bizzybody

A client just bought a new Gateway PC with Home Premium. Gateway "helpfully" stuck icons for AOL 9 and Netzero on te start menu. The icons can be deleted but they come back when the computer is restarted. NEITHER PROGRAM IS INSTALLED! They ARE NOT in the list in Programs and Features. I can't find anything with msconfig or in the Run keys in the registry for either one. How do I completely scrub this malware-like garbage off this computer? (Anyone replying with "Go to Programs and Features..." gets a free thwack with a #10 clue-by-four.)

Once I tried deleting everything under c:\Boot except for the en-US folder and Fonts folder. I don't recall if I left the rest of the files under Boot or not. Whichever, after that, Vista wouldn't boot. WTF would it need all those folders and the files in them when this is an ENGLISH version of Vista? 12.7 megs of non-english folders and files- leaving the en-US folder and contents and the other files under Boot.

I see some folks have whipped up easy-integration tools for SP1... might be an SP1 "shoehorn" app come along soon. When MS says something's not possible... just wait. My laptop only has an 80 gig drive, split into two partitions. With all the bloat I stripped out with vLite, SP1 is so far the only thing that won't install!

Very nice. Gotta love how someone on the outside can whip up a program to do what MS claims isn't possible. Now how aboot something that shoehorns SP1 onto a vLite customized install so everyone who has a whole bunch of stuff installed etc won't have to start over from scratch just to get SP1 on their system? Something that slaps it upside the head when it wants to crap out on something missing- make it just ignore it and move on to the next bit.

SP1 won't install on my laptop with Ultimate that's been customized with vLite, gives me error code 0x80070002 Has anyone managed to shoehorn SP1 onto a vLite modified Vista install? Or am I going to have to find an Anytime Upgrade DVD with SP1 already integrated and start over?

I suppose it'll be simplest just to get an Anytime Upgrade DVD of the SP1 version.

That's... hideously complicated. I'll wait for someone to figure out a way to slipstream SP1 without so much rigamarole. I only have one PC with Vista. I have one it *might* run on but I don't have spare drive space for it.

The OEM license files used by each OEM are *identical* for all versions of Vista, at least for the 32bit versions. In other words, Acer's license file for a $400 laptop running Home Basic is the same as the file on a $1,200 desktop running Ultimate. What's different is the OEM key for each version of Vista. Some OEMs use a single key for each version, others have two or more. If you have two different PCs from the same OEM, running the same version of Vista, it's most likely they have exactly the same OEM key. The key on the label on the outside of your OEM PC is NOT the OEM key. It's easy to backup the OEM license file. Look for a folder under %systemroot% (which is usually c:\Windows ) named OEM. Copy that folder and contents somewhere else where it won't get deleted. Two more things you need (in addition to an Anytime Upgrade DVD) are the OEM key for the version of Vista you wish to install- for the OEM that made your PC, (in other words, if you have an Acer PC and Acer OEM license file, you can't use an OEM key from DELL), and a specific command-string for a script file that comes with Windows Vista. That reinstalls the OEM license file and completely de-activates the requirement to phone home to MS to activate Vista. (Good job, Microsoft! Include the h4x0ring tools to crack Vista's activation with Vista.) If you want OEM keys and that script command... STFI. P.S. Of course you should pay for any upgrade to Vista and only use this OEM thing to eliminate the inconvenience of Microsoft treating you like a parent who doesn't trust you with his teenage daughter.

If you get an Anytime Upgrade DVD, it has ALL versions of Vista on it. There's a 32bit and a 64bit DVD. They're single layer disks. You may choose to install without a product key, but you will later need a key that is for the version you installed. If you want a single version custom install disk, use vLite with the Anytime Upgrade DVD. It's possible to strip it down enough to fit on a CD-R. If you have a computer with an OEM install of Vista, it's possible to "upgrade" to a better version while keeping it as a pre-activated OEM install. I won't elaborate further on that method. (It is handy to go from Home Basic to Ultimate with a paid upgrade, without the hassle of phoning home to MS to activate it.)

