cluberti

I can't speak to the hardware questions as I'm not familiar with that board or it's history in your box, but I can speak to domain backup. Assuming this is a domain controller in your domain, and this DC also holds the global catalog, then you can use ntbackup to backup the domain structures.

Well, if msvcrt.dll (the C runtimes dll file) is giving errors, that almost always means something (either IE or a helper object loaded in it) made a C function call that had a bad pointer (either a null pointer or an invalid pointer) to a memory address. Honestly, I'd start be removing all of the BHOs and toolbars, restarting, and see if the problem continues. Did you actively make any changes, or download any updates prior to this that you can think of?

I vlited SP1, but only to remove languages and drivers. I didn't remove any features, and it appears you've done something to break that (obviously) but I'm not sure exactly what it could be. However, removing System Information could be somewhat dangerous, as well as the Diagnostics and Performance Monitor service. It's really hard to say, but if you've got the time you could do a section at a time and rebuild in a VM to see what breaks it. With all the trouble vLite had with installing SP1 on a vLite-d machine, I'm not sure it's safe to remove anything other than languages and drivers and not expect to have some issues. Sorry, wish I could help more - but if it was me, I'd build a VM and test a bunch of vLite iso's with each section set back to default, and then try your changes one set at a time (testing after each change) to see what breaks things.

You can sign macros as such: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HP052495571033.aspx If you choose a certificate not in the root trust by default, or if you generate one from your own CA, you can push it to all machines via the security / PKI sections of group policy.

Ah yes, that update is indeed not in the Windows Update catalog, therefore you will not be able to push it from WSUS or import it. If you choose to push it to install via a logon script or SMS or some other distribution mechanism, you'll have to install the update manually as such: WindowsXP-KB935843-x86-ENU.exe /quiet /norestart

That is coming from the remote server, during the SMTP HELO or EHLO conversation - once the RCPT TO: is sent for that user, that is the response the remote server for "somedomain.co.uk" gave to your server, and thus your Exchange server dutifully notifies you of this in a bounce email as it is supposed to. This is a problem with the remote server, not yours.

First, remove the "Users" group, as they have more rights than the group you appear to try to be locking down. Next, show us the Advanced output, including the full list of permissions for that group. Click Edit, then Advanced.

Then some permission is still allowing the user to delete. Whom is the user (for example) you are having this problem with, and can you provide a screenshot of the "advanced" button output for that folder?

The update is a private, which WSUS will not have, and it is possible that the update you have will not be in the Windows Update catalog so you can't use the WSUS 3.0 import function (it requires it to be in the catalog). There's a way, documented on this MSDN article, that describes how to import a non-catalogued (i.e. private) update into WSUS, but it's not clear exactly how to do this. What is the exact KB number of the hotfix you're trying to distribute, btw?

True - deny permissions are processed before any allow permissions, and thus take precedence. Don't "deny" unless you actually mean to deny.

As I am not a fanboy of either side, here is the unfortunate truth about the Phenom chips - a phenom X4 won't be as fast per-core as an Intel Core Quad (faster than most Core Duos except the higher-end Extremes), so if all you run is things that are single-threaded or not thread-safe, or you want a quad-core processor and want to have the fastest per-core chips, go with the Intels (they will indeed be faster as I've mentioned before the dual-die dual-core allows for faster "in-processor" operation). They'll also do better in video games and video content applications (it's relative, but they are better - the Phenoms are somewhere between the Athlon X2 and Core Duos and the Core Quads, almost right in-between in benchmarks). If you are sticking dual-processor, the fastest Athlon X2 and the fastest Core Duo are about the same performance-wise, so that boils down to what motherboard, memory, and video card you want and which platform fits your budget for the features you want to throw into the box. For what you're stating you do, you aren't compiling code or doing a lot of VM or large file set work, I'd say the x6600 Core Quad from Intel with a good video card is a much better purchase right this moment than the Phenom X4 or an Athlon X2, especially stating that you spent a good deal on your last rig 5 years ago meaning price might be a consideration, but not a barrier. If you ask me in 12 months, this will probably change and AMD will bump up the clock speed and the L2 cache on the X4 chips, but for "home use" scenarios like video games, regular everyday browsing/email/document editing and maybe a little photoshop or Windows Movie Maker or what have you, the Intel Core Duo/Core Quad or an Athlon X2 are a much better choice than the Phenoms at the moment. Which you choose is highly subjective at this point, but the Core Quads that are on the upper range (the 6800s and the Extremes) are REALLY fast if the benchmarks are fairly accurate for what you're looking to do, but you'd be better served buying a cheaper Core Quad 6600 and spending more on fast RAM and a good video card than sinking the budget into the processor .

