justacruzr2

I was thinking about that last night. Maybe when you renamed the account it looked at that account in a different way and now there is no provision for it to return to the original way. I wonder if there's a way to reset it. I wonder if you could use Files and Settings Transfer Wizard to take your settings from your other computer that does work correctly and transfer them to the one where you renamed the Administrator account. Only other thing that I can think of would be to start from the beginning again (re-install) but I'm sure you don't want to do that.

Logging on as THE Administrator is the only way it saves those settings. And it is the only difference I have ever found between logging on as the lesser Administrator and logging in as the top Administrator. Was it intentional or a mistake only MS knows. Yeah, it doesn't seem logical to me either. There certainly are an abundance of more crucial things to restrict access to. When I'm done setting up the Administrator account I'll probably delete the Default account. The Administrator account wasn't even there when I installed all the 3rd party software so I have to go thru the whole start menu as the Administrator so each program can save its settings in the Administrator account under Application Data. That takes a little while.

I was beginning to think that might be the reason but I'm glad you finally resolved this annoyance as have I.

Just out of curiosity why not try renaming your account back to Administrator and/or take it off auto logon and see what happens.

In my Groups account Administrator is listed first and then my "Default" account which is what I have been using since the install. Right click on Administrators in Groups and select properties and see what's there. In mine there was Administrators and then my Default account. Did you rename the Administrator account to Dave? If not then somethings funny.

Hi Dave. Can you wait till Monday as I'm walking out the door from work and can't access MSFN from hime. Sorry.

Dave, here's some additional information. After you do the registry entry reboot. Depending on whether you gave your "Dave" account a password already you will either see the Logon welcome screen or the plain welcome screen. If you had a password already logon to that account and the go to settings/control panel/user accounts. Give THE Administrator account a password and if you haven't done so already your "Dave" account too. Tip: use different pictures for both of them because on the Logon welcome screen the description will be the same and without different pictures you will be unable to tell the difference between the two. Reboot again and on the logon welcome screen logon as the Administrator. This is when the Administrator folder is created in Documents and Settings. You will be a little disappointed at first because the account will not have your settings. Now logoff and logon to your Dave account and go to Files and Settings Transfer Wizard. Choose this as the computer you want to transfer files from. On the second panel use the "other" option where you can choose the "Dave" folder as the source and the destination folder you want to save these settings in. Now logoff and logon as THE Adminstrator. Reverse the process by choosing this is the computer you want to transfer files to. The rest you can probably figure out yourself.

Go to Local Users and Groups in Computer Management and click on Groups. You will see a list. Click on Adminstators and see what it shows you. If it shows Adminstrator and then you "Dave" then you are not the top Administrator. It seems strange but only "THE" Administrator gets that priveledge and not just "A" Administrator. Could be an oversight when coded. That was the same way it was on my system until I made myself "THE" Administrator. Also, if you have not done so yet, click on the link Jaclaz provided above for instructions on how to make "THE" Administrator account appear whether or not there are other users. When I did that and then logged in under that account, the columns I like to use appeared automatically. Thanks again Jaclaz for that link.

A very plausible explanation. Tried the method you suggested last night and that works a lot better than deleting or disabling all other user account to get the Admin logon. Also found out that my other idea works. I used File and Settings Transfer Wizard to copy all the settings from my "Default" user account to the "Admin" account in Docs and Settings and saved a lot of time resetting all those things. Learned a couple other things too. The S-1-5-21 accounts with the 25 digit long identifier in HKU are, by the looks of it, dynamically loaded into the registry according to the user that is logged on. That goes for HKCU too. After all this time I'm still finding new things out about XP.

Awesome. Thanks for that bit of info. Doesn't make sense the way they did it though. Maybe they thought some other user might try to logon as the administrator. But they would have to know the password anyway.

OK, I guess I should explain this better. You have to be logged in as the Administrator. If you have any other user accounts they have to be deleted because Windows does not show the Administrator account on the Welcome screen if there are any other user accounts. You also have to turn off the "Guest" account. You can check this in Computer Management under the "Local Users and Groups" folder. The Administrator account must also have a password or you don't get the logon Welcome screen, just the regular Welcome screen. I have no idea why they did it this way since how can you log in as the Adminstrator without it being shown on the Welcome screen? And as soon as you put back the other user accounts (if you have any) the Administrator account is again not shown. Some sort of catch 22. My situation is a little different than a clean install because I copied Millennium onto the drive that I was going to use for the XP install. I did this because I thought it would be easier for me if the install took as many settings as it could from Millennium and that would save me some time re-doing all those settings in XP. Because I did not have a user account in Millennium, the install created a default user account call "Default" in Documents and Settings. In the "Local Users and Groups" folder on my computer in the users folder is listed "Administrator - Built-in account for administering the computer/domain", "default - Account upgraded from Windows Millennium Edition" and "Guest - Built-in account for guest access to the computer/domain". So when I did all the above things I was able to set the columns the way I like them and it has stuck ever since.

