CoffeeFiend

And I thought we were all using Netware back then. You guys were early adopters. I've ran NT 3.1 before but never on a server.

Like anything programming-related, it's a matter of preferences, as well as what you need it for. For really trivial things, like for example passing a /s parameter to an installer, nothing beats a plain old batch file (at least in terms of character count). But beyond that there are better alternatives. As far as administrators go, VBScript is the most popular language, and by far. It's really easy to learn (the b in vbscript standing for basic, and the b in basic standing for beginners). You don't need a very solid or in depth knowledge of concepts like OOP or such. It also runs out of the box (no 3rd party software req'd, no compilation req'd -- much like batch files) on any version of Windows that came out in the last decade. You can easily debug it (you start the debugger by passing the //X parameter to your script) i.e. set watches, breakpoints and more. There are TONS of resources to get started, TONS of pre-written scripts and snippets to copy/paste from (why write everything from scratch?), and overall it's alright. Many programmers (C/C++/C#/Java/etc) don't care for the VB syntax though, the error handling (on error resume next or on error goto something) is laughable, it kind of sucks having to declare all constants for pretty much everything (unless you go with the more complex wsf format which nobody uses, along with an object reference), and you don't really get any kind of useful includes. JScript (close to JavaScript/ECMAScript in syntax) is the other engine WSH supports along with VBScript. The same paragraph applies, except you get a more C-like syntax (which a lot of programmers prefer), and half-decent error handling (try/catch blocks). Most places don't use it at all, and just stick to VBScript because that's what everyone's doing anyway and that it's somewhat simpler to grasp for many. The new kid on the block is PowerShell. Very neat, powerful and useful for certain tasks. I find myself using it more and more, but I always seem to run into some kind of scenario where it limits me (or my limited understanding of it does? Perhaps a little of both?). PowerShell 2.0 is already included in Win 7 & 2008 R2, but for older OS'es you have to install it first. It's also radically different than pretty much anything else. It's gaining popularity though, and a lot of products are using it for admins tasks (e.g. Exchange) Then there's a lot of different 3rd party scripting languages, with varying feature sets, support also varies from a vendor to another (in terms of bug fixes, or still being around 10 years from now), varying prices, etc. AutoIt is fairly popular, especially for the cases where you have do send mouse clicks to a GUI and such tasks. Then there's also a few people who use Cygwin/MinGW instead, and even those who prefer to use Perl/Python (most often using ActivePerl/ActivePython). That was assuming you meant scripting. If you mean programming, then there's a lot of other options. Visual Basic Express/Visual C# Express/Visual C++ 2010 Express (all free) are 3 great options, depending on the language you pick. Out of those 3, VC++ Express is the least attractive as it has no MFC support (nor for ATL), so it's a matter of which syntax you prefer between VB (which I truly don't care for personally) or C# which is more C-like. As usual, there's TONS of resources to get started. You can also leverage your knowledge of VB or C# to make web apps very quickly using Visual Web Developer Express (also free), and SQL Server Express is a free edition of one of "big 3" databases (the other 2 being Oracle and DB2), and it integrates very well with Visual Studio too. Unfortunately, we're not quite sure what you'd like to do (write some simple scripts to automate tasks? write software?), and we couldn't pick the best language or tools for you even if we did. You'll just have to try some by yourself.

That board is particularly well known for having bad capacitors (something very common in Socket 478 systems in the first place). Even Intel openly admitted to it. And that sure can cause problems like you're experiencing. I'd have a good look at the caps on the board. It might be time for an update after all.

I think the figure is quite accurate. There's over a billion computers worldwide, and win7's market share is a solid 15% according to pretty much everybody.

Do you seriously think a malware writer will keep a Win9x box handy (physical or not), just to write a separate version of his malware, to target a still very rapidly declining OS with a market share that's pretty much already non-existent (below 0.1%)? The target is so small, you might as well try to attack OS X, Linux, the iPhone/iPad/iPod, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile/Embedded/CE, all of which have FAR more users. Attacking something so tiny *and* still decreasing so quickly is just a total waste of time. There is just much more to be gained from concentrating on the other 99.9% or so of Windows users, making it stealth (rootkit indeed) and a real pain to remove/clean too. There's already countless millions of n00bs who won't notice anything, who don't keep updated, run everything as an admin, wouldn't know how to remove it, etc.

