GrofLuigi

The reason I didn't post explanations was I don't really remember any more... Long time ago I played with it. Now I only transfer these settings without thinking, and while they work for me on XP, I couldn't make them work on Server2003 (so that's why I didn't post any numbers either). Glad I helped some though GL

The key is HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\fwdrv Interesting values are: KernelModuleAuth MaxBufferSize AlwaysSecure ErrPopup GL

There are tons of fax programs out there - most of them install as printer driver. Some of what I tried (but on XP) are: SnappyFax, MightyFax, 32Bit Fax... WinFax is one of the heavyweights, but if it works for you, use it. I can't see a reason why any of them wouldn't work on 2003 (apart from manufacturers wanting to make more money and sell you separate versions). I think that Win2008 is too new for those programs to be tested on it. Oddly enough, some time ago I looked for free one and couldn't find any. GL

I've been experimenting with permissions for quite some time and I would like to share a method that led me to quite nice speedup (on several computers). It's about XP SP2 where the only user is THE ADMINISTRATOR (or possibly any other administrator) and that user has solved the issue of security in any way he deemed and verified suitable, so security implications of this method would not jeopardize the machine. So from now on, let's assume that the user has no concerns about security and only worries about how to speed up his/her machine to the highest level possible. The goal of this method is to equalize security restrictions (not necessarily to minimize them) in order to shorten the code path as much as possible. What this means is, we want to have the least exceptions we can allow. In the past, I experimented with NTFS and registry permissions a lot, but always came to a point when I rendered my computer unusable due to 'overzealousness' or 'forgetting myself' and digging too deep. This time I found the perfect solution: DON'T EVER GO TO THE ROOT LEVEL OF ANYTHING, BUT STOP ONE LEVEL BELOW IT. START/WORK FROM THERE. When you see any object that has different permissions from its parent (excluding the root level), you invoke its properties and in the security tab click the "advanced" button and there check the boxes that say "Inherit from parent..." and "Replace permissions on all child objects..."; additionally, in the upper listview, check if any item says "not inherited" and remove it. Of course, your common sense applies. No two machines are identical and there are some objects that have legitimate excuse to differ from others. Most common I've encountered are those related to MSI (Microsoft installer) which, depending on the subversion, wants to grant "Everyone" access to some objects. Understandable, having in mind the problems it had with Windows Update some time ago. Then, there are some "protections" which are laughable if they rely on security tokens, but some can be quite nasty if poked (starforce and kin, but I never had those, so don't really know). Then, there are odd ones that give wanton permissions to everyone (I've noticed with parts of Adobe applications). I guess that's how they overcome the problems with apps not working/installing after the 'great tightening of security' in XP SP2. It doesn't matter, because you're already administrator and have all the rights you want. So let's try it: When AccessEnum is started, it can scan both drives and the registry. Let's start with drives: Click "Directory", select your drive and "Scan" it. Every time you see an object in the listview, after the scan has finished, right-click on it, select "properties", "security" tab of the dialog that pops up, and "advanced" button. Then refer to the paragraph I wrote above (below the one in capital letters). Any non-bootable partition can be excluded from the rule printed with capital letters above and just have permissions set on the top level. It makes life easier. For the bootable drive, remember not to touch permissions on the drive itself or on any of the top-level directories. Below that, feel free to equalize everything. Same applies to the registry: Scan each of the branches (HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT, HKEY_CURRENT_USER, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, HKEY_USERS, HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG), but don't touch THEIR permissions. You can expect some 'stubborn' entries: locked by some process, recreated on reboot (most notorious: group policy entries), or some rare ones that you will need to 'take ownership' of. If any of them 'resists' too hard, don't push it! Leave it alone and investigate later. So, you 'equalize' most of them, say a prayer and reboot - you can expect nice 'snappiness' of the operating system. Bonus: there are some entries that get written all the time (user tracking/instrumentation/adaptive menus etc.) which I treat 'the reverse way': remove rights of "Everyone" to SetValue/Create Subkey. Examples: ShellNoRoam/MuiCache; Explorer\StartPage; App Management\ARPCache... There is nice speedup in there too. And please remember, I never said this would be easy or quick! (meaning: if you find too many entries, don't blame me!) And as a final thought, this method could possibly be scripted with subinacl or similar tools, but it would take much smarter person than me. DISCLAIMER: SECURITY RESTRICTIONS EXIST FOR A REASON AND ALTHOUGH I DON'T KNOW MICROSOFT'S OFFICIAL POSITION ON THAT, I'M SURE THEY WOULD NOT BE TOO HAPPY WITH SOMEONE MESSING WITH THEM. ADITIONALLY, YOU COULD VERY EASILY B0RK YOUR SYSTEM. GL

