Zxian

Hehe... why would you want to be a mod? That just means more responsibility... J/K guys! I think that all the mods here are doing a great job of keeping MSFN clean.

That's the problem I have... the files you listed only appear in the Acrobat directory, not in the Office directory. A search for those files only brings up one instance of each on my hard drive. As before, if I try to delete those files and then run Outlook, Acrobat repairs itself, and the buttons come back to the toolbar. EDIT *slaps self really really hard* Why am I such a dumbass sometimes... The options I wanted were available right in the installer of Acrobat... select to "Not available" and problem solved. Thanks for the help anyways... lol

Yes, Norton Ghost does the same thing as Acronis, but True Image is better than Ghost IMO. You have the option of creating an Acronis boot loader so that you can recover your image without having to load into Windows, or you can create a boot CD that you can recover your images from as well. I've simply found Acronis better than Norton.

*throws temper tantrum* Bwaggaahh fraggah...phooey. I tried reversing the order of installs but with no luck. Uninstalled both apps (restarted after removing Acrobat - which tells me there is something Acrobat related loaded with Windows), ran CCleaner on both files and registry, and then installed Acrobat and then Office. I still get this annoying Adobe PDF crap showing up in my Office Apps.

I'm not sure about other firewalls, but I know for a fact that Sygate wouldn't fall for the "explorer.exe" trick. I just made a "program" using Quick Batch File Compiler that would simply ping Google and write the entries to a text file. I named the executable explorer.exe and ran it. Sygate immediately popped up and asked me what I wanted to do. I'll have to disagree with both of you on this one. I have a friend who's computer I set up a while back with Sygate as a firewall (she had bought NAV and wanted to keep using it). She was using P2P programs in an uneducated way and came to me one day saying that Sygate was starting to ask her about all these new programs that wanted to connect to the internet. Turned out (after a visit to HouseCall) that a number of viruses/trojans had slipped past NAV and were trying to "call home". All I did to set up Sygate was ask her what programs she used on the net, ran them, and let Sygate ask me what to do (in this case, allow those programs access). I'd really like to see someone with the Windows Firewall produce the same type of results. I'm not saying that Sygate is 100% (nothing is), but it's definately better than the default. I may not have "scientific" proof per se, but I have plenty of experience to backup my opinion. (I use Sygate in all of my examples because it is the program I am the most familiar with. IMO, it is the best freeware software firewall available - note, IMO. Others may think otherwise, but for the common user a firewall that interacts with the user, at least on a first-time basis, is better than one that completely handles itself.)

WinRAR is the easiest to use IMO. 7-zip gives better compression in most cases, but sometimes not! I made SFX installers using 7-zip and WinRAR for Photoshop, and the 7-zip installer came out 500kb larger... Overall WinRAR.

An hour and a half to bump your own post... I don't know of any reliable freeware backup programs. Acronis is worth every penny of the price that you pay for it. Partition Magic creates partitions. It doesn't manage what goes on them. After the trial of Acronis is over, the partition with your image will remain, but you won't be able to use the program to recover the image if you need it.

Your new PC? *sniff*

Googled "WinKey". http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_desc...fid,5506,00.asp Second link...

If you want to make a backup partition for your desktop, you'd want to use a program like Acronis True Image. The Recovery Partition on your laptop is pretty much exactly this. Again... complete sentences... Periods, capitals, proper punctuation.

Cool... thanks for the update, and good luck to both of you!

It's either a jumper that you move over a couple of pins or removing a watch sized battery for about 30 seconds. That will set everything in BIOS back to default values.

Yup... that's the only one you need.

Well... tried that... Acrobat repaired itself when I started Outlook... There's gotta be something that's registered to load the Acrobat files when Office apps are started... but I can't seem to find it. I'll try installing them in the other order later today.

I'm not sure if Windows is able to do this by default, but for shortcut keys, I always used the program WinKey. It's small, simple, and doesn't use a lot of resources. It'll do exactly what you want very easily.

I don't have a zip drive... on-topic or off-topic. My girlfriend doesn't complain about either.

