Zxian

============================================= I AM IS POSTING THIS ON THE BEHALF OF JCARLE. ============================================= Hey xper or any one else with this info, I'm wondering if there's an IP ban in effect for my IP or ISP? I cannot reach msfn.org though anyone else I talk to can. I can also reach the site/forums using a proxy, and the reason I need zxian to post this for me is that the proxy won't let me send POSTs. Here's our route logs, run at the exact same time. Thanks guys. Zxian's trace route: Tracing route to msfn.org [69.16.212.140] over a maximum of 30 hops: 1 38 ms 45 ms 31 ms 137.82.222.213 2 36 ms 30 ms 33 ms i9-a14.net.ubc.ca [142.103.204.98] 3 43 ms 46 ms 46 ms policy1-tx-UBC.vantx.BC.net [207.23.240.6] 4 61 ms 72 ms 64 ms ra1wh-ge4-3-15.vc.bigpipeinc.com [64.251.87.209] 5 70 ms 61 ms 59 ms rc1bb-ge1-2-0.vc.shawcable.net [66.163.69.41] 6 59 ms 73 ms 74 ms rc2wt-pos1-0.wa.shawcable.net [66.163.76.142] 7 66 ms 62 ms 66 ms GigabitEthernet4-0.GW11.SEA1.ALTER.NET [63.65.78.33] 8 50 ms 62 ms 61 ms 0.so-7-2-0.XL2.SEA1.ALTER.NET [152.63.107.22] 9 109 ms 88 ms 83 ms 0.so-7-0-0.XL2.CHI2.ALTER.NET [152.63.68.90] 10 84 ms 75 ms 88 ms POS7-0.GW9.CHI2.ALTER.NET [152.63.69.165] 11 125 ms 115 ms 102 ms liquidwebOC12-gw.customer.alter.net [65.207.234.198] 12 127 ms 80 ms 116 ms lw-core2-ge2.rtr.liquidweb.com [209.59.157.34] 13 182 ms 118 ms 117 ms lw-dc1-dist5-ge2.rtr.liquidweb.com [209.59.157.74] 14 122 ms 113 ms 122 ms ns2.msfn.org [69.16.212.140] Trace complete. jcarle's trace route: Tracing route to msfn.org [69.16.212.140] over a maximum of 30 hops: 1 2 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.1 2 12 ms 27 ms 15 ms 10.72.128.1 3 10 ms 12 ms 16 ms 24.200.245.129 4 14 ms 9 ms 18 ms 24.200.245.6 5 13 ms 19 ms 10 ms 24.200.245.10 6 8 ms 30 ms 9 ms 216.113.122.14 7 36 ms 38 ms 28 ms 216.113.122.86 8 26 ms 27 ms 114 ms bcs2-so-5-1-0.Washington.savvis.net [206.24.227.66] 9 31 ms 29 ms 44 ms acr2-so-0-0-0.Washington.savvis.net [206.24.227.18] 10 40 ms 44 ms 67 ms 206.24.225.226 11 51 ms 45 ms 49 ms lw-core1-ge4.rtr.liquidweb.com [209.59.157.22] 12 44 ms 41 ms 45 ms lw-dc1-dist5-ge1.rtr.liquidweb.com [209.59.157.62] 13 * * * Request timed out.

I was just making sure that it's an XP problem that you're dealing with and not an nLite problem.

Are you using nLite?

Check whether or not your drives are running in DMA mode or PIO mode. If they're in PIO mode, set them to Ultra-DMA and reboot the computer. If that doesn't stick, then uninstall the IDE controllers and reboot again. PIO access can be quite CPU intensive and bring your system to a crawl.

XP can do this. You can mount the partition in an empty NTFS directory to get more space. To do mount a drive into an empty NTFS folder. If your system drive isn't NTFS already, make it so by typing the following command into a command prompt: convert %systemdrive% /FS:NTFS Create a folder on the system drive. Let's call it C:\Other for now. Go to right-click on My Computer and select Manage. Select Disk Management and find the second drive. Right click on the partition on the second drive and select Change Drive Letter and Paths Click on Add and select Mount in the following emtpy NTFS folder. Browse to the location of C:\Other. Click Ok until you're back at Disk Management, and then close that window You're done! You can also use Junction Points, but those are a little more complicated I think.

