HyperHacker

I checked, my copy and the downloaded one are identical (after all it is the exact same file I used before). The problem seems to have just disappeared though O_o but who knows if it'll start again.

This is a problem that I've had basically as long as I've been using XP, but I never really paid any attention to it until now. I want to use the "at" command to run a music player of some sort at a given time. If I do this: at 03:53 c:\progra~1\winamp\winamp f:\music\misc\bananaphone.mp3 It just doesn't run, shows an error when I run "at" again (just "error" next to the item and it's rescheduled for tomorrow) and the system log says it can't find the file. The same happens with any other program. I can run F:\test.bat, and it works, but the program (tried both Winamp and VLC) doesn't create a window, so I have to terminate the process to stop it; also, it runs a second instance of Winamp even though it's configured not to allow this. I suspect the problem may be related to the program being run as LOCAL SYSTEM instead of my own account, but I dunno what to do about it.

That page says during setup, though. It could be something different when Windows is running; bad driver perhaps?

Ever since I reinstalled Windows, I've been having a strange problem with proxies. I use Proxomitron which acts as a proxy running on my system to filter out ads and junk. If I configure browsers to not use any proxy, they work fine, but when they're set to use Proxomitron (even when it's disabled, not filtering things) both IE and Firefox randomly fail to find the page. Firefox for some reason just shows a blank page while IE shows its standard error page. I was having a problem a few days ago where Firefox would show its error page and not make any more connections, but this seems to have just stopped somehow. I doubt it's a Proxomitron bug, as I've been using this same version and configuration for years and it's never been any problem. The log window shows it sending a request then closing the connection: When working normally, it doesn't close the connection until it gets a reply. It happens on every web site. Just refreshing brings up the page, but it's quite annoying.

FYI, disabling right click does nothing except make things a pain. All of those options are available elsewhere and there's not much harm you can do with them.

If the new RAM doesn't work or isn't compatible, all sorts of things can go wrong.

Given that you have ")(/->00'.(0" bytes available, which is about 800 million of no unit, I'd say some system file is corrupt.

Hm, if you can change a different account's password at that prompt, I wonder if doing so would bypass the need to change your own?

It asked me if I wanted to download it. O_o

Is it always a certain song? Did you update anything? Does anything else odd happen?

Yeah, if you know their password, you've already breached all manner of security.

It's probably be easier to just write a new zipfldr.dll, compatible with Explorer, that supports other formats. You might even be able to stop it snooping inside them and reduce bloat that way.

I think 1.5.0.2 was just to fix some exploits.

All you need to do is go to Control Panel -> System -> Advanced -> Environment Variables, find or create HOMEDRIVE and HOMEPATH, and edit them. At least, it should work, unless they're some sort of special variable. BTW what I do is use the /k switch to run a batch file that does things such as show the system uptime, change to a specific directory, etc. Didn't know about that AutoRun key... *tries it* Hey, neat! Though I notice it runs before /k, so if you put in a cd command or drive letter (eg "F:") then run "cmd /k cd ..\Windows", it'll try to go to F:\Windows, not C:\Windows. That might interfere with the "Command prompt here" hacks people like to put on their context menus.

I prefer this one. Does basically the same thing. Hm, would I get better performance if I: A) Keep the page file on my Windows partition, or B ) Put it on the other 20GB hard drive in my computer, which is slow (~5200RPM) and I think shares an IDE channel with my DVD burner? I have 256MB of RAM. I only ever use that drive to store backups and it has 4.62GB free; I could partition it and make one of the partitions a page file since I rarely access it. BTW, ctfmon.exe only runs for me when I have the language bar enabled. Maybe because I don't have Office. [edit] Drat you, B) smilie. And drat you too, overzealous censors.

Alright, well after much trial, error, and the power going out, I figured out the startup problem. I have to have both Microsoft Acoustic Echo Canceller (aec) and Microsoft Kernel DRM Audio Descrambler Filter (drmkaud) enabled to prevent this. This explains the freeze when trying to open drives/folders; it plays a sound when I do this, probably any thread trying to play a sound gets hung up for a while. (Not sure why it'd do it when hitting Ctrl+Alt+Delete though. Maybe it's handled by the same thread as the startup sound.) Thing is I don't want any of that DRM crap (I don't even use WMP) and I don't even know what that other one does but it certainly sounds (no pun intended) unnecessary. So can I disable these without messing things up?

