justacruzr2

That didn't do it. I'm tghinking this may have something to do with the timestamp thing.

Thought the same thing too so I checked my other XP on my other computer and its running there too. I'm going to change it to manual anyway and see what happens. Could be 2 different behaviors because the computers are different.

OK here they are. Couldn't get the whole thing in one shot due to number of processes.

Thanks but what I meant was that I didn't know that the max file size you can put in a post is 512K here. These were a little over 1 meg so I have to resize them so the file size is smaller. And I just finished doing that online. Pictures are below this reply.

Didn't know the max file size for files was 512k. I'm going to have to downsize them at home tonight. I'll try again tomorrow.

Read the article your link points too. Very interesting and either the same or very similar to what I'm experiencing. One article I found (think it was the MS website) talked about the timestamp and how to turn it off. Haven't tried it yet but it brought up another interesting thing I never new....GPEDIT.MSC. Not put in Administrative tools by default. I was looking for a way to turn off Autoplay (like everyone else) and that is done in gpedit.msc. It has a lot of other settings that can be manipulated so I put a shortcut to it on my Administrative Tools menu. Haven't completely looked at all of it yet but there might be something in there too. Also did a search for all files with the .msc extension and found about 20. Some of them are already in Administrative tools and some of those that are, actually have a few more things in them that you don't see when called from the AT menu. And my apologies....I forgot to do the PrtScrn last night. I'll get it on here this Monday. Thanks.

Exactly. Like I said in an earlier post the XP on my other computer doesn't do this. I installed XP on both computers from the same disc (XP SP2). And both were upgrade to SP3 from the same file. Yet they both exhibit different behaviors in some things. Part of this is possibly explained by the fact the hardware is different on both computers but as for the rest of it....hmm....

System Restore is disabled. I need to get a Backup program one of these days. I really don't care for the XP/NT Backup app. I prefer the way backup used to work on the 9x OS's. XP doesn't back up the registry with everything else. It does it seperately so now the backup consists of 2 pieces. That's one of the reasons I keep Millenium on the system. But I would also like to be able to do that kind of backup in XP. Just a precaution in case Millenium goes down

Never used it for that. Thanks for the idea. I'll try to get that done tonight.

I haven't been able to find a snipping tool that works yet....even when they say they are compatible with XP. So at the moment I can't. Can you recommend one that you know works? Also some additional searching reveals that this problem I'm having is not unique. Others have experienced it as well. Here is a sample question that explains what I'm talking about (from Microsoft's website): "I am having this problem with files on the server (Windows Server 08). One of my users just pointed out to me that when he goes into a directory and drills down and then goes out without changing anything, the date on the folder changes (modify date). How can I stop this from happening unless there is an actual change made?" There were also other people asking the same question about Windows 7.

Volume Shadow Copy is set on manual in Services and is not running. And I have to correct what I said before. What Windows is doing is continually "modifying" folders every time they are accessed. I checked the properties of that drive and "let system index this drive" was checked but I have unchecked it but it didn't help. What's annoying about this is I check the drive after every session to see what has been created or modified and I get this long list of folders that I have to weed thru. Win XP on my other computer doesn't do this and I have no idea why they both behave differently.

I'll have to check the services for that...not sure. By created I mean the same way Windows recreates menu shortcuts everytime the clock changes from DST to CDST except that it does it all the time.

Everytime either I or Windows access a file, the folder that file was in is created again. It's annoying and I'm wondering if there is a way to turn that off. My other XP installation on my other computer doesn't do this. The big difference between the 2 systems is that one is XP on a FAT32 drive and the other (with the problem above) is XP on a NTFS drive. Is this just a quirk of the NTFS file system or can this behavior be turned off?

Thanks but I did know that. And I have solved the problem. One of HP's services was set on "manual" In MMC services. I think it was hpqcxs08. I changed it to "automatic" restarted and everything is hunky-dorey. It must be the service that starts hpqddsvc and the system must have had to forcibly start it to get hpqddsvc going and that's what the long delay was about. Don't know why the windows firewall was turned off and on unless that was what was needed to force the start. Thanks to all for your help.

Thanks. Wasn't sure about dll's. I see that after I installed SP3 there's a lot more security checking going on.

