Mr Snrub

ntldr is the boot loader for legacy (pre-Vista) Windows, and is only used at the very, very start of the boot process - once ntoskrnl.exe (the OS kernel) is started ntldr is done, so you wouldn't notice any difference from replacing it with another version. One of the design principles for XP was "get the user to the desktop quicker", so a lot of the startup routines were made to run in parallel in order to get to the point where winlogon.exe is up and the GINA is presented for the user to authenticate. In Windows 2000 all those routines ran serially, so the logon prompt doesn't appear until it's completed all the previous startup steps. As the changes are in the (5.1) kernel, there's no way to "tweak" 2000 (5.0 kernel) to behave like XP. (And for Vista the boot process is not so much of a big deal as you're encouraged to use suspend-to-RAM instead of shutdown - "restart" time is under 2 seconds then.)

Quad core for multiple concurrent VMs to alleviate the logical CPU bottleneck, or faster FSB dual-core for gaming (as these tend to benefit more from FSB than >2 cores). Probably irrelevant, your bottleneck is likely the CPU or disk well before running out of RAM. The type of chipset on the graphics adapter, and the type of RAM is more important than the amount I would guess. If you are running multiple VMs you want them using separate disks to alleviate the disk I/O bottleneck, the type of drive is probably not going to make much difference - for gaming either.

Otherwise known as: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-v...ings-to-do.aspx

If you are looking at running that many machine concurrently then why are you looking at a workstation OS anyway (especially Ultimate)? I work a lot with virtual machines on Hyper-V at work, and I find that even when I am setting up complex labs (e.g. DC, TS server, TS gateway and TS client in a virtual network) I can work comfortably with 8GB physical memory - and once the test is over I can save the state of the VMs to free up the RAM again. I also have 1 server VM running all the time in addition to my parent partition. The limitation will tend to be processing power or disk I/O rather than memory when you get to run many active VMs at the same time.

Sorry, I don't have access to VLK media.

You should set your machine to create a kernel memory dump, it is not often that a minidump has enough useful information in it to diagnose the problem.Right-click My Computer, click Properties Select Advanced tab Click Settings button at the bottom, under "Startup and Recovery" Under "Write debugging information" select "Kernel memory dump" Click OK Click Settings button at the top, under "Performance" Select Advanced tab Click Change button Ensure that there is a page file on the C: drive at least as large as the amount of RAM you have installed, plus 50MB (e.g. if you have 1GB installed, it should be at least 1074MB) If it is already at least this large, don't change anything - if you have moved the page file to another volume then you need to make a change or a dump file cannot be created. Click OK on all the open windows When the next bugcheck occurs, the system should create a dump of kernel memory in C:\Windows\MEMORY.DMP - make a copy of this file, compress it and upload it somewhere we can take a look (there are plenty of free file hosting sites around).

I would guess it is a VPN client driver - is it listed in Add/Remove Programs?

Note that disbling software is not the same as uninstalling it - the filter drivers are still present and involved in I/O. You need to uninstall the software to be certain it is not affecting the environment.

Nope, it is a REG_DWORD value. It's already present, so this is an edit, not a creation.

The (EN) hotfix packages from those 2 KB articles are: WindowsXP-KB883667-x86-enu.exe WindowsXP-KB883667-x86-Symbols-enu.exe WindowsXP-KB910678-v2-x86-ENU.exe Only the second package, with the word "Symbols" in the filename, contains a symbols package (.pdb file) - the other 2 contain update.exe and some compressed files so should work fine. You don't need to run WindowsXP-KB883667-x86-Symbols-enu.exe at all.

An HP machine - did you get a recovery CD with it, or is there just a recovery partition on the hard disk? You should get support from HP if it was supplied pre-installed as OEM, they should be able to guide you through the steps to get to a recovery console, rename & run spuninst.bat to perform a manual rollback. You may be able to get a free support incident with Microsoft as it's an issue caused by the installation of a service pack - though I don't know the boundaries when it comes to OEM (you may be directed to your OEM for first line). You could copy away your personal files in Safe Mode now to ensure that you have at least some kind of backup, in the event it all goes horribly wrong.

Sorry, I didn't mean Power Management on the NIC, I meant in the Advanced tab on its properties. There should be a list of entries under "Property", all these are features that the manufacturer has enabled configuration of through the driver - such as flow control, interrupt moderation, jumbo packet, large send offload, link speed & duplex, priority & VLAN, etc. Are you using any personal firewall software, maybe part of the Symantec suite? Just seems a bit of a coincidence that you say it's ~2GB file copies on a (presumably) 32-bit system (2GB being the default size of the user-mode address space). Does it make any difference which direction the file copy is going, or which end it was initiated from? If you do the copy from the XP client it should be using the Workstation service, but if the file is pushed to the client from the other end it should be talking to the Server service - might be interesting to see if there is a difference...