Don't use Outlook? There's a lot of other good E-mail clients.

I just reinstalled WinXP SP2, it was working fine, but I used Sysinternals AutoRuns to disable a few things. Now it exhibits rather odd behaviour at startup: It starts fast, but after about 30 seconds it freezes (the mouse still moves), and then after about 2 minutes it plays the startup sound and starts to work like normal. Here's a list of things I disabled (I also removed the entries for some nonexistant files; they were deleted before this, just stuff like Media Player and Messenger): [edit] Refuses to show up properly; see attatched file instead. [/edit] [edit 2] Hmm, this seems to be a bit more complex than I initially thought. I put the following in a batch file in the Startup folder in my Start menu: start sndvol32 sleep 5000 nircmd win -style title "Volume Control" 0xC00000 nircmd win setsize title "Volume Control" 1543 976 56 190 nircmd win trans class "Shell_TrayWnd" 178 sleep 2000 start notepad "F:\Ideas and crap\Stuff to do.html" What this should do is start the Volume Control app, wait 5 seconds, remove its title bar, and make it small and placed under my taskbar (so I can see the volume ), turn the taskbar 30% translucent, then wait 2 seconds and launch Stuff to do.html in Notepad. What happens instead: 1) Windows starts. 2) The taskbar turns translucent. 3) Stuff to do.html is launched in Notepad. 4) I open the Display Properties control panel by right-clicking on the desktop and poke around a bit. 5) I open My Computer and double-click a hard drive icon. Explorer freezes for about 2 minutes. 6) The startup sound plays, Volume Control is launched, and Explorer resumes. (The Volume Control window never gets moved, resized or has its titlebar removed, as the program that does so has already run.) Seems like Volume Control launches, but doesn't actually initialize and show a window until the startup sound has finished playing, the startup sound doesn't play until some other event occurrs, and Explorer waits for this event for a while, then decides it's not going to happen and just pretends it did. If I reboot, then just leave it alone for an hour (during dinner) it eventually does whatever it's doing; the volume control is open and there's no delays when opening a drive. I checked that none of the extensions I removed from autorun were still enabled; there were only the 3 WMP ones, which I disabled to no avail. Pressing Ctrl+Alt+Delete has the same effect. Opening a drive/folder via Run doesn't do it, but it will freeze temporarily once I double-click any folder within that (not when I open a file though). I tried having Process Explorer run at startup (by putting it in that batch file) and not only did it not show anything unusual, but the sound played as normal and it never froze. [/edit] Also, I don't think this is related since it happened before I reinstalled, but I got an NEC ND-4551A DVD burner, and it works but when I put in a DVD-RW, Windows thinks it's a zero-byte CD-R. The only program that can actually recognize and write to the disc is Nero 6 which came with the burner. It works fine with CD-Rs, and those are the only media I've had a chance to try; it also reads and plays DVD video and pressed CDs without a problem. Can this be fixed? (I used 4x Nexxtech DVD-RWs, if it means anything.) The name shows "DVD-RAM Drive" when no disc is inserted, but the type shows "CD Drive". autorun.txt

Hm, neither of those exist, and error reporting is already off. I think something's just messed up, planning to reinstall soon. Just wondering what program that might have been.

I just right-clicked in Explorer, and it crashed, with a strange dialog that I've never seen before. It had a "Send error report" button, but it didn't work. It also had this in a text box: What the heck?

Not the first time this week someone's bumped an old thread because someone else voted on it.

For that matter, if a given "protection" software is particularly popular, they'll probably be able to crack it that much easier simply because they've done it a few times.

FYI, I don't know if this applies to VB, but I code in C and when my program just closes for no apparent reason, nearly every time it's due to a stack overflow.

Use one of those skins that looks like IE, maybe they won't notice. Seriously, sounds like you need to reinstall IE.

Good to hear. Is there any specific ghost program I should use? Or would just copying all the files do the job?