cluberti

Since the vendor has pulled the RC ISO, redistribution of vendor binaries not authorized by the vendor is not allowed here as per forum rules. Stop asking for a link, please search for yourself if you must. [Closed].

That's a misbehaving driver. We're gonna need any .dmp files that are generated when this occurs to tell you more, though.

No, that's normally reported. I would suggest perhaps creating a test OU, block inheritance, and place a machine there with a new GPO applied to the OU that sets these again.

Basically, yes, the distributor is in the wrong (although downloading a copy off of some random place on the internet can be an unsafe thing to do). Ultimately though, the copy is a warez copy, so steer clear - forum rules prohibit any discussions of warez here, but I know this is more of a procedural question. No bans, but if you're gonna get a warez copy of Windows best not to discuss it here.

Unless it's a royalty OEM key (and even then, only *some* are architecture-specific), a product key is a product key, regardless of the architecture. The key is specific to the version of Windows, not if it's an x86 or x64 variant of it.

It's the Windows servicing engine. No, there's no open source version of the servicing and packaging engine for Windows binaries.

And Apple doesn't have to worry much about stepping on 3rd party toes when they release a (very good) 1st party app to do something that other vendors may have already written apps to do. I'm not saying it's the only reason, but it is a reason it would seem. Also, I sincerely doubt Microsoft is trying to be Apple, rather they're trying to reduce the OS footprint (which is what users want - read the forums here and elsewhere on the 'net) and make apps less dependant on OS version (again, this is what people seem to want). You can't have it both ways - if it ships in the box with the OS, it's STUCK on the box, at that level, regardless of whether or not a new version could or is released for a newer OS. And since Microsoft puts 5 - 10 years of support into an OS lifecycle (and by inclusion every app that shipped on said OS), you have to consider it's the best compromise available. Just because it's done differently (the Live Essentials download way) doesn't mean it's bad, it's just different. If you do want an all-in-one OS, then use a Mac and OS X. But with Windows 7, you're going to have to download the latest Live Essentials bundle (or have it preinstalled for you). Again, it's a wash to me - the OOBE and start menu direct you to WLE for things like this, so yes you have to download. But it also means that in 2019 we won't still have the vast majority of folks holding onto their Win7 boxes with Windows Mail from 2009. I know you don't like it, and I agree you have a right not to, but I personally think it's better this way. Quicker turn-around on newer apps, easier fixes, and less OS dependance on the version you use. That's fine, I found XP to be stable as was Vista (again, I'm not comparing the RTM code, because it was RTM in name only). However, if the things in XP that are missing from future versions are that big a deal, you need to find out how many others think like this, and start making Microsoft aware of your concerns. Personally I never used explorer as my webcam viewer, and I don't know anyone who did - it doesn't make me right or you wrong, but it does make our experiences and expectations of newer versions different.

You can't argue logic with someone who has come to their opinion without using logic - it doesn't work. I know people will hate on Win7 just like they did on Vista, but this time they won't have anything logical to fall back on other than calling it "window dressing" or "a marketing ploy", etc. It's not worth your time and energy to argue with someone about Win7 when the arguments devolve into reasons like this. However, I do feel that this isn't illogical, just perhaps a difference of opinion - I don't agree with it, but it's an opinion. Here's my thoughts on this: Well, it's not so much a marketing ploy as it was code cleanup and removing and adding features when and where it made sense. Also, reworking the kernel and the video subsystem to run with less resources, fixing all the bugs that were filed for Vista that couldn't be fixed on the Vista platform, and adding in a lot of features (admittedly enterprise-level and not very useful in the home) to make it easier to manage, maintain, and deploy (anyone who's played with DISM, MDT/SCCM, and a Win7 or 2008 R2 image knows this). I would agree with you to a point - Vista RTM was a rushed piece of turd, and it was NOT ready for prime time - it was released early to appease folks with Software Assurance contracts that would have expired without a new version of Windows, plain and simple. Driver vendors weren't ready (partially their own fault, but partially Microsoft's fault for rebooting from the XP to 2003 codebase, changing much of the kernel, and giving driver developers basically less than 24 months to rewrite drivers for the new architecture before RTM (and especially with the changes to printing and video, this was NOT something that is a simple recompile - they were vastly different from their XP or 2003 counterparts). Vista SP1 fixed the Vista side of things, but it was already too late - the lemmings believed everything they were told by the trade rags about Vista, and compare XP to Vista RTM. Vista is heavy compared to XP, and it is heavy even on mid-range hardware for 2006 when it was released, but there was really nothing wrong with Vista SP1 and there's nothing wrong with Vista SP2. However, Win7 really does tighten up the codebase for performance and driver compat, and is designed more to run on things like Intel Atom processors and slower P4 or AMD K7 CPUs, given enough breathing room in the RAM department (I'd still not run Win7 on anything with less than 1GB RAM, but in 2009 I shouldn't be expected to either). Correct - this makes it easier to keep the user experience consistent across (supported) OS levels, and I always include the latest Live Essentials package as part of any build I do for myself or others. This actually makes sense to do, although it'll be a bit of a pain for upgrading Vista users who will find no more Windows Mail on a default 7 install. I would argue that XP SP2 was indeed the pinnacle of stability for the NT5 codebase, but you need to be careful when comparing features (webcam in my computer) with stability (uptime, lower patch count, multitasking) - they're not interchangeable. I personally find Win7's interface (including webcam only in the app designed to host it) rather than dumping those binaries in such a low-level user-mode app such as explorer.exe - while it works, it's not the safest thing to do considering there's always the potential for exploits (and the webcam driver now has a global hook for all windows too - no thanks). I don't know how I feel about this - correct that the apps disappear, but the Windows 7 OOBE does point you to Windows Live for these apps, so it's 6 of one and a half-dozen of the other. It's a wash to me, and again, I think it's better that these NOT be part of the OS so as to keep app and code consistency across supported platforms. It also makes it easier for the dev group to release newer versions that only have to be tested in specific scenarios rather than having to go through the full OS test matrices to get a new version released (and even then, only with a major OS revision, like a service pack). Look at how long IE6 has lived (and will continue to live and be supported) on XP versus what could have been if the browser was not released with the OS. It's a pain point, but it's pain with gain, I feel.

