd want really (I'd be using a hashset[string] instead, so more like 5 lines). That's why when the scope of the project start to fall outside of what powershell does best I switch to other tools. For example, see the C#/VB one-liners (both case insensitive) in the post directly above yours. There are plenty more options out there that don't need 80+ lines for such a simple task. My point isn't so much to solve this particular problem (yanklines already works for him, no point in me wasting time on a already solved problem) but rather that there are so many other options out there. Then again, if I was working on whatever he's doing (I believe merging inf files or somesuch) I'd look at solving the problem as a whole instead of just working on this script. I probably would have if the problem and solution were well defined.

You're missing the out-file at the end (which tells it to write to a file). Then again it could be a one-liner in so many languages... A couple quick examples: in C# (tested), with special thanks to the LINQ's Distinct extension method who does all of the work besides the file I/O (case insensitive -- just lose the StringComparer.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase for a case sensitive version): File.WriteAllLines(args[1], File.ReadAllLines(args[0]).Distinct(StringComparer.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase)); or for those who still do VB in 2012 (not tested): File.WriteAllLines(args(1), File.ReadAllLines(args(0)).Distinct(Of String)(StringComparer.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase)) Of course I'd add a couple simple guard clauses (args.Length != 2 to show usage, and File.Exist on the source file) and ideally also a try/catch block for the file IO (if this was more than a quickie) but essentially that's all of the relevant code right there.

Tasks like this (or others like sorting data) is why I'm moving away from VBScript for scripting/admin/automating stuff, mainly towards PowerShell and C#. It took over 80 lines of VBScript to do, whereas in PowerShell it's a very simple one-liner: gc in.txt|select -unique|out-file out.txt I have nothing to say against your script (I only had a *very* quick glance). It's the scripting technology itself that's reached the point where new offerings do the job better and quicker most of the time. So I just wanted to point out how much quicker/simpler it is now.