cluberti

When you install Windows, any NT-based version, it keeps track of what drive (and the position on the bus) that it installed on, so that it can boot to that drive later. I would suggest that after installing and removing, you did not put these back in the exact order they were in, hence the boot loader is not working. Is there some reason you are removing the other HDDs when installing? If there's a good reason, getting a removable drive bay is probably a good idea long-term.

Also note that there is a very good blog post on the E7 blog about the WEI changes, and it does go into detail about the HDD test changes. A good read overall.

Yes, when it works it does, quite a bit. What happens is that the drive tells the OS driver that the write is completed once the entire file copy is either on disk or in cache, rather than ENTIRELY written to the disk - it will go back and flush the cache to the disk at a later point when it thinks the drive is idle and won't affect performance. This can drastically improve HDD utilization and performance, and make the system more responsive and hopefully faster. When it doesn't work, however, it can cause the system to be slower, so this was tested for in Win7's winsat because it does matter. What winsat is testing is the actual performance of the drive during load whilst write-back caching is enabled, and what the score is saying is that, in fact, the drive you have performs FAR better with write-back caching disabled. The reasons for this could simply be that the spindle(s) is/are too slow, or a poor hard disk controller on the system board, or the algorithm for write-back in the HDD firmware is not optimal, etc. A lot of times it's that the hard disk controller does a poor job of handling out-of-order flushes, or that it's actually slow to write (but not read) thus negating any benefit a write-back cache would give, etc. Note that this phenomenon is seen more often on laptop drives/chipsets and older desktop IDE/PATA drives rather than newer drives and chipsets, so keep that in mind.But, this is much more a "real world" test than Vista's was, so the number is more accurate with the write-back test - your drive really is performing that much better under a "real-world" test with the caching disabled.

Update your chipset drivers to make sure you're using the latest, but ultimately not much.

XP counts the number of sockets, not cores - 2xQuad will work under XP Pro or XP x64 (I have done it).

Well, DWM doesn't actually take up a lot of resources itself, but the driver may (and nVidia has a history of making less than stellar Vista drivers). If you don't need any of the Vista features for your work, and don't mind running an OS that is going to go into extended (no bug fix) support soon, XP x64 should also work fine assuming the nVidia drivers provide the OpenGL support under XP x64 that you need.

Resolution will affect it, as will system bus throughput and bandwidth capabilities to/from the graphics card.

It's not possible with anything shipped with Exchange, but there are 3rd party tools that allow incoming mail to be copied to certain other mailboxes before delivery, for example. Look into software from GFI for starters.

Yes, I'm aware, this machine is used to test WDDM drivers from WU, so that's why it's running it. And whilst the catalyst updates from ATI are better, there's nothing wrong with the WU driver either, really.

LOL - perhaps you should look? You seem to have learned your lessons .

Use "send feedback" to file a bug with Microsoft, and contact nvidia. They've been pretty good with drivers as of late, they may have a fix for you in a beta driver.

From what you appear to want to do, you may have good luck using the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit, rather than hackery. There's a webcast available for it, and the help files installed with the product are INCREDIBLY useful. Plus, MDT is basically a subset of the imaging component of System Center, so working with MDT for a lite touch is easily transferred to SCCM (in fact, there's documentation on how to do it in the product). It can do things like drivers, apps, etc, and can be targeted as you want.

Correct - you will still likely have a "slow" disk (especially if you score 2.0 or under on the initial test), but it will perform "better" - 3.0 will be fine for everyday use, but will be slow if you hit the disk hard.

Windows XP Windows XP / Windows Server 2003 64-bit Edition Windows 2003 Server Windows Vista Windows Vista / Windows Server 2008 64-bit Edition Windows 2008 Server

That error maps to "ERROR_AUTHENTICATION_FAILURE" in the ras api headers, so I would make sure that the settings are correct especially for auth. Also, if the device is using cert auth, make sure you've installed the client cert properly.

Process Explorer while running Skype might help tell you what it's doing whilst it consumes the CPU. Also, I agree with the antivirus post - see if removing or disabling your A/V makes a difference.

If it's your hard drive score, you can go to the "policies" tab of it's device properties and disable the write back caching, it will result in a much higher HDD winsat score. Vista's winsat didn't take into account the write-flush policy, and Win7's winsat does. Hence, certain drives that perform poorly on the write-flush portion of the test will score (very) low compared to their score in Vista. Show us the whole break-out and it'll make more sense. For example, this old Dell of Mine running Win7 scores as follows: Note that under Vista this machine scored higher in every category - memory and HDD, for instance, both got a 5.9, but now they do not with the winsat changes.

Once you use vLite, it is no longer their fault. You've removed components that the designers expect to be there. All bets are off once you use vLite, and blaming Microsoft for a component not working when you remove something it depends on is just insane.

Considering that error code maps to an Access Denied error, perhaps running process monitor whilst attempting the update will show you where the error is coming from?

Look, I understand that you are all upset about perceived or real grievances with Seagate, but this is a technical forum. Please keep your complaining about a third party to a minimum, and if there's no "hardware" value here, out of the Hardware forums and in the General Discussion forums. I've no problem with helping people with Seagate hard drive issues, but if you've just come to complain take it offline, keep it off the forums. With that said, thread closed. [Closed].

Regular business with WMP removed? And, removed how?

Also worth noting that even on x64 versions of Windows, x86 IE is still the default. Installing the x86 version as previously mentioned should get you working again.

Yes, I've seen this as well. Use the "Send Feedback" option and file this - it will actually create a bug at Microsoft.

Interesting - good find .

It is a video card driver issue, and if a newer driver does not resolve the issue there is an option. It is less secure, but you *can* disable the secure desktop prompt - again, I would *not* recommend this for security reasons, but, if you can't use UAC otherwise it is better than disabling it by far.