bizzybody

IIRC, with nLite, starting with XP RTM, you have to first slipstream SP1 or SP2 before you can do SP3. I've never tried the command prompt slipstream of SP3 to an RTM version.

Both a "one shot" package to update a live XP SP3 system and the fully integrated disc for a clean install would be ideal. I've used nLite and vLite several times to build machine specific install discs so the scripts etc to add in all the post SP3 updates will be useful, thanks. Once in a while I still run into XP boxes running the RTM release. Those take a long time to update, SP2, SP3 then everything else, plus all the non-hotfix updates of IE, Media player etc. Just one of the "joys" of an area where most people still have dialup, if they even have an internet connection.

I was hoping Microsoft would put together a "Security Rollup Package" for XP like they did for NT4 shortly before ending support. The SRP contained most of the updates released after SP6 but wasn't large enough to warrant being called a Service Pack. (IIRC some called it SP6a.) What's been released for XP between SP3 and now is huge and a real PITA to have to download or use Autopatcher or WSUS Offline. Even on a decently fast system it can take nearly two hours to install all the updates. Having it all in one big lump that can easily be slipstreamed would be very nice.

All I want from Vista on XP, aside from the Sidebar, is the RTM version of Solitaire. I installed Alky 1.1, copied the Solitaire.exe over from my Vista Ultimate laptop then rightclicked, used the patch and run option and... nothing. Not even an error message. The beta version works... but it's a *beta version* with an out of position circle under the card pile.

The DOS utility to identify which OEMBIOS files to use identifies the T1000 as SAMSUNG_904CF15A and the ClientPro as Genuine C&C_8B2EBECB but the OEMBIOS files I've saved from their OEM installs of XP Pro are different from what's in those downloads. The T1000 was actually made by Samsung, one of their P series laptops, but customized by Micron. I've no idea where Micron sourced the motherboard for the ClientPro desktop. I've been trying the SAMSUNG_904CF15A files on the T1000 but can't get it to work as a pre-activated install. Had no problems at all with this on some other laptops where the SLP manufacturer in the BIOS matched the name on the case. Must be some small difference making it not work. I want to make OEM installs for both of these, using the OEMBIOS files and SLP keys I've saved from them. I haven't yet wiped the ClientPro and still have the original hard drive for the T1000 but XP on it has problems. If someone wants the OEMBIOS files from these Microns, I can send them to you.

I have two old Micron systems to do OEM installs on. One is an MPC ClientPro 365 and the other is a micronpc TransPort 1000, both with crufted up OEM installs of XP Pro, secondhand from a salvage yard and they couldn't find the discs that came with them. Hollander's auto parts interchange database requires a password to *uninstall* it, and they don't give out the password to anyone, not even paying clients. They expect people to wipe their systems and reinstall Windows to get rid of their software. Using the DOS utility to find which OEM files to use, the ClientPro comes up as Genuine C&C 8B2EBECB and the T1000 is Samsung 904CF15A. I've copied the four OEMBIOS files from each but they're different sizes than the ones available to download for those two CRCs. The T1000 is really a thinly disguised Samsung P series laptop, who knows where MPC sourced the mainboard for the ClientPro. Will this work for oemscan.ini in the $OEM$ folder? Should I use the oembios files I copied from these computers or should I stick with the downloaded ones? I also got the CD keys from both with the magical jelly bean. They do match the ones I've come across for Samsung and "Genuine". ; ; Samsung OEMBIOS Files CRC32 = 904CF15A ; SLP = SAMSUNGPC ; [sAMSUNGPC] PATH=".\SAMSUNGPC\" CMD=".\SAMSUNG\OEMCOPY.CMD" CMD="SetKey ----" ; ; Genuine C&C OEMBIOS Files CRC32 = 8B2EBECB ; SLP = GENUINE ; [GENUINE] PATH=".\GENUINE\" CMD=".\GENUINE\OEMCOPY.CMD" CMD="SetKey ----" If someone who is collecting OEMBIOS files wants these sets, I'll be happy to pass them along.

I used WinToFlash and a retail 32bit Vista DVD with all the versions. The only change I made was to add the OEM stuff for a Toshiba laptop which had the hard drive die, taking the restore partition with it. Now I want to make a DVD from the USB stick so the laptop's owner can have a disc to use if it needs to be restored again.

