humble3d

your idea seems good to me and i am trying it again and will advise... many thanks Update Well, I've tried everything you've suggested except to run out and get another video card...perhaps i'll try that tomorrow. Many thanks

apparently, hard drives are normally hard to fully erase (security concerns) so, someone developed a strong magnetic paddle that really and fully erases the hard drive beyond anyone's ability to extract sensitive data from it... I did not believe this "guy" so, he showed me...some friend he is for breaking my brand new computer He said they cost around $1000. and are used by D.o.D. and others agencies to get rid of old hard drives...

thanks for your offer to help. sadly, the paddle came in contact with the machine and the hard drive while it was running... At this point I cannot see anything on the monitor but the monitor works fine in another box... lights and fans come on in the effected machine but since i cannot see anything on the monitor, I don't know if anything is coming up on the screen... cd tray won't open and the floppy seems dead as well and I cannot hear the hard drive...I removed the drive and it tested healty in another box... still a mystery to me... I will now believe what he told me about paddles

Try clearing the CMOS jumper could you please explain how to do this... i've found the battery... many thanks

Greetings, My Compaq Presario hard drive was "Accidentally" subjected to a "magnetic Paddle" which completely removed all data on both the main "C" and backup "D" drive. Backup Cd's were made prior to this; however, the system is not indicating any activily other than remaining on when plugged in ( NO on/off function); lights and fans are running but the cd, floppy and hard drive don't respond and resetting the bios (f1...f5...f10) have no effect. The monitor is working on another machine but not at all on the presario which formerly housed window xp home edition. Is there any way to restore this system from this horrible experience? Many thanks

How do I repair Internet Explorer in Windows® XP? Revised - 03/03/2002 The ability to Repair Internet Explorer does not exist in the version that ships with Windows XP. This feature only becomes available after you upgrade to a newer version. This is normal and has been this way since Windows 98 and IE4. However, you can reinstall IE in Windows XP by clicking Start, Run and entering the following command: rundll32.exe setupapi,InstallHinfSection DefaultInstall 132 %windir%\Inf\ie.inf You will need to have your XP CD available. Some people have problems with the command line above. A small VB Script that will execute the command for you can be downloaded http://www.dougknox.com/scripts/xp_run_ie_setup.vbs here. Save the file to your hard drive and double click it to run IE Setup. How to Reinstall or Repair Internet Explorer and Outlook Express in Windows XP (Q318378) http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...b;EN-US;q318378 This page last updated 05/03/2003 19:41 All material © Doug Knox http://www.dougknox.com/

Removed Link removed This is not a warez site! Links/Requests to warez and/or illegal material (porn, cracks, serials, etc..) will not be tolerated. Discussion of circumventing activation/timebombs will also not be tolerated. If you ignore any of the aforementioned you will receive a final warning. If you choose to continue, you will be banned without notice. Please respect that Thank you xper

I would now start looking at any software and or hardware you've installed as there are some issues with w2k3 and some antivirus and some firewalls

hello there sweetie...you've got a purdy mouth...nice hair, too! your suggestion is a beta... Microsoft plans to release Service Pack 1 for Windows Server 2003 in the first quarter of 2004 http://www.entmag.com/news/article.asp?Edi...itorialsID=5924 just so everyone knows... more info here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/lifecycle...rvicepacks.mspx i just love blonde ladies

sounds familiar...you may need to install earlier vb runtime versions as well...like 5

true...there are alot of tweaks available in w2k3 that are not readily available in w2k...enjoy

i should have guessed that people in Estonia have plenty of time on their hands...accordingly, get the whole storie(s) below...can't beat 'em so join 'em?? http://www.hot.ee/salasource/2k3faq.htm http://www.hot.ee/salasource/index.htm http://xp-win2k3mods.netfirms.com/xp.html http://torufoorum.hot.ee/foorum/ Kiss me, baby... ...there is no spoon...

i would be certain that pagefile defragmentation is not taking place as this is the symptom most experienced by the described behavior Start regedit, left click edit, find, then paste in ClearPageFileAtShutdown ...check that clear page file at shutdown shows a value of... (0) HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\SeCEdit\Reg Values\MACHINE/System/CurrentControlSet/Control/Session Manager/Memory Management/ClearPageFileAtShutdown look in right pane and check that: DisplayType REG_DWORD SAYS 0x00000000 (0) if it shows (1) instead of (0), pagefile defragmentation may be running and slowing the reboot process... change the (1) to (0) right click DisplayType and left click modify...replace the 1 with 0... reboot to see if this was the problem...you may have to reboot twice.

Did you disable internet explorer's extra security crap in add/remove windows components??

Once i turn down the antivirus and firewall and ensure cookies are accepted, i get right on for updates...be certain to accept the mod download security message from v4, too...win nt all: go to services and enable encription mod.