Hi, I have similar problem SINCE 1 DAY AGO. I use Opera (slightly customized - User Javascripts, don't know if that is the reason) and I can't switch to linear (standard) mode - I click on options and nothing happens. If I change it with IE, which works OK, it doesn't apply to Opera. Yes, I deleted cookies and logged out. It has happened to me in other forums too (forum software upgrade?) but the change of settings in another browser 'stuck'. I think this mode is insane - who wants to see only one post of a thread? Except maybe when pointing out a solution to a problem, but even then context is welcome. GL * Edit* Solved by cleaning cookies twice and/or rebooting. The settings 'took'.

Yes. The driver crashes very early in the boot phase. Also tried increasing its buffer... Search on the Internet has led me to several places that claim it just doesn't work on 2k3... That's very sad. GL

Or complicated, but rule-based one? That works on Server2003 used as a workstation (as per the guide)? GL

Can it (be forced) to work? The driver crashes on startup. Compatibility mode doesn't help. I have some well defined rules that built up over the years and hate to search/try/learn new firewalls. But, if it couldn't be made to work, a recomendation of a similar simple rule-based firewall wouldn't hurt. GL

I found out that for installing printer drivers on XP you absolutely have to have srclient.dll, even if you have disabled/nlited system restore. Don't know if recent Nlite builds keep it (since I've seen the dll mentioned many times on this board, but nothing speciffic about this, only together with framedyn.dll). Or maybe I had deleted it manually, but in any case, no printer driver would install without it present. GL

With NLite + a lot of hotfixes, at one time I had a similar problem. When windows file protection was left enabled (the default), device manager picked up USB Human Interface Device (or something simiral) instead of USB Mouse, although both drivers were from windows. The solution was to "update driver" and manually choose USB mouse. Or to disable (patch) windows file protection. Might not apply to your case. Also, might be fixed in newer versions of NLite (I don't remember). GL

Yes it is! I would have posted earlier, but thought it was just my weird Opera configuration, hard to troubleshoot. Thank you. GL

It doesn't work here too (Opera 9.50 beta, version 9745 and few versions before). Although I have some non-standard user javascripts that sometimes break entire javascript functionality, at least this feature (go to new post) worked until December. I think the reason might be, for example with this thread, that the button that points to the latest post of this thread is: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=111182&view=getnewpost while the actual page when opened has the URL modified like this: http://www.msfn.org/board/post-broken-t111182.html&pid=730511#entry730511Notice that it has part of the topic title in the URL. GL

It's KB929280 (I guess updated version). GL

Colour of the wires doesn't mean anything. If you don't have any info or scheme you could only fry your motherboard. Although both ps/2 and usb are types of serial ports, I don't think they are interchangable. I might be wrong, but I've seen usb mice that work with ps/2 only with their own adapter - which would mean that there's no universal solution. Do you have any schematics? GL

The errors are all related to Internet Explorer. Since you integrate IE7, I don't know if that's normal or not - I haven't used it. Maybe someone who did can help you further. In any case, I'd say that you could expect eventual problems only with IE, and if IE7 'took' - all is OK. Another thing I noticed is MMC3 - I'm pretty sure it's included in RVMUpdatePack2.1.11, so I think it's redundant. Hope this helped a bit. GL

From what I've read about it (meaning I've never actually seen it) something completely oposite would be needed - to add components. GL

