j3schmidt

Had a look at x10. Seems pretty decent for a freebie host. I would also include HelioHost, Zero Dollar ($0.00) Webhost (000 Webhost) and Zymic on the list of good ones. MSFN user Bristol used to have a huge Windows 2000 site hosted with Zymic on one of their subdomains (bristols.zxq.net -- no longer active and not accessible via Wayback Machine), and user Mimo has an informational page about HFSLIP on mimo.zxq.net. I just signed up for HelioHost and found it pretty decent. 500MB of shared web space (not much wiggle room, but pretty decent for "static" pages) and "unlimited" bandwidth. I'm an aspiring author, and in this day of social media marketing, agents are requiring potential clients to demonstrate their ability to have a "platform," or some sort of Internet presence where they connect with potential readers. I just set up a domain name and have a Google blog externally that I'm setting up too. But the writing is my priority, so for right now a minimal setup ($ free) works for me.

More power to you, and my thoughts go out to your grandfather. I hope he is doing well. There's an old saying "laughter is the best medicine," and I'm not sure if you're familiar with the U.S. comedian Chris Rock, but he would tend to agree (as I do) with your sentiment about (Abridged for content. It is Chris Rock, after all.)

ADrive.com gives you 50GB for free.

Thanks for the trick, dencorso, and tomasz86 who you quoted. Still no surprise that M$ would hide this from its regular users, though.

I just had me a search for "Windows 7 SP2" and it doesn't look like there will be one as Microsoft gets ready to pull a Mitt Romney and commit professional felo-de-se improve Windows as we know it with the new and improved Windows 8, Codename "2012: Epic Fail." W8 looks like a tablet OS for 3-year-olds (which is what most tablet OSes look like anyway) and W7 (which a lot of people, myself included, consider the "new and improved" Vista SP3) seems to be getting the bum's rush as W8 gets ready for its big premiere in 2013. (Rumor has it Roland Emmerich is scheduled to direct.) Or am I wrong and is MS going to give W7 a final goodbye with a "surprise" SP2 or a "rollup" (unofficial service pack) like it did with Win2K?

I know this is an old thread (10mos old), but I just added a post on another thread about a similar solution: VMWare vCenter Converter Standalone Client. It turns your already-running system into a VMWare image that you can open in VMWare or free alternatives like Virtual Box and QEMU.

Newbie here, but I thought I'd mention that there is another alternative that's similar to cloning but slightly different. The popular technology site Make Use Of recommends a VMWare product (free) called vCenter Converter Standalone Client. What it basically does is converts your already-running system to a VMWare virtual machine image that you can then access in VMWare, Virtual Box or QEMU. Works great as a backup solution too. Read the article at Make Use Of - "Turn Your Old Mission-Critical PC Into a VM Before it Dies" Download VMWare vCenter Converter Standalone Client from VMWare.com (You'll need a free VMWare account to do so -- you don't have to fill out your real information, and you can even use a disposable email service like Mailinator if you don't want your real inbox to be bombarded with VMWare emails.)

