CoffeeFiend

hex -> hexadecimal (2) is for a REG_EXPAND_SZ i.e. Expand String, which has a value of 2 (others: String = 1, Binary = 3, DWord = 4, MultiString = 7, QWord = 11) : self-explanatory 64,00,3a,00,5c,...,73,00,00,00 is the text/hexadecimal representation of unicode string (zero terminated) Just sayin' ... Also, it would be trivial to make an app to translate from one form to another (hex/unicode string). Edit: an app like this one I'll post it later if there's any interest...

The hardware (and serial #s) are different on both boxes so it would be obvious you're running it on 2 PCs, and they're not going to activate the other. That's assuming it's not a special OEM version that is tied to the hardware in the first place (activated using key in the BIOS). If you want to run it on a 2nd PC, buy another license.

Winamp can do gapless playback is what I was saying. As for Winamp burning Audio CDs, no idea, it's been probably 6 years since I've burned one of those (don't even have a AudioCD-only reader) Ideally, you don't want a solution that will crossfade, but rather one that will get rid of the silence at the beginning/end of tracks (foobar2000 might do it).

Yet another vote for CCleaner. Not so much for the registry cleaning as much as getting rid of junk/temp files. I'd have voted for "none" if the option was there.

@jaclaz: I'll have a look. Haven't had time to play with this lately. But I've been thinking about using async I/O perhaps (probably won't change anything, still worth looking at), or skipping the FileStream class altogether (maybe it's not "tuned" for 64KB writes?), and calling ReadFile/WriteFile (kernel32.dll) directly instead, or possibly even calling CreateFile "by hand", specifying the FILE_FLAG_NO_BUFFERING flag... Bufferred/unbufferred I/O likely makes some difference (again, depending on the block size and all). Operations on flash drives are likely affected quite differently by block size too (they tend to use blocks of like 256KB, vs plain old tiny 512 byte sectors for HDs). Similarly, speeds would likely vary quite a bit when I change my RAID0 stripe size or NTFS block size. There's a LOT of factors involved. And we're still only comparing operations on the same drive, copying between 2 drives would likely affect the results too (besides overall speed).

From How to use the Sysprep tool to automate successful deployment of Windows XP: See also Choosing Sysprep Settings and How to Use Sysprep: An Introduction.

Yes

You can already take out most of the effects stuff with Vista using the windows classic theme. Vista (& older versions) can already use WiMax, the hardware comes with the drivers for it. It's not Vista's fault if your computer won't boot from USB (maybe you meant getting WinPE to boot from USB, but that's also possible).

NOD32 has 50 Success / 3 Failure out of 53 tests (95% pass), spread over 10 years. Most vendors aren't even close Plus, it's extremely lightweight compared to all the others. As a quick comparison (VB100 test pass/fail): AVG: 22 Success / 22 Failure, 50% failure rate (and poor detection rates unsurprisingly) Trend Micro: 16 Success / 11 Failure, 41% failure rate McAfee: 35 Success / 20 Failure, 36% failure rate Kaspersky: 42 Success / 16 Failure, 27.5% failure rate Avira: 13 Success / 2 Failure (only been tested for 3 years, new-ish app), 13% failure rate Symantec: 44 Success / 6 Failure, 12% failure rate

The OpenTextFile method only opens one file (returns 1 file handle), so using a wildcard there doesn't even make sense. If you want to process more than one file, you'll have to enumerate them first, and then process them one by one. Also, just wondering why you're even doing this. Unless you have very specific needs that would be solved by a specialized app or script, there's no point in wasting time reinventing the wheel poorly. The "text replace in files" problem has been mostly solved since pretty much forever, using standard utils like sed (which has been around for 30+ years). What you seem to want to do (replace "tutu" by "tata" in *.txt) is trivial to do using sed: sed -i "s/tutu/tata/g" *.txt All done... -i -> edit the files (not make copies) s -> substitute g -> global

In the same sense that not having irrational hatred towards this years' Ferrarri models makes you a Jean Todt lover? Or is anyone that doesn't resist change, prefer the new ways, or plain disagrees with you automatically considered a "fanboy"?