Call me old school, but I believe OS should be just that - operating system. To enable your computer to boot and support drivers. Microsoft has proved in many ocasions (as court rulings said) that it tries to kill off competition by bunding a similar functionality program - from IE vs Netscape through Media Player (Windows N) to desktop search engine, to name just the well known ones. Additionally, a general one-size-fits-all program will never be as good as specialized one. For example, anyone who is serious about video editing would never use Windows Movie Maker, but a specialized program. And that's bloat for the thousand others that don't use it - and ever for that person after he has played with it a couple of times. Also, there are many 'features' that seemed like a good idea to Microsoft at the time of launching an OS (and maybe they were, but never took off) or were made obsolete over the time, but they are installed on every computer in the world anyway (AOL and other ISPs bundled with Windows 98 - right at your face on the desktop, web folders (how many people actually use them?), briefcase, clipbook viewer etc. (if you want more, just see nlite ). And yet another category that is incredibly useful for the ones who use it, but total bloat for those who don't - terminal services, front page extensions, languages and keyboards, Internet games... I would not have a problem with those or with WMP11/IE7 (to get back on topic) if they were just a bunch of files, but they take literally thousands of registry entries (com/ole and filetypes), which are read all the time by windows and significantly slow down normal computer operation. And in latest service packs there is no way of removing most of the components - add/remove just hides the shortcuts. So that's what I meant. (And please note I've not even touched Vista). GL

I agree with most of the points with you. Furthermore, I'm not so convinced that Vista is better for quadcore or higher than XP - I have not seen any fact-based proof of this - only assumptions. Even if we set aside that on most benchmarcks it shows lower performance. GL

One word: bloat. GL

Maybe something like this? I don't have Office 2007, but in O2003 it could be done through something like that. GL

To back up my claims, here's a list of files in system32 folder that query the OptionValue entry: advapi32.dll credui.dll cscdll.dll dhcpmon.dll filemgmt.dll kernel32.dll localsec.dll lsasrv.dll msgina.dll msv1_0.dll netcfgx.dll netid.dll ntdll.dll ntkrnlpa.exe ntoskrnl.exe ntshrui.dll pautoenr.dll rshx32.dll samsrv.dll services.exe sfc_os.dll smlogcfg.dll smss.exe syssetup.dll winlogon.exe Found through searching unicode strings. There may be others, this is a heavily nLited system. It seems this is an (undocumented by Microsoft?) way of determining if we're in safe mode or not. GL

This is the Internet's word of mouth... a very dangerous thing. Here is the original (?) article about getting the Security tab appear in XP home. Notice it suggests naming it OptionValuf to differ from the original. Rshx32.dll is patched... but what about the others? Are you ready to patch your whole OS? Not to mention that I still fail to comprehend how this dll relates to SFC... But maybe that's just me. Or THAT is the method that the author has discovered. But I wouldn't risk to patch it on a live system (while I don't have that problem with sfc_os.dll). I haven't tried this tweak and don't recommend it to anyone. All I know is, last time I created an OptionValue in the registry (I like to tinker with Regmon a lot, and I saw many applications were trying to read it) I lost my soundcard and other drivers. I believe this is the value that gets set when you choose which flavor of Safe Mode you want - with networking, etc... And by the way, many drivers don't start in safe mode. So... do you really want to be constantly in safe mode? GL

By far, the cheapest way would be to buy USB hub + external USB floppy and carry them around as one unit (never disconnect the drive). If you meant internal floppy drive with USB port, I'm not sure if such a thing exists... GL

Those look suspicious to me: Drivers ATM Support Modem Support Extensible Storage Engine (not likely) Application Layer Gateway (also not likely) Retry without removing them. GL

1. It's definitely WMI (the exe is even in that folder). 2a. REGEDIT4 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters] "DisableDHCPMediaSense"=dword:0 "DisableMediaSenseEventLog"=dword:0 2b. Set Network Connections and/or Network Location Awareness to Auto 3. Suggestions: WMI and SENS always invite their friend Com+ Event System to join in. Set it to manual and see for yourself. I always enable/disable all three together. Same for Browser, Server & Workstation (maybe even NetBios Helper if you use Microsoft Networking) - one is pointless without the others. GL