CoffeeFiend

Sounds like it can't connect at all. Perhaps you're running a firewall? Can you even ping the PC?

"Page cannot be displayed" essentially means nothing so we can only try guessing. Try with a browser that gives meaningful error messages (404? 500? ...) or even better: do a network capture using wireshark or something like that, then we can see. Just a wild guess: I would say check your authentication settings in IIS (i.e. is anonymous enabled or not, etc).

Intel based systems also has SATA3 ports. But SATA3 is mainly pointless for HDDs, it's meant for much faster devices like SSDs. Not realy a bad pick, but I'd sooner pick a cheaper Athlon II X4 630. The extra 50% the Phenom II X4 945 costs brings you about 10% more speeed. If the Athlon II X4 630 isn't fast enough, then you probably want to look at something like the X6 instead (not a whole lot more expensive than the Phenom II X4 anyway) but then again for the kids of tasks you listed a plain old dual core would more than suffice. Nice motherboard & PSU choice for sure

That is no reason to rule out the power supply (more like the inverse). It's fairly likely that you have a bad PSU or a bad motherboard (bad caps are definitely a possibility in both). If you can, try to swap the PSU with another one (if you got a spare on hand) and have a good look at the caps around the CPU at the same time. It would help knowing more about the actual hardware as google returns no relevant returns for that brand/model.

I'm not implying it's the case at all, but you know they all say that It's not like a Mac will magically protect against that. And it just sounds like insecurity (no pun intended). The only person I recall who had his box hacked in such a way in the last few years was actually a guy running Linux (not exactly updated) with a SSH vuln. Honestly, nobody on the web really cares for my documents or yours, and it sounds like you're fairly well protected regardless. Normally you'd switch to the admin account temporarily for things like this. It mainly sounds like you're running into a unusually large number of network problems if that's an issue. Most people don't ever have to touch anything networking-wise (no idea what the problems you're running across are though) I use word on a daily basis at work and fairly often at home (and other parts of the suite) and I don't think I've seen Word crash even once in the last decade (and that implies using it probably a bit over 100 different PCs). It's most likely your paperport (I don't use that) or something like that which has issues and has a plugin that crashes your word. I've never even heard of someone with Word stability issues before (ever). That sounds like defective hardware or a Windows install full of malware... Never seen that happen ever (and I don't think I'm alone here either, much like for a LOT of things on your list) Sounds like bad hardware (definitely a recurring theme in this thread) or bad drivers. Besides BSODs caused directly by some nasty nvidia video drivers I probably see one BSOD per year across every machine I have access to (work/home/friends' and relatives' computers combined). Plug your computers in your router, setup some network shares, done. It's not usually a problem. It authenticates using the credentials you provide... You could open a new topic to get help with your network if it's being that much of a problem. The only thing I recall ever requiring IE for is Windows Update, and that's no longer the case beyond XP. I don't use IE much at all, but I don't recall seeing it crash once in several months. Not like any other OS will be different. But if that's an issue, perhaps you're reformatting more often that most... Never had that problem so I wouldn't say it has that kind of tendency. Honestly, it mainly seems like you just have incredibly unreliable hardware (bad caps, bad RAM, etc -- lots of possibilities). I'm not sure if I've ever seen someone have so many problems with a single computer, it's not like most people go through anywhere near that much trouble.

