CoffeeFiend

Quite strange. It didn't write the empty elements of the array when I ran it on this box (or if it did, I must not have noticed) Easily solved though. Different version that definitely shouldn't have that problem: Option Explicit Dim fso, f, filename, section, data, i, j, s, skip ReDim data(500) i=0 skip = False filename = Wscript.Arguments(0) section = Wscript.Arguments(1) Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject") Set f = fso.OpenTextFile(filename, 1) '1=ForReading Do Until f.AtEndOfStream s = f.ReadLine If skip=True And Left(s,1) = "[" Then skip=False 'stop skipping, new section reached (w/o a blank line) If s = "[" + section + "]" Then skip=True 'start skipping lines when section reached If skip=False Then data(i) = s i=i+1 If i = UBound(data) Then ReDim Preserve data(i+50) End If If s = "" Then skip = False 'reset once section end reached Loop f.Close Set f = fso.CreateTextFile(filename, True) For j = 0 to i-1 f.WriteLine data(j) Next f.Close

An excel document isn't exactly a good back end/data persistence layer. It's not meant for that at all. You could do like 99.999% of other websites out there, and use a plain old database to hold the data, and plain old HTML forms to enter & edit it. Any PHP tutorial should cover this.

it's i386 rather (intel 386, as in, the old pre-486 CPU), and winlogon.exe is NOT digitally signed! Also, there is no such thing as a fix for signed executables. You just couldn't re-sign them yourself as the original signer anyhow (that's the whole point of it) That's merely because it checks a checksum in the PE header, to see if the file is corrupted or not. If you edit an executable and don't fix the checksum in the header, it'll give you those "unable to copy file" messages indeed, because it assumes it's corrupted. Using UPX to compress it isn't so much a fix as a side effect. It just happens that UPX fixes the checksum in the header after writing the packed executable. The real fix is merely writing the proper checksum in the PE header, and it just happens that there's a few programs that do just that (I'll even share mine in a few days, open source and all). I wouldn't really want to run every file through an exe packer just for that. BTW, why in the world would you use the ancient SP1?

I respectfully disagree. While I don't normally like to reinvent the wheel for nothing (e.g. you don't see me try to clone grep or such), this is trivial to do. In fact, one could write a complete clone of IniMod in very little time, in basically any language (JScript/VBScript included) Easy! Here's a 5 minute quickie that does exactly that, written in vbscript (any other language you prefer, just ask, it would only take a couple minutes to translate): Option Explicit Dim fso, f, filename, section, data, i, s, skip ReDim data(500) i=0 skip = False filename = Wscript.Arguments(0) section = Wscript.Arguments(1) Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject") Set f = fso.OpenTextFile(filename, 1) '1=ForReading Do Until f.AtEndOfStream s = f.ReadLine If skip=True And Left(s,1) = "[" Then skip=False If s = "[" + section + "]" Then skip=True If skip=False Then data(i) = s i=i+1 If i = UBound(data) Then ReDim Preserve data(i+50) End If If s = "" Then skip = False Loop f.Close Set f = fso.CreateTextFile(filename, True) f.WriteLine Join(data, vbCrLf) f.Close Save that as delsect.vbs or such, and then to do exactly what you said, you'd use this command line: delsect.vbs DOSNET.INF CmdConsFiles And that will delete the [CmdConsFiles] section altogether from DOSNET.INF -- simple as that.

That's one of the few good places for sure (along with jonnyguru.com and a few others) I think you misunderstood what he was calling BS. From my understanding, he was saying the "double the rating" nonsense is BS, not the stuff you said or linked to. Also, the calculator you linked to is my favorite as well, it's not perfect, but I have yet to see a better one out there. I personally wouldn't use the one in post #3. Even side-stepping countless things that bug me (like only having a handful of CPUs on the list, and having to calculate your OC'ed wattage by hand, having to enter DDR2 speed for no real reason, being forced to pick a specific hard drive in a list where yours aren't, the limited max amount of hard drives, them expecting to lookup your fan's models even though it hardly makes any difference, the lack of many options, etc), the results are WAY off. Just try my current main box: E2160 @ 3400/1.25v, 4x DDR2 800, GeForce 8500GT, 12x Seagate 7200.11 (SATA), 1 DVD writer, check TV Tuner - Satellite & PCI SATA RAID Card, 1 extra PCI-e x1, 4 USB devices, 6x 120mm & 1x 80mm fans, 90% load, 30% cap aging. Do the same on the other -- no E2160 on the list, so perhaps try with a E6300 (same 65W TDP, only 0.06GHz diff), OC'ed to 3400 too, and Arctic cooling fans. The results? Outervision says 756w, whereas aanet's calc says a 367w PSU will suffice, when I'm 100% positive it won't (a good quality 450w isn't quite enough -- I've actually tried!), and only 23.4 amps combined draw on the 12v bus, whereas each hard drives takes about 2 amps when they spin up, so the hard drives by themselves will use that much power, leaving none to the computer... It probably wouldn't even POST, or the PSU would die a very quick death. I'm very much un-impressed by that calculator.

