DonDamm

Yes. Unless you are using a beta which has a "For Testing Purposes Only" on it which you can't remove this way, you can change what shows on the screen. those keys are correct even though one of the keys says "NT" it is a legit key under XP, Server 2003, and even Vista and Windows 7! :^) Setting the first key to "1" will show the version of hte screen and "0" will remove it, but you usually have to reboot or log out and login again to see the change.

If it's corporate, you may have some Group Policy settings controlling that. Normally, you see that screen when you set up a new account and open an office progream for the first time. After that you can get to it through the Tools/Options dialog under the User Information tab.

If you only have a file or two to share, then RS is very useful. I use it for my students sometimes. Recently they've overhauled the site and made the downloading for non-members much more palatable. A 30 - 60 second delay and even if you have a couple of large files the wait between downloads is way reduced. There are also other services which are quite good including MIHD, Mediafire, and others which aren't as annoying as easyshare or megadownload and the like. In fact, there are a large number of these hosts out there now, and they've completely changed the way we think about sharing. The FTP scene has all but disappeared and gone the way of the old BBs and terminal screens. The issue of privacy, though, is a real one and one that needs to be addressed. If the pigheads at the RIAA and MPAA would ever get their heads out the dark places their in, they might just find that the internet offers them an unparalleled opportunity to broaden their markets and range. TV broadcasters who are currently locked into a limited number of primetime slots, and thus revenue, end up killing perfectly viable and well-liked shows because of very tight competition. If they expanded their audience by expanding thier primetime slot reach, they could increase advertising revenue, give us more flexibily in viewing (which makes us happier), and generally achieve a win win. Instead they both fight thier customers trying to maintain a rapidly outdating business model. Sigh. The consequences for us are an unprecedented attack on our privacy and liberty. MAny have already experienced the consequences of unprotected data and invasion of our personal privacies. Our only defense, at this point is to password compressed and encrypted files (such as rar, ace, winzip and others can do) when using these hosts. Even GMail auto scans your mail and any attached zip files. I know because I tried to help someone long distance do an installation setup. Their isp required the MAC as identifier and the new machine had a different MAC. I sent a MAC spoofer in a zip file so she could get online and do updates without having to wait until the next day to reach the isp and then wait some more. GMail wouldn't let the zip file through until I passworded and encrypted it and then changed the extension to .doc! This stuff is a pain. Tapping telephones is easy and the phone company was always a private one, but nevertheless, there are still very strong laws in place against wiretapping (well, okay, they've been watered down a lot by the current administration, but the concept is still there). WEith the int3rnet, however, there is an unabashed attack on our privacy rights and seemingly no shame attached to it. Why are we all still electing these clueless legislators??? Not long ago the German government was caught red-handed distributing a trojan and one legislator there when informed it would only work under windows suggested banning any other operating system!!!! these sorts of people are protecting us??? Anybody remember Orin Hatch of Utah who wanted to allow companies to physically damage anyone who accessed their computers from outside if they could?? Under the circumstances, rapidshare is doing very well. They provide a fast service and rose to the top of the heap very quickly. I wouldn't say they suck as much as that you need to be a bit circumspect if you're going to upload files that are not legit, or questionable. Use WinRar and encrypt.

The registry key for this I believe is HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\PaintDesktopVersion and puts the watermark in the righthand corner. To change that you'd have to alter the version number in the registry, but since it is in several palces I'm not sure which, but probably somewhere in Local_Machine. You might try this key in the registry HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion there you'll find the information used when you look under System Properties. I think that may be what your looking for. Let us know if that works for you.

You also might want to consider Vopt v9.08.1 which is one of the fastest I've ever seen, at least in normal mode. I use tightest mode for drives with video files. Like Perfect Disk it can operate in a very low free space environment (like less than 4%) unlike the built in Windows defrager or Diskeeper which it's based on (they strat to freak out at 15% free space or so). Vopt also has some neat utilities built in such as cleanup. You can try it out for 30 days to see if you like it. You can find it at Goldenbow.com. It's small and fast. I like PD, too, in some situations and have long had both on my systems and afaik both manage both 32 and 64-bit systems with aplomb.