That's rather the power options. What you're looking for is simply appwiz.cpl Or, if you like the over-complicated way, try: Explorer /N,::{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}\::{7B81BE6A-CE2B-4676-A29E-EB907A5126C5} The end result is the same.

The funny thing is, I can't seem to reproduce that particular bug you shown here, in any view mode I tried. Vista has some bugs & issues, but I can't say I've ever noticed this one myself. Most of the bugs on your page are there indeed (mostly minor annoyances), but there's a few more that I can't reproduce or that do different things: -the "2 Desktop.ini Files on Desktop Bug". Never had the problem, and yes, I always have "show hidden files" enabled and "show protected OS files" enabled too. -the "Taskbar Bug", not that clicking there does nothing, but for me it opens the "safely remove hardware" dialog instead (not that it makes more sense, nor that I double click on nothing often either) -the "Titlebar Buttons Bug", I only get the popup on the minimize button, the maximize/un-maximize button doesn't do that when I try, but it's still a bug I guess (problem with the skin perhaps) But 90% of the stuff on your list is just small visual glitches and lack of polish i.e. everything but the statusbar issues in explorer and the lack of logoff confirmation dialog. It would be nice if those 2 things were fixed, and not having to wait until SP2 for that to be fixed either! There's several more annoyances I could add to that list though, not just small GUI bugs that don't really affect anything, but more significant issues. Like when you use volume mount points, none of the drives mounted get indexed. Even if they get mounted in a directory on a drive that gets indexed. And even if you also go in the mounted volume's properties, and select "Index this drive for faster searching". There is no easy way to make that happen either (even the Microsoft.ISAdm object doesn't work so you can't script it). And I'm pretty much forced to use them too: A: & B: are wasted for old floppies, then I have 15 partitions (across 12 hard drives), 4 letters taken by a memory card reader, another used by my DVD writer, one by a virtual drive (daemon tools), another one for USB memory sticks (usually plugged in), so I'd be using all the way up to X:, still leaving me with Y: and Z: to juggle with for when another when I plug in my mp3 player or external hard drives/other memory sticks, and mapping network drives. That's pretty ridiculous & hard to keep track of what's on which letter... Also, there are various small issues regarding some language packs (MUI). Here's what the clock looks like using the french MUI pack on an english copy of Vista: The line at the bottom (change date and time settings) is in french, but the month at the top is in english (July), the day of week headers are in english (above the numbers), and the day of the week when you hover on the clock is also in english. Not a very big issue either, but it could be improved for sure. And don't get me started on the screen savers having no options at all... There's just no excuse for that one.

Try good old WinDiff. There's a lot of great apps out there specifically for this (like Beyond Compare), but unlike WinDiff, most aren't free.

The vid card gives gamers more FPS (I'm definitely not willing to spend $200 on one myself not being a gamer). The faster CPU will also make most things significantly faster (especially encoding). Whereas as high-end PSU has no apparent effect. As long as it works, most people are happy, and couldn't care less what PSU they use. Personally, I don't go for no name or very low quality PSUs, but seriously, that Corsair HX520 is $125 when not on special, that's pretty expensive for a 520W (I got a decent 750W for $74...) Yes, it's modular, but again, most people wouldn't really care. I wanted a modular PSU, but a similar PSU that's modular would have cost me like $200. As long as there's enough place for the unused cables in the case it's not a big issue (total non-issue in a big CM Stacker). It's one of those nice-to-have's, but that most people won't spend extra for. The Enermax is still fairly pricey because it's modular (~$100 for a 420W), considering you can get a half decent 450W Fortron, 400W Seasonic or 380W Antec Earthwatts around $50 (not modular though). That's like $50 extra, or double the price, for not having a few extra unused cables in your case.

