GrofLuigi

It's not Windows, it's Office and from what I've seen, it is not easy to turn this off. Maybe something with Assistant (registry values, as far as I remember, something like AcbOn, AcbClipboard), but I didn't have success with it. Some suggest you copy a small piece of text before you leave Office, which is no solution at all. * Edit: Now I see AcbControl seems promising. Haven't tested it yet. * Edit 2: As seen here, but doesn't work for me (Office 2003). * Edit 3: It isn't the same thing after all. GL

Install wim tweak. But it's very unsafe because it doesn't check for or know of any dependencies. Whenever I used it, I've always ended with unusable Windows. It's that easy to get carried away. I feel like I'm handing you a wepon to shoot yourself in the foot, but you asked for it... GL

Do I need Windows Activation functionality? Since I'm doing a clean install I'm guessing I probably do. - Yes, you probably do, depends on your source. Is it best to remove standard windows drivers if I'm installing 3rd party ones such as removing VGA & display drivers and installing my NVIDIA ones or removing the WLAN drivers & installing the ones for my wireless card? - Depends. I've had good experience with removing display drivers and installing my own, but some wireless drivers depend on the Windows in-built functionality. Is it removed together with the wireless drivers, I'm not sure. Is it worth removing other drivers I don't think I will use and language packs or are they to small to make much of a different to performance so I should just leave them? - There will be a very very small gain, mostly in disk space, but if you ever discover you need some functionality, it's very hard, almost impossible to install it manually. You decide if it's worth for you and be absolutely sure you'll never ever need the components you remove. Is Active Directory Services only used for allowing multiple user profiles on a PC & if I don't use that functionality is it safe/ worth removing? - It is safe/worth removing if you don't use, but might be linked to the user accounts control panel (sorry I can't check now). If you don't use that too, remove. Is the massager service ok to remove, from what I've read it sounds desirable to remove it. - Quite safe to remove. Is Volume Shadow Copy and related items only used for cloning a drive and as such wont effect system restore or other back-up activities? - Might be connected with system restore, almost certainly is connected with Windows Backup. Some backup programs (that operate within Windows) might need it. Lastly, In the tweaks section of Nlite If I don't tick/enable things that are normally on by default does that mean they get turned off? - If you don't change (toggle) them, Nlite won't make any change. *Edit: Check and use this topic if you haven't already. GL

Just one forum below. Vlite is for Vista, NLite is for XP. About your specific questions, I don't know. GL

I had something like this in mind, but your needs are different. The idea is to use the Parted CD (download and burn the .iso from here) to boot from. If you don't have an optical drive, there are instructions on that page to make live USB stick. I would have used it like this: Boot from the CD/USB, delete all partitions on the SSD (if any), create (and align) the partition, boot from XP setup disk, install by pointing it to the partition. That's because: - If you create partitions with XP setup from the CD, they will not be aligned. - If you create partitions from Vista/Win7 setup from the DVD, it might create a small partition, or write its own bootsector, or simply the created (and aligned) partitions are not compatible with XP setup (I am not sure about this, I keep searching the forum about this issue, but can't find the exact thread. It mentiones this). That's why I alway prefer to create and format partitions with independent tools before installing the OS. Also, for some reason, I think this might help you. About wiping, do it if you're absolutely sure you can do it correctly. Otherwise, don't bother. GL *Edit: I might have mixed up the tools, Parted with Gparted, but I think both will do.

What happens when you enter "SATA HARD DRIVE" in the first screen? My Amilo Pi 3525 also doesn't have option for AHCI, but there it can't be disabled. Phoenix BIOS is very restrictive. GL

I have a Z68 board (Asus) and the controller is indeed called "Intel® Desktop/Workstation/Server Express Chipset SATA AHCI Controller". You need iaAHCI.inf. The other one (iaStor) is for RAID. Be careful with the creation of partitions. You said you created them with Win7, which is a good thing for alignment, but I think might, in some circumstances, not be acceptable for XP at install time. Again, I'm not sure about this, there were some threads here about it, but if I were you I'd double check the partitions with any third party tool (parted magic live CD or whatewer it's called nowadays). GL

Pardon me for barging in, but I know the answer (kind of). It's MUI (multilingual user interface). The idea is, the displayed name of the Server service isn't stored as string, but as a pointer to the string inside the dll file (in this example, the 100th string or resouce inside srvsvc.dll). If you install another interface language of windows, the 100th string will contain the displayed name in another language. If you find the 100th resource in srvsvc.dll with I don't know, Resouce Hacker maybe, it will contain the displayed name (probably Server Service?). Windows caches some of these resolved strings (search for MUICache in registry; there are several places in Win7, but I'm on XP currently and that's the only place there (per user), while on 7 there are more). Now, I've seen Windows 7 replace these pointers with absolute strings, but I don't know under which circumstances that happens. Maybe if you play around Regional Options or when Windows Modules Installer (trusted installer) is started. That's how I discovered this effect, while tracing installations of programs with Total Uninstall. I could see nearly in realtime how they were replaced. To cut the long story short, I don't think this "effect" is responsible for your problems. These are only strings anyway, expanded or not. GL