I've used BulletProof Server and CuteFTP Server in the past with good results. Just install the apps and read the help files. What you may need is a way to access your server from the outside, and that is what servbices like http://www.no-ip.com/ are for. You are asking for someone to hold your hand from A to Z, but from what I've read I don't know whether you are behind a router, have a dynamic or static IP addy from your provider, or even why you are having so much trouble. FileZilla is both an FTP client and server. Are you certain it was the server app? Setting up a server is basically telling it what files on your machine to "serve" (this is what shows up when I connect to it) and a list of accounts with passwords which are allowed to access those files. There's lots of small bits and bobs to customize that, but it really is a pretty simple concept. Why would you put in your own ip addy? You say as soon as you run it it asks you to connect to a server. That is about as clear as mud. You are not describing what is happening in clear understandable terms, so it comes off as a rant. do you mean that when you start the server you get a dialog box with fields in it asking for a server ip address appearing? Is that what you see? Or something else? Folks here get tired of guessing and mostly end up ignoring stuff like that. Even if you aren't using BulletProof Server, the website has a great online manual which really helped me when I first set one up many years ago, http://www.bpftpserver.com/support/manual/...pserver/windows, and may answer a lot of your questions.

Hmmm. I used the standard install, but set the hard disk size to 25GB and bridged the network. I set the CD/DVD drive to access the iso file directly. The Windows 7 build is 6801. In the newer versions of VMware the hard disk is tagged as SCSI whether it's an IDE, SATA, SAS or whatever. I had no problems with several different versions of Vista in a VM. UPDATE: I finally decided to delete the VM and create a new one. This time it seemed to take and install very smoothly. It saw the disk properly and went right through the steps without a hitch! Go figure. I can't really see a reason to use a 32-bit version of this, however. I found that needed to use about 20% more mouse clicks in Vista than in XP even without the UAC. that's really unacceptable and definitely not an improvement. I'll be interested to where this one is going! MORE UPDATE: The last phase seemed to take forever, so I went to bed and it was done in the am. I used a published beta key. VMware tools went in and I didn't have to add an audio driver like with Server 2008! My first impression is....... it looks like Vista! Ummmm, itt installs like Vista. ......It's as big as Vista. It's ..... really Vista 2! Truth - they've streamlined things like the UAC and ironed out a lot of the file transfer nonsense that plagued the original. It's pretty to look at and may end up being very much more usable than Vista. However, I'm willing to bet I'll still have to use more keystrokes to get many of the same jobs done, and that is no improvement. I'm bound to move all my server functions over to an Ubuntu box running Intrepid Ibex v8.10 which is proving very very stable. Also, I'd be looking at Windows 7 to install only in a 64-bit version. Drivers for 64-bit are maturing and honestly many things move faster. With no memory bottleneck 8GB or 16GB is a real possibility and makes the prospect of using multiple VMs more palatable and functional as you can then really devote enough memory to a given VM.

I tried to install it in VMware v6.50 build118166 and.... it started to load, but couldn't seem to find any disk! It kept asking me to load the appropriate driver. :^( Seems odd, no? ANybody know the trick to getting it to install in a VM?

Servus! Gut gemacht. :^)

I don't know if this is relevant, but since there is an admitted problem slipstreaming SP3 into XP on a Vista machine (http://www.msfn.org/comments.php?shownews=22398) and this seems to be an issue with nLite sometimes, the solution I found for the slipstream problem might help. What the article didn't mention is that running the integration under compaibility mode for XP seems to work fine - at least it did for me under Vista in a VM. Have you tried running nLite in compatibility mode? I haven't yet played with 64-bit Vista, so I can't say either way, but it's worth a shot.

