atomizer

This is my my own fault... I wanted to change the default action to "edit" instead of "run" when i click on a .bat file. Not being very careful with what i did, i hosed my .bat file functionality. When i click on a .bat file, i get a CMD prompt that shows the path of the file and that's it (not even the file name). If i R-click a .bat and click "edit", i get "access is denied". i can still edit using notepad or run it from a CMD prompt, but not by clicking on it. i thought i restored all the ".bat" and "batfile" reg entries (from another box), but i obviously missed something. Any ideas? EDIT: never mind, i fixed it. been trying to fix this on and off for a week and 30 seconds after i made this post i found the problem

so what's your point? BTW, many of the problems you pointed out have already been fixed, making your list of problems 1/2 worthless. EDIT: make that 90% worthless. the 229 pages you refer to are bugs -- many of them OLD and most not for FF, but for mozilla (there's 9 pg's for FF). as for security vulnerabilities, there are 5 pg's. for FF (as opposed to 32 for IE) and all/most of them appear to be outdated. you need a dose of learning your calander. i never claimed that FF was bomb-proof. and my comment as to those who pick on open source s/w was meant as just that -- open source in general, not any one piece in particular. see ya...

sure, no problem. there may be a bit of a learnig curve to using them (there was for me anyway), but learning how to set them up is fun. most of the configuration lies in the DSP. they are great drivers. the only down-side is that you lose EAX support, but i do not miss it at all. the trade-off is well worth it.

i took a quick peek and it doesn't look like this will do you any good, but you can check for yourself. check their forums: http://kxproject.lugosoft.com/index.php?skip=1 they are *far* better than the creative drivers.

i could care less if it's legal. i'm a rebel DC++ and peer guardian - no spyware/bloatware/adware or any other crap. i have yet to d/l a fake with this combo.

probably no need to rely on windows updates as hevily if you use mozilla/firefox/thunderbird. matter of fact, no need to use IE to access windoes update: try this instead. oh, and it's really funny to see that, so far, mozilla/FF is doing better than IE... on a MICROSOFT forum love it!

i went through some of the same frustration you did, but not because of XP; no matter what MS OS i've used, if i have more than disk, it may decide to install on the the wrong one. the problem was compounded when i built my last box which has a 2 disk RAID 0 array (which is where i install the OS and programs). there may be a more elegant solution, but what works fine for me is just to unplug the power supply to all disks except the one i want to install on. very simple.

yes, the poor memory managment issue with FF is very popular, however there are very simple tweaks available to make it behave. and those who pick on open source code need a life.

not when you're stripping IE from the install.

if you insist on getting an aftermarket fan for your mainboard CPU, then save a couple $$ and don't get a retail CPU. get the OEM instead. also (and maybe you already did this), from expierence, i'd suggest getting everything you can from ONE vendor and newegg is an outstanding choice.

i've been toying on and off with bbLean, a fork of bb4Win, which i think is a port of BlackBox for Linux like you Jeremy, i'm looking for a new replacement shell that is fast, stable and efficient, but that also is, or can be made to be similar to the classic interface (start menu, desktop icons, etc.). i think you can do all of this with bbLean and a few plugins (bbIcon, bbSlit), but i'm having a little trouble figuring it all out. Check it out for yourself though. Very configurable and tweakable.

can't stand either (bloatware/spyware/lousy security). Media Player Classic

build... always! Any windows OEM box that i know of has it's OS tailored to meet certain specs and this will likely cause the hard core user nothing but problems at some point. So, just wipe the drive and install your own OS? Good luck! I did that on my HP at work and lost support for the on-board sound. I never could figure a way to get it to work again and ended up installing a sound card i had lying around. Our work machines, all HP (about 2 yrs old) are crap IMO. 2.4 GHz, 256 MB RAM and they all run slower and take far longer to boot than an old P3 800 i have at home that i built years ago. Even my work machine, running XP Pro and tweaked pretty hard, is still slower than my old P3 box. The BIOS is a joke and so is the rest of the hardware. Guess that's an HP rant more than anything, but you'll run into similar problems in many OEM boxs that i know of. If you're uncomfortable building your own for whatever reason, there are many on-line vendors that will build one for you to your specs.

anyone know of an explorer tweak/addon that allows you to "pin" start menu items (like with the BlackBox shells)? sort of like where each start menu sub menu can have a "tear off" line that, when dragged or clicked, would remain on the desktop even after it loses focus.