Well... just got back from a nice weekend and found this in my PM box. I'll let this one slide since phillyman2004 is relatively new here. First off to anyone who might read this, it's better to ask in the forums themselves since more people will have different inputs. As for me, the only programs that I have running are AveDesk and WindowBlinds. As for the calendar, it's a slight modification of the Vertical Calendar docklet for SysStats. You can find all the info you want there as well as links to various SysStats configs. If you have more questions about AveDesk or SysStats, you'll probably want to ask in the Aqua-Soft forums (AveDesk is under Ave's Apps). For the Recycle Bin, I hid the default recycle bin with TweakUI (from Microsoft) and then AveDesk comes with a default Recycle Bin desklet (it's under the PidlShortcut desklet). Most of the stuff you do with Samurize you can probably do with SysStats... you just need to know a little bit of scripting to make it work. If not, stick with Samurize - I don't think it's too bad on resources (I haven't used it in a while). And to find icons... Google and DeviantArt. That's all I can say. Happy modding!

I think that there are some good points and some bad points on the list. For the "common" tasks (basic browsing, e-mail) smartphones are alright. However, I still think that laptops will always have a proper place in the market. I have fairly large hands, and I've used the foldable keyboards for my Palm a while back and I kept on missing the keys. Even after a month of use, I couldn't properly type... With the full size keyboard on my laptop (which I now actually prefer to a "real" keyboard) I can usually average about 60-80 wpm without trying too hard. Also... watching movies on a smartphone? The screen is far too small and the quality of the video/sound that you're getting will undoubtably be worse than that of a laptop (which will most likely be worse than a comparable desktop). I've done a number of lectures at my university, and I can say with complete confidence that no smartphone/pda could replace my laptop as my presentation tool of choice. Just as prathapml said, a laptop is a mobile PC, and that's exactly why I love it. I think that ultimately we will see many more developments in the handheld market. The blending of a cellphone and a pda is something that is probably fairly appealing to many people, and the main hinderance right now is the price (such devices cost about half that of a good laptop here in Canada).

Many people misinterpret the term "open". Your computer/network may be secure enough to stop something unwanted from entering the network, but the Windows Firewall and hardware firewall won't do anything to stop a Trojan or other malware from sending information out from your computer. A proper software firewall is the only thing that will prevent this.

Have you done the usual spyware/virus scans? both with your AV program and online scanners?

@harunaksoy - YES!!! For me... I'd have to say a tie between Dave Matthews Band - Two Step KMFDM - Attak Reload Infected Mushroom - Frog Machine Signum - Coming on Strong Depending on my mood. Anything by Aura - the source of trance is good too...

Wha...? If your system is telling you the system32 folder doesn't exist then you've got big problems buddy... To help you out on this... download this bootskin just for example's sake. Go to the C:\Program Files\StarDock\WinCustomize\BootSkin\Skins\SnowLaden\ folder and open up the bootskin.ini file. You'll be able to see how the general layout of the bootskin works. If you want to add another image in there, you'll probably have to add it to the background image and use that as your bootskin. (Take the default background or whatever other background, open in an editor, add new image, save, use in bootskin)

I've been searching around for the answer on how to do this properly... Basic story is... I've got the really annoying Acrobat Toolbars (and menu items) showing up in my Office applications and I don't want them there. I remember back in the days of Acrobat 6 that there was a file placed in the Office install directory that you could simply remove to get rid of the toolbars, but I can't seem to find that file anymore. I've also thoroughly looked through Process Explorer to see if there were any DLL's loading that were related to Acrobat (none found... ). I know that if you install Acrobat first and then Office, you don't get this problem, but if you reverse the order of installation, then Acrobat integrates itself with Office. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance!

The big problem with the Windows firewall is that it is easily circumvented by malware and it doesn't scan outgoing traffic at all. As for third-pary firewalls, I don't get any "pesky" pop-ups from Sygate, and I only need to allow the program access to the network once and it leaves me alone. I've never had a "false" alert with Sygate, perhaps one that Sygate thinks is a threat, but actually isn't. So I just adjust a setting and all is well. It's better to have a little bit of a tighter system that you then have to open up for your programs than a wide-open system (which is essentially what you've got now). I know other programs act in the same way (BitDefender, Kerio, etc).

AveDesk has support for docklets made for ObjectDock. Any ObjectDock docklet should work in AveDesk without any problems. DesktopX widgets will not work however. If you're looking for more desklets, the Aqua-Soft forums is a good place to start (Link). You can also add SysStats to AveDesk to get system information and a whole bunch of other cool things. The SysStats site has links to lots of good configs and information. Hope this helps!