CoffeeFiend

Actually, I must disgree on that one even though it seems to be the logical thing to think. A few (somewhat?) reputable websites have been affected by nasty things like that lately such as theregister (it was actually their advertizer that was hacked - details). Some people say there are rootkits going around for current exploits too. Add server vulnerabilities (yours and your advertizer's), slow patching (both by people running servers and home users, and the time it takes for a patch to come out sometimes) and a browser I couldn't recommend. What you get? Not sure, but it can't be pretty. That's also why we're filtering IFrames at the firewall now. Anyways, all this to make a point: you're not as safe as you think you may be. (Advertizers can deliver bad content on good sites, unpatched exploits on servers can get good sites infected, ...) It's kinda funny to see all these issues arising all the time - if you're not a IE user that is

I'd vote for "not use a 17" monitor" but it's not there (too small).

Not sure... But it has got to be funnier than the *really* old funnies about ctrl-alt-delete keyboards dating from the win95 days

Just do a search, you will see at least 2 major threads about it, with everything you need to modify the installer and in depth information on what's happenning.

No thanks, I get to shoot C7's every year already... I'll pass.

Your problem is his the partial color management information like I had mentionned previously (looks like he updated his posts to reflect that).

Hmm, I don't recall him saying that... The original idea was a stand alone app/db, but that meant updating all the content myself, and providing download mirrors and everything (definately too much). The online version is a new thought (in fact, I already got something, but it's asp/mssql based, and redoing it all in php/mysql isn't planned (yet?). Anways, we'll see.

I have to suggest my old registry tweaks and switches database idea (with forms to search, submit, results, etc). I do know it's a lot of work (not so much to create the pages that accesses the DB, but mostly to populate the DB). Perhaps let everybody submit entries that have to be accepted by mods... I could do something like that, but I'm so not hosting this on my server Other than that, I think there's already a lot to upgrade and add on the site without having to add too many suggestions. Ideally, you'd need more than a couple ppl to work on it as there's lots of work to do.

I tried iTunes and I really didn't care much for it. Don't like the interface, don't like the background processes, didn't like the setup either... I'll pass (oh, and iPod compatibility is only good if you got one of them - and you couldn't possibly sell me one)

Ok, I thought you wanted to make a exe to replace the real one being called, that would tell what switches are being passed to it, and then shell the real exe. Looks like I didn't get what you wanted to do... If you want to discover what switches to use... Hmm, there's USSF, a forum search, and it's easier to do it by hand anyways (there's only a handfull to try if you can't guess). I hardly see a use for an app that will look for me what installer type some app uses as you can easily find out in 99% of cases (then you use the typical switches), and a lot of the apps have been posted on the forum too. If you want to do this, you're in for a lot of fun, you'll have to get creative. (run the other app.exe /?, look up resources, look for certain strings in the installer, ...) A lot of work for nothing imho.

I have to completely disagree on this. Firefox is much better overall, a lot of extensions that makes it so great. There's the odd website (a VERY small portion) that only works in IE, and that's usually because either the site is using ActiveX stuff, or using bad design tested only in IE. If everybody only used W3C standards compliant stuff and such, you'd hardly ever see one of those pages. I've seen a lot of stuff that didn't work right in IE either (mostly stuff that uses CSS2) As for "noobs" getting nailed with IE, well, I have to completely disagree too. Even with SP2 (and a good AV and firewall), I still see tons of people get nailed bad - including people I know that work in IT. Scanning for spyware is only a fix for a broken browser, it's not really a "normal" thing to do (ie: you shouldn't be getting that stuff in the first place).