To add - I've had some limited success using the Startup Repair in Vista. Making an image and then recreating C: and placing the image there is a good idea. If it doesn't boot, using the installation disk and choosing the first repair option should reset the boot files. Now since Vista Home Basic does not give you access to ImageX as far as I know, and that is MS new imaging utility available in other versions. If you upgrade to Ultimate, for example you would have access to it. It is an interesting approach since the images are made slightly differently than most other imaging solutions (like Ghost, BootIt NG, True Image, etc). Also, I notice that the C: and D: partitions are roughly equal in size. Rather than increase the size of C:, I'd be inclined to reduce it to a more functional say 25-30GB, move the pagefile, User files, and other data I want to keep intact to D:, and then increase the size of D: to use all the unallocated space. One of the best ways to do this is to make an image and backup any data to a CD/DVD disk or USB stick, then use diskpart to reset all the partitions the way you want using the installation disk as if you were doing a new install, and then restore the image and data. Let us know how it turns out! :^)

NOD32 AV Business Edition works very nicely on Server 2008. So, does Online Armor Pro as a firewall. Both are top notch in their class.

I ended up using a sentence from an old Beatle's song which I could remember. whatever you end up using, you are free to change it back to the the non-complex (or even no) password policy in earlier server releases through the group policy editor. Make sure you enable the service and then you can fire up gpedit.msc.

Just an aside about Corsair. I've had really good luck with them and they do honor their lifetime guaratee. I had some PC400 go south on me a year and a half ago and they were kind enough to send me two matching modules - they paid the postage overseas no less! The RMA etc was handled through their forum and email and all went smoothly. I've had good luck with OCZ, too, but never hd to return any.

Ah, the joys of dual-booting! It appears that all your partitions are formatted in FAT. It also sounds like the partition table in your W2K installation got pooched. If so, it will give scrambled names like you see and would explain the bootlaoder failure. The W2K boot files reside on the first partition (the W98 one here) and the boot.ini file contains the information and pointers. First check that the info inside there is okay. If so, then where it is pointing is returning gobbled inforamation in the form of the crazy names. If you have a copy of Acronis Disk Director or Disk Editor, you'll be able to copy the uncorrupted second FAT to the beginning of the partition and you should be able to read it again. Almost any disk editor can do this in cluding older versions of Norton tools (NOrton Disk Editor) and even UltraEdit. It is most likely in the first 512 bytes where the error is. Even if ScanDisk does fix the error, it will drive you crazy with file fragments renamed. A repair install is a possibility, but very well may not see any installation there and will just act like a new install, wiping previous data. Follow the suggestion for recovering any usable data and get it off that drive first. You could try a utility like Recuva or SoftPerfect File Recovery, both free and non-invasive. R-Studio is another good one and may work in the trial mode, but is a paid program. Without a healthy partition table you will run into problems whatever you do, so I'd aim to restore that first if you can. It is one reason there is a second copy there in the first place. Good luck with it. Let us know what happens.

Glad you got it sorted! :^)

@Yzöwl I didn't intend to get into a debate on guns, and though we probably agree fundamentally on the issue, I don't think the analogy holds very well. As a network communication system the internet is more like an expanded and enhanced telephone system. Indeed, it relied and still does to some degree on the existing telephone network. While we know it is technologically easy to eavesdrop on a given phone conversation, it is still illegal to tap into it without a warrant, the Patriot Act aside for the moment. The same for the mail system. there is an inherent approach taken by the lawmakers that the individual is due a certain level of privacy. So, if you and I conspire to commit a crime using a telephone, it is certainly not the obligation of the phone company to either listen to us, report us, or interfere with us in any way. Nor are they liable for any damage that may result. They are merely a distribution system for our conversations and that has long ago been established and even tested in the courts. It is this historical precedent to which I'm referring when I say that torrents are only a way of distributing bits in a more equitable fashion as oppposed to the single server many user model. I don't believe this is in any way equivalent to the "distribution" of bullets. Secondly, "guns" are not a singular and easily definable item because they range from the smallest derringers to fully automatic sub-machine guns to Big Bertha, not to mention the variety of ammunition types. It would be necessary to confine the range to say just handguns and maybe single shot bolt action rifles, and even then, the history development and multi-use of firearms doesn't really compare to torrents as a distribution method. Broadcasting radio waves is a distribution method and I suggest that you'd be uncomfortable with the idea of someone coming up to you while listening to the radio and informing you that you were not allowed to listen to that particular station. You would likely protest that whoever said that is an id*** - and rightly so. After all should listening to broadcast music or speech be against the law? Should the broadcasters themselves be held responsible, or even those who allowed them to broadcast? Where exactly should the "blame" lie? I don't claim to have legal knowledge on any of this, but it is still clear to me as a layman that there are raging inconsistencies floating about. Even in the issue of guns. I believe Canada has a high gun ownership, but has no where near the same problems of their children getting shot up in schools aas we see in the US. Both Switzerland and Austria have a high gun ownership level comparable to that in the US, and also without the corresponding level of shot up kids. Are guns themselves the problem? No. But access, training, and education, along with national temperment and cultural background play a big part in the results. In both Germany and here in Austria the public transport systems rely a great deal on a level of compliance (tickets are only checked occasionally so it is possible to ride without paying - sometimes). It doesn't work in France or England and would never work in New York because it would be abused to death, so they have to use a check every ticket for every ride system in those places. Blaming torrents for "illegal" sharing is something our sadly clueless legislators are very good at. It is up to us to educate them.

