Leeoniya

I don't like the welcome screen, never have. What i do like it that it allows you to select users without having to type in usernames. I know logon studio can modify the welcome screen, but all i have seen are skins rather than functional changes. Is there any replacement for the logonui.exe that mimics the classic logon box, but gives you a local user dropdown list instead of an editbox for user selection...like the domain/location selection dropdown? thanks, Leon

but anything that breaks can be remedied with appropriate junction points....just make a cmd script that generates all of them using this CLI proggie. http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysintern...k/Junction.mspx running it at t-13 should allow you to use environment variables and never have to change it again, even if you decide to change the directory names during txtmode. the only issue i foresee is backup software that doesnt check for reparse points. It is important to note that all it needs to do is "check" for them. through explorer's detail view a junction will have its target folder in the "reference" column, which isnt on by default. through the CLI, a simple DIR command will show you that it's a <JUNCTION>. Otherwise a full disk image should work fine i believe, and if you do specific directory backups, just watch out and exclude nested junctions. Leon

by the way.....this is a MUST if you're gonna play with HardLinks/Junctions in XP: http://schinagl.priv.at/nt/hardlinkshellex...nkshellext.html

In my travels, I came upon this article: http://derekslager.com/blog/posts/2007/03/...ture-on-xp.ashx This got me thinking...would it be possible to rework the XP install source to actually have a near-vista-identical folder structure. Rather than creating junctions to have shorter names, eg "users" instead of "documents and settings", have xp actually use a "users" directory and create a "documents and settings" junction point instead, like vista? through the procedure description it seems like redirection of documents and settings is a couple of reg tweaks and on initial install, it should be a simple registry hive tweak assuming the install process uses environment variables rather than absolute paths?...but even that can be remedied by a search and replace inside the hive? anyone? thanks, Leon

I have an internal media card reader plugged into a USB header on my mobo, and XP displays the "Safely remove hardware" icon in system tray all the time, even when i have no media cards inserted. i know thwere is a registry tweak for nforce that specifies a sata drive as non-removable, so it does not cause the icon to appear. is there a way to tell xp that the card reader is not removable or something else to prevent the **** icon from showing up all the time when there is no media inserted? btw, i dont want to use the "hide inactive icons" crap. thanks, Leon

I have a motherboard in a live system with an onboard SATA controller is acting strange...it fails to find a boot drive very often. Swapping motherboards is a PITA because it pretty much means clean install, lots of disassembly...etc. I would rather just get a $70 EIDE drive and transfer to the EIDE controller for the main OS. are there issues with imaging the bootable primary sata drive w/winXP onto an EIDE drive? I assume i would either need to run repair install of xp...or maybe just fixboot from the Recovery Console/edit the boot.ini by hand would do the trick....and of course change boot priority in bios. anyone done this? thanks, Leon

I've been using registry tweaks for a long time and after countless testing have come up with my optimal tweak collection. A lot of sytems i build for others, i incorporate at least some if not all of them for speed improvements, usability enhancements, security and the-like. I have recently been looking through the local policy editor and was wondering if it would be better (or possible) to import a policy template instead of using straight .reg tweaks, since most tweaks are in there and it is easy to make different custom templates for different purpose systems. does anyone do this? I figured it would be better than tweaks, even though tweaks work well, it seems more reliable to do as much as possible with the system-provided resources to avoid errors and such than can result from accidentally modified text reg files or incomplete entries. regards, Leon

it's a long shot, but try changing the PID - http://www.thetechguide.com/howto/setuppini.html make sure when you re-burn that you make it bootable : ) Leon

i have to correct myself, the disk that works normally without the slowdown is a retail Pro with slipstreamed SP2. i dont think it's possible for any file to be faulty with the MD5 of the image matching the one that i have found publicly posted everywhere online. thanks for the advice though. Leon

I am using an ISO image that was made from an original VRMPVOL_EN disc, (MD5: 973987A4372E273EBE961E9DFF628FBF). I'm installing into Virtual PC 2007 environment to test out various unattended options, driver integration, hotfix slipstreaming and reg tweaks. the initial install i'm doing clean. when i run the install off this image, the textmode copy section has some parts in the beginning where it is fine, and then it gets stuck on many different files....like spnike.dll, rio8drv.sys, riodrv.sys etc. it's to the point where it really crawls for an hour, but it does not give me an error or that it cant read them, it just takes forever. however, when i use a CD that was originally an SP1 or SP1a Professional VLK that i then slipstreamed with SP2 myself. the textmode flies through just fine. can anyone shed any light on this? thanks, Leon

that's closer - that adds the prompt to the context menu on any file inside of a folder view and on the desktop...but if i right click inside empty space in the folder window and not a file in it, i still see the same old menu. one example is if you go into the "Documents and Settings" folder, and right click inside that view, it will have a "Customize This Folder" in the context menu. thats where i want to add cmd, but i looked for "Customize This Folder" in my entire registry and couldnt find where that entry is made. thanks, Leon

