cluberti

I would suggest, if sfc /scannow doesn't help, reinstalling the latest Service Pack and Update Rollup package to your system to make sure that your system files are all using the latest version (to avoid file mismatch issues). After that, I'm not sure there are any options short of a rebuild, unfortunately.

Have you tried running "sfc /scannow" from a command prompt? This seems odd in that it isn't logging anything about the error...

The registry key for the printer has gone corrupt (sort of a known issue for 2000 after installing SP4 or URP1). If you uninstall the printer (and driver) and reinstall, it'll work again. There's also a way to do this by deleting certain registry keys in the PRINT subkeys, but it's easier to make sure the right ones go away by removing the printer and the driver itself (and less chance for error).

When you click on this tab and receive the error message, is anything logged into your event viewer as a warning or error?

If you configure your server to do a full memory dump, and also post all of the bugcheck data on the screen here, I can most likely help you determine which pool tag is causing your system to BSOD.

Replace the file in question from a known-good Windows XP CD. The checksums didn't match, and Windows will not copy the file if the checksum of the file and the checksum in the manifest (master list) do not match. If you haven't touched this file with nLite (or some other tool), it's likely a corrupted file on the disk and will need to be replaced.

Hotfixes using an update.exe version older that the 6.0 version do not support the /integrate switch. You'll have to use the svcpack method, or nLite, or some other tool to integrate these hotfixes.

If both are connected to the network at the same time, I'd say the wired card should be first in the list. The error you're seeing is a failure to query objects in the domain or Active Directory. If you don't have an Active Directory, then am I correct in assuming that the accounts and groups are all local to your machine?

That I cannot say. You should consider trying Win2K, with the latest drivers from SiS, as that's the only way to know for sure. The card was released back in 98 or 99, IIRC, so keep that in mind. You should be able to use the added features of the card in Win2K, but there's no way to know for sure until you try.

To get more than 5 or 10 connections (XP Home or Pro), you need to upgrade to a server-class edition of the product. If this network isn't going to grow past 40 or 50 users anytime soon, consider Microsoft Small Business Server - it's not very expensive (at least the Standard edition), and it does come with Exchange.

X:\i386\winnt32.exe /cmdcons /unattend /dudisable

Another poster already posted this, but here's the link to the KB article that your problem resolution will be found under: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=263231 This is an easy fix - just follow the instructions. And I found this using google, so remember that google is your friend.

What exactly do you mean by "disabled" - are they greyed out in the list, or do they give an error when you try to use them from the list?

I know the card isn't supported under XP, and you'll only get "good" performance out of it it Win9x. However, if you're only using it to watch TV, you should be OK if you've got a good decoder in your TV software (if it requires or recommends a hardware MPEG decoder, you'll have some issues with speed and frame skips). If the driver I posted doesn't work, try to find some others via searching the 'net. I'm not sure there's anything out there for Windows XP though, either from the vendor or a third-party. It's a pretty old card.