Try SpinRite v6.0 from Gibson Research at grc.com. As far as I know it will remap bad sectors and mark the unusable as you wanted.

also, check the size of your Outlook.pst file. If it is too big (I don't like more than 500MB, but it will go up to just about 2GB before falling over) as this can cause problems even before you reach theoretical limit. I don't know if that is what is happening here, but it worth checking. Disabling add-ins in safe mode is also a very good idea.

First, do both machines have a username/password? If not, you'll need to do that for both machines. Second, turn off the firewall on both machines and see if you connect. It is always possible that one of them hasn't yet added the "new" network yet and is blocking it. Once you get things working, you can turn the firewall back on and test again. Three, try searching for the laptop from the desktop machine using the internal ip address (something like 192.168.0.3). Name resolution in peer networks is always an iffy thing, but once it has figured it out, things go better. Fourth, trying pinging each machine from the other using the ip addy from the command line (Start->Run->type cmd then hit the OK button). Also, ping the router. If those ping are successful, then you should be able to connect the two with no problem.

Considering the shifting sands of what is okay and what is not okay, the word "legal" only applies in some places and not others. For instance, it is perfectly legal to sell something you have bought here in Austria. In fact, it is a basic priciple and right. This clashes with MS's idea of non-transferability and they have lost when it has been tested. It is still "illegal" in America to sell some versions of its OS software due to the non-transferability clause in the EULA, but even though they still include that clause here, it has been deemed invalid. I know this is a minor issue, but the point is that the whole issue of legality is very much politcally based and not static. Downloading for many whether by t*****s or straight single server acceses is more like picking up broadcast ransmissions with a radio. They feel if it is out there, they have a right to sample it and no one has the right to tell them it is "illegal" to do so. In this country as in England, the government taxes radios and televisons, so you pay for the broadcasting whether you like it or not. Also, here as in the US and Canada buyers of cassette tapes and blank CD and DVD media have been paying a tax for years which goes to the the likes of the RIAA and MPAA supposedly to compensate them for folks who copy their stuff. They are still collecting money and at the same time going after people who downl;oad and copy their stuff to CDs. Isn't that a tad hypocritical? Like having cake and eating it too? You betcha. And your politicians have been going along with it. but is it all really "illegal"??? I'd venture to say that it is not under the circumstances - but that's a whole 'nother can of worms. The issue of software is a different issue because there isn't the two-faced hypocritical stance taken, but a straight forward one. but there are choices there. A friend of mine has almost completely weaned himself of MS and with the latest configuration of PostFix he'll be able to get rid of Exchange server at last. So it can be done. T******s aren't the problem. They are just a distribution method and Bram's Bit******* has worked hard to legitimize the whole scene. Why are discussions about them not allowed? Don't know, but I'll guess it's because it cuts down on the work for the admins and mods here. Nobody wants to police the vast number of posts here for questionable links. They probably reason that anyone interested in that scene will soon find all the sites they need to with a little research and we don't need to get into it here. I don't believe it is an attempt to silence genuine discussion at all.

