CoffeeFiend

Weird... And I know your motherboard might not be completely outdated yet but the KT133 chipset has issues, which combined with the wrong cards/drivers/os can be extremely bad (it was bad enough back in the 98se days with a sb live 5.1, promise fasttrack raid and capture card-even with the george breeze's latency fixes and such that I ended up giving the motherboard away because a BSOD every 5 mins at best sucked bad ). Not only it has pci latency issues, but there are more problems with it, such as the via confirmed southbridge (VT82C686B) bugs and what not... (which again causes more issues with sb live's it seems) This was the single most troublesome board I have ever seen in my whole life! There was a lot of throwing the ball at each other between via and creative (although creative and their sucky drivers have a lot to do in this as well imho). Since then I've mostly stayed away from VIA and such problems never occured anymore Even cheap ECS chipset based motherboards have proven being many many more times reliable... (I would MUCH rather be stuck with an old PCI video card than a KT133 chipset personally) Did you look for bios updates? You never know...

There's many ways around this problem 1) straight import registry file (probably will fail/have issues in many cases depending on hardware and what not) 2) vbscript, using the Win32_NetworkAdapterConfiguration WMI class (I just love WMI, but do we always have to resort to that for every single small thing?) 3) netsh command line utility, for static IP (which is the one I'd use personally): netsh interface ip set address "Local Area Connection" static ipaddr subnetmask gateway metric ie: netsh interface ip set address "Local Area Connection" static 192.168.0.10 255.255.255.0 192.168.0.1 1 of course you have to change numbers to match whatever your case might be. There probably are more ways to this as well.

Installshield wise, it seems to matter if it's installing from a CD/DVD or HD. -s alone works for me - only if it's from the HD. Since I run them all from a DVD, the *only* way I managed to get them to install is to use -s -f1"%cdrom%\install\app_name\setup.iss" (change the path accordingly...) if I don't have the f1 with full path, it won't install. I also use -f2"%SystemRoot%\log_file.log" with it as well and that doesn't seem to conflict. If your installers aren't working, make sure to include the -f2(...) part and after install check the error code, it will tell you why it didn't install.

If it's a fat32 partition, just use a win98se boot floppy to get in there, if it's ntfs, then there's WinPE/BartPE/NTFS Dos Pro (and some similar tools I've seen - I remember coming across a free one that would read only). Or you can simply put the HD in another computer...

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It doesn't sound to me like a driver issue at all, more like you don't have rights to the $printer share. Try to access it, if you can't, then there's no way it can find/install the drivers for the printer. (most likely it will work from all your PCs but this one you're having problems with)

Ghost can clone the disk easily (and similar products from different companies). You could clone it to another hard drive or to a mapped drive across your network (you'll need a 98se boot floppy with appropriate ndis2 drivers for your NIC and such). You can poke around the disk image as well with tools like ghost explorer afterwards. If you want a real "recovery" DVD, then you can make a bootdisk with a batchfile that will start ghost and restore the disk from the disk image on it, it's actually pretty straightforward (any help needed don't be afraid to ask). For the recovery "floppy" you can start with the old 98se boot floppy, and keep just the boot files (plus generic cd drivers, mscdex, ...), add ghost.exe on it (you can actually make it a 2.88mb floppy in tools like winimage if required), then the batchfile looks for the disk image, sets that as a variable, and starts ghost "command line style" to restore disk 1 from the disk image. I've done that many times for people that end up messing their PCs bad all the time and that don't want to have to reinstall/update everything by hand or that don't know how and it works wonders for them.

If you really *have* to, then check out the directx SDK, there's a bunch of DirectShow examples in there. Also, you could peek at the source of some other apps that do it (like virtualdub(mod) that has capturing abilities and is open source). Lots of times you have to deal with vfw stuff too. I remember even seeing some small apps on psc that played with the webcam... There is also a netmeeting SDK out there with C++ code, you could maybe base some of it on that? Otherwise (if you don't absolutely *have* to code it), there is a free video server that can do that already: unreal media server (www.umediaserver.net) - and there's always windows media services and what not...

It comes down to preferences, opinions, current pricing/value, use, ... Nobody likes the same thing and no one is truly 100% better and the situation is ever-changing. I stick to ATI because I had issues with the only nVidia I bought and none with the ATIs, and ATIs seem to be more popular among HTPC'ers too (because of the component dongle, the custom timings with powerstrip and everything else).