Note: this is NOT a "warez" topic but a discussion of alternate non-IE browsers and M$' disregard for users of them. As I'm sure most of you know, some updates downloaded from Microsoft (as in directly from their site) require a certain "validation" process to ensure that the user is running "genuine Windows." Most often that process occurs automatically when using Internet Explorer as it is a "native" part of the operating system. But since the infamous "browser wars" of the late 1990s (not to mention the now-legendary developments by MSFN's own Nuhi, nLite and vLite), IE is no longer considered as much an integral component for surfing the Internet as it once was. Today we have Firefox and its numerous open-source derivatives (Pale Moon, Waterfox, Lunascape and even browser/media-player hybrid Songbird), Google Chrome, Apple Safari, Opera and numerous others. There are even non-graphical browsers such as Lynx which have been around since before the World Wide Web got into full swing. Windows 7 even allows you to "turn off" IE as a component in the Add/Remove Programs control panel. And Microsoft began allowing an alternative, albeit slightly more cumbersome, validation process for users of non-IE browsers. Well, all of that seems to have changed, unfortunately. Just yesterday I went to download an update for a freshly re-installed XP on another laptop, from a Windows 7 x64 computer (the XP laptop has a fried network controller and cannot connect to the Internet, but everything else works fine). On my W7 PC I had "turned off" IE in Programs & Features > Add/Remove Windows Components, for the numerous security concerns I still have about IE (and also on principle -- if I had the time to learn Linux I would dump Windows entirely, now that M$ is entirely focused on W8 and there doesn't look like there will be a W7 SP2). Normally I use either Firefox or Opera, or 64-bit FF forks Waterfox and Pale Moon. Tried to download an update requiring validation, and guess what: no go. I downloaded the Genuine Update program and attempted to open it, but I got an error: Well, I updated my clock, even restarted the Windows Time service and updated the clock again (in the taskbar date/time applet). I also tried running the program in compatibility mode for both XP SP3 and XP SP2. (Neither worked, so I figured W2K was a hopeless shot.) I wasn't aware there was a "newer" version; turns out there isn't, but that M$ apparently no longer supports the "old" WGA program and basically requires IE to download updates requiring validation. Let me issue a disclaimer that my Windows IS genuine; it came with the computer, and I don't have any other OSes on my hard drive other than in VMs. And as it turns out, I'm not the only one having this problem. I Googled the error message and got not one, not two, not even three, or four, but five results at the top of the page: Microsoft Community - This version of Windows Genuine Advantage validation tool is no longer supported. Please download the newest version and ensure that your system clock is accurate. Microsoft Community - Windows Genuine Advantage tool no longer supported? Microsoft Community - VALIDATION TOOL OUT OF DATE Microsoft Community - Unsupported version of windows genuine advantage tool Microsoft Community - Unable to install update - Windows Genuine Advantage Validation Tool (KB2647753, KB2732487, KB2729094, KB2732500) I refuse to re-enable IE, but fortunately I have W7 Professional and XP Mode in Virtual PC, which I was then able to use to download the pesky update (the lone WGA-required one, KB939683, on boooggy's WMP site). I just thought I'd give people a head's up as to M$' return to iron-fist tactics to control user choice with regards to security in their OS -- and to alert people of this issue who may have either removed IE in nLite/vLite or "turned it off" via Add/Remove Windows Components. A user in one of those threads posted that he has a European "N" edition that didn't have IE installed by default -- the response of the forum tech was I thought the whole point of that EU settlement with M$ was to remove the "dependency" on IE in the "N" editions. Not only must you use IE to download the update, but it has to be set as default. But the response was basically the same in another thread (not sure about the "N" edition here, but the user appears to have a British -- EN-GB -- version of Windows): "For the umpteenth time in the past four days" -- nice attitude there from the tech. How about the EU admonish M$ for exclusionary monopolistic practices "for the umpteenth time since 1995"? (I wouldn't count on the U.S. doing so since Citizens United established that Billion-Herr Gates is just as much of a "person" as his much-maligned software company.) I hope I'm not the only one irked by this. As I said above, if I didn't require M$ products for compatibility, and had the time to learn Linux, I would burn all of my M$ discs (as in literally burn them in an incinerator) and switch to Ubuntu. But even though the dirty "W" word is taboo here, I have to say that for those without the "luxury" of switching to other products, this is the kind of user squelching that causes fed-up consumers to resort to the infamous Swedish meatball site. Wouldn't be surprised to see the validation updates on some unmentionable DMCA-prone Voldemort board if M$ continues practices like this.

Newbie here. I was wondering if anyone has been able to compile WUD update lists for IE 7-9 and WMP. Now that MSFN user boooggy has discontinued his fabulous WMP Integrator tool I was thinking it might be a good idea to compile an update list containing the most recent WMP updates (the ones linked to at the bottom of the page). If anyone could do an IE list that would be great too. Also, for the "member-contributed" lists, is there any chance they'll be linked to on the WUD website?