Honestly, most of the people with such issues are the main cause of the problems. You know, those who run as a local admin, willingly don't keep updated, and then run any malware infected warez from every dark corner of the internet (then obviously blame Windows for it)? But hey, they had an antivirus so it's OK (like wearing a seatbelt -- no need to drive safely then!) The last virus any of us caught here goes back to the XP pre-SP2 era and we're not doing anything special at all (even at work, the last time I've seen any such issue would be blaster, circa 2003) They're hardly magic. Reliability? They're standard PCs now (but with EFI instead of a BIOS), built from pretty much the same parts as you'd find in any other PC and from the same manufacturers (e.g. Intel for the CPU and chipset). As for security, they also have their issues (needs patching just like any other OS) and they funnily always get hacked first in the pwn2own contests. They basically offer zero hardware configurations I'm interested into (how about a normal mid-tower eh?) and the software side is even worse (read: mostly useless) but that's just my opinion. As for programs crashing it's likely caused by your computer (disappearing HAL, beep codes, dead mobos, etc) as 99% of the computers I've used in the last decade had no such issues (the other 1% being those with hardware issues or faulty drivers -- or being owned by those people running all that malware infected warez). Networking works fine if you know how to set it up, but with Win7 and HomeGroups it's supposed to be easier for home users. BTW, Word 2003 is compatible with Win 7. And I'm not sure what you read about Word 2007, but I definitely wouldn't go back to 2003 myself. Either ways you can download the 60 day trial and see for yourself.

I've seen a lot of n00bs who also use FTP all the time, knowing it hardly makes someone "special". Besides FTP "variants" there are also WebDAV, SMB, NFS and other ways to do this. I'm lazy, so I usually publish right from within Visual Studio itself (along with database and everything else). As for FP extensions (eww), it doesn't use FTP but HTTP POST to transfer data.

That's a lot of money wasted on a machine I wouldn't pay $20 for. OR like puntoMX said, get a low end laptop that doesn't suck, like this for instance which is $10 cheaper than trying to make-do with that P3 junker. The 2.2GHz CPU is about 6x faster than that P3, it has 4x as much RAM which is also faster, a widescreen LCD of far better quality (for one, it's not out of the P3 era) which has higher resolution, a bigger and faster 160GB SATA HD, a DVD writer, a better video card, wifi (B/G/N), 3 USB 2 ports, likely far better audio, better/newer chipset, the trackpad and keyboard are most likely a lot better, the set of connections for other stuff is likely better, it's a 64 bit system, it comes with Win7 x64 already, the battery is also brand new and its power management is better, it's a bit lighter and thinner, it has full warranty, the finish likely looks a lot nicer, etc. It might be a low end laptop but it's at least a million times better than an old P3 (paperweights indeed) And that's the very first model I even checked and at the first store too, so if you shop around you might find better deals still.

Process Explorer rocks, but if you just want to see a the Process ID, you can add that column in plain old device manager (view > select columns, tick PID) Edit: and if you wanted a more "console way" of doing it (like the util you showed), then there is Windows' built-in tasklist.exe, Powershell's Get-Process, you can very easily write something in vbscript that does exactly what you need (in a few minutes), etc

No need to be sorry for bumping a topic when you have a valid reason It's not like you're bumping a 5 year old topic to say "Me too!" This is by far the hardest task, due to the files that normally change between some versions of XP (e.g. home or pro) and having to make a multi boot for it. You'd also have to make a "version" of those for each value you want in setupp.ini so that might make a lot of them (I don't use XP so I'm no help there) That is fairly easy and well documented like here for instance. Writing a script that says which "PID" a key is for is easy enough. If you just wanted to retrieve it from an installed copy of Windows it's just as simple. Again, you're either going to burn a lot of discs or have a crazy multi-boot disc (or some sort of complicated contraption) Which won't work for the "other" version of Windows (Home), and since other files sometimes change (VLK/retail) then it might not still work (not that I tried). Getting an installed Windows to just use another key doesn't work (I've run into this before where it just wouldn't take the new key). So that doesn't sound like a solution after all.

I haven't had a look at them lately, mostly for having been deceived by them in the past but they might have improved a lot since (it's been a while). Foxconn also has some half-decent budget offerings. I also heard several times that ECS isn't producing the same junk as they used to (in the K7S5A era) but I haven't look much either. I forgot to mention this in my last post: a lot of AMD's offerings are more "modern" (AM3/DDR3 and you can get USB3/SATA3 too without breaking the bank -- and compatibility with the new 6 core CPUs too) than those Intel 775 boards with DDR2 which are very much a dead end.

