HyperHacker

I was just looking through my services list and found "Uidsios25a", which is disabled (though I don't remember seeing it before, so I couldn't have disabled it), runs C:\Windows\System32\label.exe, and uses an account with no name and some password. This name turns up nothing on Google, and label.exe just seems to be the command line utility for setting drive labels. What the heck?

Whenever Windows starts to break down to the point that it becomes a major problem, which is usually about every 6 to 8 months. I intend to switch to using images soon though. :-p

That funny you say that, it seems millions of people a day flood our boarders to gain access to the american dream. That's because they have to cross through the USA in order to get to Canada. Anyway in Control Panel -> Folder Options -> View there's an option called Restore Previous Folder Windows At Logon; this opens up whatever folders were open when you shut down. Try unchecking that.

Well I bought a TV tuner card today, "EasyTV MPEG WDM TVTuner"... It's cheap so I don't expect it to work that well, but I would expect it to at least work. Exact same problem after installing the drivers: This device cannot start. (Code 10). Should I be buying a new motherboard or something? Really ticks me off. Also it's still forgetting the display settings and position of the desktop icons and taskbar. I've been on vacation for a while so I didn't find anything related to that.

Or the controller and/or motherboard has a problem.

Yeah, it's especially annoying if you're holding Shift trying to think of what to type, or playing a game and happen to hit it 5 times in a row, and *boink* a dialog pops up. >_>

I'd suggest you just not use a program that installs spyware toolbars.

I noticed the HOSTS file is overridden for certain addresses on microsoft.com.

Well the adapter was a good idea. Everything's working nice again except for one small problem - when Windows starts up, it forgets the primary monitor's display settings and puts it at 640x480 at 60hz. If nothing else I can probably write a quick program to switch it back on startup. The secondary one (connected to the DVI port) starts up at 1152x864@75 just like I left it (the highest that monitor can go at >60hz), 3D works, hibernation and standby work, and it's not slow. If anyone does know how to make it not forget the resolution and refresh rate that'd be great - it's probably a problem with those dumb video drivers (but at least they're not crashing) - but like I said it's not a huge problem. As for the PCI card, well, I guess my brother might like it as a replacement for his really really old card. [edit] Hm, maybe it's more of a problem than I thought. Since it starts up in a low resolution, it scrambles the desktop icons because a lot of them are outside the work area. Setting it back to the resolution I wanted was easy enough, but it's too late to avoid moving the icons. It actually seems to forget where they're placed - as well as where the taskbar is, defaulting it to the right side of the second monitor when I want it at the right of the first - just as it forgets the display settings. Even the icons on the second monitor, which stays at the correct settings, get moved back to where they were before. [more editing] I see in the registry, at HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\VIDEO, there's a lot of keys with CLSIDs for names specifying various video settings that I've used. Maybe I should delete some? Also I heard of a NoSaveSettings key, but it didn't exist, and I'd assume the default is off. [guess what, it's an edit] I found something interesting in the Windows troubleshooter (for once): I'm just going to stick to using the adapter though.

When you view the network connections, try disabling the connection and then enabling it again. (Right-click on the icon.) This tends to solve a lot of my networking problems. Also, this should be obvious but make sure you're close enough to get a good signal. Try to avoid having to go through walls, and turn off things that might cause interference. It might be worth going to some other place that has wireless such as a restaurant or Internet café, and see if you can find their network; that would tell you if the PCMCIA card works. Also it could be the router refusing any more connections; try turning off one of the Macs.

Have you tried resetting your connection? Power off/unplug all modems and routers for a minute, then reboot. (600 posts!)

Alright, well I called the local Circuit City because they're really the only electronics place in town. As expected they're charging a whopping 15 dollars which is more than I have at the moment, so I'll have to wait a little while to get one. However when I was looking them up I noticed they mention "this adapter has enough bandwidth for up to 1600x1200 @ 60hz" and such. Am I going to need a really expensive one to use high resolutions? Currently I have 1600x1200 on one monitor and 1152x864 on the other (I'd like to go up to at least 1280x1024, but the monitor can't do it), and I simply can't live with less than 16-bit colour (uuuuuuugly) or less than 70hz refresh (it burns!). I fear if I buy one of these adapters it won't support such high resolutions. For that matter, the video card itself only goes up to 1024x768 when TV Out is enabled (it can do that fine as long as the TV is disabled in Windows; it just shows the same thing as the monitor). I'm not sure whether it does this because TVs don't support such high resolutions, or if it's actually limited to such low resolution when using 2 devices.

I think the repair install from an HP disc would wipe everything. I had one a few years ago and all it did was wipe the disk and copy everything back from the install CDs. If you have or can get an actual Windows XP disc, then the repair install should do it without wiping out whatever's there.

Or a command line app.