Once i turn down the antivirus and firewall and ensure cookies are accepted, i get right on for updates...be certain to accept the mod download security message from v4, too

Don't waste your time since the SBCore mod will track you down... just buy the retail version and enjoy but, don't forget to install a firewall then head over to microsoft update for the needed fixes

Many thanks...it was all a senseless, time wasting experience as it was easier to just buy the retail version which, as it turns out, is a great deal

w2k3 IS xp home-- under the hood

update...check the info and fixes here: http://www.hot.ee/salasource/index.htm http://xp-win2k3mods.netfirms.com/xp.html http://www.hot.ee/salasource/2k3faq.htm http://www.hot.ee/salasource/index.htm http://torufoorum.hot.ee/foorum/ Apparently the programmers of the Windows Product Activation did not work carefully enough. In the course of our experiments with several hardware components, product keys and especially the central file wpa.dbl some interesting weak points showed up. Together with peculiarities in generating the id of the hardware this will open the way for hackers to avoid the Activation completely. Two fields are coded with three bits and two with seven bits. Because in each field the coefficient 0 is impossible, 7*7*127*127=790321 possibilities remain for the file wpa.dbl. As only three components are allowed to change from the moment of Activation onwards, you can take the weakest fixed component for a "Universal Activation". The CPU type or the RAM size present themselves here as the best solution. It is more than sufficient to only once activate a computer with 128 MBytes of RAM at Microsoft's. With its file wpa.dbl you can then "activate" all other computers of the same memory size. Conclusion With its technology of Activation Microsoft wants to thwart the user who occasionally copies software. Up to a certain degree this may still work. But by means of the above described steps nearly everybody can activate his own XP merely by getting a corresponding wpa.dbl file. There certainly will exist some web sites in the near future where the user can comfortably download "his"wpa.dbl. http://www.tecchannel.de/betriebssysteme/746/ >> >> Frequently asked questions and their answers >> concerning the Fully Licensed WPA paper >> >> Fully Licensed GmbH, July 10, 2001 >> >> 1. Was Microsoft involved in the creation of the paper? Microsoft was not involved in the creation of the paper in any way. However, we made a draft version available to Microsoft to give them a head-start. We consider it to be good etiquette to inform a vendor of a pending publication related to one his or her products, so that the vendor is able to prepare an official response. >> 2. Why should we believe you? We do not expect you to believe us. That's why we have provided our complete knowledge about WPA and the XPDec utility. Combine both to verify our claims. >> 3. But Thomas Lopatic, one of your managing directors was born in Unterschleissheim, Germany, which is the town near Munich in which Microsoft's European headquarters are located. This is a nice coincidence. It is in a way understandable - and at the same time highly amusing to us :-) - that this has given rise to rumors about the whole paper being a cleverly planned Microsoft conspiracy. Thomas was actually born in Karlsruhe, Germany. However, he was living in Unterschleissheim from the 1970s - i.e. long before Microsoft moved there - until recently, when he moved to Berlin. That's why some records still list Unterschleissheim as the place where he lives. Incorrectly interpreting these records led to the rumor that Thomas was born in Unterschleissheim. >> 4. Does Microsoft downplay the paper? No, most definitely not. The paper really IS harmless. It does not provide any information that would help a pirate circumvent WPA. >> 5. Why did you release details on Windows Product Activation? We felt that there is a need for facts in the debate about Windows Product Activation. Many people suspected that WPA could be abused to spy on end-users. Our paper, however, shows that insensitive information is transmitted during product activation. From this, it can be seen that the facts that we provide really are a necessary contribution to the ongoing discussion about WPA. We think that license enforcement mechanisms will be an important part of the future of software distribution via the Internet. Thus, we do think that public discussion of technology of this kind must be free from bias and it must be based on facts and openness. We hope that the information that we provide positively affects the current debate. The debate is necessary, but it should be based on facts and full disclosure of information relevant to the privacy question. >> 6. Do you know how to circumvent Windows Product Activation? No. We provide insight into which information is transmitted to Microsoft during activation. Our paper is important to help people understand the impact of WPA on their work and their privacy. We do not believe that our paper helps in any way to circumvent the license enforcement provided by WPA. >> 7. Your paper says that Microsoft will err on the user's side. What our paper shows is that a) no sensitive information is transferred to Microsoft and typical hardware upgrades do not negatively affect an already activated installation of Windows XP. But, if you either completely re-install Windows XP or modify your hardware beyond what is tolerated by product activation, you have to re-activate Windows XP. The important question now is: How often will Microsoft let you re-activate? Erring on the user's side would mean that they allow you to re-activate as often as you like, which seems to be what Microsoft says they will do. It is, however, impossible to confirm this policy by means of a technical analysis. >> 8. Why doesn't Microsoft know which hardware I use? Let us consider the case of IDE controllers. In the installation ID transmitted to Microsoft they are represented by a 4-bit value. The 4 bits are obtained by applying the MD5 message digest algorithm to a string that uniquely identifies the vendor and model of the IDE controller, e.g. 'PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_7111&SUBSYS_00000000&REV_01' and picking 4 bits from fixed locations in the resulting 128-bit message digest. With 4 bits, we can represent 16 different values at maximum. However, there are far more than 16 different models of IDE controllers out there. So, since there are more models than 4-bit values, the above hashing procedure must yield the same 4 bits for more than one model. The more models there are, the more models will map to a given 4-bit value. In contrast to what Microsoft says, the privacy that WPA provides is not based on the assumption that it is impossible to invert the employed message digest algorithm, i.e. MD5. If we used all 128 bits of the message digest derived from a hardware component's identification string, this 128-bit value would most probably uniquely identify the hardware component. If we used 128 bits, each hardware component on earth would probably map to a different value. What an attacker would then do is build a list of all hardware components on this planet and calculate the corresponding 128-bit values, which are probably all different. Then finding the hardware component that corresponds to a certain 128-bit value is just a table lookup away. Privacy is based on the fact that only a few bits of the resulting 128-bit message digest are considered. Obviously this leads to lots of collisions, i.e. lots of hardware components mapping to a given value. If there were 160 different models of IDE controllers, we could on average expect 160 / 16 = 10 models to map to the same 4-bit value. Let us, as another example, consider the MAC address of an ethernet adapter. The discussion is technically not 100% accurate, but it illustrates the point. The MAC address is a 48-bit value, which means that it can theoretically be one of 281,474,976,710,656 different values. However, its 10-bit representation in the Installation ID is obtained by picking 10 bits from the MD5 hash over an ASCII string comprised of the 12 hex digits of the 48-bit value. Picking 10 bits leads to 1,024 different results at maximum. So, on average, we expect 281,474,976,710,656 / 1,024 = 274,877,906,944 MAC addresses to map to the same 10-bit value. Because of this, nobody will be able to obtain the actual MAC address from the 10-bit value, since there are 274,877,906,944 candidate MAC addresses from which the 10-bit value could have been derived. It is interesting to see that the bit-field that represents the MAC address is 10 bits in size, while the bit-field representing the IDE controller only consists of 4 bits. Microsoft probably have assigned a longer bit-field to a component if they expect more diversity in the identification string of this component. The number of different IDE controller models is smaller by orders of magnitude than the number of different MAC addresses. So, to produce sufficient collisions, they decided to use a relatively small bit-field for IDE controllers but could still afford to chose a 10-bit bit-field in the case of MAC addresses. >> 9. What are the implications of re-activating after hardware changes? This is an interesting issue which is not covered in our paper. We simply did not think of it. Our mistake. It was brought to our attention by an article by Greg Falcon <veloso@verylowsodium.com> on www.slashdot.org: If you have to re-activate your installation of Windows XP because of hardware modifications, your new hardware configuration is embedded in the Installation ID in the form discussed above. While this does not enable anyone to find out which components you have, it is trivial to find out which components you have changed. Just examine which bit-fields have changed their value since the original activation.