I got this one figured out. I copied the Win98 folder from an original CD-ROM to one of my XP computers and had copied that same folder to hard drives before installing the drives in old computers. Apparently something went funky with that folder on the XP system- not enough to prevent 98SE from installing, but it'd make it screw up after installing NUSB. So I copied the win98 folder directly from the original CD-ROM to the PC with the "Cognac" motherboard, did a fresh install and no problems. I just installed NUSB 3.3 and still no problems. Next I'll go back to the Compaq Presario 5610 with a fresh-fresh, right off the original CD-ROM install and see if that one still has a problem with NUSB. That was the first time this had caused a problem for me. If it doesn't this time around, then I'll know when something happened to the 98SE install files, but not what. Looks like that needs to be added to the NUSB readme, "If you have any problems after installing NUSB, do a clean install from an original 98SE CD-ROM." I didn't suspect a problem with the install files because it had ALWAYS WORKED until that Compaq, and that didn't make me think it might be the install files because of the built in 1394 controller that can't be disabled in BIOS.

For the first time since Windows 95, Microsoft released versions of Windows without built in FAX capability. Is there a way to port the FAX stuff from Vista Ultimate or Business to Home Basic and Home Premium?

I've found another board that NUSB 3.3 DOES NOT WORK WITH. It's the TriGem/HP "Cognac" socket 370 micro ATX. This board has nothing 'funky' about it. It's an ordinary Intel 810 chipset, NO built in 1394 controller like the Compaq Presario 5610, which NUSB 3.3 doesn't work with either. Clean install of 98SE, all the hardware drivers, reboot, install NUSB 3.3, reboot and BLAM. Stick a fork in it, Windows is done. Won't even go into Safe Mode because Explorer.exe commits digital seppuku. Fortunately I made a copy of c:\Windows before installing NUSB 3.3 so I can just connect the drive to another PC and copy it all back. I have six other old boxen, all are going to get 98SE installed. They're all different boards and CPUs. It'll really be a PITA if some or all of them have this same problem. What'd be nice to have is a DOS bootable disk that can REPAIR a system that this blows up so people don't end up having to completely reinstall Windows. What'd be even better is if it worked instead of causing this problem. How about an installer option that asks if the computer has a floppy drive, then doesn't install the stuff to support USB floppy drives? Who is going to plug a USB floppy drive into a PC that has a normal one already?

I'm still waiting for a fix that will make it play nicely with an integrated 1394 controller that can't be disabled. (Compaq Presario 5610)

When it's set to not hide things from the User, the junctions for Application Data, Cookies, Local Settings, My documents, NetHood, PrintHood, Recent, SendTo, Start Menu, and Templates are all visible under the user's named "folder" in Windows Explorer. From searching, I've found they're there to redirect programs to all the places Microsoft decided to put things in Vista rather than leaving well enough alone. Of course the problem is these junctions are not set up to redirect the USER to the new and "improved" locations. Instead of doing the LOGICAL thing, it slaps the user with ACCESS DENIED. I hope this will be fixed with SP1! It's creating much extra work for me, having to explain them to clients who've been long time XP users, people who don't want anything hidden from them and know enough about things to NOT do any damage in the Windows directory tree and other places they should stay out of. The reply from most of them is "That is so dumb/stupid/idiotic!". (I wonder if NT4's File Manager will run in Vista? It works in XP just fine, even supports long filenames.)

No funny modifications on this. I got search working by unchecking the indexing box on the properties for C: then applied to all subfolders and files. After that was done, I checked the index box again. Is there a faster way to fix what must have been a screwed up search index?

Dagnabit! Search is broken again and these fixes didn't work this time. Now if I give it an exact filename of a file that is on the drive, it says it's not there. Doesn't matter what I search for, it's not there.

