Takeshi

If you cannot logon, I don't think you can directly access remote registry from another PC via network. You can do this quite easily if you have a dual boot system and load the registry hive from the OS you can successfully logon. Alternately, temporarily transfer the HD to another PC as slave and load hive. If you have XP or 2003 (which doesn't seem to be case here), then MS WinPE should also be another option. It comes with regedit.exe and you can load the reg hive from the local computer.

This is frequently encountered but easily fixed (assuming it's not EFS you've used): "Access is Denied" Error Message When You Try to Open a Folder http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...kb;en-us;810881 Your original problem and harder to fix: How to recover from a corrupted registry that prevents Windows XP from starting http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...kb;en-us;307545

It disables many system servcies tweaks the WaitToKillServiceTimeout tweaks the NTFS time stamp etc. resorts your Start menu order all of these can be found here and elsewhere... PS. Putting the long list in code box tag would be better.

I've always just used the [backspace] key - it works on IE, Explorer, and Firefox.

Yes you can. The necessary files need to be in the Sysprep folder at the root. So make a $OEM$\$1\Sysprep.

Assuming you have XP Pro, at the logon screen, type: Ctrl+Alt+Del to launch the classic logon box, from where you can logon as the Admin. If you can't then it's been disabled.

One of my IDE 120 GB HDs has 10 partitions: 3 prim for OSes and the rest ext. logical for data, backup, VMWare, etc. My 2nd 120 HD has 5 partitions. My 3rd and 4th HDs are setup as RAID. Everyone's need is different and my setup works for me. It's never caused any "hindrance" to me, whatever that is, except that the lists of drives in Disk Management and other dialogue boxes are rather long. And where you have to configure a setting for a particular drive - like system restore and Recycle Bin, it can be tedious to go through them all - but then you only need to do this once. You lose a "tiny" amount of disk space for the extended boot record and ext. partition tables the more ext. logical drives you have. It really depends on what your needs are. For video, you should have large partitions (as on my 2nd HD).

Is there any unrecognised file at the root of C (or whatever is the first primary parition)?

May I make one suggestion? Have a thread (sticky perhaps) dedicated to typos and errors in the Guide so that people can report them as needed in one place. I would also help those reading the present version to look for any errata.

I didn't like the MS PowerToy VDM. Some desktop icons don't show up in some desktops and it saved its config files to the Temp folder (so after cleanup it no longer worked).

I see, thanks. So I suppose for PCs that don't support DEP that shouldn't matter. My old ver of RC can still logon to XP SP1 and SP2.

What updates are there for the RC specifically in recent Service Packs?

I think he meant, in regedit: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shell\explore\command

If you mean changing language interface then install the corresonding MUI pack, if it's an En international version of XP Pro.

Bear in mind that for Expandable Strings and Multistring data in hex, the formats are different between ANSI and Unicode (one and two bytes respectively).

If you get an OEM XP CD (HE or PRO) not tied to a specific manufacturer, it won't have $OEM$ folder in it. So that's not going to determine whether you are better off with an OEM XP Pro. Are you trying to make an uA CD?

Oh, that NT4 plug-in, I'm aware of that; I thought you imported some other reg or hack a file. What I did was: copied the necessary files and templates (adm) to the right location, registered: gpedit.dll, gptext.dll, fde.dll, copied loads of reg keys (found by RegMon, and having manually changed the CLSIDs). I used FileMon to see what files are accessed when gpedit.msc was run and there were many, including: admfiles.ini, explorer.exe, msimtf.dll, msxml3.dll, oleacc.dll, rpcss.dll, shdocvw.dll and winmm.dll etc. These seem to have identical versions for XP HE. These I've tried to replace: WinSXS folder, system32\version.dll, REGISTRATION, mmc.exe (identical in both versions), mmcbase.dll, mmcndmgr.dll (identical in both versions), mmcshext.dll. The three critical system files which are accessed early on when gpedit.msc starts:: ntdll.dll, shell.dll and kernel32.dll. I've not tried to overwrite these (yet). Result in XP HE: gpedit.msc > Tools menu: Disable Internet Options menu option in: User Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Internet Explorer\Browser menus. The correct registry key to be changed should be: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Restrictions NoBrowserOptions Instead it wrote to: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ Group Policy Objects\LocalUser\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Restrictions NoBrowserOptions And the new key will not stick after gpedit.msc is closed.

You're quite right. The usual advise to use 1.5-2.5x RAM as PF would not really apply with large amounts of RAM. The really objective way to find out is to try out various settings and monitor its usage. I only have 768MB RAM and setting PF to less than this hasn't caused any problems. Setting PF to another HD would help but since you won't be using much PF anyway I doublt if it's an important issue.

Use the Classic logon screen instead of the Welcome screen in User Accounts? (In XP HE you can logon to the Admin account only in Safe Mode.)

If you want the user to add his own info during Setup then omit the entries altogether. Adding XXXXX is not the correct way to do it.

There are tools to do this, e.g. Samurize. This is the reg key to check: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced ListviewShadow REG_DWORD = 0x00000001 (1) I don't think there's any other solution.

I did something similar a long time ago and got gpedit.msc to open in XP Home and behaved like normal in XP Pro, only that it won't actually write to the correct key in the registry when applied. Also, the mmc version (in gpedit.msc) still says XP Home. How did you add SFS - I imported the reg key but it didn't work then.

You want to create files within a folder but not changing the folder itself. So would setting Apply To: files and Permissions: Create Files / Write Data do that? Perhaps also disinherit from parent... The other thing is to create user Groups and set permissions for the group rather than for individual users.

Have you checked the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon AutoLogonCount reg key? or setting autologon via control userpasswords2 instead?

You can open regedit and manually go to HKCU and HKLM Run keys and look for these entries and delete them. Msconfig won't delete them even if you untick the boxes. Other tools like HijackThis will list all the startup entries in more detail than msconfig and enable you to delete them easily.