We weren't speculating or anything. It's been end-of-life'd for over 2 years, so if you found one, it would be old stock or 2nd hand. Not really. It's not exactly a great motherboard (only 2 DIMM slots for starters -- I'd expect more at 220 USD), and that processor is a pretty poor choice if you look at value (bang for your buck) compared to pretty much anything else. An i5 won't be cheap. And at that price, you don't have any RAM either so it would cost you more than that. It seems a bit overkill for your usage anyhow. See the previous post: The E3300 is ~85% as fast as the E7500, but it costs less than half. I mean, you can get either: -The E7500 which is 4x faster than what you got, for ~$120 or -The E3300 which is more like 3.5x faster (still running circles around the P4) for $50 (that's a good budget pick) If the E3300 isn't fast enough, I still wouldn't go for the E7500 as there are DOZENS of better options, for example: -The AMD Athlon II X4 630 which is 7x faster than your P4 for ~$100 (much faster and still cheaper than the E7500), or even: -The AMD Phenom 8750 Triple-Core which is a hair faster than the E7500 and is under $75, and if you insist on staying with Intel for some reason: -The Pentium Dual-Core E6500 which is also faster than the E7500 and costs $80 (faster for 2/3 the price). ... Personally, I'd spend the cash saved on a nicer motherboard (e.g. gigabyte or asus) with at least 4 DIMM slots.

I used to have that problem a LOT. And to add insult to injury, it was far too often "fatal" to the printer. The print heads are sometimes on the printer and not on the cartridges, and the fix isn't a new cartridge but a new head for the printer (which usually costs more to replace than the printer was worth new). That's half the reason I had moved to a laser. But then again, the kids need colors for school stuff, so I got another inkjet a couple years ago and I've been very lucky so far. The ink cartridges are $6 too (separate, only change those which need it) Well, I'd rather get photo prints on a nice silver halide printer (like a fuji frontier) and great paper than doing it myself. That is definitely a LOT cheaper than buying a $1000+ wide photo-quality printer (like an Epson Stylus Pro 4880), along with pricey archival ink (usually over $100 a cartridge, and 8+ cartridges isn't uncommon) and fancy paper, only to have to fiddle with the color calibration, gamut mapping, max printable highlight, dot gain depending on paper used and what not including the crappy dialog settings (my usual place will reproduce my work with colors that are spot-on, both in RGB and CMYK, and in sRGB/Adobe RGB/SWOP v2 color spaces). As for plain paper stuff, some printers aren't that expensive. And (assuming it doesn't dry up) the convenience is nice, like being able to photocopy or print something quick for the kids' homework or whatever (without spending a half hour in the traffic and $5 in gas to get to a copy shop) My printer was dirt cheap ($50 for a printer/scanner/fax combo thing that can photocopy, has useless memory card slots and everything else -- a nice ethernet port too!) and it does the job fine so far. It's a somewhat better scanner than the old one it replaced (saves desk space!), it prints text and basic graphics (charts, etc) alright. I'd never print photos with it though (not that I'd want to). So far I might have spent about $25 or so in ink over a couple years so not too bad. A color multifunction laser would be nicer, but the nice ones aren't exactly cheap nor cheap on toner Still, most printers are a real PITA.

I hate to say this but this sounds like the perfect example of how NOT to compare. What you're saying is, based on your comparison across different machines with completely different CPU architectures, with a different amount of cores, varying clock speeds, different FSB speeds (and ratios), some with hypertreading and some without, using different sockets, wildly varying amounts of RAM, varying RAM types (3 kinds) *and* different clock speeds *and* different latency (and perhaps some with single or dual bank config, and with different interleaving), on different motherboards, with different chipsets (and most likely a whole lot more, including the video card) and the architecture changes that come with it (different interconnects & speeds), and running different operating systems that are most likely fairly different installs (in terms of configuration, drivers, background processes, etc), probably different browsers and/or flash plugin versions (build) -- and based on these totally different boxes you say that some gain in a completely subjective and unquantifiable speed evaluation taken across a fairly wide time range is due to RAM clock speed? I mean, if you took the RAM from system 3 and put it in system 4 or vice-versa (and hand set the latency to the same on both -- don't rely on SPD) and somehow managed to do an actual measurement which showed repeatable difference beyond statistical irrelevance, then I'd have to say you must be right to some extent (it very well might still only hold true for older systems)