Doing a clean install of Vista Ultimate 32 bit on a laptop and Windows Update keeps downloading and installing the current update to the Malicious Software Removal Tool over and over. I've tried unchecking it and hiding it but in about 10 seconds it pops up again. Install it and there's no error message, but a short while later Windows Update wants to download and install it again. I've searched the web for this and found people posting about it doing the same thing as far back as 2006. Microsoft, this is a bug. FIX IT and stop repeating whatever it is you keep doing that makes it happen time after time. I'd think after 15 years of Windows Update, and this same problem with various downloads over that time, that by now they'd have the issue permanently cured.

I made a bootable 4 gig USB stick to install a customized 32 bit Vista Ultimate, now I want to put that on a DVD-R - but when I search the web all I find are how-tos on making the bootable USB stick.

Fresh restore on an Eee PC1005HAB netbook. Windows Update says there's 137 important updates and 3 optional updates available. So I let it go with all the important ones. Downloads them all, installs, craps out and reverts everything so it's right back to where it was after restoring from the hidden partition on the SSD. So I checked the version, not SP1, so I get SP1 for 32bit Windows 7. It extracts, churns about for a long time then pukes out this error. ERROR_SXS_ASSEMBLY_MISSING(0x80073701) To quote someone else dealing with this same error from SP1... "I have run the System Update Readiness Tool for Windows 7 at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947821/en-us and all is reported to be well." So that didn't work, any other ideas? Why won't Microsoft fix this? Will we ever see a "Sure fire, guarranteed fix for ERROR_SXS_ASSEMBLY_MISSING(0x80073701) when attempting to install Windows 7 Service Pack 1."?

Here's a shell extension that adds details view data for M4A files. http://whitebear.ch/music.htm That's one, how many other formats that XP doesn't have the built in capability to do that for? Looks like a project... "Further Development: Perhaps I will extend the library to handle other music file types; possible candidates are .mp4, .m4b and .m4v; please inform me if you have a concrete interest in these or other (MPEG-4) file types." Perhaps the author might release the source code so others can extend it to cover many other media types, and make a 64 bit version. Ehhhh, probably not. Wants a donation of 3 Euro. Or could the function be back ported from 32 bit Vista to XP? If so, that still would only cover the additional types Vista recognizes.

Is there a fix to make Explorer in XP display tag data, resolution etc for file types such as MP4, MKV and others? In Details view it shows the information for AVI, MP3 and a few other types, but not for many newer formats of audio and video that came along after the release of Windows XP. It *should* be able to show such information for any media file for which codecs are installed, but it doesn't.

Could WinMe's System Restore be ported to 98SE?

Do these instructions mean that I only need go into device manager, locate these devices, and click the remove button to remove these devices, or, if I have installed device specific drivers that came with flash drives and usb controller cards, I am supposed to track all of them down and figure out how to uninstall them? All individual USB Mass Storage drivers have to be removed. This driver package installs a universal driver for that. Check Add/Remove Programs first for uninstalling any USB drivers. That will remove the inf and driver files for them, if the install package included a properly done uninstall routine. If you just yank them out through Device Manager those inf and driver files may not get deleted and Windows will happily reinstall them for you when the device is detected again. After rebooting, cancel any requests by Windows to install drivers. Then go to Device Manager to remove what USB devices are left. Reboot again, and now let Windows to install drivers for all USB devices.

I have a PC with a nVidia FX 5000 series AGP video card connected to a HDTV. The nVidia control panel has settings for video brightness, contrast, gamma etc. Windows Media Player completely ignores all those settings and displays all videos very dark. I have to use its own brightness setting, turned up +10. Wouldn't be a problem if WMP would keep that as a default but when a new video is opened it resets all its adjustments back to zero. Is there a fix for this?

Anyone have a registry file or script or anything to automate enabling the installer service in Safe Mode? I did it on a 7 Home Premium SP1 64 bit laptop the other day with the info from http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/117840-uninstall-remove-software-safe-mode.html Note that MSIService in the registry part should be MSIServer What went worng was a program that caused Windows to lock up when the mouse was clicked once on anything after booting. I figured "I should be able to uninstall this in Safe Mode.". Nope. MS has helpfully disabled the installer service in safe mode. Whip out the Android phone and found that link, jump-started the installer service, uninstalled the problem program and all was well, especially after a Windows Update visit and 45 new updates. Having a quick file to simply doubleclick and fix this *before* I do anything else on a Win 7 system would be very handy. I just did find a little exe that adds the data to the minimal option but not to Safe Mode with networking.