Not 1TB or more like he wanted. And write speeds of 10MB/s or so.

Those are arguably some of the best in that market segment (not that it's saying much). I don't think you'll necessarily be luckier with other cheap devices. We've been over this ("Which NAS?") several times before, like here and here for instance. Again, any NAS in that price range will basically suck, especially speed-wise (backing up 1TB worth of data will seemingly take eternity + 1 day) There's always other options, like eSATA (or USB) drives. You can backup to such a device too. There's even external drives that come with backup software when you buy them, but then again there's many other options like acronis trueimage and what not. But then you'd have to move the drive to the computer you're backuping, or creating a network share and backing up to that from the other computer(s), which is fairly close to what you'd be doing with a NAS anyway (very easy to do too). I can't personally recommend any cheap NAS

Latency is often a problem, and so is echo cancellation. A telephone conference call (not using VOIP but POTS lines) with a phone designed for conference room usage is better with regards to that, but the sound quality isn't exactly great (and you incur the long distance costs too)

And you say this, based on what evidence? Not that running memtest86+ (yes, with a +) is a bad idea. It's even quite possible, but still. I don't see anything that surely means it's bad RAM based on what's been posted so far. In this: *** STOP: 0x0000008E (0xc0000005 There's already 2 interesting parts: (from bugcodes.h in the latest WinDDK) (from ntstatus.h in the latest WinDDK) This means there's a memory access violation. From what we know so far, it could be bad hardware, it could be a bad driver and several other things. As for the dump, it's not a complete dump, and I can't really see anything interesting in the stack or anywhere else. (dds 9aeaad20 didn't give anything useful either) Also: where 924fdea0 is a memory address used by win32k.sys so no help there either... Perhaps someone with a better windbg-fu (I'm definitely a n00b here) can get something from it though. I'd set it up for a complete dump. And while I'd wait for a crash to happen, I'd have a good look at the event log for helpful clues (and have a peek for possible malware, shady drivers and what not, that the OS is fully patched, etc)

It's a video hook driver for VNC. Nothing to do with codecs or players.

See this

Have you tried updating your video drivers? Just kidding You have the option of posting a memory dump (preferably a complete dump, although a minidump is better than nothing I guess), or you can have people continue with wild guesses and telling you to update your video drivers some more. Your call.

No way. It only takes 15 minutes or so for the entire thing from scratch. If you can't spare 15 minutes in a month and a half, you're in big trouble. The barebones hardly saves you any time anyway -- I'd say about 5 minutes or so (10 tops) -a couple screws on the side of the case to remove (gotta do it either way) -the PSU has 4 screws (a whole minute or so) -there's the motherboard to install, let's say 8 screws total (2 or 3 mins total) -there's the PSU to connect to the motherboard (2 cables total, 30 secs tops) -the CPU to drop in its socket and clamping down the heat sink (all of 2 minutes if you take your time) -2 sticks of RAM to clip in (under a minute) -2 to 4 screws per drive (depending on your level of lazyness; gotta do it either way) -a couple SATA & power cables to connect (gotta do it either way) -you have to close the case again, 2 more screws (gotta do it either way) -tidying the cables (somewhat optional, no time saved with a barebones there either) -plugging the thing in (gotta do it either way) -the OS, drivers and apps to install, update and configure/tweak (by FAR takes the most amount of time -- it's perhaps 90% of the job, and you still gotta do it either way) Either way, you've opted to massively waste money by buying absolute junk for a month worth of use, just to save 5 minutes out of something that will take probably 2 to 3 hours including the software part (I only wish I had the luxury to waste hundreds of euros to save so little time) so good luck with it. All 3 systems suck, so flip a 3-sided coin and buy that one. It's a game where you lose no matter which one you pick.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosts_%28file%29

