cluberti

Windows would not update your firmware on it's own (drivers, maybe, but not firmware). If you're going to update it anyway, do so before you install Windows, always.

Assuming the delay is from entering your logon credentials to getting to a usable desktop, you might want to start with some userenv logging to see what steps are taking the most time - once you know where most of your time during logon is actually being spent, you can start troubleshooting in a more targeted fashion.

It's the group that is used to provide access to resources (printers, files) to computers that are a member of a Win7 HomeGroup.

Is the problem the security prompt in your first screenshot? If so, there's nothing you can do about that one. You say it's a regular install (which would mean the original screenshot wasn't related to this at all), hence the confusion.

It sounds like it's failing because of \\.\null (0mb), which is very, very odd. Could you attach one of your verbose .log files?

That's fine, but for starters, doing this inside a virtual machine runtime is probably not the best way to do this. VB also is another impediment, although not an incredibly high hurdle. Also, if we're talking about this running on a Windows machine post Windows XP SP2, if you want to "clean" RAM (which I don't recommend, as the Windows memory manager is more than adequate at this task), you're going to need something running in kernel (a driver) which will inject itself into every process running - this isn't something you can do from inside a .net app, and it's not something you're going to even want to attempt in VB. Your best bet is to write something in C or C++ (the driver and the user-mode component application), or just pay a few $$$ for someone to write it for you or purchase one that already exists. The other option is to shut down processes and services yourself before running your game from a script or batch file, but "cleaning" RAM is really honestly just a scam - it doesn't really net you anything that the Windows memory manager doesn't already do, and you've already paid for that with your Windows license.

Note that particular power supply model has been known for bad caps since at least late 2006 (just make a google search and you'll see what I mean). As to the harness, I honestly couldn't tell you what it is, as I've never seen a motherboard require a plug like that for power, and I haven't seen any retail power supplies that have that connectoid either - however, I built only a small few P4 machines in my day, as I was more a fan of AMD at the time, so it may be something that cheaper Biostar/ECS motherboards required from the PSU for the P4 processor on the board to get adequate power (which wouldn't be required anymore with newer PSUs from today). Otherwise, honestly, not a clue as to what that little black plug is for - it's very flat, so it's not an additional 12v rail, and it's not a fan power plug either.

WDS unattended installs (truly unattended) require two unattended xml files.

Well, a good place to start would be what code do you have already, and what specifics are you looking for assistance with?

It doesn't, technically - the Windows Photo Viewer has wrapped what I linked in their own UI, and unless the WPV exports APIs to allow you to automate it's print functionality (and it doesn't), you'll have to do it yourself or do what I linked and do the printing controls yourself, from your app. I don't think that the Windows Photo Viewer app has any COM automation either, but you could check to be sure.

The unknown module, if it has an offset starting at 0x8xxxxxxx, is a kernel mode driver.

Something like this?

It sounds like something's failing when calling devmgr.dll - this could be a problem with the dll itself, or something that's installed that has it hooked. I would suggest the following: 1. Download and install version 6.11.1.404 of the Debugging Tools for Windows. 2. Create the folder C:\adplus on your computer. 3. Open a command prompt, and browse to the directory that the Debugging Tools was installed to (usually "C:\Program Files\Debugging Tools for Windows (x86)\" if you accept the installation defaults). 4. Execute the following command from the command prompt: cscript adplus.vbs -crash -quiet -o C:\adplus -sc "rundll32.exe devmgr.dll DeviceManager_Execute" Device Manager will attempt to spawn, and should crash. It will create a folder in C:\adplus with a bunch of files and folders - zip up the C:\adplus folder at this point and upload it somewhere (or PM me) so we can have a look at the crash itself.

Technically an x86 WinPE should be able to apply an x64 WIM file without issue, although if you're calling setup.exe to install Windows from media then yes, you'll need an x64 PE.

Yes, this is what you must do. No, it will extend the schema but make no changes. Yes. Follow this checklist and you should be fine (skip the upgrading existing domain controllers part if you plan on decommissioning your old 2k3 servers - and given you aren't upgrading them, you'll have to anyway).

I would wonder if there's some sort of video driver issue (I guess it could be another driver) - the screen should only awake for keyboard or mouse events, so it would be interesting to remove the keyboard and mouse (assuming they're USB) before it goes to sleep and see what happens.

.\Administrator is really == %computername%\Administrator, and if you create a default MDT 2010 task sequence (and provide the password during the TS wizard), the TS should enable the local admin account and set the password. If login is failing, it would sound like either the TS isn't enabling the local admin account during setup, or some other issue has occurred.

I never recommend an in-place upgrade . What you want to do is sound, but follow the technet article and you should be fine.

If you're upgrading to new hardware, then moving (not seizing) the roles is the way to go once you've got your 2008 R2 DC up. If you're doing an in-place upgrade of a DC from 2003 to 2008 R2, then obviously that's not necessary unless you want to move the roles around. Some other questions to ask are what other services are in your domain and AD, how many other DCs do you have that you'll be upgrading, etc. Microsoft has a technet paper on ADDS and DNS migration to 2008 R2 here that you might want to peruse if you haven't already.

1. What is your specific question? 2. This is the Vista forum, but that looks like a Windows XP dialog box... is this a Vista, or XP, issue?

bitsadmin is a tool that's not really designed to do what you want to do - it's more for large downloads over network connections it isn't supposed to saturate (hence why bits can be throttled back by pretty much any other network traffic). It can be used for such a thing, but wasn't designed to be used this way. Honestly, putting the wget binary onto a WinPE or Windows box if you plan on using it a lot is probably a lot better use if you want an easy way to do this and don't need the throttling bits can do (and it doesn't seem that you do).

Sort of - bitsadmin.exe can do this, but it'll require you reading the documentation and monitoring the whole download via the exe. However, as of Vista, it ships with the OS if the BITS feature is installed (and I believe that is the default as well - my Server 2008 R2 machines all have BITS installed, and they're stock retail installs for repros that I rebuild every 15 days or so). Basically, you create a "job", add a file (or files) to a job, then resume and monitor it - when the download is/are complete, you have to "complete" the job.

If a game (or any program for that matter) runs and terminates gracefully (aka not crashing), Windows 7 isn't going to tell you anything because ExitProcess was called successfully. As Trip said, at this point procmon is probably your best option, short of running the app under a debugger.

The problem is you're not talking about encryption through a provider like verisign, that's tunneling and means nothing for mail (I'm guessing your link is simply invalid). If you want encryption with a public PKI (which you would undoubtedly want for external mail recipients), you would want something like this.

Assuming you can telnet to the mail server from an external host and deliver mail properly, it would seem like a routing or blacklist problem. You could also subscribe to a site like dnsstuff.com and their mail server test center - I'm not shilling for them at all, but their tools are very good and thorough, and would probably tell you where the problem lies quite quickly.