almost all are either freeware/open source or free for personal use and contain no spy/nag ware (except for 1) or other such crap. i run XP Pro and one or two of these are XP specific... ... ClamWin - http://www.clamwin.com - completely free, non-obtrusive, lite anti-virus protection. perfect for those running Mozilla/Firefox/Thunderbird who don't need a full-time, bloated AV. ClamMail - http://www.bransoft.com/clammail/clammail.html - to go with your ClamWin. FoxIt PDF Reader - http://www.foxitsoftware.com (i think this link is right - website is down)- *much* faster and smaller than Acrobat, though some functionality is sacrificed. this is the ONLY app that i could classify as nagware since it displays a link to their PDF editor, however it is small and fairly unobtrusive. VersaVerter - http://www.pawprint.net/vv/ - wow! you want conversions? this has a ton! plus an up to date, downloadable currency rate data. UltraEdit - http://www.ultraedit.com - couldn't breathe without it. one hell of a programmers file editor! not free however. PopTray - http://www.poptray.org - hands down, THEE best email account checking utility (IMO) with a bunch of very useful features (delete from server, user SPAM filtering, check multiple accounts, etc.), yet not bloatware at all! BitPim - http://bitpim.sourceforge.net - GUI for communicating with several mobile phones (backing up phone #'s, uploading tones, modifying filesystem, etc.). PC Wizard 2005 - http://www.cpuid.org/pcw.php - a free and very good system info utility. StrongDC++ - http://snail.pc.cz/StrongDC/indexen.htm - file sharing client for the DC network. DVD Shrink - http://www.dvdshrink.org/what.html - for backing up DVD's. ffDshow - http://sourceforge.net/projects/ffdshow - a very good codec pack, especially for those who strip WMP from their OS. foobar2000 - http://www.foobar2000.org - not overly pretty out of the box, but the absolute best (IMO) audio player. highly (and i mean HIGHLY) configurable. kx Project Package - http://kxproject.lugosoft.com/index.php - got a creative sound card? well, their drivers are crap! kxProject fixes that in a BIG way! KeyTweak - http://webpages.charter.net/krumsick/ - remap your keyboard from a super easy to use GUI. KeyPass Password Safe - http://keepass.sourceforge.net - the best password managing utility i've ever ran across. CDBurnerXPPro - http://www.cdburnerxp.se - a great CD/DVD burning tool. AM-DeadLink - http://www.aignes.com/deadlink.htm - find and fix your broken bookmarks. Kerio Personal Firewall - http://www.kerio.com/kerio.html - been using it for years and years. Tiny Personal Firewall (TPF) uses this as their base code, but i can't stand what Tiny has become. XP AntiSpy - http://xp-antispy.org/?lang=en&option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1 - rather than manually editing the registry, fix those security/privacy holes the easy way! CUBE - http://www.cubeengine.com - this is the absolute best, free, open source, multi-platform, multiplayer FPS game i've ever played. the graphics are not great, yet i've never had so much raw fun since DOOM! IMO, CUBE is thee definition of a pure FPS. and of course Firefox - http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox and Thunderbird - http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird and now... for my NUMBER 1, all time favorite... nLite - http://www.nliteos.com/nlite.html - another "can't live without" app, nLite is used to build a custom Win 2000, 2003 or XP installation (32 or 64 bit). can't stand all the useless, annoying crap that Bill thinks you can't live without, like OE, MSN, IE, useless services, wordpad, etc., etc., etc.? than CUT IT OUT BEFORE YOU INSTALL!!! BTW, my average install disc is ~200 MB after it's "nLited" oh, and to go with nLite, try Ryan's CAB which contains all the latest hotfixes - http://ryanvm.msfn.org/ . you can easily slipstream this with nLite.

i go along with many here... MPC. it's a highly configurable media player. I use nLite to strip XP, including the WMP core files, so along with MPC i use the ffDshow codec pack. For music there's foobar2000 -- not the prettiest player out of the box, but VERY configurable and very good and extendable with plugins.

the "FOX" -- all the way! -- 1.0.4 with the following exts: download manager tweak fireFTP adblock -- a must have! FLST disable targets for download permit cookies bug me not -- very handy user agent switcher wmlbrowser ChatZilla open links in... plain text links Googlebar Lite -- a must have bookmarks syncronizer also, i can see why firefox turns some people off initially. i didn't think all that much of it myself when i first tried it. you really need some good extensions to get the functionality you want but, oh boy, with the right exts, it's great! i'll never go back to IE... EVER!

average... i've never had a problem with SP2 that i can recall, and it does add a few decent fixes but, on the other hand, a lot more tweaking is necessary after installing it: dissabling/removing the firewall, patching the TCP/IP stack, removing the "security" center (what a joke), etc., etc., etc... all of the IE changes are useless to me because i use Firefox/Thunderbird. the firewall and security center gets dumped because i use Kerio PF (which blocks trafic during boot and is very fast and configurable). it's obvious that MS sees it's average user as pretty much computer ignorant and later OS's and service packs reflect that. i like XP a lot -- but not out of the box. a AWFUL LOT of tweaking is necessary to make it sutible for a power user and nLite is the best thing i've ever found, by far, to get rid of all the crap that MS thinks i just can't live without. when you think about it though, MS OS's, IMO, are not nearly as "point and click" as it's assumed; you really have to be careful what you install or else you'll end up with huge headaches because of the registry and shared DLL's. MS has got to be the number one target for ICC's (incredibly crappy coders) now, if i can just get rid of the bulk of the registry and stick all programs configs in their program group where they belong

well, heck, as long as you're here... http://www.nliteos.com/

here's the screenshots i promised...