now i know why he's in the advanced class...his excellent post follows: Assuming you are Currently Dual Booting ? Simply Delete the Windows 2000 Program Files Dir and the WIndows Directory. then edit boot.ini and remove the windows 2000 Entrys then set the defualt to the windows 98 Entry and set the timeout to 0 the system wil lboot 98 normally and windows 2000 is now uninstalled. You will still have 2000 boot files but it makes no Difference, that part you cant uninstall without reinstalling / Formatting the Partition ( you can but its abit Complicated ) Just want to Format and go back to 98 You Cant Format Coz the Drive is now NTFS, Dos format wont do it. Ok Follow These Instructions Carefully, Print them if u need to. Boot from the windows 2000 CD and follow thru normally and when you reach the Partitions Part, Delete the Partition. Now create another one. Go to the next part and choose FAT32 and let it finish When you get to the part its Copying Files Reset your COmputer and boot from your Dos Boot Floppy Disk. You can Now FOrmat and INstall WIndows 98

sunny is correct...TweakUI 1.33 Works fine. Under the network tab choose auto-login

under the hood of w2k3 is xp home edition...not a good idea to try to install both...if you want to dual boot, install xp pro in one partition followed by w2k3 in another partition...the w2k3 ntdetect will boot xp...it's even larger than xp's version of ntdetect...

ARE YOU CERTAIN THAT PAGEFILE DEFRAGMENTATION IS NOT SLOWING YOU DOWN ARE YOU USING XP ANTISPY?? IT WORKS ON W2K3, TOO...QUICK WAY TO MODIFY SOME SETTINGS IF YOU WISH see below

ZoneAlarm Pro 3.7.159 AND LATER WORK FINE WITH W2K3...DON'T RUN AN EARLIER VERSION OR YOU'LL HAVE PROBLEMS