newsposter

Amen to the Hemi. I've got a brand new Dodge Charger R/T Hemi. With less than 3000 miles on it it gets better mileage (currently measured by me at 18 city, 25 highway) than my 2002 Intrepid R/T that had a 3.5l 6 cyl. I can't wait for the motor to get broken in. City mileage won't change much but highway should go up to 27 or so. That MDS cyl cut off system really works.

Do you want to directly replace shell32.dll or do you want an alternative UI for windows? The former is kind of hard. If you are open to the latter there are all kinds of possibilities.

Firewalls that are 'software packet filters' on the same machine they are supposed to protect are dangerous. You will be much better off with a cheap linksys or dlink router/firewall between your home net and the internet. Cost is damned near the same. You can get an obsolete, but perfectly functional and effective Linksys BEFSR41 for less than U$20 on ebay. The cheapest I've seen Symantec firewall is about U$30. If you need more than 4 network ports (the befsr41 has 4), the befsr81 with 8 10/100 ports goes for about $40 on ebay. And you'll gain some system performance back. The Symantec firewall (like many of their products) isn't exactly the most efficient piece of code.

filename cben5.sys, version 3.14.13.00, 21 Nov 2001

This is mostly for P-III generation laptops, etc. version 5.12.1.1174, available as a d/l from microsoft. Microsoft Update calls out the driver in the BtS pack as outdated and grabs the newer one.

This one works for me. I'll just write off my problem with Base 5075 as Bad Karma. Thanks!!

Bashrat, I will check. The last install/update I tried yesterday used the same options I've been using for a few months........ Which brings up another question: Is there a simple explanation of what these options mean: RunOnceGUI RunOnceEx -and- Keep the Drivers Don't Keep the Drivers It would be nice to have a concise explanation of what each option does and their relative impact on install time as well as ISO size. Many thanks! BTW, with the World Cup in Deutschland next summer, we might well have enough MSFN-ers in one place for a party. I'll be staying in Berlin-Zehlendorf for the month........

Just to put my 2 cents in, it looks as if the cleanup script isn't running (or is missing) in my download of the new base and driverpacks. The 'usual stuff' gets left behind in my WXP root director after run_me.cmd completes.

All useful suggestions, normal troubleshooting techniques, didn't help in my case. But we have a solution!! I got the system to boot and give me kbd and mouse by reverting to a previous known-good config with an F8 boot. Then I looked hard and long at all of the USB devices. Guess what?? SP2 had turned on power saving for ALL of my USB root hubs. All 5 of them! So when the system went into screen saver and powered off the monitor, 30 minutes later the USB hubs all shut off. I turned off the 'power down' feature for the root hubs and all is well. I checked on two other personal systems that recently had SP2 installed and the same 'problem' came up. I've got my techs in the office researching this with both Microsoft and on our own installed base of about 3000 PCs, about 1/2 of which have SP2. So far this problem is confirmed on desktop systems with Abit, and ASUS mobos running Athlon XP CPUs. We'll be checking the Intel CPU systems (mostly Dell) for the problem starting August 5th (normal quarterly maintenance cycle). Again, thanks to everyone who helped out, this particular problem is pretty smelly............

Thanks MSFN11, that would all be obvious EXCEPT for the fact that my mobo has no PS2, serial, or moused ports. USB and 1394 only.

Ok... My USB keyboard and mouse have stopped working. No caps light, no response to mouse inputs, etc, etc. I obviously cannot log in this way The entire PC works fine from a Win2k boot drive (IDE) that I keep around for diag stuff. Even under XP safe mode, nothing. This is XP SP2 with hotfoxes as of July 1st. Both the Kb and Mouse are Microsoft hardware. Both Intellipoint and Intellitype are installed. I tried anothe rknown-good keyboard and mouse (both USB), no luck. The mobo has no keyboard, mouse, or serial ports so trying old-style HID devices isn't an option. No changes were made to the system in the past two weeks. The system has been loaded and running fine for >6 months. Literally overnight this happened. Logged off and went to bed. Got home from work 2 hours ago and no keyboard or mouse in XP. Is there any way to tell XP on bootup for force scan for new hardware? Help! (and many thanks in advance)

Nice suggestion although TweakUI is a MS product and one that we all know about. I'm more thinking along the lines of Mike Lins Startup Control Panel and others.

