[What's your internet connection like?]

A quiet afternoon looking for the shortest path to our nearest speedtest.net server.

[Frustrating Image Problem]

You could have a logon script that's run first time they logon to make the file.

Something like this would work

@echo off
echo [DeleteOnCopy] >"%userprofile%\My Documents\desktop.ini"
echo Owner=%username% >>"%userprofile%\My Documents\desktop.ini"
echo Personalized=5 >>"%userprofile%\My Documents\desktop.ini"
echo PersonalizedName=My Documents >>"%userprofile%\My Documents\desktop.ini"
attrib +h +s "%userprofile%\My Documents\desktop.ini"

and then change the default user profile HKCU\%username%\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVirsion\RunOnce

and put a key in there to run the batch script

[Frustrating Image Problem]

No probs. And I took no offense

The irony of windows how opaque it is

[Frustrating Image Problem]

try looking in the desktop.ini in the my documents folder. iirc this is what it uses to do the auto renaming. In my default user folder that file does not exsist. so i would guess removing it from yours will fix this. (its a hidden file so make sure they are visible)

[Where is the registry stored in X64?]

:/ possibly too late to help but for future readers, in xp64 there is a folder called

c:\windows\SysWOW64

Think of it like system32 but they store 64bit library files there, and also the other half of the system hive (ignoring the user hives which are stored in %username%)

[memory stress test]

You could use a live cd from

http://www.memtest86.com/download.html

and do the test in a proper environment. This way you have direct memory access and can test on a block by block process with out windows doing any memory management for you.

[Monitor and Edit Network Traffic]

Hi Redhatcc,

Your question was understood, however for the example usage you gave DNS spoofing or a proxy server are both much better methods. If you want to intercept the packets and modify the data in real time i think you will find that substantially harder. For one each packet has a check sum to verify its not been tampered with which would be beyond most peoples skills to spoof. Far better would be acting as a man in the middle as either a router or a proxy. For example using something like squid 3 and an ICAP server you can rewrite webpages in real time so that, for example, all html tags defining the font colour for black are changed to pink, or all txt sitting between <p> tags is reversed. You could also use a url rewriter to redirect people to different parts of a site or different sites altogether. for example you can enforce google safesearch with a simple url rewrite that appends &safe=active to the end of your query string. both these methods are limited only by your own inventiveness. I saw one setup that processed the webpages via a filter to render them upside down as a joke on a wifi freeloader.

I manage a substantial estate of proxy servers which is why i personally would use that method to intercept and modify traffic. but im sure that much of that can be accomplished by a router as well.

Can you clarify what exactly would would like to accomplish by editing the raw tcp traffic?

[Free Microsoft Exchange E-Mail Client?]

Yeah, Its called outlook. Every CAL for exchange includes a licence for Outlook. If you have a recent version of exchange with all the correct licensing then you can use a recent copy of outlook. As to using something other then outlook as far as i know there is nothing that can talk using the same protocols and so wont have the same functionality but you should be able to use any pop3 email client to get the email.

[Ideas to block websites]

Hiya,

Rather than edit the hosts file you could set the 2k3 server up as a DNS server and then spoof the domains that you wish to block and redirect them to a web server (that could also be hosted on the 2k3 server) with a holding page explaining that the site is blocked. To enforce this if you block port 53 outbound on your edge firewall and allow only the 2k3 server out over 53 then all the internal client computers would be forced to use DNS from that computer and so could not bypass your block (well not with out a little more effort, short of whitelisting i dont think its possible to filter traffic if your determined). Personally i would use a proxy server though as it is much more powerful for filtering, and gives you the added choice of logging people going to sites that should be blocked.

Tris

[I've never seen anything like it before!]

the ram could be dyeing - try memtest86

or its over heating cos the cpu fan has packed up, heat sink is not fitted right etc (i favour this as it would fit with the bios being fine. no load on the cpu)

[Display a Picture on a Monitor/Panel from a server]

There are 2 ways i have heard of doing this.

1 is to do it as a website and have either a thin client, UMPC, etc attached to a monitor. the webpage can be made to refresh periodically to reflect changing pictures.

2 is to use a screen saver (though i know of no custom screen saver application tht can connect to a db)

Regards

[What's your internet connection like?]

