GrofLuigi

As far as I know, it restricts the number of icons in the cache, not its size in kilo/megabytes. I once counted on a computer with many programs installed, it had around 500 icons. GL

Maybe your account has seen and enumerated many more icons? How did you restrict its size? I know of registry entry "Max Cached Icons" which restricts by number of icons. Then you'd need to take account of individual icon sizes... And, if the Admin acount is rarely used, it has definitely seen less icons. Try cleaning (deleting) both icon caches. GL

Only fools and no horses. GL

X, I think this would be very beneficial for all. I can share my experience with restoring Active Directory (or whatever it's called - the one that Nlite mentions that breaks User Accounts control panel). Few dll's and registry entries. GL

You have activated "Track Changes". Just deactivate it. On office 2003, it's on the Tools menu. (Keyboard shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+E). Don't know about later versions. Usually there is also a toolbar visible (called Reviewing), so you can also find the button "Track Changes" there. GL

I do it for many years and no problems. The only way you could run into a problem is if some program is braindead enough to cling onto non-existing data. GL

Any boot disk will do. No need for NTFS, as far as I can see. Maybe you will need to inject the .exe into the ISO. GL

It's binary identical to the file from hddguru. The readme file (wdidle3.txt) is much more sane than what is written the WD page. I don't know if they're trying to scare people off or it was some mishap in copy/paste operation, but there is evidence many people used it successfully. If it was my drive, I wouldn't hesitate a second to use it. But it's your call. Please don't send me a bill. GL

The dos tool, of course. - It's straigt from the manufacturer - It will solve the problem once and for all, so there will be no need for other prorgrams Just hope it works for your model (it should, but one never knows)... Here it is from the WD site. I learned a new term, idle3 (probably specific to WD) for all this mess. GL

Hi again and good luck with your new drive. I'd say, try with whatever works. That DOS tool could be the right thing, if it works and saves the changes permanently. It looks like it does a slightly different thing, but the end result for you should be the same - no clicking. GL

In that window, you can click on more than one item while holding CTRL, select a range using SHIFT (click on the first and then the last one), or select all items by pressing CTRL+A. This works generally with most of the other programs too. GL

I remember it was a frequent problem with older versions of nLite. I have never encountered it because I always use driver signing patch of nLite, not onlly registry tweaks. Maybe you could search older posts in the nLite section of the forum. I tried to, but onlly came up with this, pretty similar but not exactly. Maybe it will help you, just as a pointer... GL

Hi Hartismere, your situation is a little confusing, but nothing to worry about. You indeed have two devices in your system: onboard audio and another one on the graphics card (in order to play sound through HDMI; that was done because the music/film industry don't trust the users and want to protect "their" audio from being copied). Note: I'm going by the Infosys data, so if the program is wrong, I'm too. The motherboard chipset is Nvidia nForce 430. Unfortunately, it was made just around or after the time they stopped adding their own audio chip in the MCP (motherboard chipset) and left it to motherboard manufactures to include whatever audio chip they wanted. By the way, this is the driver for your chipset, but as you can see it contains no audio, unlike the ones for previous nForce generations. So, for your first audio card, you need to download driver from your motherboard manufacturer, or try to use this from Realtek (second/third option). For the second card I think you need this from ATI. One thing I'm unsure of (because I don't have a Radeon) is that, in the Realtek link, there is also a driver for "ATI HDMI Audio Device", so you might try to use that for the second card if the ATI one doesn't want to install. Also, to be on the safe side, do as Sp0iLedBrAt told you and maybe post it here. GL

I had a same case recently with a friend's laptop and I never determined the cause. Similar symptoms - short hang about every 30 seconds, no matter what (not only video, the whole system, mouse too). Also with live CD and few reinstalls of different OSs. I suspected it was bluetooth stack and Intel (wired and/or wireless) network drivers, because that was showing in Process Monitor, but nothing helped.. I haven't seen him recently to ask him whether he had it diagnosed from the hardware side. Sorry if I couldn't help you more. GL