Edit: nevermind GL

I'm not sure if this is what you're talking about, but use the following since long time ago, I also think these settings are unreachable via the GUI. But I don't remember exactly any more, I just know I investigated at the time and came up with this. I use it all the time when I use the default Luna theme, otherwise the menu bar isn't right. REGEDIT4 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Colors] "Menu"="236 233 216" "MenuBar"="236 233 216" GL

It's a good thing that people who defended things like hectic start menu (it's just a search away), mandatory driver signing (it's vendors' fault that make buggy drivers), bloat (WinSxS folder too big? What's the problem, hdd space is cheap), the ribbon (you should get on with the times), forced obsolence (VS doesn't compile for older OS? You should "upgrade"), mandatory activation (it's their OS, not yours, you've just been granted a licence to use it) etc. etc. can now taste what it felt like for us all along. Not directed towards you, CF, just hoping all these people would see how nonsensical these arguments were. GL

Since I see some models of that laptop with Intel processor, there is a pretty good chance it has Intel Sata controller. Follow this guide. GL

The problem isn't that TI has too much rights, but that we (Administrators) don't have enough. My thinking is, if Microsoft built it that way, and it isn't standing in my way, i'd rather leave it alone. I have killed several windows installations, but sadly I didn't document my steps. Every time I was "nearly there" and it was like Windows was toying with me, knew what I was doing, let me approach the finish line and than dropped the hammer. About WRP: I've disabled WRP with instructions from here and Windows ended nearly unusable - couldn't install updates or (maybe, I forgot) regular programs, and there were many other problems (some control panel items won't start). To add insult to injury, I couldn't add the files back to WinSXS, even from other OS. I wouldn't recommend this route yet. What I think are promising courses of action: - Adding TI "token" to yourself or Admin group. I don't know if that's even possible, but it would be way better than for example, running yourself as TI (as Den mentioned somewhere). - Giving ourselves and TI full permissions to (almost) entire registry and filesystem tree. It would save us (at least me) tons of headaches and time when thinking about is it safe to "process" the desired item (take ownership etc.) . Some may say it's defetism, but I really have nothing against the guy. TI can be ADDED from GUI like this. - I am wary of hex editing and would leave it to the king here. GL

Yes , but you also must remember how you CANNOT have an XP without Internet Explorer jaclaz Sorry, but I don't understand what you're aiming at. And I like to consider myself as having some sense of humor. GL

I wouldn't strip Trusted Installer of any rights, instead I'd search for a way to grant myself (and my group) full rights. I've seen strange things happen when TI is dethroned, from bsod on boot to unprovoked re-registering of all the useless default filetypes and clsids (partially), to unability to install Windows Updates. It's linked to MSI service and/or Windows resource protection in a "dirty", undocumented way, from what I've seen. But partial dethroning is OK (I've succeded with Classes and everything works). *Edit: and propagation rarely works not because they've set a new system of ACL (what I thought in the Vista era), but because of the way default permissions are set during install. I strongly suspect this is the reason for invention of WIM. *Edit2: And the default liberal permissions for Creator/Owner (wildly exploited now) are not a "courtesy" of Microsoft, but a failsafe to prevent disasters. GL

No, as I said, I just copied the files and regsvr'd them. Duck tape solution. IE works good enough, as far as I can tell, but isn't used much. Don't have time (yet) for installation in virtual machine, and analyzing there. GL

As far as I remember (and my memory might be wrong since it's been many years since I did a repair install), it's like this: If the first install was full install with, let's say, WMP not removed, and if you do a repair install with nLited Windows where WMP is removed, after that you will still have WMP. If the first install was nLited with WMP removed, and you perform repair install of full Windows on top of it, you will still have WMP. As far as I know, repair install doesn't remove the previous components, except if you go to control panel > add/remove components, but that can be done anyway. There may be exceptions for some components (that rely on inf's?), but it can also be dangerous to mix inf's. < now this was clear as mud, I know. Edit: and the repair install will do absolutely no change to third party (java, .net, Office) installations, so I don't understand that part of the question... GL

When I want to disable ReadyBoot/Prefetch/Superfetch (and I always do, because I don't believe in caching of caching of caching - the HDD, whatever model it is, has its own cache, windows does file caching, and I think that's enough, or else something is bound to go wrong one day) I go to administrative tools > performance monitor > Startup Event Trace Sessions and disable ReadyBoot. My point is, you should check if you have it disabled there. Some tweaking programs and guides do. GL

4. 5. 6. 7. If it sounds too good to be true, it will probably harm your computer.

It's called SysMain in the registry.GL

While I don't have that exact board, I have a similar one from ASUS and I can confirm that this works. I think SP2 shouldn't be a problem, but it would be better if you slipstreamed SP3. GL

Maybe some accessibility option? Or "scancode map" (google for it). A registry key - it's a pretty complex scheme that I don't understand quite well, but maybe there is some program that can work with it... (for example, nLite uses it for "disable Windows keys"). GL

Winamp 2.XX with Kernel Streaming plugin. I use it to this day on XP, so I think it should work fine on 9X. GL

It informs me it detected IE8, and asks me (and lets me select) to install it anyway. But everything else is the same. Also in safe mode it's the same. It's the only log file, anything else that is created is "Internet Explorer Troubleshooting.url" on the desktop, pointing to http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=106440 . I followed the links/steps there, but it led me nowhere. GL

Here it is. ie8_main.zip GL