QFT

Are you on the latest firmware for the laptop? If you disable the NIC, then wait 10 seconds and re-enable it, does it report the network is back up again? Is there anything in the properties of the NIC relating to power or offloading? If so, and you have a reliable method to reproduce the problem, I would try toggling some of those features off to see if it makes any difference.

All 10 are identical hardware, and only 3 have the issue?Is there a difference in the BIOS configuration at all? AHCI, power settings, USB legacy support through hw or OS, PnP-aware OS enabled, etc. (Try a reset to Safe Settings on one of the clients, maybe.)

You don't want to change the system cache - simply read from Task Manager / Performance / Physical Memory (MB): "Cached + Free = available physical RAM"

Vista and W2K8 work in the principle that "unused memory is wasted memory" - if you are not using it for applications then the Cache Manager will use it. This does not mean that it is not available for use - it has not prevented anything from launching, or significantly slowed down the allocation of physical memory. The system cache is a representation of data already on disk, so it speeds up the system when requests for that data are made - this is a good thing. If the "free" physical memory is not enough to fullfil a request from a driver or process, then the Cache Manager can drop some of its data out of physical memory to allow the request to complete. No data is lost as the cached data is still there in a non-volatile form on the disk, so if it is needed later then a disk I/O will fetch it back. ReadyBoost is a mechanism to use flash memory storage purely for cache (it is not "extra RAM" or used for the page file at all), if you don't want to install extra memory.

You always authenticate with credentials recognised by the service you are connecting to. In the case of standalone machines (as in a workgroup), this is the local Security Account Manager (SAM) database. In the case of a domain member, it is the local SAM or a domain account (in which case a Domain Controller is contacted). I am logged onto the XP virtual machine with an account which does not have a password, and when prompted for authentication I use credentials on the Vista or W2K3 machine to which I am connecting. (And I do not need to pre-pend the user name with "MACHINE_NAME\" either.) In the case of the Vista machines, the account name is the same, but not the password. In the case of the W2K3 server, I am using completely different credentials.

Well I'm stumped then - networking XP machines in a workgroup is usually straightforward, but I don't know the implications of hacking XP Home to appear as XP Pro. Client machines in workgroups have no common authentication authority, and no way to guarantee the identity of other computers - so it is not possible to add computer or user accounts from other machines, that is what a domain provides. I have a clean-installed XP SP3 virtual machine in my home workgroup, and browsing my W2K3 or Vista machines prompt for authentication - once I provide credentials for the remote machine I am able to see the shared resources. In the properties of a given network interface there are 2 requirements to get access to shared resources working: Browsing shared resources on remote machines is provided by the Client for Microsoft Networks (this effectively connects the Workstation service to the network interface). Sharing of files & printers is provided by File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks (this effectively enables Named Pipe support in the Server service on the network interface). The Windows Firewall needs the exception for File and Printer Sharing on the machine that will be sharing resources. (If a 3rd party firewall is used then check its documentation for how to permit file sharing.) If the Guest account is enabled on a machine with shared resources, then anonymous browsing of the computer's shares should be possible (you can still have security on the individual shares themselves if required).

Take a look and see if turning off "simple file sharing" is what you need... Click Start / My Computer Click Tools / Folder Options Select the View tab, scroll to the bottom of the list Un-tick "Use simple file sharing (Recommended)", click OK Log off & back on again Do that on both XP machines, accounts which do not have blank passwords should now be able to authenticate remotely.

Is there a reason you don't want the drivers installed, do they cause a problem? If you know they came from installing Nero, then uninstalling the product should remove the drivers. If you really want/need to prevent the drivers from loading and know their names, you can look at this article, ignoring the bits about making a parallel Windows installation. But make sure you have a system state backup, as if you edit the wrong value you may make the machine unbootable.

Well, you would definitely get the symptom in KB888018 for a start, and problems if there are future hotfixes for the Help and Support Center delivered through Windows Update. General rule of thumb I tend to use: don't delete anything under %systemroot%. You may not need it now, but a) how do you know, and B) how do you know you won't need it in the future?

What you mean is when you bought your computer it was running Windows XP SP2, and now you have connected it to a LAN.There is nothing you need to do, XP SP2 = XP SP2 regardless of how the service pack was applied or whether it is/was connected to a network or not. SP3 = SP3, the difference is with the delivery.If you go through Windows Update you will have the necessary files downloaded to update you to XP SP3. If you download the redistributable service pack installer then you have more files than you need, but only the same ones that Windows Update would deliver are actually applied (the ones you need). It may be useful to get the redistributable SP3 installer package and save it away, as your install media will most likely be SP2, so if you come to clean install you would have a large download to perform again - but if you have SP3 handy you can just run it immediately after installation.

Is it legal to attempt to convert media to VLK, presumably to avoid product activation?

If you installed from the original recovery CD or partition that the OEM provided, it should activate okay and you should be able to contact Microsoft regarding activation. If you used other media to install the OS then you would have had to have used another key, that did not come with your machine.