cluberti

If it happens w/o a network cable plugged in, we're going to need a memory dump about 1.5 minutes into the login "pause".

Hopefully this can be answered more readily here. Moving post.

That hotfix is for NT 4.0 - so if you're running 2000, XP, or Vista, you won't have much luck with it.

This should still give it to you (although cpuinfo can be used too, I'm not against it, but this is at least scriptable): Wscript.Echo "Manufacturer: " & objItem.Manufacturer Wscript.Echo "Name: " & objItem.Name Wscript.Echo "Description: " & objItem.Description Wscript.Echo Wscript.Echo "ProcessorId: " & objItem.ProcessorId Wscript.Echo "ProcessorType: " & objItem.ProcessorType Manufacturer: AuthenticAMD Name: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3700+ Description: AMD64 Family 15 Model 39 Stepping 1 ProcessorId: 078BFBFF00020F71 ProcessorType: 3 You'd have to parse it though, for the name, description, or processorID.

Yes, you can.

There is no software that I'm aware of that will check a WAP or Wireless router and tell you who is connected, short of the interface within the router. If you don't have a list in the router of all connected MAC addresses, perhaps the vendor has something you can use. Otherwise, the only thing you could do would be to set up a man in the middle network trace by putting a hub (not a switch) between your wireless device and your cable modem or your internal network. You could see all of the traffic back and forth between your wireless device and your network or your internet connection, but you wouldn't catch any traffic between wireless devices directly. This isn't ideal, and is prone to missing connections, so hopefully your wireless vendor has a solution.

Sysprep'ing the same machine more than once can cause all types of problems, so I'm not shocked a machine that Dell already sysprep'ed is giving you trouble the second or third time around. From what I understand, you have basically sysprep'ed that image twice, and with Dell's initial sysprep, that brings the total to three. Usually you can do two and get away with it, but it's almost always the third sysprep that screws things up. I'd suggest going back to your original image and get things the way you want, and sysprep that. Even though that means that image has been sysprep'ed twice, it should still work almost 100% of the time on new machines.

Evolutionary I'll agree with - however, which svchost is using your processor or memory? Some are normal, some are not - if it's something like readyboost, that's a problem that needs to be looked at.

No, that wouldn't be safe. Run "tasklist /svc" in a command prompt to see which services are loaded inside each svchost.exe instance. And yes, 5 is quite normal.

If you download the Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK), you'll get peimg and a bunch of other useful binaries.

Thats what MS gonna say tooo... Upgrading hardware isn't practical for everybody just to experience Vista interface. Operation of vista for basic user is still a crap. What is vista for a basic user ..just a sleek UI. Most of the user, i bet, have installed VISTA just to feel it, but not the wants. Yep for sure.. i am gonna shift to XP soon.. 512MB is a minimum requirement, and if you run full-on Vista, that's pretty low. 2GB is minimum for a good user experience with Aero, and 4GB really makes a huge difference. I understand the upgrade argument, but RAM isn't that expensive nowadays, and neither is a decent video card with 128MB of RAM to run Aeor. I just don't understand the desire to run something on 256MB of RAM anymore when 2GB can be had relatively cheap. I'm just not sure why people install Vista and then strip everything out of it - if you want Windows 2000, run Windows 2000!

Vista Ultimate on my test and main box, and the laptop for my wife. Vista Enterprise on one of my machines at work. Edit: they're all x64.

Pay attention This WMI call in my script.. Wscript.Echo "DataWidth: " & objItem.DataWidth ...gives you the output... DataWidth: 64 That would be 32 if a 32bit processor, 64 for a 64bit processor.

LOL

You could always wait about 1.5 minutes, then generate a complete memory dump. It could then be analyzed to determine what's happening when you're hung logging in.

You can select the option in IE to empty your temporary internet files when IE closes, but unless you're running 2003 or higher, the reg value that does it on logoff will not work (no, it will not work on XP SP2). The IE setting also doesn't tend to work exceptionally well, either. If you're running anything not Vista or 2003 as your workstation OS, I'd say a vbscript as a logoff script should be better able to handle this type of job. http://www.codeproject.com/vbscript/DiskCleaner.asp

If you can log on in safe mode w/ networking, download autoruns and disable anything non-Microsoft. Reboot, and you should be able to log in and clean the rest of whatever is causing this up.

Not to mention that Vista does try to do a lot of precaching (SuperFetch) and indexing (integrated search), plus visual effects when Aero is enabled. These things aren't free - they require memory. And 512MB for the full out-of-the-box Vista experience definitely isn't enough . Useless to you maybe, but to others they're quite useful. SuperFetch and ReadyBoost, when used properly, do make a system much more responsive and faster to do everyday things. Then check perfmon and see where that memory is going - it should tell you what "feature" is using that memory. If you don't like Vista, go back to XP and stop complaining.

