GrofLuigi

Maybe it's just another font? (Missing in one of the installations) GL

If you're old school, you'd know they are different characters. One is soft return, other hard return - forgot which is which. Try pressing "enter" and "shift"-"enter" to see the difference. You can have them both in a document. Of course, maybe your case is something else, defined in Korean language. GL

Most of the time, the policy is linked to one registry value. "Enabled" sets it to 1, Disabled sets it to "0" and "Not Defined" deletes it from the registry. This happens when the policy is applied (during boot or at other times). As for myself, I prefer to find the values with regmon and set them to my liking, thus avoiding the overhead (deliberate tattooing?). Other's experience may vary and you must be very careful while doing this. GL

Update: I've delleted all *.manifest files I could find on my disk. Nothing broke up, except firefox, so I returned them there. I don't know if it's just me, but everything seems faster. The UI looks a little more like Win2000, which is what I wanted. Now, if anyone has any suggestions as to disable more parts of the themes component? I'm looking into editing the *.theme files, but not as usual - to apply unsigned themes, but to kill'em all. GL

Hi, If have Windows XP themes disabled and I never intend to use them, is it safe to delete *.manifest files for various applications? Or they are compiled to depend on this file and will break if it's not present? I know that they can also have it embedded. I'm asking not from the aspect of programming, but as an ordinary user (although I think reducing the number of dlls called can reduce memory usage/bloat and benefit stability). Also, can I kill WindowsLogon.manifest, logonui.exe.manifest and WindowsShell.Manifest? I'm afraid it won't boot. GL

It was not my post, but nevermind.

You're kidding, right?

I've seen it once started on Win2000 when a driver was missing. What does it REALLY do, I don't know. GL

You are missing a VERY IMPORTANT distinction between the car and Windows - you are buying the car, but you aren't buying Windows at all. You are buying a LICENSE to USE Windows, and you don't own the source code or the actual OS binaries - nor can you legally do whatever you want with them (including bypass things like security mechanisms and built-in limitations, unless the methods or mechanisms to do so are provided you by Microsoft or an agent thereof). Therefore, at least in the US and certain other countries, you can indeed be legally limited in usage and functionality by the owner of the product you've licensed in almost any way they see fit (read that EULA you clicked yes to when you powered on your machine or agreed to when you installed Windows). You're comparing apples to oranges in the car vs Windows analogy, and unfortunately for you if you don't like this arrangement your other options are open source or open source. Note that you get the same sort of EULA when you purchase MacOS - you don't own that either, and are under similar obligations and rights from Apple. Since this is heavily offtopic here, you could, as a moderator, split this topic if you (or anyone else) wants to continue this discussion. Although, I'm a little tired of bashing this to death. You can find loads of better arguments than I can ever provide on any good Free/Open Source website. And, of course the current situation is as you (and others) describe. I never said the oposite. I was talking about how it SHOULD BE. It's a matter of principle. Eula is not a law, and that stuff... On apples and oranges - both the car dealer and Microsoft are happy to take my money as good as they are. If I could say "Microsoft, you don't own my money. I just licence them to you" then I would stop complaining. GL

Sorry for double post, I just noticed this: While I agree with your conclusions/explanations and respect your knowledge, this sentence sent chills down my spine. With this concept I will never agree. Accepting the risk of being struck or worse for offtopic, I will just try to be short: If you BUY a car, are you not allowed to open the hood? Are you not allowed to change oil yourself? Are you not allowed to install non-factory (better) parts (i.e. tires)? Are you not allowed to smash it into a wall if you feel like it (of course, assuming nobody gets hurt)? What have I bought when I bought XP? Mr Snrub, nothing personal, it was not directed at you. I just see this much too often recently, I had to let it off my chest. GL

Cluberti: Of course I was talking about the outgoing conn. limit, first implemented by Microsoft in XP SP2, aka Event ID 4226. That's what the OP asked, although the discussion slipped towards XP a little. I didn't know there was a limit on the inbound connections. Well, it might be the same as the familiar XP limit of 10 users connecting to the machine simultaneously (file and printer sharing AND/OR terminal services) - that's what it differentiates it from the Server. But a limit on ANY inbound tcp/ip connection is a different thing in my book. Oh well, I guess we could just go on living with it as before, as nobody has reported problems with that yet. Ignorance is sometimes bliss... and that confirms the old one "if you want server, buy server OS". 65535 is another funny number, apart from being nice round in hex, I don't know if there is any reason to limit the number of total connections... But if we accept the above logic of server vs workstation OS, no objections here. Mr Snrub: Very nice explanation, and very true. But, we may never know if it was effective and if, since its introduction, has saved millions of machines out there or not. I look at the issue (of virus busting) the other way around: yet today, if you check your firewall, you see tens of hits per minute. I think that pre-SP2 machines are still majority on the Internet (and infected SP2 machines). So, if you are the target, it makes no difference - you are still being hit, and if unprotected, this limit won't save you. Might be OK for the future, but by that time virus writers will catch up... What is not OK is the manner of implementation (breaking existing programs) and the inability to turn it off. As I have said, I have witnessed with my own eyes how this thing cripples P2P on slow connections (although by that time, all P2P programs had configuration options to lower the number of conn. attempts per second - nevertheless, Event ID 4226 appeared almost instantly). So, until new programs/protocols appear that implement the connection more robustly (as you suggest), we're stuck with what... 100s of P2P programs that we used until recently? Microsoft appeared to care about legacy applications in the past (even dragged DOS compatibility for decades), but now... Wait, wasn't it around SP2 when they introduced their own P2P protocol? Everything is just too convenient here. GL

