pugwash2004

For a business network environment there is usually a version with a central server that distributes / installs the software, for AVG its AVG Anti-Virus Network Edition this manages updates for the definitions and the software and you'll be able to see if any machine is out of date. Looking at the price for that version it may save you some cash as well. I use EPO from McAfee to do the same thing, for that I use the EPO Agent installer from the GPO which would then install the software from the central repository automatically.

I've checked my Technet account and the only XP SP3 I can see is the RC2 version. Searched all the downloads and can't see any mention of the fully released version anywhere.

For machines I fix for family and friends I usually install Zonealarm basic mainly because its free and usually its to get rid of Norton they got with their machines. For myself at home, I have to use Pro because Basic blocks VPN access to my work network due to its limited features. ZA appears to have gotten more stable recently, possibly because of the buyout, the older V6 version used to crash on me quite often overnight and kill any offpeak downloads I had but the new V7 has only crashed a couple of times since I installed it.

By nothing on the drive I assume that its not completely dead i.e. ticking loudly rather than the usual spin up sounds. At the computer shop while it was attached to another computer for testing (I'm assuming they did this) did it show the partitions on it but no / lots of missing files? If it did then I've had to fix a similar problem myself, my machine appeared to be missing most of the folder tree and would not boot. To fix it, I used an XP bootdisc and with the manual recovery option, running 'chkdsk /V /R c:' at the command prompt. This should find and try to fix / recover any data in any corrupted sectors, certainly fixed it for me but it took a few hours to run.

One interesting thing I noticed about the pricing, it's a lot cheaper to buy a Vista Ultimate upgrade with an OEM copy of XP Home than it is to buy the full retail version. I'm not sure if you get both the 32bit and 64bit version though. - I've just checked, the upgrade version is 32bit and 64bit unlike the OEM versions.

Its the same in the UK, Ultimate is £299.99 about $580. Over here the tv news had been broadcasting stories about Vista every bulletin but aren't mentioning that MS is charging more from non U.S. buyers. I could understand $20 - $30 to take out fluctuations in the exchange rates but $180 is way too much

Game.co.uk have it listed for a June 2007 release. It is a bit of a joke that a game that was originally released on the Xbox (a cut down 386 pc) over 2 years ago will probably need to run on an operating system more expensive to buy then the original console and game combined, it must have one hell of a set of extras compared to the xbox original! From what I heard it was half the size of Halo. Reading through the press release I love the statement 'It’s too early to state exact system specs, but the team wants to make the game available as broadly as possible.' so they make it Vista only! I really cant see why it can't be made compatible with XP while disabling the Vista only features other than Bill wants a new patio. One thing I have noticed is that Halo 2 on the xbox budget range is now no longer available.....

The same thing happens on a network with a domain, if you log onto a fresh install with the local administrator account first and then a domain administrator account you'll have two folders starting with administrator but the second will be suffixed with the domain of the account. It's just the way windows deals with two accounts with the same name.

As you have a license sticker on the side of your case it will be for the OEM version of XP Home, a full retail version will not work with the code on the sticker.

I would avoid Ghost, I had a nightmare of a day transfering a laptop from an 8gb to 20gb drive. It didn't copy the virtual memory file correctly it cheats by creating an empty file the same size to make the compression better, a day of someone asking 'is it ready?' and 'we should buy a new hard drive' was enough for me. I got it working simply because I found someones website that had gone through the same process, after transfering the image to the new drive you have to edit the boot sector to make it re-initialise the virtual memory file, all from a dos6 boot disk. They may have changed it in newer versions but probably not, Symantec seem to like doing cosmetic changes to justify an upgrade with the odd new feature every couple of years. It may just be I missed a setting but I've avoided it ever since and used Acronis True Image.

First check the ram and make sure it hasn't come loose, from my experience drive errors have been down to bad or badly seated ram. I would also recommend running chkdsk with the /F /R options. Use your installation disk, boot into recovery mode and run it from there. If this doesn't work then try a recovery from the 'Boot from last known working configuration', I've a machine at work that every couple of weeks dies with a BSOD at each boot caused by the Nvidia graphics drivers and using the 'Last known' has fixed it everytime so far.

