DigeratiPrime

Thank you Cluberti but still no luck finding a way to go to "legacy mode" here or workaround it. I was wondering if it might be related to IPC but its something I am just not that familiar with. I do have the Location Type for both Vista machines set to Private as well as the other settings. One reason I wanted to avoid duplicating accounts is that there are a # of users and some do not have passwords. I am still confused why Vista allows connecting directly to file/folder shares, but not the IPC$ share; esp when the Network control panel links to it! I thought it might also be related to the Anonymous Logon user but no luck changing the two polocies mentioned here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc772211.aspx I've tried: Bypass traverse checking Network access: Let Everyone permissions apply to anonymous users Network access: Do not allow anonymous enumeration of SAM accounts and shares

Hmm, the most expensive part of my system would be the Monitor, a 19" Viewsonic VX924 which I paid $350 for a few years ago, but I havent upgraded from that purchase yet. Otherwise the Barebones Shuttle Kit which includes the Case, Mobo, PSU, HSF for $250 about 6 months ago, then the CPU, E8400 which was $200, then the GPU, 8800GT which was $150, then the HDD, WD WD6400AAKS, which I just got for around $80. However I think the GPU is the most expensive component because it probably has the highest turnover in terms of upgrading. BTW I'm now in the market again for a new monitor, either 24" or 26" @1920x1200 (16:10), and looking at something like the BenQ G2400WD.

I have a machine running Vista Ultimate SP1 x86 with pretty much default settings which I will refer to as the HOST machine. I am trying to connect to a share on the HOST from another machine on the same network and workgroup which I will refer to as CLIENT. When I try to connect to \\HOST I get Access Denied although \\HOST\Share will work. Also if the current logged on user on the CLIENT has a matching account username and password on the HOST then even \\HOST will work. I get the same behavior whether the CLIENT machine is running Windows XP or Vista though I dont remember having this 'problem' when the HOST machine was running XP. HOST appears in the Network Control Panel on the Vista Client. Also using the HOST IP \\IP instead of the HOST NETBIOS name makes no difference. I understand this is 'normal' behavior for Vista, according to http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library...27037.aspx#ECAA However I dont understand why \\HOST is denied but \\HOST\share is allowed yet. Is there a way to change this behavior to be how XP was? I don't really want to add all the CLIENT user accounts to the HOST to achieve this either. The HOST has Network Discovery ON, File Sharing ON, and Password Protected Sharing OFF. I believe this is some security setting enabled by default on Vista, but I am not sure which one. I would like to connect to the 'root' share because it is cleaner then making shortcuts to all the shares. Ideas?

IIRC the last version was 1.6.4 but those are some great new features and improvements! esp the 64bit guest support [EDIT] checked the changelog page and there was actually a 1.6.6 'maintenance update' about a week ago.

Hmm, down from over a year ago, ping is better though; Cable Broadband though so its variable. Time to run some more tests, check the connection and if necessary call the ISP! That's strange. It does the same thing as my VTel (vermontel.net) DSL connection does, (sometimes) the download drops while the upload stays roughly the same! Just ran it again, 1am Saturaday morning, and made sure nothing else was nothing else running behind the gateway. Since it is a Cable connection the Downstream / Upstream bandwidth is shared amongst customers on the same node. Also it is an Asymmetric Connection meaning the Downstream/Upstream ratio is not 1:1. What is interesting is why they seem to affect each other, that is uploading decreases the download rate, instead of staying at the same ratio. I am not sure if that is a property of Asymmetric connections, Cable, the OS TCP/IP stack, some combination of those or other? Since the bandwidth from my ISP is variable it is difficult to figure this out.

boot.ini is part of ntloader and considering your exclusion list that leaves you with only Windows 2000 or Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs I think.

I've always found high schools to be the absolute worst places to try and build self-esteem. If you can make it out and go to college (or hit the "real world"), you'll find people are far less shallow. Just force it if you have to, but get yourself through that last year and it'll be the best thing you've ever done for yourself. I experienced some frustration in High School, everyone does in their own way. Anyway in hindsight I realized that not everyone there cares about students futures, some put in only enough to get to that pension. Don't let those type of people get you down and get in the way of your potential! I got lucky and had a couple great teachers that had a passion for what they were doing and those people inspired me, not to follow their careers but their outlook and professionalism. My personal philosophy is "do what you think is right" and "push the envelope". For example I align myself with other people that would like to see the Public Education system modified a little so those aforementioned bad teachers don't stick around long so future students have less crap to deal with! Anyways I always encourage others to always pursue what interests them and what they enjoy. Do what you enjoy; be good at what you do; Everything else will follow! B)

Hmm, down from over a year ago, ping is better though; Cable Broadband though so its variable. Time to run some more tests, check the connection and if necessary call the ISP!

I am curious too, my thinking was the 64bit cmd.exe environment variables map to different locations in some cases. Otherwise I think all these wrappers do is pass the script onto the cmd interpreter anyway. So is there a difference between a cmd file packed in a silent SFX created by WinRAR or one of these specialist applications?

Whats wrong with the RemoteDesktop built into Windows?

I would like to add special effects to the Vista DWM that go beyond Flip3D and are more advanced like Mac's Exposé and Linux's Compiz Fusion. Is their any reason Vista's DWM cannot perform like Compiz Fusion? So far I've found: Switcher http://insentient.net/ DExposE2 http://www.winmatrix.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=17657 Any other ideas?