Huge learning curve? What's changed to the point where it's become difficult to use? If anything, things are getting easier for most people. For most end users, the main change is the new start menu, which now has a search box. You mean the hardware makers and their shoddy drivers (who are causing the BSODs) are what's keeping you employed (ok, back when people used Win9x, sure, a large part of those were MS' own fault, but XP's been out for ages). What's incompatible? 99% of stuff works just the same, even the 32 bit apps on the x64 versions of Windows. How is it not backward compatible? It's no worse than any previous version of Windows. The only thing that's not backward compatible specifically with Vista x64 is ancient 16 bit apps. That statement is at least 100% wrong. Eh? The "documents and settings" thing was the annoying thing. And the name was fairly unrepresentative (should have been more like "User Profiles"). Those long names (like "Program Files") were meant to force developers to support long file names. Now that it's solved for good, we're moving to a more sane way to name things that's easier/faster to type. What's so hard about this anyways? Naming everything "my documents", "my pictures", "my music", and my everything was also pretty lame. Besides, I wouldn't complain about something that changed only once in 12+ years if you wanna complain about change. With computers, you'll have to learn new things every so often, regardless of who makes the OS. Linux, Mac OS and others are no different. Some people adapt to change, others try to resist it. If anything, I'd complain it hasn't changed enough (they haven't solved many issues/made many things good enough yet).

See this.

MagicAndre1981: Thanks a lot! That's a great find. It'll sure come in handy.

Then everyone who does more than click start has to download and install a thousand more things separately? No thanks! That'd be a huge step back. Besides, even if they removed basically every app coming with windows, you'd only save like 1GB of disk space, which is worth like all of 15 cents nowadays. Do you actually remember what you did with those? Yeah, nearly nothing at all in windows 3.x's case, and not a whole lot in win95's case. Nowadays, people do heavy multitasking, editing photos, playing mp3's, and countless more things that nearly nobody did back then. They do, but it still requires us to chase a couple dozen extra apps to have basic functionality that should be part of the OS, and in a LOT of cases, they also do a good job of charging money for it. It hardly comes with anything. And 99% of what it comes with (e.g. outlook express & IE) is garbage not worth using, and a lot of them apps haven't gained a single useful feature since windows 3.x (e.g. notepad & calc). Removing apps & stuff will just make Windows crippled and useless. Besides, I'd love to see the marketing for that! "Windows v7 now with LESS features!" or "Windows v7: does even less stuff!" That'll sell great I'm sure They need to work on making it a good desktop environment, not making it suck more.

The thing is, you're hardly going to be able to upgrade that. More RAM (for Vista x64) will eventually mean a new motherboard (4GB max), or at least throwing away your existing RAM (all banks full). A newer CPU worth upgrading to in the future will be AM2+ too, so again a new board. The newer vid cards will likely soon use PCI-E 2.0, and this only has a 8x slot even (16x, but in 8x mode). You want more than 1 HD + 1 optical drive? Too bad, only 2 SATA ports. The PSU will likely die on you, so that you'll be forced to upgrade anyways, and you just might tire of the cheap flimsy case with poor airflow too. Just saying, a worthwhile update will basically mean getting rid of almost all these parts (a waste of money) When you count other things like a hard drive and a DVD writer, you're spending close to $400, where spending ~$100 more would make a HUGE difference in the quality/longevity/usable life of parts you're getting. $40 would get you a PSU that's FAR better (there's tons of them, perhaps a 380W Antec Earthwatts...) There's lots of nice boards around $80, like the GIGABYTE GA-MA770-S3 (I pretty much picked the first board I saw, no in-depth research there). It supports AM2+/AM2 CPUs (no need to throw it out with the next CPU upgrade), has a PCI-E 2.0 x16 slot (will work with new vid cards), newer chipset, 4 DIMM slots (16GB max), 4 SATA ports, Gigabit ethernet, very good sound (24bit/192KHz audio & 7.1 channels, supports BluRay codecs, etc), 6 USB2 ports at the back, 2 firewire, toslink & spdif digital audio outputs, solid caps (will last a long time), etc. There's plenty of other boards around that price, some of which have pretty good onboard video (with DVI or HDMI outputs too), and some that even do MPEG4 decoding in hardware if you want to play BluRay discs one day (look at boards based on the 780G chipset). Case wise, perhaps an Antec 300, but again there's so much choice there... Those few extra $s will make a HUGE difference.

Shortcuts are just .lnk files, they're deleted just like you'd delete any other file.