[How to get a computer to go to two web sites only]

Ok, restricting to 2 sites is dead simple. squid. set it up as a transparent proxy for those computers and you can limit it to 2 sites no problem. With regard to limiting the programs that you can run, i know we use ready state for our library pc's (though don't know how far we lock those down) and if you want you can do it with GPO's, though i suspect it would be time consuming locking it down totally that way.

[Open .URL with 2 browsers . How can be made ?]

I know its not ideal, but you could have a separate shortcut set like this

"C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\IEXPLORE.EXE" [url="http://site.com"]http://site.com[/url]

[Monitor and record registry changes]

cant you use something like Wininstall LE 2003. this alows toy to take before and after snapshots of the system state when installing programs. this will record all registry keys added removed and changed. iirc (i dont have any examples to hand to check) it saves a reg file that you can then use to rewrite the reg.

[Howto batch install some hotfix?]

this is a sample of a batch file i use to install the updates on computers

@echo off
echo Upto date as of 06/02/07
IE7-KB929969-WindowsXP-x86-enu.exe /passive /norestart
echo 1 of 63 done
IE7-WindowsXP-x86-enu.exe /passive /norestart
echo 2 of 63 done
msxml4-KB927978-enu.exe /passive /norestart
echo 3 of 63 done
msxml6-KB927977-enu-x86.exe /passive /norestart
echo 4 of 63 done
WindowsXP-KB873339-x86-ENU.exe /passive /norestart
echo 5 of 63 done

its that simple, this will go through and sequentially install all of the hotfixes in the list for you. once thats done you can have the script reboot the computer for you as well.

[Broadcom RIS Arhhhh]

have you looked at this post ?

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=39778

this post also suggests its down to dhcp conflicts

http://bink.nu/forums/8005/ShowPost.aspx

btw, i had a poke at getting my tablet with that nic to install using ris. i never even got the setup to start :/ gave up on it in the end as its just not worth the effort for this one computer, but i will look at it again now that ris has been replaced on 2k3.

[run<msconfig help]

firstly my copy of msconfig is located in C:\WINDOWS\pchealth\helpctr\binaries, not in system32

secondly if you put in your xp cd and type in to the run dialog box

"expand x:\i386\MSCONFIG.EX_ C:\WINDOWS\pchealth\helpctr\binaries\msconfig.exe"

where x: is the letter of your cd drive that should restore the file from the cd for you.

[Did anyone try to nlite Windows XP Tablet PC Edition?]

I nlited this computer with tablet edition over a year ago, cant find the media atm with the lastsession.ini but i have had no problems with this setup and i know i took a fair amount out.

[XP System now very slow to hibernate]

try turning off hibernation and then defragging disk.

on my laptop after the feb updates i have not seen any change in hibernation speed so i doubt it is due to one of the hotfixes.

[poll on front page is wrong]

the current poll asking about office has a mistake. office 2002 and xp are the same version. 2002 could be changed to 2004 which is on the mac.

[Totaly Wireless Domain]

dont worry about multi boot as if the dc dies you should still have your profile cached on the laptop/pc which will let you log in or if that fails you still have the local administrator account on the pc which you can choose at the logon screen.

[Totaly Wireless Domain]

I dont want to offended but you really should know how to set up a dc if you have a MCSE. That's fairly basic stuff.

if you read these 2 guides that should give some good idea as to how to go about it

http://www.petri.co.il/how_to_install_acti...indows_2003.htm

http://www.petri.co.il/create_a_new_dns_server_for_ad.htm

with regard to running it on wifi over wired it should make no difference if its just the 1 server in the forest. regardless as to how you will eventually use it it will be MUCH better if you can hardwire 1 client to it during setup just to make sure its working as expected.

with regard to telling the dc to associate the the router that should be just like any wifi client. the computer will use any available network link wired or wireless.

[Start Menu question]

By setting the start menu to classic style you can i can make a start menu that looks basically the same as your photoshoped version. however i doubt you will be able to get it to use your theme.

[Which Os Is Better?]

XP Tablet edition I spend 80% of my time using that now. but then that's kinda specific to hardware. I like both 2k3 and xp pro for normal desktops and 2k3 is obviously very good on servers. My small experiences with home have all be very painful as i quickly find stupid limitations like simple file sharing or 5 concurrent tcp/ip connections.