You don't really want that. Unless you like ridiculously noisy pictures (tiny sensor + high res = less light per photosite so higher noise -- see this if you want a basic explanation). Nevermind that the extra pixels basically won't really give you any extra detail in the first place (merely slowing down the camera and saving larger JPEGs that fill the cards faster). As for alternatives, it depends on budget, what you intend on mainly using it for, etc. Not that I'm an encyclopedia of point & shoot cameras or anything (I got vastly more experience with SLR systems, whether digital or film)

Good call for once. It's not a whole lot better than the previous two. That's not exactly selling points (more like the inverse IMO) Not a bad CPU, but you're unlikely to unlock 2 cores. Nevermind the motherboard in it has no such feature, so you'll unlock absolutely nothing. Why would you buy that over something the 2 systems I quoted for example? It still gets mostly everything wrong! For 10% more than both examples I had listed (above your max quoted budget by 30 euro), you are: -Giving up the modern AM3 Socket, which means wasted money as you'll be buying a new motherboard in September (only 1.5 months away!) -Give up DDR3, which means getting rid of the DDR2 soon (the board only has 2 DIMM slots too, and is limited to 4GB -- ouch), to spend just as much on DDR3 in a couple months -You are getting a lesser chipset, which we've all advised against because it's crap (nvidia 6150 -- eww) -You are getting a slower dual core CPU, that will also be replaced within 2 months (more wasted money) -You are getting a very, very low end motherboard from a not exactly great manufacturer (BioStar) -- definitely nowhere near as good quality as Gigabyte or ASUS and several others, and in many ways; loads of electrolytic caps, crap chipset, limited TDP (95W), the layout sucks (floppy right besides a PCI slot? LOL, that's really awful for starters), again, only 2 DIMM slots, very few PCI-e & PCI slots, older audio codecs with only the basics, no Gibabit ethernet, no firewire, etc. The list goes on and on. -You are not getting SATA 6Gb/s, nor any eSATA -- and there's only 2 SATA ports total (ouch!) -You are not getting USB 3 ports of any flavor -The only PCI-e slot isn't v2.0 -You are getting a junk power supply that you'll also replace real soon (you really won't want to buy junk here) ... Except that you're now also getting it with a dedicated graphics card that's not a whole lot better than decent onboard video for gaming (and still costs 2/3rds of a card that's actually nice, which means now being over budget AND getting a even lower quality system), which you'll most likely also be getting rid of in 2 months if you're buying a system to play games. Honestly, even the outdated Socket 775 junker you listed first was a bit nicer. You're still doing the "buy total junk now, get rid of everything in 2 months" thing, so this is the point where I stop wasting my time recommending anything as you're pretty much ignoring it all anyway.

I find XP really outdated, and I really miss stuff that's in the newer OS'es. I'm quickly becoming less and less familiar with it too (haven't been running it on any computer at home for a couple years), so I'll be glad to see it disappear and replaced with more modern stuff. I'm sure there must be an appropriate name for that kind of mental condition. And you'd be right. It's a few thousand kilometers away. It would be nice to visit I'm sure but it's not very high on my list of places to visit soon.

Because they're wrong. See the link in my previous post. That's part of it, yes: To be honest, I think April 2014 won't come soon enough.

Nope. It's still April 2014.

It depends what kind of server-side tech you use (no guarantees I'll be any good at helping with whatever particular server-side tech you use either)

I assumed it was unnecessary for the vast majority of games (not that I follow games too much), and it's certainly overkill for office usage. But yeah, that's always an option. And a DVD writer too, just like in the barebones he linked to. I assumed he would reuse those as he hadn't mentioned them. And unless his current case is craptacular *and* worn out, his current case might be better than what those new machines include -- that's why I hadn't included them in my original suggestions. If you also need to include those inside that 300 euro budget, then he'd lose a lot of features and/or quality, so he'd be better off waiting until September then (IMO)