The best I can figure is that the programmers felt that the search result column settings were a personal setting and not a global setting. Two other thing I noticed is that 1) the list of users is different between User Accounts in Control Panel and the Users and Groups folder in Computer Management. For me that might be because on this computer (I have 2) I installed XP over Millennium and the XP install gave me an account called Default in Documents and Settings and 2) when I left clicked on the Administrator account in the Users and Groups folder of Computer Management and I got the "What's This" pop-up, I decided to click on that just to see what it would say and it gave me an interesting piece of information. That the Administrator account is not shown on the welcome screen if there are other user accounts. Didn't know that. For me that means because I have the account called Default and also am shown as the Administrator too, when I log on I am logging on as Default...not the Administrator even though it uses the same password for both accounts. Currently, now that I know this, I am trying to figure a way to change this without losing all my personal settings. I already tried deleting the Default account and shutting down and reloging in as the Administrator and that part worked but it created a new folder under Documents and Settings called Administrator (which I expected) but my personal settings were lost. I did do a backup before this so I am back to where I was before this experiment. I did see the identifier it gave the Administrator account in the registry and I'm going to try a little registry trick of renaming my Default account folder (not the .DEFAULT folder) with the Administrators identifier (if the Registry Edito doesn't complain about this) and see what happens.

The answer to the question that I have seen asked before, including myself, that Explorer doesn't save the column settings in search results is that you have to give yourself a password, then logoff, shutdown the computer and then restart. I know that most of us are the sole user of our computer so why bother with setting a password but it does work. I came up from the 9x series and didn't bother with a password either. I just liked booting in and going but it's a tradeoff I'm willing to do since I usually do searches many times in a session but only have to enter a password once. Found the solution when I did a clean install on another computer. Hope this helps.

I'll look at that first chance I get. Thanks and have a Happy New Year.

Thanks. I'll try them as soon as I can. And I think Dave-H is right. The Audio problem has to do with the RealTek HDAudio Manager (control panel). I have found a few of them out there but they all say Vista and 7. Is Vista that much different than XP? Sometimes I think the only difference is a few extra or updated system files. Something I've tried before and it seems to work most of the time is to get those extra files and put them in the system. I have XP files in my ME system and they work just fine. It's all coded in "C". The only problem with that idea is I have to know what files it needs and the updates aren't all that forthcoming with what they are looking for. Appreciate your help

OK, I tried your suggestion sort of. There3 are about 30 inf's in that update. I wasn't able to determine which one was right. The update says it's for Vista and 7 so I tried changing Current Version registry entry from 5.1 to 6.0 but that didn't work either. I think that the update isn't for my chip. So I'm thinking it may be time to bring it to a computer repair shop to have them find the right drivers for that and the SM Bus. I don't have any other ideas. Thanks for trying.

No I didn't try that. When it didn't work I went on with installing other apps. I'm almost done except for the audio problem and the correct driver for the modem. I'll try it tonight and let you know Monday. Have a good holiday. PS one thing just occurred to me. I wonder if XP SP3 might have this fix in it.

OK. Tried it last night and it didn't work. Stopped during the install to let me know it's not the correct version. It's for Vista(64) and 7 even though the readme file says for XP too. I'm going to be unavailable for the next 4 days so please don't expect a response till Monday unless you respond today. Thanks for all your help

And one more thing about that. I usually do this at work so scanning this computer isn't going to help at all. Different brand and different OS.

Yes and some of them are sneaky. When you think you're downloading the file you need you are just getting another driver scan tool app. Seen that several times when I click on "save as" and I see the name is not the name of what I clicked on. I was also thinking that this might cover several different computers. I'll let you know what happens tomorrow.