It might boot faster, but Superfetch in Vista will take advantage of your empty ram to intelligently pre-load applications and reduce paging.

the way I see it: ATI currently has smaller fab process, meaning less heat and energy use UVD supports hardware accelerated VC1 decoding open sourced some driver specs supports DirectX 10.1 integrated audio for hdmi NVIDIA better OpenGL performance hardware PhysX processing in Geforce8 or later HybridSLI / HybridPower Larrabee (Intel) real-time raytracing ??? Driver stability and performance goes back and forth so much I cant say who is better anymore.

Adobe has gotten smarted with v8 and v9 and has delayed much of the program from loading until needed. Still how are you measuring memory usage? Working Set, VM Size, Private Bytes, Other? Is the program window minimized in either test? Have you tried Foxit Reader? You should post a public PDF that others can use to compare experiences with.

Use Process Monitor to see what process is writing the logs, then with Process Explorer determine what thread of that process is responsible, suspend all the bad threads, then kill them and delete their modules. Run a good AV afterwards and pray you really got everything. If the modules are modified Windows modules, or you have a rootkit which is subverting Windows, then things get more complicated... As jcarle points out ShieldsUP is irrelevant and a poor Firewall leak testing utility anyway. http://www.matousec.com/projects/firewall-challenge/

Although it's one hour I've watched that video before I will say it is very worthwhile if you want to improve your skills in manually troubleshooting problems. For virus or rootkit type infections I always reformat because you cannot trust you system after that point. You antivirus might become ineffective and may also lie to the user and insist nothing is wrong. You would need to mount the disk offline, so its deactivated, and then scan it in a secure environment like a PE ramdisk. There is also the possibility that your infection is unique and no antivirus knows about it, or if they do that they completely remove it. Virtually all system files that ship with Windows are signed and protected by 'Windows File Protection' in XP; or 'Windows Resource Protection' in Vista. You can check those signatures by using SFC. You can also run sigverif to check the signatures of 3rd party drivers. In Vista, WFP uses ACLs which allows the protection to be controlled on each object individually, WFP also protects certain areas of the Registry; the Administrators group is not the owner of system files anymore either. Some drivers will have signatures some will not. You can usually tell if they dont because there wont be a CAT (Security Catalog) file and/or you will get a popup warning when you try to install it, although that warning message can be disabled globally. Vista x64 requires a boot option to disable integrity checks, and this was just removed with SP1 so you must use the F8 key to manually allow unsigned drivers each time you boot Windows. As for a standard set of drivers to boot with, that is Safe Mode. Problem is on an infected system even those few drivers, and system files, that are loaded might have been modified. But if there is a problem with other drivers or files , then Safe Mode is useful. If you use Imaging software like Acronis True Image you can selectively restore files and folders from a disk image. By just restoring the registry (system32/config) you might be able to deactivate a virus that has to be loaded each time Windows boots and keep your programs and user data intact, problem is your losing user and program settings, and again Windows itself might be corrupt. You can also restore the entire Windows folder but then you might be missing some libraries and drivers. Trick is to keep the OS on a seperate partition from the Programs and User data, so restoring Windows is not a big deal; also keeps the image filesize small and the process fast.

So the Creative software works on a standard install of XP SP2 and even after the SP3 update is applied; but not on a standard install from SP3 integrated media? Can you save and zip up the DWI (Dependency Walker Image) of the exe's that are giving you trouble? Might be able to figure out what functions are missing and just add the older binaries to the program folder to get it to work on SP3. You could speed up your testing cycle by imaging your system before installing the Creative software so you can just restore the system to that point instead of setting it up over and over again.

Malware, such as rootkits, can patch actual Windows binaries so they cannot be detected by API calls. You would have to verify the digital signatures, probably mounted offline, on the files to ensure they are authentic. While the new KPP in Vista x64 helps prevent this, its not impossible. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernel_Patch_Protection

Awesome board, Gigabyte is my favorite motherboard manufacturer btw Sorta looks like if a card was put in the first x4 slot it would hit the water block on the chipset though:

that is obviously a virus, boot into safe mode and use autoruns, enable "hide microsoft entries" and "verify code signatures" , then disable logon processes. You would still need to run an antivirus after this try the KAV Scanner (freeware): http://avptool.virusinfo.info/en/ I always reformat and check the MBR of infected disks but its your choice.

Topics merged. Please don't double post; btw answering your own questions looks suspicious, like spam. Please have a look at the forum rules, particularly #2. Otherwise... The other popular gecko based browsers imo are K-Meleon and Camino. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gecko_(layout_engine) The InstantBird app is interesting, looks like an opensource alternative to Pidgin.

I'll admit first I haven't read through the whole thread. With that said I will try to keep my opinion on the original post simple. Performance is an economic problem: do the performance advantages of new hardware justify the cost; likewise are the performance disadvantages of older hardware insignificant and the savings are justified? There are two* ways to increase performance: free-up system resources to specific tasks OR add system resources across the board, *or do both. Depending on how old your hardware it may make sense to add resources to areas that are bottlenecks, commonly RAM. However even a TB of ram will not help a system with a P1 (in virtually any realistic situation). Unfortunately with older hardware there comes a point where the cost savings are offset IMO with the increased support costs and productivity loss; and in some cases energy savings. Generally tweaks that attempt to increase performance will have diminishing returns...

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?s=&amp...st&p=784332

VEN8086 is always Intel. DEV_284B is the unknown, but seems to be an HD Audio chip. What version of XP Pro x86 are you using, SP0, SP1, SP2, or SP3? If not the last (SP3) you might need the HD Audio update from MS before you can install drivers for your audio controller: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/888111 In fact Dell does provide XP compatible Audio drivers for that laptop http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/...p;fileid=244268 BTW here is the main Dell Support link for your laptop: http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/...emID=VOS_N_1510

At what point does setup fail? Try copying the DVD to a folder on your computer and running setup from there, so we can rule out the dvd media and dvd drive.