Exactly. But they shouldn't advertize it as a security enhancement. GL

Aside from LEGAL standpoint, what about TECHNICAL reasons? I'm not familiar with the standards, but where in the world is this limitation defined (apart from Microsoft)? Something like RFC or some ISO page... Anybody knows? Or (what I suspect) did Microsoft completely INVENT this for our own good (as usual)? I haven't heard it exists in any other OS. I'm talking about the 10 half-open connection limit introduced in XP SP2. Since the original poster said that it's the same in Vista, I have no reason to believe the opposite. Before someone comes up with the usual "it's no big deal" defence, I must say that I have witnessed with my own eyes the impact of this limitation. I had dialup only until recently and this limit devastated P2P programs. As insane as it might seem, they worked quite satisfactory before SP2. This limitation CRIPPLED the NUMBER of PEERS that the program connects to, effectively KILLING P2P programs. I think this extremity (dialup speed) showed the true intent behind this artificial limitation. And let's not forget that, by itself, any P2P program is not necessary illegal. For example, Skype also uses P2P technology (but I don't know if it's affected by this). The alleged purpose, limiting the speed of spreading of worms/trojans, is quite effectively debunked here. GL

Just to let you know, I've replaced it on my installation and it's working fine (innounp 0.19 with UniExtractor 1.5). GL

http://www.imagedupeless.com/en/index.html can be adjusted to show up to variable percentage of differences between images, builds catalog... Payware. GL

Yes, I know. and I've always selected it in each nLite operation I've done. Sometimes it removes it and sometimes it doesn't. 'Search for people' is in %ProgramFiles%\Outlook Express\wabfind.dll. I bet that dll gets registered by windows anyway. GL

Two main suspects in my book: NLA and WMI. If the connection is working, but the icon doesn't stop animating, manual fix: right click on the icon, "open network connections", press f5, close window. GL

I don't know if it pertains to your case, but in the old times windows determined if previous installation existed by searching all drives for "win.com" (regardless of its size, location or version number). You could try doing so yourself and deleting/renaming that file if it exists. I have done so in the past and fooled windows into thinking no previous version is installed, while the whole directory structure of C:\ remained intact. GL

Never ever! If I have to work on someone else's computer, I disable it temporarily and enable it back if they really insist. But while I had some reasons why I wanted to turn it off, nobody ever knew why they want it on except for "it comes that way". This piece of **** led to DRM and all the unpleasant surprises coming with vista etc. It was the start of taking control over users' computers and using it for... nothing. For own purposes, just to show off: "we do it because we can". "If we make our users indiferrent to taking over of such small things, we can get away with anything." And about computers being fast enough: think about how FASTER would they be without this. I'm not talking about this effect alone, but all the similar effects found in the well known 'performance' tab. Hell, Nlite and Vlite are living proof that many people don't want this stuff. No matter how hard I tried, I just can't find ONE usefull purpose of this thing. As for aesthetics, I consider this to be one of the least amusing/pretty sights. Of course, this is just my opinion on the subject and everyone can do whatever he/she wants. GL

Microsoft TweakUI can do that. Or registry editing. Or... If you need additional info, search for "Places Bar". GL

OK, it seems we have a little misunderstanding here. No worries, I wasn't quite clear. I meant this: You take an empty computer. You install XP from CD. You throw the CD away. You install Service Pack. You install many hotfixes. Now you look inside c:\WINDOWS\Driver Cache\i386\. There are driver.cab, sp2.cab, and also many .sys .exe .dll files which are newer version than then ones in the .cab-s. My question was: can I delete the old versions inside the cab and replace them with newer versions? The goal is to have only one driver.cab and nothing else. I'm afraid that, upon installation of a new device (maybe plugging in an USB device, when windows also searches for drivers) windows would not find the driver files. I guess, the question is: Is there a link between the files in c:\WINDOWS\Driver Cache\i386\ and .cat files on already installed windows? Does windoze remember their position? GL

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysintern...essmonitor.mspx uses it too. GL

hello KRYOGENIUS, Thank you for answering. Will this work on a 'live' insstallation on hard disk? No CD involved? Windows file protection will not step in? Anyway, I'll make a backup and try it. GL

As per the title, after installation of XPSP2 and MANY hotfixes, there are many files scattered in C:\Windows\Driver Cache\i386\ directory. Can I compress them all into driver.cab (like Nlite does) or they are 'protected' somehow by SFC or catalog files? In this case, are there any additional steps I could do? Is WinRar suitable for the job (only adding/deleting files to the .cab)? GL

I'm not sure if we're talking about the same thing, but try this: Open RegEdit Navigate to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID Press Ctrl-F Enter "fade task" It will find a key with numbers and letters on the left hand side, and on the right will be: (Default)-REG_SZ_"Fade Text" (It will look like that exactly. If not, it isn't what you need, keep searching) Delete the key with letters and numbers on left side. Thiss kills the fading out of the screen when "Turn off computer" appears. Applied it to many computers in last 5 years, no adverse effect. Don't know about themes, never used one. Works on XP and 2000. I'd write a .reg file for you, but I dont have the key on any of my computers (killed a long time ago). Hence the reason for this long-wound explanation. PS: There is still some dimming going on, but much gentler to the eye. Another thing could be your laptop's EXTREME slowness (old? bad drivers? infected?). I've seen Pentium I 200's struggling with this. If it's not that old, things to check: graphic card drivers, AGP port driver (part of the chipset driver) (if the laptop is AGP based), antivirus/antispyware, event log. GL