I found this linked off the AHCI article on Wikipedia. Might want to post it as a Sticky topic. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976 Error message when you start a Windows Vista-based computer after you change the SATA mode of the boot drive: "STOP 0x0000007B INACCESSABLE_BOOT_DEVICE" SYMPTOMS Consider the following scenario. In the BIOS setup of a Microsoft Windows Vista-based computer, you change the Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) mode of the boot drive to use the Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI) specification. You then restart the computer. In this scenario, you receive the following error message: STOP 0x0000007B INACCESSABLE_BOOT_DEVICE CAUSE This issue occurs if the AHCI driver (Msahci.sys) in Windows Vista is disabled. This driver must be enabled before you change the SATA mode of the boot drive. RESOLUTION Warning Serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly by using Registry Editor or by using another method. These problems might require that you reinstall your operating system. Microsoft cannot guarantee that these problems can be solved. Modify the registry at your own risk.To resolve this issue, enable the AHCI driver in the registry before you change the SATA mode of the boot drive. To do this, follow these steps: 1. Exit all Windows-based programs. 2. Click Start, type regedit in the Start Search box, and then press ENTER. 3. If you receive the User Account Control dialog box, click Continue. 4. Locate and then click the following registry subkey: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Msahci 5. In the right pane, right-click Start in the Name column, and then click Modify. 6. In the Value data box, type 0, and then click OK. 7. On the File menu, click Exit to close Registry Editor. MORE INFORMATION During the Windows Vista installation process, any unused storage drivers are disabled. This behavior speeds up the operating system's startup process. When you change the boot drive to a driver that has been disabled, you must enable the new driver before you change the hardware configuration. For example, assume that you install Windows Vista on a computer that contains a controller that uses the Pciide.sys driver. Later, you change the SATA mode to AHCI. Therefore, the drive must now load the Msahci.sys driver. However, you must enable the Msahci.sys driver before you make this change. This issue affects only the boot drive. If the drive that you change is not the boot drive, you do not experience this issue. AHCI provides several features for SATA devices. These include hot plug functionality and power management functionality. For more information about the AHCI specification, visit the following Intel Web site: http://www.intel.com/technology/serialata/ahci.htm Microsoft provides third-party contact information to help you find technical support. This contact information may change without notice. Microsoft does not guarantee the accuracy of this third-party contact information. The third-party products that this article discusses are manufactured by companies that are independent of Microsoft. Microsoft makes no warranty, implied or otherwise, regarding the performance or reliability of these products. Edit: Just did this and it works on my Acer Aspire 5315-2153 laptop with Vista Ultimate installed.

I can't find srchasst.inf on the drive. The DLL registration finished without errors. Here's the contents of that Registry key. Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer] "WebFindBandHook"="{68F2D3FC-8366-4a46-8224-58EFA2749425}" "FileFindBandHook"="{FFAC7A18-EDF9-40de-BA3F-49FC2269855E}" "Logon User Name"="Administrator" "ShellState"=hex:24,00,00,00,38,08,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,\ 01,00,00,00,0d,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00 "CleanShutdown"=dword:00000000 "EnableAutoTray"=dword:00000000 "FaultCount"=dword:00000000 "FaultTime"=dword:00000000 "IconUnderline"=hex(0):03,00,00,00 "Shutdown Setting"=dword:00000002 "Reason Setting"=dword:000000ff "Browse For Folder Width"=dword:0000013e "Browse For Folder Height"=dword:00000120 "link"=hex:1e,00,00,00 "SearchSystemDirs"=dword:00000001 "SearchHidden"=dword:00000001 "IncludeSubFolders"=dword:00000001 "CaseSensitive"=dword:00000000 "SearchSlowFiles"=dword:00000000 "NoFileFolderConnection"=dword:00000000 I also found this hunk of gibberish in there. Deleting it shouldn't hurt anything, eh? (I think it's about time for a nuke and pave job, but it's such a huge PITA on dialup, even with an SP2 slipstreamed CD and the last Autopatcher from August 2007.) Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\lA+I+Lt4RTIlnlgNTWCbX+04nGM=] "tRP5KXExzM4IVjcxpxdMCDTaAk8="="yfs=" "fV9ro0qXtGTvYZgSDASwdAasDVU="="z/uhUA==" "54awq/y+r2M4vIhSJuwpQhwSGas="="yfs=" "akVPJ9wWibwa5I5IHV+sFRzg53k="="YLdWm54zyAE=" "2BpN//ShX5DoAvXjIrkr5hei2Jw="="m12UCNX5wwxDaTDcjwYp2+K7HXI=" Edit: More weirdness. srchasst.inf was NOT visible in the windows\inf directory, until I found a copy online and saved it there, then I got the prompt to overwrite it, so I did. Then I rightclicked on it and aimed the install at c:\i386 Hopefully that worked.... Yup, it did. A search for *.txt now turns up every text file.

When I wiped my OEM install of Home Basic on my laptop, I booted with an XP CD to repartition the drive and had to switch the mode in BIOS to IDE. I forgot to switch it back to AHCI before installing Vista Ultimate from a vLite'd unattended disc. Is there a way to change it without having to reinstall Vista?