If you can remotely enumerate the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run entries (by means of scripting or maybe some admin program such as Hyena or such) and look for an entry called WinUpdate (starts C:\WINDOWS\System32\[random name].exe). That should identify them, but the key is not just removal but patching as well. Hopefully you can add the security patches in your login scripts, or start the processes remotely (scripted, WUS, ...) Patching is a big issue in corporate networks like that, you have to have something in place to prevent things from happenning (again), but you must already know that Another thing that would be really helpful is making sure all your client PCs have updated definition files (update check at login script or whatever you want). If you have a half decent AV and that the definitions are up to date, things like that shouldn't happen.

I'm guessing it's related to this other thread where he has discovered a bug in 2000 pro/server/.../xp/2003 (i wonder who would take time to install them all (let alone have all the licenses) to even check it out) where his copy/paste is broken... (which sounded like a IE caused glitch and not an actual "windows bug" anyways) Like every 2000/xp/2003 are broke (copy/paste doesn't work) and no one noticed before...

We've all ran 200, XP and 2003 with and without all the various service packs out there, and no, don't go saying you've found that that major bug in it, the bug you're looking for is called IE :

That page shows a bunch of squares and question marks and nothing happens... Perhaps it's in a foreign language? As for solutions, we would need more to really give any half accurate advice. -Number of participants at one time (point to point or multipoint) -If multiple participants, if you have enough bandwidth or would require the use of a "multicasting" service (you send to a server who sends it to everybody else) -Do you need to support other platforms than windows? (macintosh/linux/...) -Do you need services like a "bridge" for H320 (ISDN) to H323 (IP based) conferencing? -Do you want a program that installs on every pc or something web-based? -are client(s) behind a firewall? -Do you just need video, or application sharing/whiteboard/etc features? -The price bracket and your priorities in order (price, picture quality, features, ...) -Is it a personnal or enterprise solution that you want (...) I'd check this page out for more information http://www.thinkofit.com/webconf/ you can also reach a consultant for his services if you so desire.

Actually, ffdshow is not a codec pack at all, it's a single codec, and I don't know how you can manage with just that... It's solely a video decoder, and for only a few formats. Codec pack wise and such, I yet have to come across one with spyware or such (no, I don't install the crappy DivX codec on my PC either). As is, your PC wouldn't play many, many movies, such as any movies with AC3 audio...

Yep, cost always is an issue. (else why are you living in an apartment/small house when a mansion or castle is what's best for you, along with a dozen sports cars??) I like XP Pro a lot better and it actually is a lot faster than 2003 (if you do have themes and all that GUI crap disabled). It's been actually more stable for me as well and less driver issues too. The only thing I use 2003 for is as my dedicated server (IIS, ftp, storage and such). Otherwise I only use XP Pro.

If it's solelt for FTP purposes, then I'd really consider something else than IIS instead. IIS is very good - except for FTP imho. I'd just install a good ftp server instead, create your accounts and setup port forwarding to it and you're done... Personally, I use IIS for web pages only and G6 ftp server for FTP access.

You should try using full paths, and to see what went wrong, check the error code in the log file

Why anyways? You're developping nice devices? This just might not be the best place for this type of discussion...

Actually, it can be installed on XP home, but it's quite a workaround, and it's not very recommended either... I use IIS a lot, but as far as FTP goes, there's far better than IIS for that. Also note that XP ships with IIS 5.1, which has some serious limitations, first being limited to only one virtual site, the second being 10 simultaneous connections (not users). The first one is easily bypassed by using another iisadmin (3rd party or the one from 2k server), the second limitation can be increased up to 39 simultaneous conns by editing the metabase with metaedit (by microsoft, free). Together, it makes for a more tolerable testing/devel machine... My unattended installs install both install another iisadmin and metaedit 2.2, comes in handy.

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True enough we don't use as many PCI cards as before, but for me that still is a huge limitation. I guess it's coming down to preferences... Personally, I'd rather pay more to have a bigger case...

I don't use the GK codec pack but I use GK (same style installer, /s /silent /... switches don't work), and the only way I could think to automate it's install would be to use a AutoIt script.

Find the .iss file and make sure it looks ok, put it in the same spot as your installer, and start it with -s, then if it fails, look at the error code inside the log file, that will tell you what went wrong.

Thanks for the nice guide btw. I do use a similar method now (although a bit simpler since it's all GUIRunOnce based and I use regedit /s firefox.reg for all reg entries)

Yes to all 3, and I bet a search will find them all