I would very much like to have this on any Intel processor newer than Core Duo. I am not sure anymore, but I think it's for XP SP2. What I would also hunt for: the latest hotfix for the SP that includes ntfs.sys, usb*.sys... well, I'd update everything I can. Not for security issues described in the bulletins (I think the dangers are overrated anyway), but because of bug fixes. I think there isn't a big difference of CPU/memory usage, performance etc. within one service pack. Also, most of them are cumulative, i.e. you can find newer version of Ntoskrnl.exe etc. (listed in your second KB number) which still has the funcitonality desribed in KB896256, but also many other bug fixes. GL

Substract the difference between the system requirements (real, not on paper) between the two OSes and you get the real value of the Microsoft tax. I might be old school, I'm used to the idea of the OS being an operating system, and not trying to make me coffee (no pun intended) even when I don't want it to. If I want it to make coffee, I'll teach it (obtain a program). Maybe I don't drink coffee at all? That's why "liters" are so popular. Win7 was supposed to be modular, but it's all but. The five different Win7 editions are only for segmenting the market, if you rely on them to select a list of features you need, they're useless. XP was no angel too, but with a lot of work it could be 'tamed down' to do only what you want. With Win7 it's impossible. Control is taken away from the user. Also, with new features come new incompatibilities, annoyances, DRMs and general restrictions. GL

I really wouldn't know, I disabled Plugin scanning a long time ago... GL

You made me download Quicktime installer again. No, it's not present there, I don't know where the QTAlternative/Lite author got it from. I don't see any file that, renamed or not, is equivalent to the files in the folder /Plugins. GL

You're welcome. Glad to share some of my experience GL

First of all, I don't think that your HDD temp is too high. But I'm by no means an expert, so you're welcome to seek second opinion. All laptops get hot, some more, some less. Often, warm exterior is a good sign - it means it's transferring heat properly from the interior. The biggest danger for a laptop is if the paths of air get clogged, and that could happen very easy. What I often do is just raise the laptop some more then its legs allow, with some small objects - bottle caps, pencil erasers etc. There are also many types of "laptop coolers" (stands with fans) to be bought. Working with any laptop on a "fluffy" cloth (example - blanket or tablecloth) for a longer period of time is a big no-no. From your pictures, everything seems fine. The hot spot is a vent and that's where the heat is coming out. The point when I'd start to worry about overheating would be when: 1. The computer is shutting down, bluescreening or throwing many errors (but I would check for viruses and/or OS errors first) 2. Any area of the laptop is so hot it's uncomfortable to touch - meaning, no matter how much you force yourself to leave your hand on it, after some (short) time you feel you can't stand it any more. I think any other "general" (mass market) brand of HDD would behave similarly, unless it's some specialized solution or SSD, but that's expensive. Again, I repeat, in my opinion, there's nothing to worry about the heat, especially if the laptop is that new. About the clicking: on those laptops I experienced clicking, it was one click every 1-3 minutes. I don't think the clicks are "normal HDD noise" - if we exclude the two cases: thermal recalibration and idle head parking, it should't be happening. I don't know how to determine if the former is happening, and maybe you still haven't eliminated the latter. In any case, I want to reassure you again, both cases don't mean there's anything wrong with the drive, they are just an annoyance. GL