Others don't scan those either. There's no way anything could scan a PC reliably (other than just the exe & dll files or such) at this speed (that's my opinion anyways). Kaspersky does a very thorough scan by default, but you can tell it not to go crazy scanning inside sfx installers inside a iso image that's rar compressed type of thing And nothing has quite the detection rate Kaspersky has and the very fast updates. Nothing is pefrect, but this one is as close to perfect as it gets imho. Anyways, the idea is to run something decent, ie: not norton stuff

EAC here too (encoding to Musepack usually)

Ms office may be a bit better, but remember that 90% of ppl use 10% of it's features (open/save/print and probably just font changes). It's a pretty good alternative in a lot of cases. Firefox too is free, and it's the best browser around imho (followed by Opera). They may be free, but I don't mind paying a few $ to support their development. It's sabing your from a very expensive ms office license, and firefox is saving a lot of people from having to get their PCs fixed because of a lot of scum on the web... That's a few hundred of $ saved, some people don't mind contributing to the products. (I wouldn't pay for a 3rd party "box of freeware" though)

VB can... I have done this about 10 years ago in turbo pascal too A tiny block of code with a msgbox Command$ isn't hard to do (and then shell the "real" exe) I'm not installing VB.Old, you can have the fun

I sure ain't doing that big mistake again anytime soon

Or you could just buy a nice mouse for that money

winimage or the like would work great. It can make a .exe of it and will format/write the floppy too with a nice GUI. There's a free trial available.

Uh, you got an english version of that?

Trying firefox is adopting it. @techguy21801: what people have against IE? Everything! It's your computer's main security hole. It's rather featureless, not standards compliant, defective CSS2 support at best, ... The list is endless. IE is probably the worst of all browsers (with the exception of maybe Lynx). If you did design websites ("real" ones), you'd hate IE too. If it wasn't for windows update, this thing wouldn't be on my PC at all. As for spyware scanning, firefox isn't a bad thing. You're used to run those scans like rebooting and starting to accept it like a normal thing to do, whereas if you used firefox, you'd realize you never get any of that stuff on your PC, and when you scan it never finds anything. It's not about lazyness, it's about security, having no spyware/trojans/backdoors/popups and other scum on your PC, it's about having a real, decent, standards compliant browser that works well and that has lots of great extensions and everything. Even if it there wasn't firefox, I still wouldn't use IE. IE makes you wish you didn't have internet!

If you like nice GUIs, then you'd like Theatertek. If you like quality, then zp with the filters you find look best, with ffdshow post processing is best (you can do your own graphs with anything). Between PowerDVD and WinDVD GUIs, I much prefer PowerDVDs but imho both are VERY lacking (and in features/options a LOT too). ZP all the way B)

I'd use the process class instead of the old VB6-like Shell function (it's part of Microsoft.VisualBasic.Comaptibility namespace, 'nuff said...) That's one of the very few posts that would actually belong to the programming section (why does it always have to be ppl that want help with batchfiles or other non-programming related stuff who post in there instead? )

Ghost when it restores can create/resize partitions in specific/relative/remaining sizes if you use the command line. It's quite powerful. As for automating it, you could use autoexec.bat to pass it your command line (that's what I've been doing for years for "restore" CDs for many ppl). Back when I still used FAT32 partitions (I don't touch 9x anymore), just to save time, I used to clone a empty (or empty but bootable) FAT32 partition to the disk (resizing to 100% usually). using FDISK wants to check drive integrity several times, and formatting without /Q is rather slow too, whereas ghosting did create & activate partition and even format it (bootable if I wanted to) in a couple of seconds. If you wanted to, your almost "blank" FAT32 partition could also use autoexec.bat to setup a var for the CDRom and start setup by itself... (you can do just about anything) Rebooting wise, ghost has a switch for that too. Otherwise, there's about a billion ways to do it. (a 2 byte .com file with int 19h, or the old jmp ffff:0000, you could even create them by textfile redirection to debug.exe like we used to do in the old dos days hehe)

Those are not commands at all. They've variables. %CDRom% isn't set by default - you have to set it (use a script to do it). You can see all the current ones by doing like IcemanND said, and you can define your own by SET somevar=somevalue ... You could get more infos by looking at a good ol' dos book

PowerDVD 6 was very easy... Add silent=1 in custom.ini (so it installs silently with no switches req'd - no need for a setup.iss either that way) Install and activate it all, and keep your PowerDVD.sim file (that's where your activation is kept); replace the one in your installer with it -And a couple registry entries to add to MCE_SYM.reg (section [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\CyberLink\PowerDVD], export it and remove irrelevant stuff...) DVD Decrypter uses /S (uppercase; I'm using v3.5.1.0) DVD Shrink uses /silent (I'm using v3.2) As for MyDVD, I've never looked at it...