Thanks. I just downloaded it but I'm at work so I'll have to wait till I get home tonight. Something looks funny about it though. The name is intel_4076288397182f .exe and the file size is a little over 86 Mb. Seems a bit big for just a driver. I hate that most of these driver download sites always want you to download their driver scan tool first before you can download. It wastes my time and I don't trust them and I don't want their garbage on my computer

OK. I installed KB888111 update which is the Microsoft UAA Bus Driver for High Definition Audio. After the install the entry in Device Manager under Other Devices: "PCI Device" with the Instance ID: VEN_8086&DEV_27D8&SUBSYS_2A2B103C&REV_01 changed to "Audio Device on High Definition Audio Bus" with the Instance ID: VEN_10EC&DEV_0882&SUBSYS_103C0000&REV_1001 and the Registry key is: HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_10EC&DEV_0882&SUBSYS_103C0000&REV_1001. Solved one problem and created another one. Actually this is probably a step in the right direction. But something is still missing and I still have no sound. Device Manager properties for this device, General tab, says "The drivers for this device are not installed. (Code 28)". Here is part of the logging in the setupapi log file generated by the install: #I060 Set selected driver. #-019 Searching for hardware ID(s): hdaudio\func_01&ven_10ec&dev_0882&subsys_103c0000&rev_1001,hdaudio\func_01&ven_10ec&dev_0882&subsys_103c0000 #-018 Searching for compatible ID(s): hdaudio\func_01&ven_10ec&dev_0882&rev_1001,hdaudio\func_01&ven_10ec&dev_0882,hdaudio\func_01&ven_10ec,hdaudio\func_01 #-019 Searching for hardware ID(s): hdaudio\func_01&ven_10ec&dev_0882&subsys_103c0000&rev_1001,hdaudio\func_01&ven_10ec&dev_0882&subsys_103c0000 #-018 Searching for compatible ID(s): hdaudio\func_01&ven_10ec&dev_0882&rev_1001,hdaudio\func_01&ven_10ec&dev_0882,hdaudio\func_01&ven_10ec,hdaudio\func_01 #-166 Device install function: DIF_SELECTBESTCOMPATDRV. #W059 Selecting best compatible driver failed. Error 0xe0000228: There are no compatible drivers for this device. #W157 Default installer failed. Error 0xe0000228: There are no compatible drivers for this device. The "dev_0882" refers to the RealTek (ASUS) sound chip which is an ALC882 and I assume they mean there are no compatible drivers for this device included in this update. It did install the following files which were never on this computer before (except for portcls.sys): "c:\windows\driver cache\i386\portcls.sys" "c:\windows\inf\hdaudbus.inf" "c:\windows\inf\hdaudio.inf" "c:\windows\system32\hdaprop.dll" "c:\windows\system32\hdashcut.exe" "c:\windows\system32\hdaudres.dll" "c:\windows\system32\drivers\hdaudbus.sys" "c:\windows\system32\drivers\hdaudio.sys" I did read on the MS website in the article about the Microsoft UAA Bus Driver for High Definition Audio that all audio devices disclosed by vendors as of August 2004 are included in this update. Is it possible that because this computer was released in 2005, the sound chip was also new and so was not included in this update? I assumed that because a motherboard takes time to develop, that it would have been completed well before the release date and would have been disclosed in time to make this update. I guess I could be wrong about that. But now where do I go with this? Seems like I need the update for this that came a little later. Think I'll try the MgDX website. They're a pretty good repository of all the old updates. Unless you have another idea.

There was no sound. But the system does see the audio device there...it just can't use it because there's no bus driver. Here's some more of what I found out there: VEN_8086&DEV_27D8&SUBSYS_2A2B103C&REV_01 Microsoft UAA Bus Driver for High Definition Audio And I have found a website that has it for download. Only problem right now is that I get an error code that the websites server is having a problem so I can't download it right now. At least that solves this problem....when their server is back up. Also this: VEN_14F1&DEV_2F20&SUBSYS_200C14F1&REV_00 is the Conexant D850 PCI V.92 Modem driver. That shouldn't be too hard to find. And this: VEN_8086&DEV_27DA&SUBSYS_2A2B103C&REV_01 is the SM Bus Controller. That's got to do with the card reader. But this one ACPI\AWY0001\2&daba3ff&0 could be a problem. Searching Google shows a lot of people have this problem. I'm searching for a solution but right now this doesn't seem to be causing a problem. Only thing I notice different between XP on the eMachines and XP on the HP is when I hit the Turn Off Computer button on the Start Menu, the choices on the eMachines are Hibernate/Turn Off/Restart and on the HP they are Stand By/Turn Off/Restart.. ACPI is the Advanced Configuration and Power Interface and that might have something to do with those choices on the HP. I did install the drivers for the Hauppage TV Tuner Card and that has come off the list of problem devices.

OK. Then I had it in the right jack. It was colored light green like my other computer. On this one they don't print the name of what connects to it just a symbol. But it does seem that the system sees there's something there. I'm going to try what j7n said before I give up and get a sound card. Apprecite all your help.

Will do.