Do you know approximately how large the file is that you're trying to save? Have you considered running process monitor and monitoring the file accesses when you try to save the file (especially to disk) to see if you get any sharing violations, or worse, access denied error messages?

I leave mine on 24/7, but that's mostly for the Media Center capabilities and synching that or using it from my 360 down in the family room on the big TV. Plus maintenance is done overnight whilst I sleep, so it doesn't hamper computer use while I might actually want to use it. The machine itself doesn't take much power when it's on at idle versus when it's actually off, and my electric bill isn't much an issue either. It's not hydroelectric or wind, but it's nuclear and not coal (I don't have a choice, but at least my state runs mostly on nuclear and not coal anymore).

If you're talking about the BIOS password to boot (before Windows even loads), you'll have to fish out the motherboard manual or contact the vendor, as most have a jumper you can remove to clear the CMOS password. This will reset all BIOS settings to defaults though, so be careful with this.

Then you need to go under advanced. "Change" permission implies just that - click that "Advanced" button for more granular control. You're probably looking to allow the list, read, and write permissions but not allow delete. Also note though, that if you remove the delete permission from a share a user may open a document from in Microsoft Office, the user will not be able to save the changes to the document (Office creates a temporary file the user writes to, usually with the name "~<whatever the file name is>", and when it goes to actually save a document or changes to it, it deletes the ~ file and commits them to the actual document. However, the document delete will fail, and the save will likely fail also. If it works, you'll have a ~<filename> file left behind, for every document open, not just edit - opening the document by itself creates this file). If you don't use Office or don't allow Office docs in this share, it won't be an issue. Just a heads-up.

Using an internet search engine yielded the result. You need to become a little more familiar with group policy, then, because that statement is absolutely not true - group policy is a methodology for managing users and computers in an active directory environment, everything from folder redirection and profile issues to security and public key policies, user rights, even down to configuring wallpaper.

True, but most newer memory controllers can support multiple types of memory. I would have liked to see the memory access controller be a bit more flexible, but I don't know the costs in that, so I can't speak to why this isn't the case with AMD processors. Again, when nehalem is a go, and the OMC is a feature, I'll definitely be checking it out. Hopefully the implementation is good, and gives us the performance back.

So now it's three-die dual-core. I'll just wait until Nehalem releases with true single-die quad-core before I try another Intel Xeon.

First, welcome to THE forum. We're glad to have you here, and hopefully we can help you (and maybe you can reciprocate) in the future on something. As to your question, if it's something that happens in a repeatable way, or on a set schedule, consider AutoIT to automate the keyboard and mouse input. If it's something you can kick off, you can always use vbscript to send keypad information, although mouse information is nigh impossible without something like autoit.

Remove 3rd party apps with filter drivers (like antivirus, firewalls, antispyware realtime apps), go into msconfig and disable all non-Microsoft startup items and services, and try again? There's only a few things that can cause a shutdown to fail, and most of them are either services that never shut down, or drivers that refuse to unload.

There's something else going on there. You can't say that a whole operating system is garbage because of one incident. I copy multiple files back and forth and haven't noticed any major slowdowns when it comes to that. Startup on my laptop is comparable to XP SP2, and shutdown is actually quicker. My laptop is by far less powerful than that system (Pentium-M 1.86Ghz, 2GB DDR2-533, 128MB ATI X300 mobility, 5400RPM notebook hard drive) and Vista handles the limited hardware better than XP ever did when I put the machine through it's paces. Vista with 1GB of RAM is slightly limiting, but shouldn't be causing the problems you describe. The extremely slow file copying and slow shutdowns indicate another problem, either with the hard drive subsystem, or some other hardware related issue. Or antivirus, or windows defender (although in SP1 I haven't seen this cause a disk issue like it could in RTM), or anything else with filter drivers. Don't always blame Windows for other vendor's problems. You should always do some research before blaming the host for something (like slow file copy) - in RTM, this may actually have been true, but it's far less likely in SP1. Those speeds are REALLY slow, at least RTM would finish. I'd bet antivirus is the cause there, or perhaps a 3rd party firewall.