The main thing I don't like about Windows Explorer in Vista's Aero Glass theme is the nearly invisible highlight color. (What useability "expert" approved that?!) Is there some way to change it to an XP classic style dark blue with white text? Second thing is replacing those Macintosh ripoff triangles back to Windows boxed + signs, and make them stay visible all the time. Third thing is that bloody annoying auto-scrolling. I want my scrollbars back on the left pane. Fourth thing. WTH have all the buttons gone? Search? Delete? Map Network Drive? Why did MS remove such useful things? (Perhaps it's part of the campaign to make Mac users feel more comfortable? Can't give them too many things related to a specific window actually ON the window! Might scare them away!) The rest of Aero Glass I'm warming up to. I dunno why, normally things in a GUI that are there for the "Oooohhh! Pretty!" effect I find distracting and pointless frippery. The OS X GUI still makes me cringe, I just can't get used to it at all. I tried Window Blinds on my old Macs and always went back to the plain, original default theme. My new laptop came with Vista Home Basic, which I wiped and installed Vista Ultimate. (Using vLite to kill Windows Defender and other junk.) When the performance test enabled Aero Glass, and I was poking around for switching it to Classic style, I started thinking, "Hmmm, this isn't so bad... except for these four really dumb things Microsoft did to Explorer!".

I want to take UTF-8 encoded HTML files where all the punctuation is Unicode UTF-8 encoded with strings like 040; which is an open parentheses, (space inserted to prevent this forum software from converting it to ASCII*) and convert all those strings to ASCII equivalents. Why? I'm converting them to TealDoc format for my PDA, and there's no conversion program I've found that understands HTML Unicode character strings. They all get replaced with question marks, or removed completely- with whatever was on either side of them right against each other. I've found plenty of perl and python scripts, linux programs, Mac programs, pseudocode fragments and examples for Java, Javascript, C, and just about every programming language on Earth. I am not a programmer. I just want a simple little WINDOWS program that I can feed a file to and get a file output with the unicode strings converted to their nearest ASCII equivalents. For examples, convert any character with diacritical marks above or below into the same case ASCII plain character. En-dashes and Em-dashes into hyphens. Ellipsis into ... Left and right quotes into straight up plain quotes. I have Office XP. Is there some addon or plugin or something for Word that will make it convert the encoding of an HTML file from UTF-8 into plain old ordinary ASCII, doing the character conversions the way I want instead of replacing them all with question marks or HTML tags like <em>? *I tried enclosing some UTF-8 strings in UBB tags and this forum software still converted them to normal characters. I thought the code tags were supposed to make forum software leave whatever's between them alone? I also discovered that entering a UTF-8 string into Google will search for that character not that specific string of punctuation and numbers.

Unless I enter the full name, with extention, of the file I want to find, Search claims it can't find anything. Wildcards like *.exe don't work. I don't have Match case checked. I can put something like maketeal.exe in a folder by itself and search that folder for *.exe or maketeal and it'll say there's nothing found.

How about a 1394 WinMe driver port for 98SE? I want to use NUSB on a Compaq with a built in 1394 controller but NUSB blows it up quite messily to where it can't even boot to safe mode. The 1394 controller cannot be disabled in BIOS setup, so unless there's something done for that, that PC can't use the NUSB.

Customer has two XP Home PCs connected to a D-Link broadband router. On one of them, everything works perfectly fine online. On the other, it can send and receive e-mail using Outlook Express and it can access the shared drive on the other PC. Nothing else online or on the LAN works from this PC. It cannot ping any IP address or URL, not even the router or e-mail server or the other PC. It cannot access the router's web based configuration either. I've set the LAN and Internet security settings to the next to no security setting and disabled Windows firewall. The router has nothing blocked, is not doing any port forwarding or anything else restrictive, nor can it be set to have different security settings per port. The system was setup using DHCP from the router, with the DNS IPs set in it. I disabled DHCP on the router and manually assigned IPs etc on the two PCs. NO CHANGE. One still worked just fine, the other can only send-receive e-mail. The one that has no problems still has IE6, the problem box has had IE7 installed- presumably the internet stuff was working BEFORE IE7 was installed because Windows had to be validated. HTF can a PC get e-mail when it can't ping the server (or anything else) from a command prompt?! I also tried the Internet Setup Wizard, went through everything for an always on connection. It created an icon for the connection in Network Connections- tagged as Disabled. I rightclickd that and clicked Enable. It deleted the icon. (Grrrrrr! Yet another thing for "Windows Networking Sledgehammer" to fix.)

The only access available is from DOS. If there's a way to get it booting again by replacing files with original 98SE versions from DOS, I'd like to know. Then I'll try disabling 1394 in Device Manager and see if NUSB 3.3 blows it up again. I'll check the BIOS again too to see if 1394 can be disabled there too. So, how about porting WinMe's 1394 drivers to 98SE?