The preloaded laptop should already be activated when using their recovery image/discs. The other laptop should also come with a license (nearly all laptops sold are via places like Dell, and those pretty much always come with Windows), so just use the recovery discs. Unless you're trying to use a different copy of XP you bought separately, in which case you'll have to call MS' activation hotline, and explain the problem to them. Unless you're doing something you're not supposed to (like trying to install the same copy on more than one computer), they will give you an activation number for it.

I've often seen figures saying 10% of their capacity per year, assuming it's powered on 24/7. Never actually measured myself. But then again, quality varies a great deal when it comes to electrolytic caps -- another reason not to buy cheap no name PSU's. To offer dirt cheap products, they have to cut corners somewhere, and quality caps are usually one of the first things to go. It's been particularly bad in the last few years, with some manufacturers offering some very poor quality caps that go bad pretty quickly (you might have seen the tell-tale bulge on the tops of caps on a motherboard before...) Personally, I always go for 30% extra to account for this. I've just gone through WAY too many power supplies before that were just barely sufficient. I'd rather buy one good quality and powerful power supply once for a little more $, than have to replace it every year and dealing with the problems you get when they go bad. Buying twice or more isn't really cheaper than buying a good one in the first place either. And again, going for something that sometimes looks overkill means room for expansion/upgrades and not running near 100% capacity (less heat, better efficiency), even with some capacitor aging. A BSOD itself doesn't damage your computer. It's Windows' way to make you aware it has detected a serious problem with your system that it can't recover from (bad drivers or faulty hardware). It basically just stops. If the PSU is too weak, your system can become unstable, reboot without warning, have various issues (like hard drives "disappearing"), not POST at all, etc. Most faulty PSUs are found when you try to find out why a system has problems. Anyways. Pick a good quality model, from a reputable company, with some head room, and you'll be just fine. It doesn't have to be a crazy overpriced model to be good either, look at specials, there's often some good deals on very nice models. I got a fairly decent deal last time, I got a Cooler Master Real Power Pro 750W for $74 CAD. It's made by Enhance, who makes pretty good products (the cheaper CM PSUs come from other not-so-great OEMs). No complaints at all! Like most things, it pays to research what you're buying.

Honestly, I'm not sure one can plan on 5 to7 years on a PSU right now. In the same system? Sure. But eventually connectors change. In the last 5 to 7 years, we've seen drastic changes PSU wise: -the 4 pin P4 connector -24 pin motherboard connectors -SATA power connectors -PCI-e power connectors And that's not counting fundamental changes in their design, like the shift from high-amperage 5V bus in old designs to more power on the 12v rails, and more recently multiple rails, and more advanced features in nicer PSUs (things like active PFC weren't exactly common 7 years ago), besides the obvious increase in power ratings. Just saying. I doubt I'll be reusing my PSUs in a new PC in 7 years. What to chose exactly is a matter of budget, preferences and priorities. There's many good PSUs on the market nowdays, and plenty of garbage ones too.

I'm rather thinking that reinstalling it fixed a problem with some unrelated component that was causing the crash, but at this point we're guessing. If VS2008 had such a problem, out of the millions of VS2008 users worldwide, we'd have heard about it by now... Google doesn't return anything for similar problems either, so again, likely not caused by it.

Strange, I've had no such issues with VS2008 (nor 2005). SQL Server (any ed) shouldn't make LogonUI crash. I'd say enable minidumps, but since the problem is now gone...

It's just one anonymous guy who says so, don't lose sleep over it. Going for higher certainly is a good idea -- room for expansion/upgrades, not operating at the max capacity of the PSU (not the most efficient point in the curve, and also not making them heat up as much), as well as working reliably for longer (due to things like electrolytic caps aging). I have yet to hear anyone knowledgeable (e.g. jonnyguru) say you should double any rating (and I'm not a complete moron either, I've even built simple SMPS'es before -- usually using Maxim's ICs, and also repaired plenty of them) Nope. And I can't say I care much for that other calculator myself for various reasons.

Just curious -- why post that in the Application Add-Ons section? Besides, it's been posted non-stop all over the 'net for the last few days, including several times here, like this post, that post, this other one, this front page news, etc. I don't think I've seen a tech site that didn't write about this already, from sites like slashdot & digg, to sites like CNET and PC Mag, portals like yahoo, and even mainstream news sites like the BBC...