I have no idea how you'd even "evaluate" that in the first place (swap RAM for some faster clocked in the same computer, and then see if something in flash somehow works better?), and I don't see how memory speed would affect it in any perceptible way. It's usually either network bandwidth bottleneck (wait for it to download before it does anything), or otherwise a mostly CPU-bound process (i.e. decoding HD H.264 streams and the like). You got me curious on how you got to that conclusion.

Even that would hardly make any difference, about 1% or so for most applications. More RAM would likely give more of a boost if you use apps that need it (i.e. not just "surf, office apps and nero burn"), otherwise there is very little gain to be made either. Totally not worth the expense, when a modern $50 low end CPU (E3300; would cost about the same as new RAM) is about 550% faster, or something a little nicer, a $100 Athlon II X4 630 would be a bit over 1200% faster (not that they would fit on the old board admittedly). Jus like puntoMX said, if it ain't fast enough then you're looking for a new computer (doesn't have to be expensive).

It can be pretty surprising. A basic 2x1GB kit of DDR2 with ECC and suitable speed (non-ghetto brand) starts at $63 at newegg. With taxes and "Egg Saver" shipping it's about $75. I do think it's quite a lot for a machine that is worth perhaps $100 in the first place (and that would be in "working condition"), which might still require a new motherboard (then it would be $75 wasted), which still needs a new optical drive, and possibly a new PSU too, etc... I mean, if the motherboard was known good (and the machine at least somewhat reliable), that the PSU & optical drive and everything else were pretty decent as well, and that it was upgradeable to a more decent CPU (this can't be upgraded past a dinky old Pentium D) and with some life left in it then sure, I'd happily throw the $75 at it. Just my 2 cents.

RAM problems... I don't recall using Dell's RAM test. I don't really trust it, but they likely do (and use it to determine if something should be RMA'ed usually) so it's hard to say for sure if it's any good. I'm not totally sure what kind of tests Windows runs either. For memory tests, I stick to memtest86+. You know what it's up to/does and it works. The bootable CD should be easy enough to use. As for USB problems, well, lots of motherboards from that era are like that. Failure to detect a USB keyboard isn't all that uncommon either in old machines (assuming you set the BIOS option properly for it to work). Bad caps... Well, I'm not sure about the Precision 380 (don't think I've seen one of those), but P4's from that era (first half of last decade or so) are well known for that, including Dells. It's always a possibility. And now beeps, accompanied with "strange" beep codes... We can only speculate here. Bad motherboard? Bad RAM? We can't really guess. What I don't need to guess though is that this machines seems like a whole lot of trouble: possibly bad RAM, possibly bad motherboard, USB that sometimes work, beeps instead of POST'ing, had several motherboards replaced, from an era known for bad caps, likely needs a new PSU as well, needs a new optical drive seemingly (and more RAM), and perhaps even has a failed RAID from what I've seen in another of your topics. And there's the HAL issues and not turning off by itself too. And there's probably some more that we're not aware of... That's far more trouble in a single computer than I've ever seen before. It seems like anything but reliable. And I'm also keeping in mind it's an old P4 with not so much RAM so not worth a whole lot to begin with. I wouldn't personally invest much in a machine in that kind of state (why waste $50 on RAM if it's still going to be highly unreliable, that's $50 wasted IMO). A replacement motherboard would likely cost a fair bit more than the machine is worth in the first place. Upgrading that computer wouldn't necessarily be cheap either: new motherboard/CPU/RAM, new PSU (that old 125W junker would have to go) and new case as the old one is BTX, and the optical drive you wanted to replace... There's very little left to salvage: an old video card with a measly 64MB that is outclassed by even Intel onboard video (ouch!), and an old 160GB HD with years of wear (a brand new SATA 500GB'er is like $50). That leaves you with 2 other options: 1) Building something new and reliable (doesn't have to be crazy expensive) 2) Buying a similar low-end machine 2nd hand locally, like this one on craigslist for example (which I believe isn't that far from you): P4 2.93GHz (hardly any difference), 1GB RAM (double what you got), 40GB HDD (put your old drives in if you want), including a 19" LCD+keyboard+mouse for $125. Either ways, such "deals" aren't hard to find at all. I can get tons of such machines around $100 locally as well (including 30 day warranty and a legit copy of XP) -- I even see some people giving away such old P4's. So I don't think it's worth spending a whole lot on what you got. Macs sure are overpriced for what they are (and pretty much useless for me too). As for PCs taking too much work, well, you can't judge based on that particular P4 you got. I've had numerous computers with no such issues ever (neither have the 1000's at work at my previous job). They just keep working, and security has been a total non-issue since XP SP2 as far as I'm concerned (not one single virus since then, even on the kids' PCs, even when running as as local admin under XP!). If you buy a reliable machine (that doesn't mean expensive) and don't do strange things to it then it'll work just fine, with little to no maintenance. For example, my kids' new PCs ($300/ea, based on a Athlon X2) have been working perfectly since day 1 (not a single problem, not one virus, no reformatting or reinstalling anything, etc) and I don't see that trend changing anytime soon.