yes, the CLSID is what hides everything i believe (maybe that key can be looked at in the reg? never tried it yet). as for your question, it's difficult to answer because i keep going through so many steps that i lose track of exactly what's going on. i know this; if you delete the CLSID line, it will regenerate itself and try to hide everythig again. whether the history dir's/files are regenerating, to be honest, i don't know. i have reason to believe that at least some of them are, mainly a dir named "today". EDITED... hehe, you were editing while i was as well thanks for the link (image hosting). i will make available some images tommorow if i get time.

thanks for that link! however... i'm not so sure ExplorerXP is showing ALL the files. if you play around with CMD> in /history and go back and forth between that and explorer, you may see what i mean. it's hard to explain. after deleting everything Bill will let you delete, keep refreshing the view in explorer.

ah, i forgot to mention, and you can play for yourself as well... after you're done, go back to explorer and close the /history directory. refresh the view. expand it again. rivals some of the best magicians i've seen another thing... as i mentioned, i DO NOT use IE. ever. i use firefox. my XP was built with nLite (luv ya!) and IE, but not the core, was removed. while poking around in my "history" directory, i happened to find some log files. these files were generated by a NON-MS application i run -- with a .txt extension. they were never opened in IE. i did open them in notepad. funny thing is, in my "history" directory, they were copied exactly, except they now had an .htm (or .html, don't remember) extension. what is going on here, i ask?

ever stick your foot in the water before commiting? well, that's what i'm doing here... figured i'd test the "Get help on everything to do with Windows XP", right in the middle of a MS pond, and see if i drown why oh why does MS/IE hide files and folders, even after asking it NOT to? even after you ask IE to DELETE your history? what is the reason? why go to the trouble of hiding a users internet history so well, that even "show hidden files" is meaningless? example: un-hide the OS's hidden files. open IE and delete your history. gone, right? WRONG! in XP, r-click your /history folder, then properties, and you'll see what i mean. now try to delete them, much less trying to get them to show (a related little adventure is continued below). i forget how, or if, the hidden stuff even shows in 95/98 (using that process), but i know for a fact that those OS's do the same thing. i'll assume the same for all end-user MS OS's as well. i was told by a computer tech/builder that "corporate" editions do not do this, but i have evidence to the contrary. some time back, when my anger over this was peaking, i started researching it. i found an article written by someone going by the name "the riddler" (do a search, i'll be nice and won't link here) that explained what was going on, but not why. i contacted him and started asking questions. then i asked a law enforcement (LE) friend of mine if he knew anyone in the forensics department. he did. i contacted that guy and we began a session of developing a trust (mostly him trusting me, police are funny that way ) through email and, i think, a phone call or two. he started mentioning terms i was unfamilier with, including "mirror imagimg", amoung others. i began to see where this was headed; that there's a real good possibility that MS hides these files in the event you commit a crime for which there may be evidence stored on your box. the forensics guy would never come out and admit it, but when i tried to pin him with a direct question along the lines of "is this stuff used by LE?", the best i could get was "what do you think?". i knew exactly what that meant. is all this speculation? no way. i cannot say i have proof, or even hard evidence, but i can say that i have input from one LE officer, first hand (more, second hand), one alleged ex-MS employee and "the riddler". if anyone is interested i will try and get permission from the LE guy i know to quote some of his emails. --- let's play (works for me on XP (probably all NT's), may very well not work for you): go to your /history folder AFTER you've deleted everything you possibly can from within IE (cache, history, etc.). send it to a CMD prompt. CMD> dir nothing, right? CMD> attrib -s -h -r *.* ewww! what have we here?!? i get 1 file (desktop.ini) and 1 directory. ok, so it's ALL unhidden now, right? sorry charlie... back to explorer /history. you see "desktop.ini"? CMD> edit desktop.ini AH! there it is! it's contents will provide a key as to why you can't see this stuff. now it gets really wierd... CMD> edit desktop.ini delete the entire 2nd line (begins with "CLSID"), save changes. now back to explorer, refresh the view. HUH? hmmm... see some new directorys maybe? now this is where it gets really wierd... in explorer, expand "History.IE5" (mine is IE5, i guess, because i'm running an nLite build with IE "removed" (but not its core) -- yea Firefox! see some more directories and strange files appear? files with no name? try to manipulate them (view, copy, properties, etc.). now back to the original "History" directory... just to be safe... CMD> attrib -h -r -s *.* CMD> del *.* now back to explorer. WHAT!!! it gets better. just keep playing

glent and Yzöwl, may it would be easier if you guys just linked directly to the file from your sig? that way anyone can always get the latest version, no matter how old the post is. just a thought...