Samsung SH-S183A: IDE mode: works RAID mode on ICH9R: definitely NOT! AHCI mode on ICH7: works

Talking about mounting disk images, VMware just released their VDDK -- Virtual Disk Development Kit (again, with full docs and all). Should come in handy! And seemingly MS is back to the old lying to make their sub-par virtualization products look good, namely by using SSDs to make I/O speed look good with Hyper-V (and using stupid small block sizes too), drastically inflating their apparent performance (until you read the fine print). They're WAY behind in performance & features, and way more expensive too (why am I not even surprised?): $495 for ESXi (total cost, for a better product), or $999 for Win 2008 standard with Hyper-V plus an extra $140/every 5 users for extra CALs (only 5 included) e.g. $700 more if you need 25 extra CALs (nevermind the ESXi box can likely handle twice as many VMs too)

I might be wrong here as I'm guessing what either app truly does (I don't use either nlite or vlite). But the Vista installer is completely different. Files are already compressed in a WIM image, so likely the drivers are just added to the right location, and then the new WIM file is saved (there wouldn't be a point to compress the drivers, to only them compress them again in the drive image).

Might be somewhat tricky. Personally, I'd run a script on them that looks at HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Network\{4D36E973-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318} netmscli.inf

I wouldn't put XP on that to begin with, so Vista...

The post I linked to didn't say that at all. It said: It doesn't get any easier than this...

See this. Don't wanna sound rude, but this specific question has been asked at least a million times...

OMG. I finally found a 2nd app that doesn't run as-is (out of well over 200 different apps) modifype needs to run in XP compatibility mode or it acts retarded, and doesn't understand any arguments passed... Just for having weird issues over such trivial things, I just might share the source code to my own toy (FixPE) that does the same thing (w/o the bugs of course). It's about a hundred lines of C# total, 7KB compiled. It's really simple to do anyways.

Strange. Some people are also having that issue with XP, so it's not a Vista thing. Seemingly it's a problem with Sun's installer. To quote technet ArticleID/KB 280670: and Clearly, it's trying to download a transform (that's what the .MST file is) from their web server in certain cases, and Windows Installer doesn't support that, so it shouldn't do it, ever (why try to make it do something that won't work?) It must be a glitch/bug in their MSI installer's code/conditions. I might have a look sometime (I don't have any apps that require Sun's Java though, so I don't normally install it). Hopefully I'll manage to reproduce the problem, then log the msi installer (verbose), and also trace it with process monitor. Edit: it installs just fine right from my desktop. Can't reproduce the problem. Oh well.

I dunno, I'm not sure what you're referring to here. Everything here works as intended so far, so saying NOTHING works right is ludicrous. Eh? Start > run > netplwiz.exe > select user, uncheck "must enter name/password", hit apply, enter password, done! It's exactly like it has been for just about forever (exact same as XP and 2k at least). Nothing's changed at all. Tested, and working just fine. Did it come across your mind to check into that issue? That's not normal, for any version of windows. You have bad drivers, network problems (problems with DHCP perhaps), or something along those lines. Check with the Windows Performance Tools Kit and/or look at the network traffic with Wireshark. Something's wrong somewhere. I sure wouldn't deliver machines with such a problem to my clients... Or then again, you could use FirstLogonCommands instead (in unattended.xml), or apply the changes in the WIM image first. And more and more customers are going to chose it, so you might as well get used to the new ways.

Use whatever version of ghost they were made with. That's an issue with ghost: the more recent versions of it aren't actually ghost at all, they're really a re-branded copy of PowerQuest DriveImage...

Thanks! One could probably add LOTS more stuff to it. VMware Server is free too (and a FAR better product IMO). You don't have to make use of the server features (like starting VMs as a service) to use it. That's not what snapshots are at all! This is extremely wasteful at best. When you use snapshots, it only stores the differences from that point (in a different file). You can even make snapshots from an existing snapshot (stores only the differences since that one). It's extremely useful for many purposes (repackaging apps, testing apps/patches, etc). I sure wouldn't want to be using various snapshots on different VMs this way (copying the whole multi-GB virtual disk) when testing something, I'd quickly be wasting hundreds of GBs (and wasting time copying huge files too). Hardly a new/special/exclusive feature. You can mount vdmk images using DiskMount (vmware-mount.exe) for free, no need to buy things like winimage or such. And it's not windows-only either! Comes with full documentation too. And there's even several front ends for it (in case "vmware-mount x: somefile.vdmk" is too scary) and loads of other such utilities. Again, nothing comes even close to VMware in terms of features.

Very ouch indeed! The problem is, AMD isn't really beating Intel anymore on the low end like they used to (until the Athlon XP), nor beating Intel with a better product (like the Athlon64 vs Netburst junk), nor really beating them on a performance/$ (when you look at "mainstream" dual/quad core chips), nor do they have the most performing/fastest chip, and Intel is even eating their lunch in the server space with the latest Xeons... So basically nobody's buying their products anymore, so then they resort to slashing prices (lowering profits even more), and then Intel follows them on the price drop, so they're still no better off... And to make things worse, Intel is going to release Nehalem within a year or so, that performs even better than Core 2 Duo's, better performance/watt overall, and all that. It finally has a hypertransport-like bus (no more FSB): QuickPath (aka CSI), has on-die memory controllers much like their AMD counterparts (triple channel DDR3 actually), loads of cache (L3 too now), brings back hyperthreading (8 logical cores), etc. That can't be good for AMD either. We need AMD around though. We can't have a one company monopoly.