dr.zick

I have a copy of Pro already from my university. My copy of Pro isn't a virgin copy as far as I can tell. It doesn't have the holographic label (just a white label with the university logo, a microsoft logo, and an install key number). I had to show the tech at the computer lab my school ID, which he swiped in some card reader before he handed me a disk. They were under lock and key, so I don't think they were doing anything shady, I just don't know how original it is. I wanted to try making a slimmed down version of Home (mainly cause Home is the only version I can find on eBay) with nLite. I don't really need a lot of the stuff Pro has, like Desktop Sharing. I really wanted to try Media Center but was kinda afraid that if I took out WMP and IE would there be anything left. I guess my original question should have been something like, "If I delete a file somewhere from the disk, will it make activating go away" ... I wasn't really trying to hack it, as much as I was just wondering if it were that simple. My guess now is probably not and I guess I opened up a big can of worms.

Oops ... my bad. I haven't read those rules for a long time, and I didn't realize the line about subverting activation. I just saw the warez part and probably thought to myself, "Don't ask anyone for warez." I have a copy of XP pro from my university and was thinking of buying a copy of Home I found on eBay. I wasn't sure if this was something that's been done before and that someone had written an article about. Thanks for the heads up!

Is there a way to turn a copy of XP Home into XP Corporate ... Or make it so it doesn't need to be registered? I want to make an unattended/slimmed down XP disk but want to start with a virgin copy of XP (as opposed to downloading a copy from bittorrent), but the only original copies of XP I can find anywhere are the Home version. Thanks for any help you offer me.

Hey I got a laptop (and I can't change out any of the hardware), and I want to make a slimmed down version of XP that only has the drivers for the hardware on the laptop (why would I need anything more). Can there be a way to remove all drivers other than the attached hardware? Or is there any other tool out there that allows me to parse through DRIVERS.CAB to get rid of everything not needed? Thanks.

Sorry, if this is off-topic but I tried googling it and couldn't find an answer. Is there a way to use the windows command prompt to mass rename a bunch of files, mainly photos from a vacation, but I have other things that I would like to do. My camera names the files DSC-xxxx.jpg ... Can I remove the DSC-x and keep the last 3 digits and the .jpg at all. I don't want to have to manually rename every file if I don't have to. Thanks for the help.

Be careful when downgrading too ... I downgraded a laptop from Vista to X64 and none of the important hardware works like my soundcard and wifi ... and finding drivers for those has resulted in a paperweight. The laptop never came with a Vista disc so I can't go back, and until I find the right drivers my laptop is useless.

I bought a new laptop it was loaded with vista. I removed it and put on XP, but the oem version had the hdd split into 2 partitions (probably 90% for os, 10% for some backup system for the oem) ... So I wanted to use PartitionMagic (v8) to redistribute the partions, but I keep getting an "Init failure: Error 117 - Partitions drive letter can't be identified" when I start it up. Anybody have this problem before and know how to fix it. Also are there any non-commercial version of some program that does the same thing?

Yes to the high amount of CPU ... I have no idea what driver I'm using, in hardware manager the video controller is a "?" and the properties page shows no driver.

Ok so I bought a new laptop. It came with Vista pre-installed, so I went through the process of installing XP. I had an unattended XP cd from awhile back that I used, but after the install my new XP os is dog slow. When a window is opened, it opens as a white square, then the title bar is drawn, the icons inside are drawn, etc. It has a AMD Turion dual-core RM70 ... and I'm wandering if that has anything to do with it. My unattend cd started as XP corporate edition with SP2. I got 3gigs of ram so it can't be a RAM issue. I'm thinking the processor may require a 64-bit os. Is my assumption correct? Or does anyone have any ideas? I'd appreciate any help offered cause I hate Vista ...

first can i make the images in logonui fit my native screen resolution (1440x900)? can it support dual monitors by stretching or making it 2880x900? not the most important but i wanted to get that cleared up first. has anyone got a post to actually which images do what? i'd really prefer not to sit there and keep rebooting my machine in trial and error if there is a tutorial. just by looking at certain things i can see what certain things are, but some of the other images i'm not sure about. i'm also guessing bmp's can be 32-bit, am i correct?

