cluberti

I can't speak to Adobe OEM software, but for Microsoft OEM software there are real reasons it is cheaper: No support from Microsoft for OEM software - you have to contact the OEM that sold you the computer with the OEM software installed for any support you require (and thus, if you bought OEM software and installed it on your PC, *you* are the OEM and you need to contact ... yourself ... for Microsoft support... ). The OEM Windows license is tied to the machine it was installed on, and cannot be moved. It can be installed and reinstalled (if necessary) on this machine multiple times, but it cannot be moved. In this case, this means that if you buy a new PC in the future you will need to buy another copy of Windows if you want to install Windows on the new machine. Retail installations do not have this limitation, and can be removed from one machine and reinstalled on another. The only place that OEM software machine tying does not apply would be if you purchased the software and reside in Germany, or in a country with no IP laws, as Germany did outlaw OEM software tying and as such you can resell OEM software there. However, since you appear to reside in the US, you would be allowed to install OEM software only on one PC, and it stays with that PC going forward, forever. With Windows 7, Microsoft has removed the verbiage that allows home users to buy an OEM license for Windows 7 and install it on their own PC and has made it clear that you MUST resell the PC you build and install OEM Windows 7 on (*and* you MUST use the OPK tools to install Windows 7 OEM as well), and this is a distinct change from Vista and previous versions - meaning if you want a legitimate copy for home, you could buy an OEM copy and install it on your own PC, but that would technically violate the licensing agreement for OEM Windows 7. You can read more about OEM licensing for Microsoft software here. While a lot of folks whine about Microsoft licensing and legalese being complicated, I find EULAs and licensing agreements from Microsoft to be pretty straight-forward, in general, especially the Windows EULA. Versions of Windows prior to Windows 7 had an OEM software EULA that clearly stated that you COULD purchase OEM software for installation on your personal computer, but the Windows 7 OEM EULA explicitly removed the wording - and in keeping with the directive that if it's not a clearly allowed or defined usage right in the EULA, it is not a right one has with the software (barring a law on the books that explicitly allows certain behaviors, like reverse-engineering or fair use). I think that's the problem most people who read EULA's have - they read them and assume if <x software usage> isn't explicitly covered and denied in the EULA, that it's allowed, when in fact the exact opposite is true.

First, please note this is not a kernel dump, it's a minidump: "Mini Kernel Dump File: Only registers and stack trace are available" However, you're in luck, there might be enough here to make a determination of where to look. It looks like you do have a 3GHz Intel Core2, and it did spit out a WHEA record into the minidump: 1: kd> !cpuinfo CP F/M/S Manufacturer MHz PRCB Signature MSR 8B Signature Features 1 6,23,6 GenuineIntel 3000 0000060c00000000 211b3ffe Cached Update Signature 0000060c00000000 Initial Update Signature 0000060c00000000 1: kd> !whea Error Source Table @ fffff80003019b38 0 Error Sources That means the high 32 bits is 00000000b2000040 and the low 32bits is 0000000000000800, which equates to the following binary: 1011 0010 0000 0000 0000 0000 0100 0000 | 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 1000 0000 0000 Taking this and putting it against the Intel model-specific MCA bitmask, you get: 6 5 4 3 2 1 3210987654321098765432109876543210987654321098765432109876543210 ---------------------------------------------------------------- 1011001000000000000000000100000000000000000000000000100000000000 This means, according to the intel processor documentation: VAL - MCi_STATUS register is valid Indicates that the information contained within the IA32_MCi_STATUS register is valid. When this flag is set, the processor follows the rules given for the OVER flag in the IA32_MCi_STATUS register when overwriting previously valid entries. The processor sets the VAL flag and software is responsible for clearing it. UC - Error Uncorrected Indicates that the processor did not or was not able to correct the error condition. When clear, this flag indicates that the processor was able to correct the error condition. EN - Error Enabled Indicates that the error was enabled by the associated EEj bit of the IA32_MCi_CTL register. PCC - Processor Context Corrupt Indicates that the state of the processor might have been corrupted by the error condition detected and that reliable restarting of the processor may not be possible. Ultimately, this means the likelihood of failure rests in the processor socket somewhere - it could be the core itself, cache memory that is bad, etc - but ultimately, you have a bad CPU and probably fried something during the overclock enough to make it unstable. I'd suggest contacting Intel with this information and getting it replaced under warranty, if you still have warranty on the part.