I don't see how that's a problem. Here's the most expensive thing I mentioned (at least motherboard-wise although there are other options, and a with slightly faster CPU too; RAM brand differs based on what the stores offer), including a case of similar (low) quality than the junkers listed above, and with a decent quality 80+ certified PSU (almost randomly picked, there's lots of other nice units around the same prices) like he was going to buy later on (at least enough to power a Radeon 5750), from 2 randomly picked stores in the UK: From http://www.ebuyer.com: And from http://www.cclonline.com: Both are within his budget of 300 euro, including taxes and delivery. None of this "buy junk then get rid of it" nonsense involved. It took all of 5 minutes for both. You get a modern motherboard with AM3 socket (and a fast HT bus, none of this outdated FSB that the cheapo Socket 775 junker had), which uses a very recent 880G chipset (not old stuff like the ICH7) with plenty of PCI-e 2.0 lanes and two PCI-e x16 2.0 slots (in fact, all of the PCI-e slots are v2.0), 4 DIMM slots for DDR3, 2x USB3 with extra power and 4x USB2 on the back panel (6 more on headers), 5x SATA 6Gb/s + one eSATA 6Gb/s, firewire, a toslink digital audio output, solid caps throughout + a quality 2oz PCB + a great VRM as expected from Gigabyte's UD line, good cooling, decent layout and everything. And a pretty good CPU, decent ram and a good PSU. Not bad I'd say -- it's totally unlike both the junkers he linked to, excepting the case.

with the intent of replacing every single part in it no less? It seemingly goes something like this: 1) Buy junker made out of inadequate, low quality parts you don't want 2) Sell most parts and replace them (or trade them) for parts that don't suck one by one 3) Replace those few which are left like the PSU anyway, keeping ONLY the low quality generic case that's likely worth all of $20 Why not just buy the right parts in the first place, especially when we've already recommended some, and offered to further help in picking parts?

That's perfectly normal. It's not just the pound sign that will give you problems. Have a look at all 252 of them. They're "encoded" that way because they might be shown as different characters otherwise, depending on a page's character encoding setting. Most of the time, you'll only run into the numbered entities (thanks god). You'll have to convert them back yourself. The usual thing I've seen is matching them using a regular expression (pretty easy for the numbered ones) and then converting the matches back to the proper characters on the server-side.

Little known? It's been that way (having a commercial license along with the free version) for oh, 8 years or so. Whoever hasn't figured it out by now likely never will. Why's that? It's not like they owe you anything. I see no problem with a company that wants to make money from their products. They have employees to pay (you know, with families to support and rent to pay), many bills just like any business (office space rental, utilities, employee benefits, hosting, insurance, etc) and all that. Where's the problem? Are they expected to fund development out of their own pocket forever just so they can give it away (sounds like a great business model, right?) because some people have a sense of entitlement? People always say those things, and in the end the donations never materialize. Just for this site alone, just ask the guys behind nlite, wpi, hfslip and others how much they received over the years (or even donations to keep this site running). And it's hardly limited to this site. The vast majority of donation-supported projects never see a penny (just like the army of highly skilled unpaid coders never shows up to back open source projects). Besides, making something like isobuster (supporting over 30 image formats, different versions of many different filesystems -- on the same disc no less, for different media types, with powerful data recovery features, a great interface in multiple languages, stable, with good hardware support, with good documentation, technical support, a decent website, etc) isn't exactly a small undertaking. We're talking hundreds of thousands of man-hours of skilled programmers and a support team (not exactly something you'll finance out of some donations) Totally pointless. Your unwarranted hostility towards the isobuster guys seems to be blinding you from simple facts. That ancient version is useless. Everything it does, the new one also does for free (and more). Check the license models page. You only have to pay for the advanced features that most people don't even have a need for (and if you do, the $30 price tag every 5 years or so is dirt cheap), and that you can't be using with the old version anyway. Oh, and by the way, they accept donations for the free version which seemingly does everything you need over here. Now hopefully you'll put money where your mouth is but I really doubt that will actually happen (empty promises as usual) Not that it even is an ISO editor, nor does this warrant bumping a 5 year old topic.