fizban2

correct the higher rating, the better able you are to run vista, if you right click on my computer (or hold the windows key + pause/break) and go to properties, you should be able to check your rating there. there also will be a place to rerun winSat (it is the app that runs the rating system for vista) better score means more options are unlocked in vista (ie aero etc)

LM should not have been the reason why you couldn't connect to XP, Lan Man is a dying technology from 95 - 98 era, should be needed to connect the 2 together, check your XP settings in the same place to make sure NTLM is a valid option to connect with

*CLARIFICATION* the WAIK is not downloadable to the public yet, it has been absorbed into the new Business Desktop Deployment App (BDD 3.0) this has gone beta to select MS partners and beta testers, it should be avialable more wide spread soon (can't give you a date cause i have no idea) to do an unattended vista installion though you don't need the WAIK, you can still do it the good old fashioned way, just finished a Unattended install DVD, i will note what you need to do later today to create an unattended install of Vista 5384

have you downloaded and installed the nvidia vista drivers yet or are your running on the drivers provided from MS? you could also try running the WinSat to get a better rating

check the power options under the control panel, most likely it is set to turn off monitor after 10 - 15 minutes, also check the screen saver settings

again you have to be one of those "special" people who have access to vista/WAIK/BDD note everyone doesn't have access to that section, only the beta testers and TAP partners

they aren't available for MSDN yet i believe only "tap" partners and on Connect to select members, hopefully they will be released soon to the public, i would expect more toward the end of july... BDD 3.0 is still really beta, i mean with screens missing and stuff like that, WAIK has been absorbed into the BDD system, it is part of it now. So now only the BDD, most likely to be BDD 2007 when it comes out... sticking to the trend and such

i have been running the latedt Nvidia driver off their website, been running very smooth, no crashes... only thing the BUGS the hell out of me is the screen flash when UAC kicks in, unlike my laptop that just jumps to the dimmed screen my LCDs at home flicker, and fresh back to the dimmed UAC screen. it is driving me nuts...

easiest way would be to 'deny' user the rights to view that one folder, not the preffered method but it will get the job done

correct

i have had issues with some networks not being picked up correctly, is there a hotspot or internet caffe or even a friends house with WiFi you could test this at?

ok well if you cannot get to the internet and you can't ping any outside IP address then you need to check at your gateway, when you do an ipconfig /all the gateway listed is your router correct? can you ping that router?

superfetch has do with USB memory keys and adding those to your memory pool. the apps opening faster would be the better memory management of vista.

he may already have the 64x hardware, most servers sold in the last 2 years have 64 bit support, as for price, that will remain to be seen, you are right it most likely be more expensive then some other options but it does so much more then just serve mail.

probably a driver issue, try unistalling the driver from device manager and restarting and try to install it one more time

just mount the DVD with deamon tools, there isn't much to see htough, all the OS files are packed into a WIM file, you would need Imagex to view that though

admin account is disabled by default in vista, part of their secure by default stance. even with the upgrade you should have gotten a chance to create a new account? did you not create another account? if not you are going to have to reinstall

all, found this page of interesting things to test in vista, Windows Vista Scenarios there as pages of things that MS is looking for feedback on and to see if it all works properly, everyone whos running vista, weither it be as a second OS or those of us who are running at a main OS should go here and run throught the pages, there are alot fo things to test and you learn a whole lot about the OS in the process let the testing begin!!!

can you ping and outside IP's? (www.google.com)?

you will have to wait for the BDD 3.0 to come out, WAIK has been rolled into that, it was release june 8th to select Connect members, if anyone on the boards has access and would like to share i am sure we would all love to snag a copy

did this machine previously have vista on it? how did you capture your image? through a bartpe? was the machine sysprepped before you created your wim? i have not been able to recreate the issue with the NTLDR error you are getting, here are my steps. i build my XP image, installing all fixes and programs that i need, sysprep the machine to clear out the SID and then reboot into bartPE, capture the installation to a WIM file, (i connect to a network share and run ImageX from there) after that i can deploy XP to any number of machine and have not had an issue

you may also want to check out Exchange 2007, it will be coming out in beta 2 in july, you could test it out and see what it is like, setup a little test domain or sandbox, it is much much much better then 2003 (think x64 hardware) :-D

that secondary server is very much needed, what i meant about distance (sorry didn't describe it well) was more towards WAN connectivity between site, if a sites WAN connection cannot support the extra DNS traffic that would be created if a local DNS server went down then would also have the same issue

aahhh and there is cluberti with the microsoft preffered solution

correct, users will still be able to log onto the domain, but any resources listed in the domain or GC that are across the WAN will be unavailable.