Vista Ultimate Promo Kit versions were not retail copies, but just a DVD in a sleeve that were offered at developer events and to MSDN and Technet subscribers in 2008. It was a full version, but it is not a retail copy and you had to register it on a website before June 30, 2009 to get a product key. Well, now there are Windows 7 Ultimate Promo Kits out there as well (these were given out at launch to the Win7 party participants, MSDN and Technet subscribers that won a raffle, and there was another raffle but I don't remember what that was for specifically). It's worth noting that just like the Vista promo kits, they're "NFR" (not for resale) versions (and are labeled as such on the sleeve), so I would avoid buying them. If it comes in a box, unless it's the signature version given out with the Win7 party kits (that *is* a retail version), it's an NFR promo kit and you should try and steer clear. If it is in a box, but has no NFR in the upper left-hand corner, it's more than likely an OEM version (or worse, a counterfiet/warez version) and you should investigate further.

Arguments aside, buying a video card at $60 - $80 USD (either ATI or nVidia) should provide a much better experience than the 8400GS currently in the machine.

I had an upgrade take almost 8 hours during the RC timeframe, on a fairly new machine (quad core Q9650, 8GB RAM), and I've seen some take upwards of 15 hours on similar hardware. The more you have installed and/or stored in your profile on the volume you're installing Windows to, the longer it will take. Saying it won't simply because you've never had a long upgrade doesn't make it fact.

I'd be more worried about the age of the hardware in the "old" system rather than the specs, honestly. What the OP has spec'ed out will be more than adequate for his parents' needs if the old Compaq was serving their needs.

The minidump will not contain the memory information that has the WHEA data, it will only contain enough data to display the stack and registers (and the WHEA data would not be included). You *need* a kernel dump to analyze a 0x124 dump, so if all you're currently configured for is a minidump, please change it and upload the kernel dump when the problem re-occurs.

Very nice indeed.

Which part is a lie?

Without an actual kernel dump it'll be hard to say WHAT failed, but yes, this is a hardware error reported by the CPU (not necessarily the CPU failing, but it ultimately does the error reporting to the OS).

Indeed - USB 2.0 installs are quite a bit faster than DVD-based installations. I wouldn't necessarily suggest it on a machine with USB 1.1, but 2.0 seems to be plenty fast enough to best DVD transfers.

Let me finish that sentence for you: You have to understand Microsoft is not going to pay people to support a product for free forever, so they've set dates on stepping down support - mainstream, extended, and EOL. Once a product moves from mainstream into extended support, there are no more free support incidents, for any reason other than security bug reasons. You either upgrade to a version that does have mainstream (free) install/configuration support, or you pay the $59 for the home/consumer support desk access or $299 for professional support. Regardless of how you feel about the policy, it is the policy and it is documented on their lifecycle support pages. As to getting Office 2003 installed, what type of key are you using - it would seem the channel of the CD you have probably doesn't match the channel from the key (perhaps a retail key with OEM or VLK media or some other combination of the three), and you'll need to get a disc that matches the key. Do you know the channel that the Office product key you have belongs to?

Well, considering the bulk of the wiki answers document I believe the OP is referencing contains a straight rip from Intel's site, I'd at least trust them that disabling it isn't a bad idea. As to disabling HT on 2K or NT, that's because the thread scheduler doesn't understand that the HT "CPU" is a virtual CPU or core, and will schedule it like any other physical CPU core in the system (which is inefficient and not what HT was designed to accomplish, thus depending on the workload you can actually be more efficient running one physical core rather than a physical+HT CPU in some scenarios). XP/2003 systems at least know to schedule on physical cores before scheduling a thread on an HT "core", and Vista and Win7 take their understanding further and can actually utilize the HT virtual CPUs much more efficiently - but that's neither here nor there in this discussion. It is likely safe to leave HT enabled on a CPU under Windows 9x, but disabling it in the BIOS won't hurt anything anyway, and Intel does recommend it for what it's worth, and it's their CPU architecture and design so they do carry some weight in the recommendation.

