cluberti

If you open the "Windows Firewall with Advanced Security" icon in the Control Panel, you should see the "Inbound rules" and "Outbound rules" sections of the MMC, which allow you to set just that - inbound and outbound rules.

In this case, HKLM would take precedence, because you're setting it locally on the machine's policies or registry directly. Group policies, if you're using an AD domain, are stored in the SYSVOL share of DCs in a domain - but most GPO settings are just registry files (some are old-style registry .pol files, but they're still registry settings!). The policies that change settings on a machine or for a user get applied when the machine is (re)started, or when a user logs in. Policies can also be refreshed and reapplied in intervals, unless a policy change requires a logoff or a restart. Welcome to the brave world of policies. Some are HKCU, some are HKLM, and override isn't 100% consistent (even in GPO). The basic rule of thumb is that if you edit the registry directly (or assign an ntuser.dat that has been modified), HKLM policies will take preference over HKCU policies, but only if the policy that you're setting is configured as such. In general, HKLM policies override HKCU policies when defined locally, but just the opposite occurs when you configure policies via GPOs

Some motherboards can actually do this, but only for SATA channels (my MSI board allows me to set which SATA channel is the "primary", but won't let me do it with the PATA channels).

It was only meant for developers and testers to run Aero on non-compliant hardware for testing. Generally, if Aero won't enable on your card, it's because it's GPU or RAM just isn't up to the challenge of hosting DWM (and I do mean challenge). Anyone who ran forced Aero on Beta and RC builds with old video cards can probably attest to this.

You could always try running the application under the Application Compatibility Toolkit (the latest version is 5.0) from Microsoft - although if Filemon is too much for you, I'm betting ACT (and most other pseudo-debugging tools) will be also.

User-mode applications cannot crash the box unless they have kernel-mode drivers - and your browser doesn't. Consider uninstalling any software that contains kernel drivers (like antivirus, antispyware, backup, CD emulation, etc) and reinstalling the latest versions of such if you need those packages. Also update any video and audio drivers to the latest certified drivers to make sure those are as stable as have been released by your vendor, to eliminate that as the root cause as well.

Everyone is entitled to his or her opinion on the subject, with no one opinion being better than another. I personally prefer to have a firewall at my egress point, firewalls on clients and servers inside my network, and antivirus and antispyware installed (not realtime) that scans nightly on machines while I'm sleeping. Do I need all of this? Probably not - but it'll come in handy when I do. And if I don't ever, I'm not sure I'm missing much. Coding, compiling, and making RDP connections to other machines might take CPU power, but memory hungry they generally aren't. Plus Vista and Longhorn are very good about using every last bit of free resources for caching, so having those things installed generally doesn't seem to make the system perform (at least in my perception) any better or worse than not having those things installed and enabled.

How will that help profile incompatibility?

Vista and XP/2003 profiles are not compatible - you'll notice this specifically with roaming profiles (Vista profiles are .v2, and XP/2000 profiles are v1). You can get around this to a point with folder redirection on shell folders that can be redirected, but otherwise you're out of luck.

Unless we're talking about group policies (another wrinkle) - user settings (HKCU) take preference over computer settings (HKLM), at least in the Administrative Templates.

Glad to be of service

Is it safe to assume you've already looked at this?

Have you enabled option 66 and 67 in your DHCP console for the scope (or the whole server)?

Hmmm... Have you tried this yet?

mmmmm... retail, I had one Vista BSOD (never on XP), and the Vista BSOD was due to installing something from Winternals that Vista didn't like .

That does give me something to go on - let me do a little research and I'll get back to you as soon as I can figure this out .

Microsoft does keep many different products, including Mac, Unix, and Linux OSes, in it's labs for customers to test their products and their configuration scenarios - and also for testing interop (like SFU, SFM, etc). The stuff you see originating from the microsoft.com domain is all Windows and IIS, although Akamai is used to cache content around the world, and they do use Linux and Unix for their caching services. I believe fizban already posted the link to how Microsoft's IT is configured, but anyone thinking that MS is slow might want to reconsider - Microsoft tends to migrate to new products quickly (usually already dogfood'ing them in large quantities by the end of pre-RTM) rather than slowly.

There have been no patches released since RTM that would affect external disks, superfetch, or readyboost. Things like this don't just happen, so hopefully you can remember what was done before the drives disappeared so you don't repeat this .

The problem with laptops and dual-mon is that the laptop always wants to be the primary display (and that's a video driver issue, not a Windows issue). Also, when you move monitor 2 to the left and make it monitor 1, you end up with NEGATIVE relative pixel pointers, where 0,0 is actually the top leftmost corner of the laptop display, and you get into the negatives (up to the resolution size of the monitor) for the leftmost external monitor - and this can cause what you are seeing. You might want to try different video drivers, or send an email to the video driver vendor's support alias to see if you can get word from them on why they aren't saving the window position.

It certainly sounds like a hotfix install gone bad, file corruption, or registry corruption (my money's on b, mind you, but c is also possible). The easiest way to fix it is to do a repair install and then reinstall any service packs and hotfixes you will need - if you've got that many problems, you're in for a long, long day in chasing the rat down the hole on this one before you might get the box to work (and even if you do, how stable will it actually be?).

When specifically do you get this error? Your original problem description is unclear - perhaps you could post a screenshot?

No updates should have affected file copy from or to USB devices - have you tried uninstalling any antivirus / antispyware products, running autoruns and shellexview to disable all non-Microsoft items, reboot, and try again to see if it still happens?

True - but considering it RTM'ed on Dec 31 2001, it's been out for awhile.

I'm not sure it does - but I would make sure you have an install image to go with your boot image. BTW, is this the default boot and install.wim from the Vista DVD, or are either customized?

I'm not sure about products in extended support, but mainstream support products are fine. If you're out of extended support, I know that the answer is "upgrade", but if you're in extended or mainstream support, you should at least call and see if you can get assistance.