cluberti

If system restore fixes it and you make no changes between broken and working scenarios, perhaps your antivirus or antispyware software is causing it? Disk issues like this are usually caused by filesystem filter drivers misbehaving, and those are found in antivirus, antispyware, firewall, and backup software.

You can reset the services by using secedit and defining the "setup security.inf" file - this contains (amongst other things) default security and startup settings for services. You can also use the Security Templates and Security Configuration and Analysis MMC snap-ins to do this as well.

Please don't double-post. It's against the forum rules:

I'd suggest first reading this, then this, then this. Those should get you going.

The Group Policy benefits over 2003 are quite good, especially for those planning on running Vista on the desktop - not to mention the use of SMB2.0 between Vista/2008.

You could do this, but you'd have to modify the routing tables to make sure packets destined for one set of IP addresses (for email) go over the first VPN connection, and packets destined for the other set of IP addresses (for the application) go over the second VPN connection. It's a pain to make work, and you have to do it every time you connect your VPN sessions (or make it static, which could cause other issues when the VPN connections are not established). Your better option is to publish one (or both) applications to the public internet, if possible, so that VPN connections are not required to use this (especially if your email is Exchange 200x / Outlook 200x, as you can use RPC over HTTP or publish the RPC via an ISA 2004/2006 firewall).

I'm not sure why this would be occurring (especially if other hotfixes install properly), but getting a process monitor log of the SP2 installation (including the failure) would be a good starting place for troubleshooting.

That is possible, but it could also be the APIs used to call the file, and whether or not the app is a true 64bit app, or if it's a 32bit app on a 64bit platform. How is the app architechted to read files (which APIs specifically are you calling to open and render the file), and is it a 32 or 64bit application?

Violation of rule #1:

Upgrade to XP Pro, as all of the features you speak of are XP Pro-only.

This is actually a feature of the update engine that is used to install Windows Updates - it is able to directly deal with the SFC thread and components, and update as necessary. I can't say specifically where this data is stored, but it isn't the registry.

Well, Process Monitor and Process Explorer (from sysinternals) are a good combo.

What do options 66 and 67 point to on your DHCP server?

AD will only show images that contain .sif files in the \templates subfolder of an image, and I do believe it's particular about the path to that folder as well (so if you've modified it, it may not work).

It's not really possible, at least not without constant errors. I guess the related question is, which file are you trying to exclude and why?

Right - connect one of the 4 switch ports on the wireless router to one of the 4 switch ports on the wired router (make sure the wireless router's DHCP configuration is disabled), and it should work (a switch is a switch).

That's what I was hinting at - at this point, I would suggest running process monitor while opening outlook to see where specifically it's reading this info from, and from that you should be able to change it.

Did you configure the internet connection sharing using the ICS wizard on 2003, or did you use the "bridge connections" option in the networking control panel? Also, the subnet mask for 192.168.0.x is 255.255.255.0, as it's a class C (/24), not a class B (/16).

Does each router have other switch ports? If so, connect one of the internal (LAN) switch ports on the wireless router to one of the internal (LAN) switch ports on the wired router, and do not connect anything to the WAN port on the wireless router. You may have to disable DHCP and all other features other than wireless security on the wireless router to make sure clients get addresses from the wired router, but otherwise this should work just fine. If your wireless router or wired router (or both) don't have other switch ports other than WAN and LAN, then this becomes more difficult.

If you're sure that the "Terminal Services" service is started and running, and that the "enable remote connections to this computer" box is checked, I'd start with deleting and re-creating the RDP-TCP listener in Terminal Services configuration.

Did you modify the installation source in any way, or slipstream hotfixes / packages into the original install media? This all seems very odd...

If you need SSL on your web servers, you need to install a certificate and configure that cert for the web site in question in the IIS manager before IIS will listen on 443. Are you trying to do this unattended?

Well, it's likely apple wants more of a marketshare for their browser so they can cut better deals with some of the search and content providers As to why anyone would actually use it, that is indeed beyond me.

If you disable all non-microsoft items in autoruns (from sysinternals) and ShellExView (from nirsoft.net) and reboot, does the problem persist?

Wow is that not a good idea. You delete that, and you potentially lose the ability to patch installed applications (if you do this, you WILL lose the ability to patch Office 2007 any further, for instance).