i've been hand picking out all the files in my xp source that i don't want to install, like the stock wallpapers, stationary, etc. and i've come upon a couple of files that i'm not sure are safe to remove. first there's a file called "sp2.cab" ... now i slipstreamed sp2 a year and half ago (i think) and i can't remember if i cabbed it and threw in my i386 folder for nostalgia sake or if the service pack installer put this file there, i just can't remember. i'm wondering if this is safe to remove (19 mb) ... also what about "FP40EXT.CAB" ... i think its frot page extensions, which i won't use, so is that safe to remove. another cab is "IIS6" which i would guess is IIS, again i won't use that. there's also a "modem.cab" is that safe to get rid of if i'm using a wireless lan card. last but not least what about everything associated with the "OOBE" or out of box experience. i don't know if nlite will remove some of these when it builds my iso, but i didn't see any options for those things in the list. thanks for any feedback.

actually found and even easier way ... just delete the folders of stuff you don't want to install. who would have thought. i actually deleted the bridge folder and stock photography folder, and left commonfiles and help center ... as easy as that

is there a way to remove the 4 extra components of photoshop 9 (bridge, help center, stock photography, and commonfilesinstaller) ... i don't really use 'em and it can save 130 mb on my install dvd. i'm guessing the installer is going to look for them, so i just don't want to leave them out. i also wish i could leave imageready out to since i don't use that. anybody got any tricks/thoughts on this subject. i would appreciate any help provided.

two quick questions ... i was wondering if using editflags on my reg keys is the best way to secure that no other program hijacks the keys that i have written ... also should i enable all of them or can somebody recommend the ones that they use. i don't want my verbs to be editted and the commands with those verbs to be changed. will some installers freak out when they can't change key values? heres a list (according to msdn): 0x00000001 - Excludes the file class 0x00000002 - Shows file classes, such as folders, that aren't associated with a file name extension 0x00000004 - Indicates that the file class has a file name extension 0x00000008 - Prohibits editing of the registry entries associated with this file class, the addition of new entries, and the deletion or modification of existing entries 0x00000010 - Prohibits deletion of the registry entries associated with this file class 0x00000020 - Prohibits the addition of new verbs to the file class 0x00000040 - Prohibits the modification or deletion of canonical verbs such as open and print 0x00000080 - Prohibits the deletion of canonical verbs such as open and print 0x00000100 - Prohibits the modification or deletion of the description of the file class 0x00000200 - Prohibits the modification or deletion of the icon assigned to the file class 0x00000400 - Prohibits the modification of the default verb 0x00000800 - Prohibits the modification of the commands associated with verbs 0x00001000 - Prohibits the modification or deletion of verbs 0x00002000 - Prohibits the modification or deletion of the DDE-related entries 0x00008000 - Prohibits the modification or deletion of the content type and default extension entries 0x00010000 - Indicates that the file class's open verb can be safely invoked for downloaded files 0x00020000 - Prevents the "Never ask me" check box from being enabled. The user can override this attribute through the File Type dialog box 0x00040000 - Causes the file class's file name extension is always shown, even if the user has selected the "Hide Extensions" option 0x00100000 - Prohibits the addition of members of this file class to the Recent Documents folder also, one last question about reg keys ... can you create right-click context menu sub-menus without creating a shell extension. i would like to create something like what winzip does ... i t has options like "Extract to here" and "Extract to folder" in a sub menu. i know winzip uses a shell extension, but can i create that effect with just regular reg keys. thanks for any help ...

hey do i have to use a direct path or can i use a %SYSTEMROOT%\flac.exe with an expandable string? thanx ... the first one worked i just like using %SYSTEMROOT%'s %PROGRAMFILES%'s if i can ... and when i played around with that type of string, it didn't seem to work.