The Tetravex version you're looking for on Windows was part of the Microsoft Best of Windows Entertainment pack back for Win95 (the actual original version was released for Win 3.1 in 1991, I believe...), and I've never seen it released otherwise. The open-source version is basically the same game, but it's not the Microsoft version and I do not believe that version was ever ported to Windows (although I believe the Microsoft version was available on the GameBoy for a short while, although I'd have to Google it to refresh my memory). You could try getting the open-source Linux version running under cygwin, as I've heard that works, but unless you can find someone selling the Best of Windows Entertainment disks from 1995, you're out of luck for a native Windows version.

Not a clue - might want to ping the authors.

Might be wise to get an application crash dump of explorer.exe the next time it crashes.

Looks like code review did find violations of the GPL, and it looks like a re-release is coming under the GPL: http://port25.technet.com/archive/2009/11/...nload-tool.aspx

Supposedly Adobe is going to release an x64 native version of Flash in some as-yet-to-be determined version *after* 10.1, but the wording is still vague enough that one has to wonder if they'll ever get around to it. I've used the x64 plugin they have for Linux browsers, and while it works most of the time it's still not anywhere near stable (they call it beta, but it's far more of an alpha version). And to agree with the previous post, unless you actually go out of your way to run the x64 version of IE, you're still running a 32bit version of IE (and you are downloading the 32bit version of Firefox, Chrome, Opera, and Safari by default when you visit the download pages for those browsers as well, even on a 64bit version of Windows). Until enough plugins are native 64bit, expect the 32bit browser continue to be the default on a 64bit OS.

Note FCKs are read via wininet, not urlmon. Actually, they can also be read by browseui.dll, if you go into the tools > Internet Options, browseui.dll re-reads all the FCKs (it reads ALL reg entries that IE can have to make sure the UI is properly populated). Note that Feature Control Keys are created to "turn on" hotfixes that originate in the QFE or LDR branch of IE, hence why they're only documented originally for the person or company that the hotfix is written for - the ones that work in the GDR branch and/or are actually publicly documented on the microsoft.com site are for fixes that either migrated into the general public releases of IE either via service pack, or if the fix was considered valuable enough for everyone to have documented but one that Microsoft doesn't want "turned on" by default for whatever reason.

Well, service pack 3 doesn't contain any IE8 files, so reinstalling it won't do any good. Also, if you've uninstalled IE8 and IE6 works fine, does a reinstall of IE8 after uninstalling back to IE6 and rebooting resolve it? Otherwise, it sounds like wininet is screwed up on the machine and it would take some debugging to figure out (WLM uses wininet for connection handling, hence why I think Revo probably screwed up a reg entry that wininet requires for proper operation under IE8).

You either install the WDS PXE filter (in the MDT start menu folder) or, if MDT is not on the same machine as WDS, simply add the boot.wim file that MDT creates as a boot image on the WDS server.

First post, direct link to an .exe, and an unsafe one at that? Bye now. [banned].

Note that most VL installations under Microsoft license agreements are *upgrade* licenses, in that they can only be installed on top of a machine that has an OEM or retail install of Windows on it. Now, as PC said, part of the agreement is that if you ever transfer ownership of that machine to any other entity, you MUST remove the VL install and restore the previous installation of Windows (or at least wipe the hard disk clean and provide the new owner of the machine all of the OEM media that shipped with the machine when purchased). If you get the machine and suspect the install is not an OEM install or retail install, you would probably want to wipe the install and do a clean install from the media that shipped with the machine (assuming it's an OEM computer - if it's retail, and you purchased the retail copy of Windows with the machine as part of the purchase, you should have the retail packaging, and if you do not the install of Windows is technically illegal).

Any particular reason you're running filemon and not process monitor, which catches and reports many different types of data? Also, note that in XP a lot of disk writes are done as "lazy" writes, meaning the call to write the file may have happened in the past, but the data flush is getting committed to disk later (which filemon wouldn't catch, but process monitor should).