It's a laptop I rarely use and it's not with me right now. When I have a chance, I will check, but it may take a while. Room temp is currently 24C. It clicked, but I just applied QuietHDD with parameters 254 for both AAM & APM. I think I also tried 192, but *I think* it was the same or worse... I never used the laptop for a very long time to be sure. Maybe it's still clicking. But definitely not loud for me to notice and no winding noise. I checked quickly and couldn't find firmware upgrade. There rarely is, unless there is some problem. About the firmware: That's the change I was talking about with 2,5'' Sata HDDs, they don't store the APM/AAM settings in firmware any more. It was different with IDE HDDs, but then I had most experience with desktop HDDs. So such programs are needed now. Hdparm is here. It's a port of Linux tool. I just unpacked the .exe with Universal Extractor, but installing should also be painless. Whichever program you use, it should be enough to just run it once and exit, the drive will keep the settings until the next reboot or sleep/suspend (of full computer or just the HDD). I mentioned NHC because I understood, maybe wrongly, that you need to keep it running to stop clicking. But it's a good thing to have running one of the two programs that can do it (NHC or QuietHDD) because computer/HDD can enter sleep/suspend mode any time and then the clicks return, otherwise my registry tweak in my first linked post should be enough. Hdparm and HDDScan can't do this without delving into some fairly complicated scripting, probably with other tools (to program to be invoked at return from sleep). GL

About the loud vs faint click, I'm still not sure what's going on. That's what my guess was about (if it's the same thing or not). Maybe you already modified the drive's behavior. Most of the manufacturers have different commands/interfaces to the drive, so it's never the same. Many IDE desktop HDDs (maxtors, maybe all?) could have their AAM set permanently, to survive after reboot and power down. I doubt this is the case here, but who knows... I was baffled to find out that Seagate doesn't use AAM at all due to some patent issue. What I wanted to say, check AAM also, it could definitely modify the sound (that's its purpose, after all). GL

Powercfg.exe is the command line equivalent to the Power Options control panel, has few more options than it and an ability to query devices, but that's mostly on Vista+. And it's pretty complicated to use, so for now forget about it. About the temperature, I don't think it's a problem. My Seagate's temp is 46°C, in similar room conditions as yours. In laptops there is very little room and poor ventilation, so HDDs are designed to take the heat, so to speak. Maybe you could investigate some more if you want to, download the HDD's datasheet from Toshiba. I just checked mine (mk1665gsx_datasheet.pdf from storage.toshiba.eu), Toshiba HDD in the laptop I don't use often, and it says Ambient Temperature: 5~55°C, but says nothing about the drive's temperature. So I still think it's not a problem, but I might have gotten something wrong, so again, if you're not sure, investigate what's normal/usual operating temperature for laptop HDD. Later: I found the data about my other drive, Seagate, which has Ambient Temperature 0-60, and for it it says: Ambient temperature is defined as the temperature of the environment immediately surrounding the drive. Actual drive case temperature should not exceed 65°C (149°F) within the operating ambient conditions. So, if we approximate, for the Toshiba it could be 60°C maybe. I forgot nearly everything about NHC, but I think it maybe installed a service, so it's constantly polling the HDD? Even if that's not the case, just setting the APM value once should be enough to stop the clicks, if the laptop doesn't go into standby. QuietHDD should also work just as good. What I would do, is try deactivating NHC and booting with no program of this kind, then trying the command line hdparm.exe -B 192 -S 0 hda (later, changing 192 to 254 and/or 255 after reboot) and working on the laptop for a longer time (several hours) each time to learn its behavior. Yes, it takes time, I did it too... GL

Yes, it sound like the HDD. But for the cause, I'm not so sure, it can be many things... Maybe another value besides 192 might work better (254 or 255), another program might work better (yes, I had tried NHC a long time ago and wasn't satisfied with it, but if it's the only thing that works for you, you might have no choice...), it might be the drive performing thermal recalibration, it might indeed be something wrong with the drive (but if, as you say, NHC stops it, it's highly unlikely)... [edit] Messerschmitt, I think I lost the difference between "loud" and "faint" clicks, and I'm not sure which happens when... Have the "faint" ones stopped now and we're talking only about the "loud" one (+ winding), as heard in the sample? Which program(s) are you using currently? Which OS? Have you disabled turning off of HDDs in Power Properties and/or tried using Powercfg.exe? Are you sure that "loud" isn't the same as "faint", just... well... louder? GL

I suspect that Apple has pressured the "developer" (he's really a packer) with some kind of legal action, so I'm pessimistic about the future of QT Alternative / QT Lite... But we'll see. GL