CoffeeFiend

Seriously, is there a reason to use a 10+ year old compiler (haven't seen anyone use that since Windows 95 came out), meant for DOS, that's mostly used to make old 16 bit executables, when you're running a x64 OS? Especially when you have modern compilers & IDEs like MS VC++ Express (free!) that will even generate native x64 apps for your OS? (no WOW64 or NTVDM stuff required)

Unless you already made the necessary changes on your win 2003 box, nope. If you need this to work on every OS reliably, then you don't want to use this WMI class, simple as that. Again, you still have the same issues as above. And that slow WMI class only returns so much infos. Again, you'd be far better off reading from the registry at this point. However, only a tiny number of apps publish a QuietUninstallString in the registry, the vast majority only add a plain old UninstallString, which will need user interaction to uninstall. From ARP? Perhaps we're not thinking about the same thing (Address Resolution Protocol) There's already plenty of apps and mechanisms to do push installs, installs on-demand and such, of various software and updates. GPO, SMS, logon scripts, etc.

Why would you want a pop under to show them things? Pop unders are used so users DON'T see it (usually for loading more pesky ads). Showing them "different things in different categories" is best done using normal site navigation.

When you're troubleshooting network issues like that, Wireshark and some knowledge are the two best tools you have. Using that, you'll see EXACTLY what's going on -- no guessing involved.

There is no trial version of it, and it will only run on approved Mac hardware -- it won't run in a Virtual Machine.

That's a way, if all your stuff can share the same IP.

I've had exactly 0 issues with IIS as an app & web server. So I think I know which one I'd blame We don't use certificate services in the first place, so I can't really say if it sucks.

With vmware you can set the mac address by hand in the config file, or you could even script it.

I've never heard of someone that had such problems. Either it's a false positive, or your trojan is coming from somewhere else. No need to double post.

S3 sleep (system standby) mode would also give you great power savings, and also be back from that power saving mode quicker. It's much like hibernate, but keeps the RAM content refreshed (the only thing powered on, wasting only a couple watts), so no need to load the contents from disk first.

Satellite internet is always more expensive, usually slower, and usually they have pretty drastic bandwidth usage caps too (transponder bandwidth on a satellite is crazy expensive, unlike copper/fibre bandwidth), much higher latency, and as you found out, it's often 1-way only. It never is cheaper than a "normal" ISP. There's other kinds of satellite ISPs like inmarsat, but you're talking about ISDN speeds at several $/minute. But, in some remote locations, it's pretty much all they you can get. With some luck, there might be some wifi ISPs/access points in your area, or WiMax being deployed in the future, or perhaps a cell phone company that has a decent data plan (not that I've ever seen one).

It's trivial to do. JScript version (AFAIK WPI uses JScript but I can post a VBScript version if you prefer) of fairly generic code that shows how you can do it: try { strComputer = "."; SWBemlocator = new ActiveXObject("WbemScripting.SWbemLocator"); objWMIService = SWBemlocator.ConnectServer(strComputer,"root/CIMV2"); colItems = objWMIService.ExecQuery("Select * from Win32_Product"); propEnum = new Enumerator(colItems); for (;!propEnum.atEnd();propEnum.moveNext()) { objItem = propEnum.item(); if (objItem.Caption == "Adobe Reader 8.1.2") { WScript.Echo("installed!"); } } } catch(e) { WScript.Echo("exception " + e.number + ": " + e.description); } However, the Win32_Product class is BY FAR the slowest one. I mean, it's really excruciatingly SLOW. It's like molasses, in January, going uphill. Don't be surprised if it takes as long as 30 seconds to run (also, by default, that class doesn't work on windows 2003). I sure wouldn't want to be calling this code several times to see if various apps are installed. If you're resorting to use it, then only run it once (keep the results in an array or such). It would be FAR quicker (I mean, more than 100x faster) to look in the registry, but then again, the path to the [un]install info changes with every build, so it gets tedious for sure.

Lots of them

Obviously something went very wrong with the install. Sometimes it's just better not trying to fix an install gone bad, and just starting clean.

If it's a driver, then you can remove it from device manager (you might have to select "show hidden devices") Depends on where the file is.

Won't make any difference. What numbers are written on unused parts of the hard disk are irrelevant, and when time comes to use it, it'll write data on it first. It can read from/restore to different partitions no problem. Done it hundreds of times. Ghost images aren't DVD disk images (a .gho isn't a .iso). It's not the same thing at all. And they're not bootable (unless that's some kind of new feature introduced in a new version -- I've stopped using Ghost in favor of Acronis TrueImage a couple years ago), so you'd burn them as a data DVD.