I think net_user may have it, if your drive is formatted with Fat32 then your limited to a filesize of 4Gb or less. If it is fat32 then consider converting it to ntfs using 'convert c: /FS:NTFS' from a command prompt. I've had to do this to nearly all the new PC's I've bought off the shelf, for some reason some manufacturers insist on installing them on FAT32 formatted drives.

1. Go to Control Panel. 2. Click System. 3. Go to the Remote tab. 4. Select the "Enable Remote Desktop on this Computer" box. Thats what I did to enable it on my standard 2003 server.

I've been using dvd-ram for about 7 years in various formats, I've still got some 2.6Gb single sided discs that still work perfectly. Ram discs are slower to write than the newer dvd+/-R formats but when data is written to them it is immediately verified to check it. To use it like a large floppy disc though you will need a dvd-ram driver to allow it, there is a modified Panasonic/Matsus***a driver doing the rounds that will allow any dvd-ram drive to work in this way, I currently have a Pioneer DVR-110 drive working with it perfectly.

I would'nt bother with the x800xt for games, the x1800 series would be a better buy or wait for cards based on the r580 core. As for ram I'm using the XMS3500 2GB matched pair from Corsair, I'd avoid the value select stuff as every single set I've had has been bad so far.

I actually have this sort of setup in operation right now. There are few ways to get the network shares to operate i) Make the Guest account active on the XP machine acting as server (I think that it is by default in XP anyway), share the folders with the Guest account having access rights. (The least secure and is not appropriate for wireless connections) ii) Create an account on each workstation and server that has a common username and password and then give it sufficient access rights to the share. iii) Recreate the user account and password of each workstation on the XP machine acting as server and then give them access rights to the share, keeping in mind to enable the option 'password never expires' As for the printer, install it on the machine acting as the server and then share it. In enabling the share it will allow the creation of an executable that when run on another workstation installs the printer for you.

The reason you can write dvd's faster than reading because dvd drives are set to do this by default to stop mass ripping. On some drives you can rip a dvd video disc at only 1x - 2x speed even if the drive is rated at 16x but a data disc will read at no limit. Changing the drive cache setting will likely do nothing. A firmware hack that removes the ripping speed limit, check www.rpc1.com, is more likely to work. I bought a dvd-rom drive specifically for ripping and downloaded a modified firmware from that site which was region free and had no ripping limit. Before the hack it could take 40 - 50mins to read a dvd but after the firmware update 10-15mins. I can backup a full 9Gb dvd in about 25minutes now using 16x media.

How many do you want? There was the time the registry got corrupted by a bad sector - result spontaneous reboots. Booting using last known config didn't work as it copied the backup registry over a bad sector each time. 3 hours of chkdsk /R later I got the machine working again. Then their was the time my ntuser.dat file got corrupted, got locked out of my profile for another 3 hours while chkdsk /R was running. Then their was the time XP decided to remove my entire profile, I lost all files on my desktop, all emails and my favourites as well as all the documents in 'My Documents'. Then their was the time I uninstalled my nforce2 drivers to install a new set, it removed a required file which on rebooting to install the new drivers I was informed 'a required file is missing', tried to 'boot from last known configuration' - still no go and so I had to install XP onto another drive with the old driver set just to get one .sys file to allow my original installation to boot up.

If you don't mind the cost, £156 from Dabs, the Draytek Vigor2600G is very good. My old router would tell me line had a SNR of 7-11db upline and 63-64db loop attenuation. The draytek improved them to SNR 15-19db upline and 59db loop attenuation at 1Mb. My old router would sometimes spend whole days loosing the connection, this one so far has only disconnected during storms. Its very quick to setup, I had mine out of the box powered up and net traffic flowing in about 15minutes. It has a firewall with DoS protection which can be set to block traffic at certain times of day. UPNP support, so Azureus works perfectly and the wireless lan can be isolated from the standard lan ports. Best investment I've made.