Creating a WMI script that queries Win32_Processor and checks the processor will tell you everything you need to know: strComputer = "." Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:\\" & strComputer & "\root\CIMV2") Set colItems = objWMIService.ExecQuery( _ "SELECT * FROM Win32_Processor",,48) For Each objItem in colItems Wscript.Echo " ---------" Wscript.Echo " CPU Check" Wscript.Echo " ---------" Wscript.Echo Wscript.Echo "SystemName: " & objItem.SystemName Wscript.Echo Wscript.Echo "DeviceID: " & objItem.DeviceID Wscript.Echo "SocketDesignation: " & objItem.SocketDesignation Wscript.Echo Wscript.Echo "NumberOfCores: " & objItem.NumberOfCores Wscript.Echo "NumberOfLogicalProcessors: " & objItem.NumberOfLogicalProcessors Wscript.Echo Wscript.Echo "Manufacturer: " & objItem.Manufacturer Wscript.Echo "Name: " & objItem.Name Wscript.Echo "Description: " & objItem.Description Wscript.Echo Wscript.Echo "ProcessorId: " & objItem.ProcessorId Wscript.Echo "ProcessorType: " & objItem.ProcessorType Wscript.Echo Wscript.Echo "CurrentClockSpeed: " & objItem.CurrentClockSpeed Wscript.Echo "MaxClockSpeed: " & objItem.MaxClockSpeed Wscript.Echo "ExtClock: " & objItem.ExtClock Wscript.Echo "DataWidth: " & objItem.DataWidth Wscript.Echo "L2CacheSize: " & objItem.L2CacheSize Wscript.Echo "L3CacheSize: " & objItem.L3CacheSize Wscript.Echo Wscript.Echo "PowerManagementSupported: " & objItem.PowerManagementSupported Wscript.Echo Wscript.Echo "Status: " & objItem.Status Next Which produces this on my AMD test box: --------- CPU Check --------- SystemName: VISTA-PC DeviceID: CPU0 SocketDesignation: CPU 1 NumberOfCores: 1 NumberOfLogicalProcessors: 1 Manufacturer: AuthenticAMD Name: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3700+ Description: AMD64 Family 15 Model 39 Stepping 1 ProcessorId: 078BFBFF00020F71 ProcessorType: 3 CurrentClockSpeed: 2193 MaxClockSpeed: 2193 ExtClock: 200 DataWidth: 64 L2CacheSize: 1024 L3CacheSize: 0 PowerManagementSupported: False Status: OK

Short of removing users from doing anything other than "read only" in \Program Files (and any other folders they shouldn't be writing to), I'm not sure you have many options short of using Group Policy. Of course, marking the whole drive read only usually breaks applications... I'd always dealt with it by having a corporate policy for users - if you install something, it's OK, but it's not supported. If your machine breaks for any reason, it'll be replaced or reimaged and we'll make no attempts at all to save any data from said program. Profiles were roaming, and the documents folder was redirected to a home server minus the music and videos folders - worked great. We had a few users who lost all of their music too, and that pretty much killed it after some months, and we heard nothing more of it. It's low-tech, but it worked overall, and we didn't have to be the IT scrooges either (nice come bonus time ).

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details...45-9E368D3CDB5A

Since your STOP 0x21A is always the windows logon process (winlogon.exe), and the error status code is 0xc34: 0xc34: STATUS_OBJECT_NAME_NOT_FOUND - Object Name not found It almost sounds like it's either not installing winlogon.exe, or one of it's dependencies. If you've reinstalled, and each time you get the same problem, I'd say your installation media is highly suspect. If you're able to configure your machine for a complete memory dump when it does work the very first logon, at least when it crashes after the second logon you can generate a dump I can analyze to tell you what the problem really is (although getting it off of the machine may be tricky, if it won't boot back up ever again). Come to think of it, this sounds like a job for a remote kernel debugger... Try new media first, as the remote kernel debugger requires a second machine, a free COM port, a 9pin null-modem cable, and some know-how that I'd rather not go into if new media will resolve this .

If you can do the following to download netmon3 to your box, and gather a trace from the machine while attempting (and failing) to visit CNN.com, those of us who have networking experience will likely be able to look at the resulting .cap file and determine what the heck is happening. Here are the instructions for gathering the trace: 1. Download Network Monitor. a. Go to http://connect.microsoft.com b. Sign in with your Windows Live or Passport account (required, sorry) c. Choose "Available Connections" on the left d. Choose "Apply" for Network Monitor 3.0 (once you have finished with the application, the selection appears in your "My Participation" page) e. Go to the Downloads page (on the left side), and select the appropriate build (32 or 64 bit build.) 2. Install Network Monitor on the server experiencing the problem. If you are not able to install it on the server you can install it on another machine that is connected to the same hub as the server or to the admin port of the switch that the server is on. If you go this route you must synchronize the time between the client, server, and this third machine. 3. Start the Network Monitor tool, by default there should be a "Microsoft Network Monitor 3.0" icon on the desktop 4. From the "Select Networks" pane, please click to select the network adapter we are using from the list (if it is not already checked) 5. Click the "Create a new capture tab..." button in the "Capture Network Traffic" pane 6. When you are ready to reproduce the problem, start the trace by clicking on the "Play" button in the toolbar, or by clicking "Capture" > "Start" 7. Reproduce the problem, and please note the exact time that the problem reproduces 8. Stop the trace by clicking on the "Stop" button in the toolbar, or by clicking "Capture" > "Stop" 12. Save the trace a. From the File menu select Save As.

That error is: 0x80070020 ERROR_SHARING_VIOLATION - The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process. So it sounds like some file the update is attempting to update/replace has a lock on it by another process - try downloading Process Monitor from the sysinternals website, and running it on your box while attempting the update. Stop the logging once you hit the error, and then look through the Process Monitor log to see where you are getting a "Sharing Violation" - it should tell you the file or registry key name. You can then use Process Explorer (also from sysinternals) or Unlocker to find and release the handle to that file or reg key, and then re-run the Windows Update cycle.