Siginet

In my opinion mcafee is one of the worst av's on the market. But every AV has it's flaws. Antivirus 2009 is a very tricky virus. I didn't know it could replicate across the network though. That makes me wonder if there is an infected executable being shared around the network? Or a website a lot of the users are going to that may be infected? A company email everyone is sharing? Or maybe someone is using an infected flash drive? I have also seen a virus that actually will change your dns settings on a router which uses the default password. It then will send all the computers to a site which will download tons of viruses. So be sure to check the routers settings. Once you get a computer cleaned up I would install K9 Web Protection on it. This will allow you to control what types of websites the users can go to. Malwarebytes Antimalware and Combofix are the programs I usually use to clean up this virus. This virus can be very tricky though. Sometimes you will think you have completely gotten rid of it but it creeps back up on you out of nowhere. So be sure to reboot and run scans multiple times to be sure it is completely gone from the system. You should send a company wide email letting everyone know there is a horrible virus going around and each system should be checked for this risk. Good luck to you. I hope you get this resolved.

In my opinion whatever field you decide to get into... make sure you enjoy it. Make sure you could imagine yourself doing it for a very long time. Computers will be around for a very long time. They run the world. Every business has a need for an IT person. What would doctors do nowadays without an IT person? Most doctors don't know much about computers. Why should they? They are meant to fix people... not computers. You can make some really good money in the IT industry if you have patience and get experiance. Don't expect to make 100 k or better right off the bat. But if you apply yourself and really stick to it you can make 100k + per year. I don't know if that is enough in your mind... but it is a lot of money to me. Computers are a forever changing world. So remember if you want to stay strong in the computer industry you will allways be learning new things and going to school or studying in some way. A small IT job may only make about $15 - $20 per hour. But once you gain experiance and prove yourself you can get a job making much more. If you run your own business you could easily make $75 or more per hour per computer you work on! Just imagine working on 5 computers at the same time and making $75 per hour x 5! Thats $375 per hour.

Hmm the recovery console sounds like a nice idea. I'll start playing with that and see if I can come up with an automated script to do what I need. Thx!

****. I also tried playing around with NTFS4DOS... but I couldn't seem to have access to any of the files on the usb drive when I booted into ntfs4dos. Could you maybe give me an idea how to utalize DOS or some sort of commandline utility which would allow me to copy/move files then go back to the grub4dos menu or launch another grub4dos entry? Thanks

ok I actually went into the GRUB4DOS commandline and think my syntax is correct. But I don't think it functions quite how I was hoping. I kept getting an error that the file did not exist. So I think the "of" (copy to) file needs to exist. Which is rather odd to me. When the "of" exists then I got an error about it being too small. So does that mean that the file sizes have to match?

jaclaz had mentioned something in the past about the 'dd' command being used for copying files. I'm curious exactly how this works. dd: dd if=IF of=OF [bs=BS] [count=C] [skip=IN] [seek=OUT] [buf=ADDR] [buflen=SI ZE]     Copy file IF to OF. BS is blocksize, default to 512. C is blocks to     copy, default is total blocks in IF. IN specifies number of blocks to     skip when read, default is 0. OUT specifies number of blocks to skip     when write, default is 0. Skipped blocks are not touched. Both IF and     OF must exist. dd can neither enlarge nor reduce the size OF, the     leftover tail of IF will be discarded. OF cannot be a gzipped file. If     IF is a gzipped file, it will be decompressed automatically when     copying. dd is dangerous, use at your own risk. To be on the safe side,     you should only use dd to write a file in memory. ADDR and SIZE are     used for user-defined buffer. What is IF and OF? Is this copy from and copy to? Lets say I wanted to copy CONVERT\XOPO\I386\winnt.sif To $WIN_NT$.~LS\I386\winnt.sif Is the correct command something like this?: dd if=(hd0,0)/CONVERT/XOPO/I386/winnt.sif of=(hd0,0)/$WIN_NT$.~LS/I386/winnt.sif I know this is a new feature... and maybe I am totally misunderstanding its purpose. Or is there any way possible to run a cmd or bat file from GRUB4DOS? That way I could make simple batch file to copy files for me. Can someone give me some examples on how this would work?

I always think of it as Raid 0 = None (No Parity/Backup, False Raid, Practically useless, Just for speed but you will regret it someday) Raid 1 = 1 Backup (Mirror) Whereas Raid 5 is the best of both worlds. Just add a third drive and you get more speed with Parity accross three drives. If 1 drive crashes you can easily repair your raid by adding a new drive or downgrade to Raid 1.

I think this is what you may be looking for: http://www.ryanvm.net/forum/viewtopic.php?...&highlight= You can modify it to your needs.

I had issues logging in from work in IE8. To fix it I had to go to Internet Options and delete my browsing history: I had to make sure I un-checked: "Preserve Favorites Website Data" Since msfn is one of my favorites the cookies were not getting cleaned up for msfn.org. once I un-checked that new box in IE8 all was well with the world.

Too bad. I was about to propose you a complex workaround, perfectly unneeded as per above reply by wimb, but nice: http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?...ic=7138&hl= jaclaz Wow... that information almost made my head pop. LOL! I can see a lot of work went into trying to figure out this issue. Thanks for the link jaclaz. I have to say you are very informative. You surely know your stuff about partitioning and many other aspects of this stuff. I personally want to give my respect to you. You seem to have helped a lot of people with pretty confusing issues. I think everything everyone has done to make Windows installing from USB possible is the coolest thing right now. I see so many opprotunities with it in our future. things we never were able to accomplish with installing from a CD/DVD.