The following adds "command prompt" to right click context menu on folders. Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Folder\shell\Command prompt] @="Command prompt" [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Folder\shell\Command prompt\command] @="cmd.exe /k \"cd %L\"" my question is: is it possible to add "command prompt" to the context menu when right clicking inside the window of an open folder but not on the folder itself or any object in it. (the menu that has New, View, Arrange Icons By, Properties, Refresh) it is painful at a high resolution to have to hit the tiny icon with your mouse in the corner of the folder window to right click it. Leon

is there a way to use the classic logon, and have a drop down menu with the user liist so that users didnt have to type in the full usernames all the time? thanks, Leon

when in detail view, or searching, or in windows explorer. is there a way or addon to make highlighting of entire rows possible. when you are browsing a folder with lots of columns like mp3 properties or long filenames, it is very difficult to determine which row belongs to which file, it would be useful to be able to either select a whole row, or to visually alternate row background colors in detail views, is there any way to do this? thanks, Leon

finally figured it out. for some reason the driver files werent being copied to the system32\drivers dir. once i copied the si3114r5.sys to it from within my working ide xp install, the gui setup started up normally and finished the install. i guess it only loaded the raid driver in the ram to copy the install files in textmode and then decided that it wasnt too important of a file afterwards. ...figuring out why it didnt and how to fix it is the easy part. finding the problem was a b***h. glad i got it pinpointed, i was about to start self mutilation. Leon

not sure why it worked before, but i cant replicate.... when i initialize setup from my working IDE windows and reboot to install on my RAID drive, textmode goes fine after i select the Windows Setup that's added to the boot.ini. then on reboot to get into gui setup i get a bluescreen if i have no SP2 CD in the drive, otherwise if i have the cd inserted, but choose not to boot from it, i get a hal.dll missing? anyone wanna take a stab? why the hell would having the cd in make it give a hall.dll missing and not having it in give a 0x0000007B BSOD? something seems funky in the way it references different devices / drive letter assigment. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR Leon

the drivers are actually integrated as well, among hundreds of others with nlite and Bashart's DriverPacks. once again, the precached drivers load fine and work through partitioning and formatting. but after it formats the partition and (after when it says building a list of files to be copied in txt mode) starts copying files, the first files it wants to copy are those for my 3114r controller that it has just been using, and not a single one of those driver files gets read off the cd at that point, but the rest copy just fine if those driver files are skipped. if i use drivers from a floppy i never get the error that tells me that it cannot read the driver files off the cd. maybe u're right about them not going anywhere. strange. i sort of found a bandaid for my situation. i installed to an IDE drive, started a second install from inside the working XP SP2...it seems that the drivers are then precached on the original IDE cause everything preloads in about 1.5 seconds in txtmode before going to the partition selection menu. then the install continues unattended as without a hitch onto the raid. it uses the MBR and loader off the IDE on restart (cause first boot order is IDE), (adds an XP Pro Setup line to the boot.ini and i just select it on restart and the GUI mode setup goes fine.) i switch the boot order at this point to boot from cd, then raid-0, go into recovery console, copy ntldr and ntdetect to the root of the RAID drive (if i dont i get NTLDR missing) at which point i get a hal.sys missing if i restart after that. but i run bootcfg /rebuild and it makes the RAID bootable. and with that *cough* easy process i have an independent RAID boot partition. what a mess...so much for unattended. you may be on to something tho, thanks, i'll check....but even if it's true...why and how? even tried it with a clean sp2 on a 4kb cluster size freshly formated /mbr'd. Leon

everything goes fine with textmode setup. the floppy driver that i load from floppy works well, formatting goes fine, create new partition, all the files copy OK, as soon as i reboot. WinXP boot screen flashes for a fraction of a sec, then BSOD 0x0000007B. (these raid drivers work without a hitch under a working winXP install btw.) tried removing all my IDE drives, updated bios, used different version drivers for sii3114r raid conroller. the only thing that has sort of worked, is cloning an IDE install, but i have to modify the boot.ini and possibly reassign drive letter before imaging. after cloning it does boot from raid, but i think it uses the MBR from the IDE. when i unplug the IDE, it freezes on wlnotify.dll. and when it is loaded the environment variables all point to the IDE drive that it was cloned from. i dont really understand how the drivers work through all of textmode and then fail during the gui part of the setup...considering it does read the boot sector cortrectly since the winxp boot screen shows up briefly. plz help, this is driving me nuts....tried different CDs, tried recreating the RAID array in teh 3114 bios, tried installing with replaced files from SP1 to support 16k cluster sizes that seem to work for everyone else. finally just trying to get it to go on a 4kb cluster size. (having windows do its own format during install with original SP2 cd.), tied both regular and unattended, nothing makes a diff. i had this working before, decided to format and reinstall and doesnt want to work now. thx, Leon

nowadays most computers dont have floppy drives. is there a way to have the winnt.sif file accessed from a usb drive? i know the drive letters might be differet depending on the order in which your bios enumerates the usb ports. but perhaps there is a way to even hardcode the device pnp id or something to have the winnt.sif read off a usb key. this would be so good, i mean what a waste of time to burn a new image with only the winnt.sif changed for different computer installs. i guess the alternative would be booting from a usb key, but this seems like a more universal solution, if there is one. thanks, Leon

Crash hit it on the head i think maybe even just use a plain REG format and have some comment lines be parsed for default on/off setting, author/date, and the check boxes should uncomment the needed tweaks, and allow to export the new copy of the reg file like a profile. this is a good start for a ton of tweaks http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?act=ST&f=70&t=47647 i also like the TweakFX idea, except Tweakage's interface is a little cleaner, the thing that p***es me off about TweakFX is that all the stuff is VB script, and although it is in a standard XML format so tweaks can be easily added, there is still no export option or profiles, just some weird "track registry changes" mode that attempts to catch the tweaks as they are applied with VBS...wtf was the author thinking!?? http://tweakfx.net/ ...this thing would be ideal with a reg export and profiles and unattended switches, and maybe with a better usable parser of standard reg files, or even a concatenator for many small reg tweak files. i'd like something like this ;Author: Leon ;Date: 10/23/05 ;Description: Diable Compress Old Files on Disk Cleanup ;[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\VolumeCaches\Compress old files] all the checkbox would do is to remove the comment before the reg string. maybe it's just me, I like things simple, non-proprietary, and scalable. Leon