Note that it's complaining about virtual memory, not physical memory. Adding more physical memory will help (because more application and system processes can be run in physical memory before they are paged out or run in virtual memory), but you will still run out of virtual memory if you open lots of applications, or even a few memory-hungry applications. I'll try to describe this the best I can, but there is a very good book in understanding the internals of how Windows works (including memory management), called "Windows Internals (4th Edition)". If you continue to have questions like this, I'd suggest purchasing or borrowing this book to gain a better understanding of the ways in which Microsoft Windows works, and why it does what it does. With that said, you need to understand the basics of Windows memory management, and how it allocates memory to running processes on your system. Windows does not let any applications or processes deal with "physical" and "virtual" memory; instead, each application and process deals in "virtual address space" which is controlled by the Windows kernel internal memory manager. 1. Each process running on your system gets 2GB of "virtual address space" that it can use, and each process can allocate as little, or as much, address space within that 2GB of virtual address space as it may need (or thinks it needs). The kernel memory manager then assigns the virtual address space that a process has allocated to actual physical RAM, or to the paging file - it does this depending on how much physical memory is available, how busy the system is, and historically how much physical RAM it thinks the system is going to need "just in case". The application or process never knows where it is actually running from, because it doesn't need to - it just needs to know about it's 2GB of virtual address space, and it lets the kernel memory manager handle the rest. Of note: the paging file on your computer is Windows' "virtual memory" - it's important you know the difference between virtual memory and virtual address space. 2. Portions of the Windows kernel itself HAVE to run in physical memory (this portion of the Windows kernel is called non-paged pool memory), and your system can use up to 256MB of non-paged pool memory if the system gets very busy, but this is usually around 30 or 40MB (or even less, depending on what you do with your system). This memory is allocated to the kernel before ANY other process can load into physical memory. Then, system services (anywhere from 3 - 15MB) and desktop heap space (anywhere from 20 - 48MB) are allocated to physical memory space. So before you are able to use your system, your 256MB of physical memory available is down to 150 - 200MB left to be allocated to currently running or new processes. After your startup items are processed and any other run items are launched, by the time you actually get to your desktop you may have even less physical memory available before Windows has to allocate processes to run in "virtual memory". Make sense? 3. Windows XP runs fine with 128MB of RAM, but don't try to run more than one or two applications at once with this amount of RAM - you'll be running in virtual memory by the third or fourth application for sure, and the system will definitely seem slower. For a "power user" system, Windows XP actually seems to benchmark best when it has access to over 1GB of physical RAM (2GB or more if you can swing it - I currently run 2GB on most systems, and 4GB on systems used to run Virtual Server 2005). With the above information, hopefully you know why 128MB or even 256MB of RAM is not fine for any system that will be used for more than browsing and email. Also remember that if you are going to have more than one user logged in at any one time, you'll have multiple desktop sessions running at once, which requires multiple desktop heap allocations, and multiple allocations per instance of any running application (startup items, programs that run in the system tray, etc). If you want to see exactly what is being used on your system, run the performance application in the Administrative Tools folder, and pay close attention to the Memory counters - especially "Available Bytes" and "Committed Bytes". Available Bytes is just that - how many "available bytes" of physical memory are left unallocated. Committed Bytes is a counter that shows you roughly how much allocated virtual memory space is actually running in "virtual memory" space, otherwise known as your paging file. Also watch the "Process" counter for processes on your system, and pay attention to the "Working Set" and "Private Bytes" for each process. The Private Bytes counter for each process shows how much total virtual address space the process has allocated for itself, and the Working Set is a counter for each process that shows the amount of virtual address space that is actually used by the process and contains data within that "Private Bytes" allocated amount. Hopefully I haven't glazed you over by now, and you've grasped at least some of the above. Long post short - get more physical memory for your system, preferably 1GB or more, or you'll be running your applications in "virtual memory". -Edited for spelling

The above posts are very good suggestions, but I'd add my own - use Process Explorer from http://www.sysinternals.com to see which service or or thread is running in the svchost.exe process that is consuming all of the CPU. Since svchost.exe is a "container" that runs other services from your system's service list that aren't set to directly communicate with the SCM, it could be ANY of those services or processes within those services that are causing this. Process Explorer should allow you to go into the properties of the svchost.exe process that's hogging CPU, and see which service or process in svchost.exe is actually faulting. Otherwise, you're just guessing .

I did a quick google search and found these drivers: http://www.video-drivers.com/drivers/54/54390.htm Not sure if it'll work, but it's worth a try. Also, I do know that this particular SiS chipset (63xx) won't give very good performance for DirectX under Windows XP, as the chipset only supports the DX6 command set under 2000/XP (yuck). Just an FYI.

If you can't get the system to boot, you won't be able to do an sfc /scannow. However, if you've got a W2K SP4 CD, you can most likely boot to that, run the recovery console, and replace the file on disk with the one from the CD. That should get you into your box (you'll probably still want to run sfc, just in case).

Actually, that does sound like a network hardware issue at that point.

I'd sincerely doubt that a virus would be causing electrical issues with your house. Is your computer plugged directly into the outlets? If so, consider purchasing a low-cost APC power device to remove your computer from direct connection with the electrical wiring of your house. It sounds like perhaps you have some bad grounding on those outlets, but I doubt the issue is your computer. It's most likely the victim in this case, not the cause.

If you can't see what's starting, consider downloading autoruns (from the sysinternals site as well) and run it. You will see EVERYTHING that is starting with your PC - hide all of the Microsoft entries and see what's left. If you uncheck everything non-Microsoft and reboot, does explorer.exe start up?

Any user-specific registry keys added during Windows setup are supposed to be applied to the default user hive, but that has it's limitations (it's not entirely built until after the T-9 mark, so some things just can't be added during setup itself). I've found that adding the regtweaks to the HKU key is easier and more complete if done via GuiRunOnce or RunOnceEx.

Depending on the switch and whether it recognizes the virtual IP or not, that'd be a possibility.

The routers need to be configured to forward DHCP requests, and the DHCP server will automatically offer IP addresses from the scope which matches the IP address of the interface on which the request is received. Most routers made in the last 7 or 8 years will have a DHCP forward or DHCP passthrough option that you can enable.

By "all messed up", what do you mean?