New Problem. Everytime I start the computer and go into XP Pro SP3 there is a long delay. Finally the delay ends when I see the Windows Firewall turned off and then back on (icon in the systray area). I check Computer Management in Administrative Tools and one of the entries is an error. The HPQDDSVC hung on starting. I figured it needed to be added as an exception in Windows Firewall. This is a service in Computer Management under Services and is run by svchost -k hpdevmgmt. There is no hpdevmgmt.exe on my computer only the dll: hpqddsvc.dll. Can a dll be added as an exception in Windows Firewall? I ask because all the other exceptions are executables.

I attempted to install Flash Player 32.0.2.255 and the first attempt bombed right at the beginning. Looking at the Event Viewer in MMC I found the problem was that Flash wanted VC version 9 (VC 2008) installed so I downloaded a copy and installed it. Retried the Flash install and everything went fine until the very end. There was a problem with the control panel applet. So according to the last installer message Flash was not installed. Trusting my eyes rather than a message I did a search in the registry for the word "flash". The first key the search encountered I was unable to delete. It is locked in some fashion that even as the Administrator with full permissions (I checked that by right clicking on the registry key and selecting permissions) it will not let it be deleted. What is going on here? Anybody know? I did make a backup before the install so I can put things back right but I'm curious since I've never run into this situation before. PS The key is in classes root\CLSID and classes root\interface

Thanks for the advice.

Thanks. I was hoping to find rootstore.sst. I have the system certificates in MMC and all I have to do there is click on Import and I'm done. I'll try it your way though. Thanks.

Anybody know where I can download Rootstore.sst so I can manually update my certificate store? I tried Windows Download (or Update) Center but all I got was a certificate file with a .wlu extension. Need to update the new installation of XP I did. It's the version that was released 8/4/2004 which includes SP2. 90% of those certs are expired. Thanks.

@Rainy Shadow I'll try that but I think it will probably either restart anyway or hang. @ExtremeGrief I already tried that and it didn't work. What if I go into Device Manager and uninstall the drive before shutdown and then reboot with the drive in it's new position? Would XP discover it and install it again under HKLM_SYSTEM_CURRENTCONTROLSET_ENUM_IDE?

Has anyone ever figured out a way to move a hard drive from its current position to a new position within the same system without Windows throwing fits? I want to move the drive from connected to a raid controller (SCSI) to one of the IDE cables but it just keeps restarting. Thanks.

Well still unable to find the problem. Both systems produce the same process list except for the fact that the computer that hangs seems to go one step (process) further and hangs on the load dll instruction. I do have one unused drive on my system and just for curiosity sake I'm going to install XP on it and then NU2002 and see what happens. I bet it will work. I'm thinking that the upgrade install, from ME to XP might be the problem. I'll post results next week.

After I wrote that last reply I did a Google search and found one that didn't require .NET to run. As for Symantec Live Update I saw that Symantec discontinued support for Norton Utilities only a few months ago. Timing is everything. I'll try reinstalling NU2001 with the registry/file tracker going and maybe that will show me where that hidden block is. Uninstalls are notorious for leaving garbage behind. And what I can't understand about that is they use something like an INF file for all the files and registry entries they make and all they would have to do is reverse the order on an uninstall and they would get everything. Appreciate your assistance. Thanks. I'll post the results here when I'm done.

That app helped find where the problem is. The very last line of output is as follows: Event Thread Memory Address Filename Load Dll 2924 0x77920000 "blank" My guess would be that either there is a problem with that memory address, such as a bad spot on the ram card, or the dll is missing or blocked. And I lean towards it being blocked. I already compared all the Symantec/Norton folders between both computers and there's nothing missing. I'm also assuming that Windows SFC would have found and replaced any missing Windows files. Like I said before, I had installed NU2001 before I got NU2002 and Windows did block some files with a message that they were known to cause instability. My guess would be that the uninstall of NU2001, or Windows, failed to remove the block. I did a search in the registry for a key, value or data that says blocked and there were a few but none of them had a Symantec or Norton filename. That's why I think it might be a sneaky key that's hard coded into a Windows system file. Maybe I should try re-installing NU2001 and take a look at the registry again. Wish there was an install tracker that didn't require .NET to work. I'd rather not install .NET Framework just to find this.