RogueSpear

But the checker program runs on every boot, adding to the bootup time. At least that's the impression I get from what Autoruns reports to me.

A few things: questions like this would be better placed in the RIS forum or even my in my AutoRIS thread. You make no mention of what kind of NIC you're experiencing problems with. Knowing what kind will greatly help others respond to and help you out with your problem. You may want to read my guide to RIS which is a sticky in the RIS forum and conduct a basic search as there are at least a dozen threads dealing with this issue specifically.

A little food for thought: http://www.devsource.com/article2/0,1895,1954651,00.asp

It'll be interesting to see if they keep on blocking that stuff when Microsoft starts using their rip off technology that does the same thing. Once the technology goes "legit" so to speak, they'd be hard pressed to continue blocking that stuff.

Torrents have the undesired side effect of keeping old buggy releases floating around in perpituity. It sounds good on paper, but I imagine the reason it hasn't been done yet is for reasons like that.

@ScubaSteve, thanks for the links. That top one will hopefully do the trick.

This is Warp 4 if I remember correctly. This isn't looking promising according to VMware's web site.

Interesting.. I've also started to do things along those lines. Like reg tweaks based on reported clock speed or special button drivers on laptops based on the presence of hwids. My favorite though is that script sample you found for setting the speed and duplex on a nic. That's really saved me a lot of time and grief.

That's exactly how I implement installing VPN software. I've started to implement this into my script pack. Hopefully will have a new version out before too long.

Ok, don't laugh I have a client who's climate control system is controlled by some proprietary software that run on OS/2. They're currently having some major issues and have an appointment around two months from now (how's that for response time) with the vendor to get everything fixes and reinstalled. This isn't the first time this has happened and when it does happen the thieves who sold them this substandard garbage charge around $4,000 US. That works out to around $1,000 / hour. Not bad. For a totally new system they want $65,000 US. Never going to happen. Back to topic.. What I'd like to do to avoid such a situation again is load up the OS in VMware, get them to install everything, take a snapshot, and then burn like 10 copies of it to DVDs. I have the install CD for OS/2, but as luck would it, it's not bootable. What I don't have is the set of floppies to get the install rolling. I've Googled like crazy and found some web site dedicated to OS/2 (kind of sad). They have some downloadable floppy images, but they seem to fall into two categories: a simple boot floppy with no functionality that I can find. It's the OS/2 equivalent of a A:\ prompt. Or what appears to be the proper install floppy, but just plain doesn't work. I can't even get past the first floppy. So has anyone here ever tried this? Is it even possible?

I suppose a Sony style rootkit is next. Can you make a rootkit for your own OS? Microsoft will show us before too long.

@BTS, if they give you some sort of workable number you could try turning on the bandwidth throttling feature. I know it sucks, but slower is better than nothing.

I thought you had contact with someone at some point in regards to integrating a mass storage driver. Well I guess now my memory is going too

I don't know if this has been linked to already in another thread, but it's an interesting read. It's nice to know someone other people out there feel just like I do. I was beginning to wonder if I was practically alone in my disdain for this utter crap. http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/winvista_5308_05.asp

Are you logging in sometimes using RDP? I think the default is to disable wallpaper during RDP sessions. Short of that, I've had a similar problem at times, but it's a little different I think. It involves a utility called UltraMon, a small utility for optimizing dual screen displays. The only thing I can do is what you described - go to the settings and click ok. The reason I say it's different is because UltraMon has some wallpaper handling capabilities of it's own. Frustrating nonetheless.

Judging from the number of hardware vendors represented, I would guess that obtaining and managing all of those permissions would be a full time job on top of the DriverPack project itself. While I do see the point in your question, looking at it from a practical point of view there is nothing being "pirated" by distributing the drivers since you need the hardware device to even utilize them. So I think it would be legal as far as any type of criminal law is concerned. There may be some nearly unreadable clauses in some of the EULAs that make it a civil matter however. As a side note, I think that some of the vendors have gone so far as to give BTS information and pointers as far as troubleshooting integrations.