Technically speaking, it will run Vista, but...... You wanna go with a x64 setup, and you're buying a cheap motherboard with only 2 DIMM slots, and filling them with 1GB sticks (not a whole lot really, I use that much for XP). Also, the board only has 2 SATA ports, etc. And like anonymous_user said, you're ending up with a no-name PSU, and it doesn't seem to be a great case either... It's cheap, but you get what you pay for here. It wouldn't cost you much extra to get a decent basic motherboard/case/PSU instead of those.

Mainly because it's locked to run only on their hardware (the absolute lock-in). It's not like billions of people everywhere on the web could just install it on their PC. Well, it's free... Same for BSD. Yes, WGA sucks. I never had problems about WGA saying my stuff isn't legit, but a lot of downloads on MS' site require WGA validation, and you have to fire up IE for that one (or download and run some validating app, hardly better -- geek just posted that too while I was writing this). But they were bound to do something to reduce piracy at some point, and seemingly they're not doing bad at all. Anyways, wishlist wise, there's about a million different things they could add/change/enhance and such (none of this total rewrite nonsense either): make aero more like compiz fusion (pretty much all of the features) something like taskbar shuffle (move tasks around in the taskbar) something like ultramon (better dual monitor support) utils like process explorer, process monitor and autoruns should be part of the OS/default install something like unlocker built-in make the zip file handling not suck (and handle more than .zip, that thing is useless; just add .7z support, and no one would use zip anymore in a couple years) make the CD burning not suck (a real burning app for a change, like nero) also add a CD image app that does iso read/write, and editing them too (like imgburn + ultraiso) a system cleaner like ccleaner/ncleaner built-in (the built-in one is worthless & annoying) keep improving the photo gallery (make it more acdsee-ish, add more options & features) a decent ftp client (and server for the server OS, IIS is great and all... but not as a FTP server) a nice rss feed reader like FeedDemon (perhaps with podcast support) a good download manager app make the snipping tool better (more like snagit), although it's a good start leave notepad alone, but add another one with more features than just file open & save (perhaps like notepad++/editpad/ultraedit) similarly, leave mspaint alone, but add a not completely useless app i.e. with more features (perhaps like an older paint shop pro) while we're at it, leave the old calc alone too, and add a nice one (graphing, with reverse polish notation perhaps, etc) music/video players worth using (like MPC) a better disk defragmenter maybe some admin/power user-only tools (like regsnap & what not -- and why not a ramdisk? and a hex editor? a MSI repackaging/authoring tool?) add even more command line utils (wget/sed/awg/grep/...-like apps, imagex & such, etc) include the latest versions of all your runtimes & frameworks & such stuff (like silverlight) make their mail app not suck (be it named outlook express or otherwise) more "basic" apps, like perhaps a html editor (or blog "editor" these days...) more config options on most things (options for the screensavers would be a start) a system-wide dictionary that would work in all apps (much like firefox's built-in one) something good to sync files (rsync-ish, with a front end?) keep improving the firewall (not that I use one, but there shouldn't be a need for 3rd party tools for this) some kind of universal/unified update mechanism for all your apps would rock for sure a web browser that doesn't suck this badly (I've long given up even wishing for this one actually) maybe a basic sound editor (I'm not asking for sound forge here, just the basics) while I don't care for it or want one, lots of people would probably like a dock a good font manager (long overdue) etc. I could list LOTS more. 99% of these aren't issues with Vista but Windows in general. And while Vista is a nice improvement over XP, I bet we won't see 99% of these addressed with Windows 7. And sadly, there's "nowhere" else to go. Linux doesn't run Windows apps (no, WINE isn't the answer either), and OS X is more of a problem than a solution (no thanks!). It really sucks wanting half of two different OS'es, and knowing you'll never get your wish.

Task manager doesn't show a LOT of stuff (like services, hardware interrupts, etc), that's why I suggested Process Explorer (it's easily 100000x better). Ya, no kidding. Finding a pegged process isn't rocket science. A tech who can't do this is in the wrong field. But then again, incompetence is everywhere. That Process Explorer screenshot would show us exactly what's sucking all the CPU power (alt-printscreen, paste in mspaint, save as png, upload on imageshack.us, paste link here).

Download process explorer, run it, and take a screenshot. This way we'll see what's pegging the CPU.