Tsk Tsk Tsk... you think that because of your anti-virus and firewall, you're secure without SP2? Unfortunately that's not the case - Service Pack 2 is a must in my books. Anyone who doesn't run it either doesn't understand the benefits, or they can't install it because they're using a pirated copy of XP. I don't think that a business would be stupid enough to use pirated software, so you've probably got a legit copy. Does the computer have a COA somewhere on it? You can download the full SP2 installation here and install that at your leisure. Oh... and WMP11 is much better than WMP8 or 9. Tell her to upgrade and get used to the new UI. Once she uses it for a bit, she'll wonder how she ever went back.

Thank you. I'm pretty sure that sums up the POV of most of the people who are saying "leave them alone".

Just out of curiosity... how do you attribute your "lightened" XP install to a fully third party program loading faster? OpenOffice has absolutely no dependencies on XP, and AFAIK it can be run fully standalone. I'm missing the link between two independent systems here... (Windows & OO). You also forgot to mention that with just those 5 services running, you've limited yourself greatly in the programs that you choose to use. I give a personal example with Apple's iTunes and my iPod video. I wanted to update the firmware in my iPod for a number of reasons (gapless playback, better UI, etc), and the only way to do that was by using iTunes7. The Apple Firmware Updater doesn't exist for the firmware revision 1.2. Don't get me wrong - I hate iTunes with a passion, but it's the only way to do it. So I go ahead and install it, and plug in my iPod. Nothing. It doesn't show up in iTunes at all. After several hours of troubleshooting, I find a solution on the net which requires starting several services: Network DDE DSDM Network DDE ClipBook Routing and Remote Access Terminal Services Server Now - I ask those who say that disabling services is a good thing - most of the services in the list are the ones that are either removed or disabled, right? What would andromeda's clients do if all of a sudden, iTunes wasn't working like it should? And then he comes back and tells them - "Oh... I had to undo something I did a while back. Sorry." Personally, I wouldn't rely on that tech support again. It's one of the reasons I don't use nLite anymore. I spent more time configuring my computer to make all the programs I needed work than I did using the programs themselves. Sure, it makes windows load this extra 5 seconds faster, but then you spend another 30 minutes reformatting, and then another 2-4 hours installing everything else again... so where's the time saved?

Why don't people show some facts to support their opinions instead of telling others that they're posting "garbage" or being "fanboys". @SunnyB - Most of the services you mentioned are set to manual or disabled. The ones that are set to automatic don't do that much harm when left running. And for the record, Error Reporting Service only sends information when you permit it to. Remote Access Connection Manager is required to dial into VPN connections. NetBIOS is only a security risk if you don't have a decent password on your computer accounts. Period. People who leave their systems without passwords are usually the people who complain about that one. Do you really think that Microsoft is "just" about profit, IP and the desire to control everything? Why do you keep using Windows then? There are several other options for you to use other than Windows. OSX, Linux, Unix - they're all alternatives for you to use. Many people go about their daily lives on these OSes without any troubles.

But why disable wzcsvc in the first place? Almost all third-party wireless configuration managers will disable wzcsvc when they're installed, and then disable it when they're uninstalled, so why should you go ahead and do it manually? You're only running the risk of forgetting about it later. Out of curiosity... what increased functionality do other manufacturers provide over the default Windows configuration? I've used Intel's ProSet, and the only thing that it does that Windows doesn't is recognize when I've turned on my wireless card and then it scans for wireless networks. I'm not that familiar with other systems, since I've only used Intel wireless cards.

Thanks for the update. I'm liking this version more already (it's even more "silent" than before).

Yup.... I had this problem a while back. Same problem - same solution. More reason to not disable services...