Hmmm.. I never thought about that one. I think that I may implement that idea in my script pack using the same logic to detect chassis type for VPN client installs. That's a real good point that I'm surprised I didn't think about before. I'm VPNed in to my network quite a bit and my laptop reached out to the RIS server for some files once. Talk about slow going.

Whenever one of my RISed workstations has needed access to the source, that's just where it looks - the RIS server. This should be an automatic thing for your clients.

It takes me less than half an hour to set up a new RIS image from scratch. If you properly test out hotfixes, which you should be doing regardless, then there's no reason to not integrate them.

I have never once in all my years talked to someone who has encountered MAC address spoofing that resulted in a successful attack. This is the kind of thing that DoD worries about, and rightfully so, but I don't think it's anything Joe Sixpack should concern himself with.

But you see end user training is a very real consideration with Vista in the enterprise. Both at my main job and at every client I have or ever had, I cannot seem to get through to people the importance of training your users. There's the odd exception where they train one person for QuickBooks or something like that, but in general I deal with people who have used a computer 40 hours a week for the last 10 years and they still have no clue that there is even online help. This is obviously not Microsoft's fault, but it is their problem because when you upgrade operating systems there's always a certain amount of pain involved. And if the benefits don't even come close to making up for that pain, people won't upgrade. So what happens is that unless I see a really major incredibly fantastic feature, there's little to no benefit in upgrading. I have my networks pretty hunkered down at this point so that nobody gets on unless their workstation proves it's up to date on patches, virus definitions, firewall protection, etc. And I'm sure I'm not alone there. It's kind of like Windows Server's builtin VPN functionality. Nobody in their right mind would implement a VPN solution using Microsoft's provided tools. It's probably not quite as clear cut with NAP, but similar.

I've never run into a situation like you describe, but it certainly sounds like an issue with the firewall, not XP. In fact it's just this sort of flaky behavior that made me finally ditch Symantec's firewall. The only suggestion that I can give you at this point would be to enter in the other computers in the Symantec Firewall's "Trusted Computers" list. In theory this is supposed to make all communications unencumbered, but in practice I've found otherwise. But who knows, perhaps it will clear this issue up for you.

RAS is Remote Access Services. In the Windows world, it's a set of services allowing for authenticated access to a private network, whether over dialup or via the Internet (VPN). SNMP is Simple Network Management Protocol. It's a hideously complex and largely unsecure way of monitoring performance stats, configuration settings, etc. of virtually any kind of network attached device. At my main work site I use SNMP with printers, UPS, servers, switches, routers, firewalls, etc. The big problem with SNMP is that until Version 3, there were some pretty major security shortcomings and most everything out there that's more than 2 years old either V1 or V2. One could even argue that V3 isn't too secure. A common misconception is that SNMP is "read only". In other words for monitoring only. But that's simply not the case. You can make some pretty major config changes through SNMP. Here's a link if you'd like to read a little more about it: http://www.snmplink.org/

Well I'm not an expert with workgroup networking as I pretty much only do that at home. Most of the time I'm in a domain. But at home, the way I have mine setup, I needed to supply credentials in order to connect and I think that's what you're going to need to do as well. If workgroup networking in XP allows you to easily setup a share that any Tom, Dick, or Harry can connect to without any sort of authentication, then that's pretty scarry. Further, good troubleshooting techniques would suggest that you should disable your software based firewalls until you get the shares sharing properly. Then enable them and troubleshoot that if necessary.

It's the same as installing a hotfix in the first place. Files are being replaced. Why should there be a difference? I think the only difference is that the newer hotfix .cat file takes over as far as file signing goes. So if you integrate hotfix KB000001 that replaces ntfs.sys, you should have KB000001.cat in the svcpack directory (and a corresponding entry in svcpack.inf) in your source install media. So let's say after you complete an install KB000002 comes out that further updates ntfs.sys. KB000002.cat will now hold the signature for ntfs.sys that SFC uses. I'm not sure if I got all the terminology 100% correct, but I think that's the basic idea.