I did a file and settings transfer from Vista Home Premium to Windows 7 Home Premium. When I went to launch Windows Mail on the 7 system, Avast 7 complained about changes needing to be made in the e-mail so its security could handle it. So I permanently shut off Avast"s e-mail protection. Now it pops up in the tray that there's new e-mail but clicking on that or the Mail icon pinned to the taskbar does nothing.

The latest thing in flash drives use a normal USB connector with the rest of it smaller than the connector, has just enough to stick out so you can get hold of it. Verbatim Store n Stay, Lexar Echo ZX, Lexar Echo ZE, SanDisk Cruzer Fit are available from Amazon. Western Digital also has one but it's a rebranded Chinese cheapie with tons of negative reviews. How most, possibly all, of these are made is they have a Micro SDHC card between the USB connector's metal shield and a thin PCB with the USB contacts. I presume the reader electronics are in the tiny plastic nubbin attached to the connector. There's at least one company selling one where you can insert (and remove) your own micro SDHC, from the USB connector end. That one's also available at Amazon. I got a 4gig Verbatim one for my car stereo. It does not have any blinky LED, which suits me fine so it's not blinking at me while playing tunes and driving at night. I know the Verbatim one has a micro SD card in it because it came up as a card reader when XP recognized it. Dunno if I want to try pulling the card out to see if it has any markings.

I replaced the Netgear with the Belkin F5D8230-4 and bought a Chinese made wireless router based on a Ralink chip. I put the Belkin in router mode and the Chinese box in bridge+ethernet converter mode. The little black box makes its WiFi link emulate a wired connection to the Belkin and as a bridge acts like it's just another switch in the LAN. "All in all you're just a- nother switch in the LAN!"

If you zero out the MBR then do a quick format, followed by installing the operating system, there's no malware or virus that will survive it because there won't be any nasty code able to run. To pick up any possibly surviving bad code laying about in clusters marked empty... first the partitions and file system would have to be exactly the same as before the reformatting, second the clusters containing the malware's critical files would all have to be untouched by the new OS install, third there would have to be a new malware infection designed do data recovery looking for the other malware. In short that ain't never gonna happen ever. Much easier to post some banner ads to an unscrupulous or incompetently run website advertising provider and attempt "drive by" infestations. There's a forum I used to frequent quite a bit until they went with an advertising provider who provided ads that attempted all kinds of nastiness. When informed of what was going on and what to do about it (dump their ad provider and find an honest one ASAP) they shut the site down and spent three days thoroughly checking their servers for contamination. Finding none they put the site back online *with the same malware spewing advert service*. The admins wanted logs etc to show to the ad provider. Yeah, sure, like anyone has time for logs and screen caps while their browser is being hijacked in an attempt to shanghai their PC in order to spread the disease and/or steal personal info. The ad service was crooked, dump it, find an honest one. Dead. Simple. Fix... which they spent months not doing.

The hard part of finding the source files of stealth malware is they can protect themselves from being detected, or can protect themselves from being deleted. The especially nasty ones can even hide when Windows is in Safe Mode then come back when the PC is booted normally. Some I've encountered appear to replace some critical system files during boot, and put the real ones back during shutdown. That foils offline scans. What I haven't figured out is how/where they hide the commands to do the swap during boot. The first one of those I ran into didn't have the scheme perfected because pulling the power cord got it into a no-boot situation so I had to do a repair install of XP. What was rather amazing about that was the repair install did not eradicate the malware. Much of these malware tricks would not be possible if the Safe Mode of 2000, XP and later was more like the Safe Mode of Win9x where *everything* is locked down and cannot be changed. Safe Mode should be a self-repairing setup where all the files used to run it are checked multiple ways for corruption and automatically replaced if they are. It should be possible to have Safe Mode actually be safe. Microsoft just hasn't bothered to do it.