Did you ever wonder why imaging programs like True Image and others have a setting to limit the files size to no more than 2GB?? that's why.!! I remember back in 1995 when I got a brand spanking new P133 from Micron and they'd just gotten some 2GB scsi disks from Conner. It preformed brilliantly, but later when the sizes increased I quickly learned of the 2GB limitation. It was then I moved to NT and never looked back! Combo drives are.... outdated now. The current DVD-DL burners from both LG and Samsung work brilliantly and for a low cost (here ~€25). Yes you can use a 160GB hard drive on your machine. However, there are some important caveats. First your BIOS. You need to determine the limits of your bios and will want to have the latest version available. Second, even with a comatible BIOS you'll likely run into the file system barrier. Win98 uses FAT32 which despite its great improvement over plain FAT16, still runs into a wall. I think that's around 127GB if I remember right (and there's an earlier one at 37GB, but that depends on your system and you didn't mention the specs). So, you'll want to partition a 160GB disk (good idea anyway - one for the OS and programs, one for the data, and maybe one for backups) into 2 or more primary partitions, and then both your BIOS and OS will be happier. Also, be aware that even though there may be a BIOS limitation, Windows can often see the bigger disk. Mysteries never cease. There are also mbr overlays like MaxBlast from Maxtor that help you fool your system into seeing more space. Personally, I don't like those and recommend against them, though they do work. Now, that all being said, why do you want to keep fighting to maintain a system which can't really manage current hardware. If you have USB at all, it is most certainly USB 1.0 or 1.1 which means and external disk is out of the question. Sure you can keep adding controller cards an such, but you'll keep running into limitations of both your board and chip, not to mention your memory capacity and the inherent limitations of the OS. I have a colleague in Oxford who runs a computer business and now refuses to work on any machines with Win98 because he says it is a losing battle. There aren't drivers for most any newer hardware and even when you do get it working, it is a security nightmare if you want to connect to the net. As a stand alone I can understand...maybe. But not if you intend to be connected to the net - and I believe that is your intention by the fact that you post here. I'm not suggesting you go out and buy the latest and greatest as I myself am currently of limited means. However, a three-year old machine can be had for almost nothing (~€50-€100 or so) on the used market and will considerably enhance your ability to deal with all these issues. This is just a thought that might make your life a bit easier. Unless you like playing with the OS and learning all about it's workings and such. In that case, forget I mentioned anything! :^)

That Hanns.G is a pretty good monitor .... for business. I was looking at the that one (I think it's just over 27"), but I noticed the contrast ration is only 800:1. With current numbers upwards of 3000:1 (I recently saw one that had 10,000:1), and having seen how important that is to the subtle gradations in blacks and dark colors, I'm inclined to keep to a 24" model that has a high contrast rating. That's becuase I do use my screen to watch videos on. While I don't play games, I'm sure this is also important for accurate rendering in graphically demanding games. Nevertheless, I set up a friend of mine with a Hanns.G as the price was hard to resist, and she just loves the thing! :^) I, too, am inclined to have many windows open and find that more real estate is better. The 22" ones which seem to be all the rage are lower in height than my current 19" screen. I don't want to lose height for width, so the minimum is a 24" at the moment! A tad more would be that much better as long as the price is okay.

ImgBurn is a brilliant app, and free!

@pjadec: Yes, I've tried it out, but it is a moving target. Seems when they fix one bug they introduce another. I didn't like the real lack of control with it. It is a good idea, but I don't think it's ready for primetime yet. @suryad: Yes, you are correct. It is similar, but not the same. Most programs like Diskeeper, Vopt, PerfectDisk, and O&O, etc. will happily schedule a bootime defrag which occurs before you are booted into the OS. this is offline and allows the software to access files which would otherwise be in use and therefore "locked". I prefer using a PE disk like miniPE or one built on a WinPE like Bart's PE disk, or even ERD Commander (Mark Russinovitch's baby). These boot into a Window Preinstalled-Environment and give access to a Windows XP installation. Doing a defrag from here gives greater access without the overhead burden of permissions, security checks, etc. You can build one yourself using your own legitimate copy of Windows. Check out http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/ for more info. You can then add a "portable version" of your favorite defragger and bob's your uncle! You can even make a portable version of any app you have using a program called Thinstall.