Most such things use web services, that you talk to using normal HTTP traffic, so you'd have to generate that traffic by sending the proper TCP packets (you'll need knowledge of TCP/IP and various protocols used like HTTP) If you want to see how an app does it, just log its traffic using Wireshark (again, good knowledge of TCP/IP, HTTP, etc required).

It doesn't really seem to take much... The new way is to use FirstLogonCommands instead (in unattended.xml) There's no reason for a scheduled task not to launch (I've had zero issues with that myself) Besides, you could have your stuff already all installed and pre-configured in the WIM in the first place. I haven't tried RunOnce at all, so no idea if it works or not. Vista is known to block some soft from running there (if it needs admin privileges)

Exactly A computer that runs Vista decently isn't anywhere near as expensive as you make it out to be. Besides Vista has some features that makes it faster than XP in many ways (like SuperFetch, greatly reducing disk usage hence delays when you start an app, as it's already cached in your free RAM) If you do know better than Mr Snrub then why not write the article? Most people around here would agree Mr Snrub is VERY knowledgeable (I wish I had half his WinDbg skills). He wasn't made a mod for no reason either, obviously some people agree. And Vista runs just fine here (no slower than XP did), without using vlite at all. There's just no requirement for this. So nobody knows where but you? You do realize than saying you know better than Mr Snrub and all the experts at Microsoft who built the system in the first place (many of which have PhD's in Comp Sci and more in-depth knowledge about Windows' internals than all of the MSFN users combined) comes across as pretty arrogant? (That reminds me of the 7 bit text file thing again, or calling people names for not agreeing with a certain network map...) Pagefile could go on another disk (more I/O speed and usually less seeking -- but like Mr Snrub said, potential problems) and not further into the disk (just more seeking -- no real advantages over a defragged & well placed page file in the first place). Besides: 1) Vista is not as dumb as XP when it comes to what to page to disk. XP just tries to page it all to disk to have the most RAM free seemingly (free RAM is wasted really). Vista isn't quite that drastic, so that memory page you need won't as often be paged to disk in the first place and more importanly: 2) Vista now has I/O prioritization, so if it needs that memory page that's been paged to disk badly, it's going to get it first, and make the not-so-important stuff wait (like loading that spacer gif from your browser's cache), and I/O intensive processes/operations aren't going to make everything else (like getting loading that page of memory you need from disk) wait quite as long. It also makes use of NCQ, and even has various strategies based on different access patterns (the I/O subsystem has been very much improved overall) So it's not quite as critical as it used to be. Mr Snrub has a pretty sound strategy to avoid heavy disk fragmentation (and bottlenecks), and there's really nothing wrong with that. He also had several other good points, like using volume mount points instead of like having 63 different drive letters (I'm a pretty heavy user of those too -- A/B letters wasted for floppies, then a dozen HDs with often more than 1 partitions, a card reader that mounts as 4 drives, a DVD writer, 1 or 2 daemon tools virtual drives, mapped network shares, truecrypt mounted drives, USB memory sticks / mp3 players / USB hard drives, etc -- you VERY quickly run out of letters!)

The question is, what makes you think your optical drive makes your hard drive read/write data? Just because the LED on your tower blinks?

First, there's no need whatsoever to zero-fill the hard drive first. Then, you can make some partitions with your preferred partitioning tool if you want, but ghost and other similar tools will handle that too. Might be a scratched disc or such, there are options to verify if you want.

It's just a blinking light, it won't wear out your hard drive. The optical drive doesn't make the computer access the hard drive, it's just that if you access either one, it will make the light blink. The only thing you're wearing out, is a half cent LED, that has a longer lifespan than the rest of your PC.

You could use any scripting language to solve this (very easily). Personally, I recommend naming using the ISO date format i.e. YYYY-MM-DD, which is always shown in the perfect sort order. Edit: the script isn't a 3rd party app per se, it runs on the windows scripting host.

That's perfectly normal behavior. When you access the hard drive OR the optical drive, the LED is supposed to blink. The LED blinking doesn't mean it's accessing the hard disk, but rather that it's accessing some IDE device (drive activity in general, no matter what device).

Quickest ref to find, by Stéphane Rodriguez, is on the "OOXML is defective by design" blog here. He's a specialist in the subject matter, and he's documented the excel 2007 format extensively as you can see here. Again, it's just one example, to show WOW64 does add extra overhead. Well, perhaps you're using different codecs instead of CoreAVC and the Haali splitter (or running those under WOW64) but again that's not exactly optimal (higher resource usage for sure).