I have a Belkin F5D8230-4 version 1002 (MIMO 3 antenna wireless N) and a Belkin F5D7230-4 version 6002. I want to connect one to my DSL modem and create a wireless bridge or extension from my house to a wired LAN in my office. In the house I'll only be using laptops and an HTPC with wireless. In the office I have a LAN with two PCs and three HP printers, plus any computer I may be working on. All that is setup with a D-Link DSS-5+ switch, which I'll likely have to connect to whichever of the Belkins will be in the office, since the Belkins only have four LAN ports. I bought the two Belkins and a D-Link DI-524 revision A3 for $7 each. Upgraded all three to latest firmware. I also have a D-Link DI-604 revision E3 router. I can't change the DSL modem, which is a POS Zyxel that hasn't seen a firmware update since 2005 and has wireless so awful I turned it off. (It will not assign IPs to Dell laptops for some reason and constantly drops connection to what boxes it will talk to.) The setup I want to replace is a Netgear WGR614 (V5, 6 or 7, I forget which) chained to the DSL modem and in the office I have a Belkin Wireless G USB dongle (there's no model number on it, just a MAC address) which is plugged into one PC. That connection is then shared to the LAN so that PC always has to be running when any other computer needs internet access. I want to get it setup so any computer in the office and house can access the internet *and* the printers any time, without needing any other computer running. Currently that's three desktops, three laptops and three printers, with at least one more desktop in the works.

Can someone upload version 3.4 of this? Lots of these projects are suffering link rot.

Malwarebytes is quite good, but there's always new stealth malware popping up it can't eliminate or even detect. Much of the time I find Spybot can *find* problems nothing else can, but it can't remove them, even when scanning the infested install from another Windows install on a secondary drive or partition. Is there a scanner which can load an inactive Registry? Something I've been experiencing recently on infested PCs is malware that can protect itself from plug pulling, and that doesn't foul things up to the point where the system won't boot because the malware didn't have a chance to replace bad critical files with good ones during a normal shutdown. Yanking the plug then connecting the drive to a clean system or booting it with a CD with scanners, or even just going in and manually deleting the files the malware couldn't delete as it hid during shutdown used to be a nearly 100% successful treatment. Then came the malware which replaced some critical files during boot, and put the originals back during shutdown to hide from offline scanning. Plug pulling on those made Windows unbootable yet a repair install wouldn't eradicate the malware. It'd get it booting but still infested. I doubt there can be a way for malware to survive a direct copy over of the entire Windows directory tree by a squeaky clean and fully updated install, other than through an NTUSER.DAT infection that would launch a non-Windows/Microsoft provided file to re-infest the rest of the Registry and some Windows files. 'Course that can be fixed by copying over the NTUSER.DAT file(s) and *sigh* reinstalling all the applications. Oh, rootkits, rootkits and ye olde bootsector viruses could survive such measures, but I've found those generally much easier to get rid of.

I had a PC which had been hit by a drive-by malware attack. It was loaded down with several browser hijack/redirectors and a bunch of other malware, much of which was very stealthy and self repairing, all of it also able to protect itself in Safe Mode too. The client only realized how big the mess was when their AV software and firewall suddenly shut down and a fake antivirus "scan" popped up. So she yanked the plug. I booted with various rescue disks and scanned it every which way but couldn't eradicate everything. There was still something doing random redirects from search sites. My solution. I connected a second hard drive and installed her XP Pro to it (editing boot.ini so I could choose which install) then updated it with everything possible. Then I booted with a CD and copied D:\windows to C:\windows I also deleted the folders for Firefox and Google Chrome (of course saving copies of the bookmarks). Upon rebooting to C: I had to reinstall the video driver, for some reason it came up in 16 color mode. Reinstalled Firefox and Chrome and every other app installed still worked. I ran CCleaner to clean up the Registry then NTREGOPT (reduced the Registry size nearly 25%!) and it ran great, much quicker than it had when loaded down with malware and a bloated Registry. A scan with Malware Bytes, Spybot S&D and Avast 6 each found a few now-orphaned and unprotected nasty files to delete. As long as the malware is only in Windows files from Microsoft and not hiding out in NTUSER.DAT, this should cure it without the inconvenience of having to take the drastic measure of "nuke and pave" with a fresh reinstall of everything. It also leaves Documents and Settings untouched. (Should probably create exact copies of all existing user names before copying the new Windows folder.) If the malware is hiding in non-windows files and being launched from commands in NTUSER.DAT, then replacing that file with one from the clean install (I used the exact same user name as the original install) should stop it but apps would have to be reinstalled. I'm moving this to the top of my list for working on @#%@^#'ed up PCs, it'll save tons of time on scanners that don't find and remove everything, especially the ever changing "vundo" family of malware. It worked better than installing Windows 95 over itself, which would always fix any intractable problem, at the cost of having to reinstall every app. I have yet to try this on Vista or 7, the majority of my work is still with XP.