This is probably a dumb idea. But if you have some sort of OCR software you may be able to snap pictures of the product key and run the pictures through your ocr program to get the product key information.

I played around with integrating drivers into driver.cab a long time ago. I don't recall all of the steps off hand. But really it is not the smart way to go about it either. I forget what the downsides were. But if you are integrating many drivers your best bet is using www.driverpacks.net I do know that if you want to integrate drivers into driver.cab you will need to recompress the cab file with your drivers. Plus you have to make sure every file is listed in drvindex.ini. I think you may also need to edit txtsetup.sif with the correct info to indicate the file is in driver.cab... but I may be wrong. Hope this little info helps you.

If you are going to be needing many different drivers you would probably have the best luck using: www.driverpacks.net They have worked for years putting packages together to simplify the process of slipstreaming drivers into a Windows XP disk. If you only need a select few LAN drivers I beleive nLite can slipstream them for you. Just make sure you have all of your needed LAN drivers in inf format.

OK Thanks. I'll give that a try. I'd much rather have it all on one partition anyways.

I have successfully created a Vista USB install Flash drive. It worked great. But now I am attempting to create a new Flash USB stick with XP Professional on Partition 1, Vista x86 on Partition 2, and Vista x64 on Partition 3. To do this I had to use the "C:WinSetupFromUSB\files\MULTIpartitionUSBstick\InstallStartDummyDisk.cmd" this allows me to use Disk Managment to partition the Flash drive into 3 partitions. P1 = 7.5 GB, P2 = 4 GB, P3 = 4 GB. All of them are formatted with NTFS. P1 seems to work fine. I can install XP with no problems. The menu.lst seems correct. I can see all of the right items in it. I just modified the Vista items to represent x86 and x64 Setups. The trouble comes when I try to install Vista x86 from Partition 2. It seems to boot fine. I get to the point where I need to click on "Install Now". Then it says Please Wait... then I get an error message: "A required CD/DVD drive device is missing. If you have a driver floppy disk, CD, DVD, or USB flash drive, please insert it now. Note if the Windows installation media is in the CD/DVD drive you can safetly remove it for this step." I have gotten this error on any system I try to install Vista x86 on. I have not tested x64 yet. When I use the original disk I created this with I do not get any issues. Any ideas? Am I missing an important step? Thanks!

Actually you don't even need OfflineSysprep or Universal Restore since you are putting it in the same computer. My examples were gear toward if you were putting the drive in a new computer. in your case you could actually use just about any imaging software.

Sounds like a great idea. I'll have to put one on the busy street behind my house. Save some money on my own electric bill!

What kind of driver is it? You may be able to disable the peice of hardware in the bios so that it doesn't detect it. Like the onboard sound and so on. Then after setup completes you can manually install the driver.

I use Acronis True Image with Universal Restore. Basically you make an image of the current drive. Then you restore that image to the new drive with the Universal Restore option. What this does is removes the hardware specific info from the drive so that you won't have any issues. Another method would be to make an image of the drive using any HD imaging utility. Then use OfflineSysprep on a BARTPE disk to change the hal information. For more in depth info about these methods do a search for "True Image Universal Restore" or "OfflineSysprep". I hope this points you to the right dirrection.

The big thing for me is... Is Windows 7 superior to Windows XP? Because we all know Vista is utter crap. It will be easy for Windows 7 to be better than Vista... so that isn't much of an accomplishment in my opinion. But if it is actually better then XP then I finally will get the enjoyment of an upgrade! I have been disgusted by the thoughts of microsoft trying to force Windows XP to be phased out because of Vista, And Microsoft forcing new PCs to be sold with Vista. Especially when microsoft themselves know how bad Vista really is. So since now I am seeing people actully compairing W7 to XP and getting good results... I am finally going to try W7.

There are 2 ways I get around this. Either disconnect the media card reader from the motherboard until you finish installing XP. Or once you create a partition to install to in xp and it makes it E:\. You usually can restart the computer and begin a new install and the drive will be recognized as C:\. This is because your first patition is now allready created so it sees it as C:\.

You can make a script in autoit to do this. I have done something simular in the past for importing Enterprise Quickbooks info into Quickbooks pro. It takes time to make the script but when it is done it is worth all of the effort.

Here are some OEMScan addons that will do exactly what you want: http://siginetsoftware.com/forum/showthread.php?t=541 There is tons of info there that will get you what you need. You need the oembios files for your computer. Which you can get here: http://oembios.net Plus you will need an slp Product Key for Dell. It is not the product key on the sticker of your computer. It is the product key that dell uses on the system when it is installed at the factory.

Great project! I can definatly see a need for me to use this as well.

Wow. Perfect timing for me ilko_t. I was just about to make a new usb stick and to my suprise we have a new version of the gui. I'll let you know if I have any issues. BTW... you think maybe we can somehow code my setupsourcechanger into it somehow? Basically if we can do it... my idea is when someone wants to integrate multiple oses into their usb they can easily add them. It would check only for file differences and place them into the same BT/LS folders. We could have a CONVERT folder in I386 with the files which are different. Then the user could easily change oses in BartPE. Or if we could get a simple script made in GPart to do the work that would be even better. We could have all of the OSes listed in the lst file... and when an os is selected it copies any needed files for that os from the convert directory for that os. I really think it could be done. We just need to come up with a good structure to use it.