So what you're saying is you want to have multiple copies of a file, but in reality, all of the copies are just pointers to the original so as not to take up space? The term for this is hardlinks; creating multiple file entries for one physical file. There's a command line tool to do this in Windows but I like using HardlinkShellExt myself. If you make a hardlink of File A and name it File B, whenever any program tries to access File B, it really accesses File A instead. Thus you don't waste disk space, and every copy is synchronized (change one and they all change), because they're really all the same copy. About your specific example, though, it sounds like you just want to have the same EXE available in multiple directories without copying it to each one. In that case just put it in some short directory like C:\Apps and add this to your PATH environment variable (in Control Panel -> System -> Advanced -> Environment Variables).

I had a similar problem before; whenever it stopped working the solution was to go into Network Connections and disable, then re-enable the connection. I also made a batch file to do this: @echo off ipconfig /release ipconfig /renew

Well, I reinstalled Windows. Nothing changed. I can't decide whether to switch to Linux or just toss the whole thing out the window and go amish. [edit] I found a workaround for the slowness: Swap the monitors (big one back on AGP) and re-position them in Windows so the big monitor is on the left like it is in real life. That doesn't fix the slowdown, but the small one is pretty much just for throwing status displays, Winamp, and desktop icons into, so it doesn't really matter if it's drawing a bit slow; the big one is where I would put web browsers, text editors etc, so as long as it's fast, it's all good. Although, one side effect to this arrangement: Setting up wallpapers is a big pain. [image here] (Actual image on the left, result on the right. You might want to avoid clicking that if you're at work; it's nothing major, but why risk it?) [more edit] "System Standby Failed --------------------------- The device driver for the 'ATI Technologies, Inc. RAGE XL PCI' device is preventing the machine from entering standby. Please close all applications and try again. If the problem persists, you may need to update this driver." So at least Windows knows that there's a problem now, and doesn't just try anyway and crash. Not so with hibernation though. :-/

A dual-head card or adapter would be ideal, but the video card I just bought cost everything I'll have for a while, and I can only return it for half what I paid (technically half the cost was shipping), so I'd like to avoid ending up not being able to use it. The AGP card does have DVI, but I can't say how well it works - the drivers crash (BSOD) when I try to use the TV-Out as a separate monitor, which isn't really a good sign, and I have no DVI devices to test with. I don't see any BIOS updates for the AGP card. Also, hibernation still doesn't work with this card, which makes me think it's a problem with Windows or the BIOS. I guess in the worst case I'll have to trade my AGP card for my mom's, which is dual-head but only 16MB. (She only uses one monitor, but that was the best deal we could find.) I fear it won't run a lot of the 3D apps I use, though. (Nintendo 64 emulation, mostly. Not high-end games, but more than just spinning cubes.) Plus that still leaves me with a useless second card. BTW, thanks for all the help everyone. [edit] Alright, I found a workaround for the SDL bug, and got the BIOS setup/Windows boot screen on the screen I wanted as a bonus. Simple solution: Make the PCI card primary both in the BIOS and in Windows. I didn't want to do this before because I feared the card I was using might die at any moment leaving me unable to access the BIOS settings to switch back to AGP, but hopefully that shouldn't be an issue now. 3D is working on both screens too, so that's the big problem out of the way. However, Windows still won't recover from hibernation (tried S1/POS and S3/STR in the BIOS, with Call VGA BIOS on and off). It brings both monitors up at the correct resolution and refresh rate to a black screen and freezes. If I plug in a USB device it powers on, then off again a few seconds later. Also, it still won't use both cards if AGP is set to primary in the BIOS. Oh, and I also found the source of the colour problems: bad video settings. :-p [edit] Oh yeah, and ever since I made the PCI card primary in Windows, every window redraws UNBEARABLY SLOW, especially translucent ones. It makes a text editor completely unuseable with translucency enabled, which I do all the time. >_<

ARGH. I bought a new PCI card - an ATI Rage XL 8MB - and it hasn't helped at all! I get the exact same problems. This is really getting to be a problem, as I was hoping to develop some 3D programs, but they won't run when the second monitor is enabled.

Yeah, most if not all archive programs can split the file into pieces.

Jeez, for the amount this guy's spending on bandwidth, he could have bought at least one new phone. You'd think he would at least remove the pictures, that would probably help.

Alright, I did a BIOS update. That fixed a few things; my onboard LAN controller seems to work now (not that I need it). Seems the only things it didn't fix are the floppy drive (pfft who cares) and this video problem. :angrym:

Crap, I just found a big problem. With the PCI card set as primary, which is the only way I can use both monitors, programs that use OpenGL through SDL - which the 3D apps I make do - crash! Can't really tell if it's because of having 2 monitors or because the PCI card has no hope of doing 3D, I would guess it's the latter though. That means I have to switch cards and turn off the second monitor whenever I want to do 3D!

OK, sorry for the delay but I tried this with no success. When the PCI card is set as the primary display, Windows doesn't even show it as using any IRQ. The AGP card is always on IRQ 16 which I can't even select for the PCI slots in the BIOS. I can't change the IRQ used for AGP, nor is there any PNP OS setting. Disabling the serial and parallel ports didn't help either.

That's what they told me to do too. It was one of the first things I tried.