But that's the entire problem... Task Manager doesn't give even remotely correct figures on memory usage. Remember the whole "minimize" trick so "solve" Firefox's memory leak problems? That's not a fix at all. There's no way that minimizing a program will "free" 80MB of memory. What's actually happening is that Windows is saying that there is now ~3MB of RAM dedicated to that process that are not allowed to be paged to disk. I think a good analogy to the whole services discussion would be to look at automatic windsheild wipers on a fancy new car (just as an example). They're there, right? And on sunny days, they don't do anything, so most people think "Why do I need these...?" Some people will go as far as to remove them from the car so that the car is lighter, handles better, and has a better drag coefficient. But then one day... it starts to rain... what then? Sure - while it was sunny, the car performed that little bit faster, but it's not a complete package that can take care of itself. You now have to lean out the window to wipe off the windsheild yourself. It's the same idea when you disable/remove services. You remove functionality and end up doing more work when things go wrong. If you're not using that functionality right now, you'll probably come across a day when you need it.

That's your problem there... you're using Task Manager to give you your numbers. Task Manager lies about the "Memory usage" of a particular program. It doesn't tell you whether or not that memory is located in RAM or on disk. If that section of memory has been paged to disk (like unused services are), then it's not using up any RAM. Simple, no? If your svchost processes aren't sitting at zero when your computer isn't doing anything, then you've probably got something else going on. My system doesn't do that, nor does any other that I've seen that has been free of malware or strange programs. Why does number of processes relate to system performance? Most processes sit there not doing anything... so why do you care? My file server has about 40 processes running at any given time, because it's got 3 remote users logged in. Does that make it run noticably slower? Not really... mind you I haven't run any benchmarks on it, but it runs for 30 days at at time, and then I reboot it for Windows Updates. Here.. download this program - nothing.exe. It's a pretty much empty .NET program that doesn't do anything. Leave it running and play your games, run your benchmarks... do you notice anything different?

Happy Birthday xper!!! w00t w00t!!! And my present to you... Click here. It's not much, but hopefully it'll make you laugh.

You feel bored of using the same name of software for several years? Does that also mean that you feel bored using Windows for this long? If Nero does what you need, then why not keep using it?

I think Digerati hit the nail on the head here. Customization and security are the two main points why people use Firefox. On the topic of security however, I read a statistic that something like 90% of malware installations are due to user error (or stupidity... depending on which way you look at it). If the malware install is written to target IE, but still requires the user to do something, then it's not a very good argument against the security of IE.

Here's the easiest solution to setting up a basic server: 1) Install XAMPP. It's got everything you need for just about every scripting language out there. 2) Upload your files to your webserver with the included Filezilla server. A good free client is Filezilla client. The XAMPP homepage has LOTS of help files and FAQs to help you out. Just read through there and you'll be up and running in no time.

Think about it for a second... what does Windows do with unused portions of memory? It pages them to disk... oh wait... Most people who disable services are also the same ones who either limit the size of their pagefile or don't have one at all. If you keep your pagefile at a reasonable size or leave it system managed, then the unused services will lie in the pagefile - sitting there - not doing anything at the moment. There is no performance hit from this.

@XPSlacker - I'm sure that the actual transfer speeds between FTP and WFS are comparable. I was just noting the high overhead that exists in FTP. That's all.

Logical Disk Manager maybe? That's a service that should always be running. Like N1K said - do you see it in the Disk Management? If you do, does it have a drive letter assigned to it?

Toss the following code into a batch file called "hdconvert.bat" and run it on the affected computers. That should do the trick. @echo off convert %systemdrive% /FS:NTFS

Try installing something like WAMP or XAMPP. They've got Apache ready to go, right out of the box, and they're very easy to use and configure. Both of them need some configuration to make them web-safe though. You can read through their FAQs for more info.

Hardware RAID cards start at around $400, and the prices only go up from there.

You can select to not use Microsoft Update on the webpage. I can't remember exactly what to do, but search for "Microsoft Update" in this forum and you'll find out how.