No kidding. The E6700 is almost 4x faster than a P4 3GHz. Not only the new CPU is dual core and the old one isn't (already a huge difference), but the P4 uses the old Netburst architecture (way too deep pipeline for starters) which was utter junk, and then trying to scale that poor & inefficient design using the "more MHz" marketer-friendly method -- compared to the MUCH nicer Core 2 architecture for the E6700 which has a significantly higher IPC (another *major* boost) and its overall MUCH better design (big improvements on the SIMD side too). And then you got the 4x larger cache, better branch prediction, new instruction sets (e.g. SSE3 -- plus others that are very nice although not so much for speed reasons i.e. VT for VMs), etc. It's also a decent 64 bit CPU which gives another boost (the extra registers help) assuming you're using a x645 OS, etc. The difference would be day and night (as much as between a P3 900 and a P4 3GHz) Personally I would do the same as puntoMX already suggested: a basic motherboard with a E3300. That would be much easier to find new (full warranty), be significantly cheaper cheaper than even a used E6700 on ebay, and still perform ~4x faster than a P4 3GHz. You might get some nice extras out of the new motherboard too (the choice is yours).

I can't guarantee it'll run, but either ways you'd have to look on the used market (ebay or whatever) as it was EOL'ed in Jan '08.

If you follow the link given by jaclaz, you'll see that verclsid isn't the shell extension, it's what verifies them. ShellExView will let you remove them, including the one causing issues (crashing verclsid). I'd start with whatever was installed last.

If you posted the minidump (D:\Windows\Minidump\042310-15147-01.dmp) then we would have a basic idea of what's going on. Right now we can only speculate as we basically have (almost) nothing to work from. My first guess would be making sure drivers are up to date (particularly video drivers), but then again that's guesswork, based on 100000ea meaning THREAD_STUCK_IN_DEVICE_DRIVER_M.

You could remove it by hand using regedit, but if you're looking for something simpler you could try ShellExView.

It was never tested from runonce. Not only I don't have any computer still running XP, but my VMs base snapshots were built a good while ago (and I never really cared for RunOnceEx either back when I still used XP). So I'm only going to put limited effort into that part. I can't really think of why it wouldn't work though (besides not finding the text file if it's not placed in the right location or misnamed or something like that, in which case it will simply quit). I don't typically invoke wscript but the vbscript itself, just like you would with an .exe or batch file (and with no cmd line args) You can change locations. Run it from anywhere you want. And if you really want it to look somewhere else than the current folder for macs.txt, then hardcode the path or something, it should be fairly simple.

You'd be surprised... There's a few pretty good sites out there, and there's only so much to say about that besides [fairly subjective] equipment reviews. I'll just stick to drinking the stuff