As to threads on multple CPUs, if the application is threadsafe and multi-threaded, it can run any thread on any CPU unless designed (or directed with processor affinity) otherwise. Also, the OS itself is threadsafe, so it (generally) tries to schedule it's load across multiple CPUs as well. Some of the caveats are DPC handling and the actual scheduler, which generally run off of CPU 0 in XP, but for the most part a multithreaded threadsafe app will run any thread on any available CPU. Also, you'll find that the XP scheduler changes between real cores and hyperthreaded (virtual) CPUs as well, and will (in general) actively try to schedule a thread on a real processor, falling back to a virtual processor only if no physicals are available and the application dev hasn't explicitly written the app to deny running on a virtual CPU. There's also "favorite" CPU execution to consider, where a thread that starts running on a specific CPU will tend to keep running on that CPU as it's time slice comes up over and over unless certain conditions are met (CPU's current queue, priority levels for objects in the queue, whether or not another CPU is less busy, or even idle, etc). Then there's the balance set manager... There's a lot more that goes into thread affinity and the CPU scheduler in XP, and I'm realizing it's probably a bit more than I can think to type at 2AM. Do you have access to the Windows Internals book(s) by Mark Russinovich? He explains it far better than I will, although if you want an online explanation I can try again tomorrow . If you've got the 4th edition of the book, an explanation starts on page 323 .

http://chris123nt.com/2009/01/04/why-windo...save-microsoft/

If you've already got 2008 and WDS, look into creating a "capture image" from your boot image. It'll create an image you can put back into WDS as a boot image that will boot up and capture (and upload to WDS, optionally) a machine volume that has been sysprep'ed, including XP, 2003, Vista, 2008, Win7, etc. No need for Ghost if you're using WDS.

LOL

Note you won't need this if it's crashing on it's own - that is only for manually taking memory dumps. If it's crashing on it's own, you can omit that key (although it's good to have enabled otherwise anyway).

It's possible, but you'll still need a "stub" cmd to launch it on the local disk. In general, I use a .cmd file that does a simple for loop to find a file that will be on the CD, and assign any drive letter it finds that file on to the CD drive as an environment variable, for example, looking for a CD.txt file at the root of the CD drive that I place in my ISO before burning: FOR %%i IN (D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z) DO IF EXIST %%i:\CD.txt SET CDROM=%%

Local Group Policy isn't that granular - if you apply a user policy, it's going to apply any and all settings under "User Configuration" to all users. You can configure some security settings under the Computer Configuration > Windows Settings > Security Settings and it's subtrees, but most of those are account and login policies, rather than the things you're probably after under User Configuration (my guess). Since you posted this under XP, consider instead using Windows SteadyState to keep him from harming the PC, rather than trying to do it via policy.

Dell recommends using the "System build and update disc" for installing Server 2008 on that Poweredge. Note I've had a few non-Dell servers hang at that point, and it's almost ALWAYS the driver for the SCSI or RAID on the server that's failing. If you can use WAIK and DISM to inject the correct drivers for your disk controller or RAID controller, you'll probably have better luck. Also, hanging there could be a sign of bad install media as well, as that's where WinPE bootstraps the install loader and starts dumping the image onto disk, so consider downloading new media as well from Microsoft.

First, disconnect from the network so no new mail comes in. Next, close Outlook, create a new PST from the mail applet in the control panel, change the user's profile to use the new PST as the default delivery location, then save/close the mail applet and restart Outlook. You can then open the old PST and delete the message (MAPI won't have a lock on that outbox anymore, so the message is freed to be deleted), close Outlook, and go back to the control panel mail applet and set the old PST back as the default delivery location. You can then remove/delete the new PST as well.

Use a script on oobeSystem to set the power plan, it will "fix" it.

Currently, yes, that is correct. VAMT 1.2 only ships with the WAIK.

So you did - not sure how I missed it. Anyway, I'd probably suggest looking into using powershell a bit, as this is fairly easily done in powershell.

Will do.

Windows 7 no longer uses netdom, it instead has a PowerShell cmdlet called "Add-Computer".

Hmmmm - I've not tried the capture-only task, but now I think it needs to be attempted. You're using the RTM WAIK and RC MDT 2010, correct?

Either that or install the OS on a VM, partition as you want, and then sysprep/generalize it and capture it back into a new WIM.

By default, neither show you a display for caps lock or scroll lock (or anything else for that matter) - assuming you're not talking about the lights on the keyboard, any pop-ups that display info about the button status would be for your keyboard, not Windows.