How about everyone posting their favorite non-MS Control Panel applets (.cpl).

Thanks I'm talking about performing 'surgery' on an already-installed and running XP SP2 instance, not prepping a new /i386 for install.

Is there any established way to completely deinstall all multi-media support, clean out the registry, and then reinstall MM support? I'm looking for a known-good way to clean out everything except for directX and WMP 10. This is for XP SP2. thanks

I will probably settle on MMJB but have also been playing with Nero because I already own NeroUltra. What are people using? My 'little' project involves the volume ripping of a CD/DVD collection (500+ CDs, 100+ DVDs) and then running a MediaPC with a dumb raid box on the network holding all of the files? I'll probably join Napster or something like that for long-term audio puying. thanks

emachines does make laptops, they're all over ebay. check overstock.com for factory refurbs. Just as I wouldn't spend more than $500 on a desktop machine, I wouldn't spend more than $1000 on a laptop.

Last I checked, google.com still worked. This is the first one that popped up, there are undoubtedly free utils out there as well. http://www.tweakxp.com/tweakutility/

If the people who are doing the 'sniffing' are network admins, they have full access to the network. They are either doing it with the blessing of management, in which case you have no recourse *OR* they are doing it without management sanction, in which case you should be able to get them fired. If they are *not* network admins who are working within the legitimate parameters of their job (an important requirement), then they should be fired. No question. You need to report this to your management. Sometime the local police are interested in this kind of crap too. I gotta' tell ya, I'm the networking and security director for a fairly large international corporation. A week does not go by that I don't get network analysis reports showing which of my users (about 11000 of them) may be trying to run seti or setup bittorrent mirrors or kazaa or something like that. We always forward the reports showing time and date to the individual involved and their manager. This usually stops the shennanigans. As far as 'sniffing' the wire and/or net switches for private end-user data, my guys are very disciplined and ethical about it. Besides that they are too busy to worry about Johnnie or Jane placing a 'net order with Toys R Us. They all understand their position of trust within the company and know full well that they would be instantly fired for any violation of privacy or trust. Instantly fired. In the case of a user who has a legit, business-related request for some special network handling, we are able to act on it pretty quickly. If there are customer sales/support issues involved, we can turn around a request in minutes pending further review. If this is a 'future plans' thing, there is a standard form that the user fills out which we then act on in days after a security review. It's questions like this (or 'how do I bypass a firewall') that make me ask the following questions: - what is the real motivation of the person asking the question? - what is their position in the organization? - if this is a legit, business-related request, why can't they ask management for assistance? Absent decent, business-acceptible answers to the three questions above, I really need to look at threads like this one with some suspicion.

So you're saying that you want to be able to bypass effective security in order to analyze said security? Seems to me that if you can't get anything past the firewall, things are already working well. From personal experience in an international setting, if you have a legitimate requirement to open certain firewall ports, a series of emails and letters to the 'head office' which are vetted by your boss in ZA (or Germany) should be sufficient. Unless you boss knows nothing about this.

Memory is cheap. Get some more.

Is there anyway, with XP Pro, to force the use of fixed IP addresses while at the same time getting DNS server addys from a DHCP server? :later on: Found a simpler solution. It appears that most if not all Linksys routers/gateways support DNS pass through. Just set your workstation DNS to the same IP as the gateway and you're all set. Of course this would be far easier if Linksys would support DHCP reservations in their products. None of their boxen with the exception of the brand new G wireless routers will do this and even the G box only does it with the third-party Alchemy firmware. Makes me want to go out and get a Dlink router.

http://www.mailmsg.com/sounds/spam-song.wav

Has anyone found a driver that would let me mount and work (read/write) with XFS formatting disks including the raid5 option? thanks

woo-hoo! Thanks!