Been up since 2/6, probably will have to reboot once a month for updates just like any other Windows OS.

This is not possible via a reg change, as this is a per-user setting. You could consider running gpedit.msc and modifying the local policy (I'm not sure a folder redirection policy exists on a W2K machine non-domain joined, as I don't have a machine at hand to check) to redirect the folder, that would affect all users. But the registry hacks are per-user only, as they're stored in HKCU.

I love that article. Any IT staff upgrading to Vista and cought off-guard by this (either at RTM or now) should be ashamed of themselves. All it takes is a KMS server and your KMS keys to bypass this. Not to mention the BIGGEST gaping hole in the antipiracy initiatives of XP / 2003 and older was the VLK product key not requiring activation, and this was well documented and passed on to shops with SA agreements (and to the internet as a whole) that this WAS going to change in Vista and Server 2008. Any shop who does their research before rolling a major upgrade out would no doubt NOT be caught by this. A non-starter and sensationalism at best. Yes, that's the key phrase there, "as a user might", most likely clicking the "allow" button in the UAC dialog. I make this assumption based on the results, especially changing protected reg keys - this can ONLY happen if the admin allows it by disabling UAC or clicking "allow" when prompted, because these accesses always trigger UAC. This is of course what some people will do when presented with the dialog if they aren't paying attention, and yes, bound to be a problem. If someone says "yes, please install this virus as the sysadmin", what do you expect to happen? I'm sorry, but users CANNOT be saved from themselves if they aren't willing to be a part of security (security is something you do, not something you buy or some software you run, for goodness' sakes), and this isn't a Microsoft problem per-se. It's why companies like Symantec have a place in the world. If the user had clicked "don't allow" in the UAC dialog, I'd wonder how many of these (at RTM) would have installed and run, and I'm even more interested at SP1 if this would have changed. Again, a bit of sensationalism (yes, a security study sponsored by an antivirus vendor, no conflict of interest - let's spout it as fact!!!). Sheesh - Teredo is IPv6 tunneling to another IPv6 host over an IPv4 network. Yes, it'll bypass IPv4 firewalls and routers if they allow the IPv4 traffic (like all other IPv4 traffic that's allowed, btw), but the end host has to be an IPv6 host to receive the packets, and it is hopefully running a firewall that can accept the IPv6 traffic tunneled over IPv4. The traffic tunneled over IPv4 will then pass through the firewall on the host once it's back to IPv6 traffic (if Vista or another host with an IPv4 and IPv6 firewall), so I fail to grasp the "problem" here. If someone turns the Windows firewall off, or installs an IPv4 only firewall, then yes, this is a possibility, and one that should be thought out and prevented when you enable IPv6 on a host! As to enabling it, eventually you have to enable IPv6 on clients by default, or we aren't going to get there fast enough (and no, I fail to see how enabling IPv6 causes a security risk because only other hosts running IPv6 can talk to the Vista box over IPv6 (regardless of whether it's tunneled or straight IPv6, and the admin should have already secured those machines, dammit). Another "sensationalism" meant to scare you, when in fact, IPv6 and IPv4 are firewalled on Vista hosts by default, so I see this as yet another non-issue. The only thing unforgivable is the unresearched and obviously biased opinions from this site on the issue(s). Don't believe everything you read, kids.

Right - Vista RTM is kernel 6000.16386, and Vista SP1 and Windows 2008 RTM are kernel 6001.18000 (If you notice your 2008 machine will report as Windows Server 2008 SP1... ). I'd get a copy of Vista SP1 from somewhere (or download SP1 and go through the installation) before comparing Vista RTM to Server 2008.