cluberti

1. Roaming profiles are really only good for two scenarios - one, users who travel from workstation to workstation and need their configuration settings, desktop, etc, to follow them; and two, users who use both a desktop and a laptop, and may need to have a local copy of a profile that they can sync with their desktop. The drawbacks are that logon times can be slow due to copying the profile down from the file server, and logoff times can be slow due to copying everything back during logoff, as well as the fact that settings may be lost or may not work from one machine to another, if they don't have the EXACT same configuration. Also, profiles between Vista / Server 2008 and XP / 2003 / 2000 are not compatible, so you'll end up with 2 profiles if/when you ever move to Vista or Server 2008. 2. Redirected folders are useful only when users never leave the network (they'll always need access to their redirected profile folders, like "My Documents" or "Desktop"), and you have a fast LAN (redirected folders can cause a lot of network congestion). The drawbacks of this are if users ever leave the network (where's my data from my "My Documents" folder, or where did my "Desktop" go?) or if the network itself goes down (same types of issues). If you're looking to back up profiles centrally, redirecting folders is not a bad idea if you have a fast (gigabit) LAN and user's don't ever leave the network, or a mixture of roaming (for traveling users) and redirected (for the network-bound).

Savedump.exe was writing the data from your pagefile.sys to the memory.dmp file - do NOT kill that process , otherwise you won't have a memory dump (that's what all that disk activity was). First thing I would do is open the dump file with windbg, run !locks on it, and then post the output here in code tags.

From windbg: Bug Check 0x7E: SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED The SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED bug check has a value of 0x0000007E. This bug check indicates that a system thread generated an exception that the error handler did not catch. Parameters The following parameters appear on the blue screen. Parameter Description 1 The exception code that was not handled 2 The address where the exception occurred 3 The address of the exception record 4 The address of the context record Cause The SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED bug check is a very common bug check. To interpret it, you must identify which exception was generated. Common exception codes include the follwoing: ... 0xC0000005: STATUS_ACCESS_VIOLATION indicates a memory access violation occurred. ... Resolving the Problem If you are not equipped to debug this problem, you should use some basic troubleshooting techniques. - Make sure you have enough disk space. - If a driver is identified in the bug check message, disable the driver or check with the manufacturer for driver updates. - Try changing video adapters. - Check with your hardware vendor for any BIOS updates. - Disable BIOS memory options such as caching or shadowing.

http://users.telenet.be/tc76/winup/_winxpsp2.html Make sure that the "Show updates for Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005" and "Show optional updates not covered individually above" boxes are checked, and you'll have your hotfix list (including MCE updates), and this was updated on 2007-11-21 as of this posting. If you decide to use HFSLIP to create your next MCE CD, this page tells you what files you need and in what folders they will go, based on what updates you check that you want installed or integrated. I strongly recommend HFSLIP - it's not the prettiest package, but it's the one I find the most powerful and provides the most hands-off installs of the tools I have used in the past.

Note that Windows Home Server can do all of those things you mentioned, I believe.

The error is actually "COR_E_FILENOTFOUND" for 0x80070002, which means Vista can't find the original msi file in the cache from when you installed .net 1.1 (either the installer didn't copy it to your box properly, or you deleted it). To fix this the easy way, simply uninstall .NET 1.1 if you can, then download and install the .NET 1.1 SP1 package to update Vista to .NET 1.1 SP1, then install any post-SP1 updates there may be for .NET 1.1 via Windows Update.

When you rebuilt it - did you JUST install Vista, or did you install anything else?

If you're still getting that popup, could you take a screenshot of it so we could have a look?

I've actually just got a fob for work that I wear around my neck with my badge, and a USB key on the back that it "talks" to - when I walk more than 10 feet away, it locks automagically (it could unlock it for me too, but I don't want it doing that - I've no idea where it stores the password, and for sure it would be somewhere right in RAM or in a heap somewhere that's easily read).

BTW: And then there is the question how many holes have been patched with those 30 updates? I love OpenBSD, but I'd never consider it as my primary desktop OS . As to how many holes, probably around 30. Windows is a beast, number of lines of code-wise, and hotfixes need to be tested extensively before public release - so code changes need to be as small as possible (meaning generally a 1:1 fix rate to hotfix). How many still exist to be found is probably quite large, I'm sure, but all software written by humans will have bugs. Some avoidable, maybe, and some that you just don't see coming at all.

The files in Vista itself are language-neutral (even English is a MUI), so this shouldn't be too hard. Documentation on how to do this (I believe you must be using Vista Business, Enterprise, or Ultimate though) is here, as other versions of Vista don't support MUI packs (someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe you need one of those three versions to do this).

Well, if it's not an internal card reader, try it in another machine (if you can) first to see if it's really a hardware problem, or just a problem on that one PC (I've seen SD cards that work fine on one machine cause issues or not work at all on another)...

MSP patches for Visual Studio and .NET Framework 2.0 (and perhaps other products that use MSP patches) place data here. You can delete the folder, but if you ever need to repair the installation that was "patched", it may fail.

It's really bad to have one benchmark test and then say "x is so many percent faster than y" - yeah, OK, maybe. Does anyone remember the same types of claims and benchmarks about Win98 vs Win2K, or better yet, Win2K vs WinXP? Back in 2001, XP was the worst thing there was, and now that the hardware's caught up, it's the best thing since sliced bread. Whatever - it's about time a Windows OS with good security and forced secure coding practices (as much as is possible) is finally available. And to everyone who says "ditch Vista and buy XP", you still just bought another Windows license .

A script using rundll32.exe against printui.dll should do the trick to clear everything out, and another script to map the printers should fix it once and for all. http://www.dx21.com/SCRIPTING/RUNDLL32/VIE...145&CMD=P-A

It should recognize it every time you reboot or resume from sleep - if it isn't, perhaps the controller driver for the SD slot isn't presenting the card right away, or isn't loading properly (or quiclkly enough) to allow it to recognize the card. It almost sounds as if the SD card, on resume or reboot, doesn't present that there's actually a card in there to Vista.

So, the next question is, when did this start, and what (if anything) did you do right before that? It sounds a lot like something on your machine is opening (and keeping open) handles to files in your profile, which the profile hive cleanup service doesn't fix (it can only unload registry handles). Does this happen in safe mode?

Note that if you click on the post, it'll take you to the new location as well.

Well, first things first, and I have to ask - did you use nlite or something else to mod the install before or after slipstreaming sp3? Also, tscupgrd.exe is only there to upgrade the mstsc client from 2000 to XP, so it's not what I'd call a critical error, either.

Not only that, but did you try a clean install of Vista from media with updated drivers, rather than the stock OEM install? They're generally bad from most OEMs...

That's too bad, sorry to hear that. What was the laptop vendor and the hardware, if you don't mind me asking?

I would love to see a network trace of the connect attempt from the client captured by wireshark or netmon - do we even know what authentication is being requested when the 401 is sent from the server to the client?

Computer startup / shutdown scripts run as LOCAL SYSTEM, and user logon / logoff scripts run as that user.

HFSlip is good for this too, so I'd check that out as well (including slip'ing MCE updates).

Anywhere that provides access - rapidshare is one that springs to mind, although a google search for free file hosting will give you a lot of other options.