DonDamm

Umm, at the risk of being somewhat technically wrong, I believe that the typical cable/ADSL "modem" isn't a true modem in the first place, but really is a kind of bridge. The electronics are different to that in a telephone modem which modulates and demodulates the analog phone signal to represent digital ones and zeros. So, in short your daughter's broadband /ADSL modem not only will not modulate or demodulate a telephone signal, there isn't even a connecter port for the RJ-45 telephone connector (I have a cable modem so I'm not sure about this, but I think the connector for ADSL is different and has a couple more pins) and the typical serial COM connector on telephone modems is certainly lacking (though USB connectors might lead one to think it's possible). If there is a computer store nearby or a local buy and sell type newpapaer you should be able to find a modem for relatively little money - $10 or so. I still have an old internal 28Kb US Robotics that came on my first Micron computer in 1995 you can have if you want, but I don't believe it's worth the postage from Vienna!! :^)

Ah, yes. Of course. I forgot as I haven't had autorun turned on for .... just about ever. That didn't occur to me!

I don't pirate anything. However, I do a lot of beta testing.....

I think the debate is already lost. Sure, we can hold onto the historical origin and meaning, and pride ourselves to be members of an elite group which is the only one which acknowledges the true meaning. However, all main stream media and expecially computer journalists have long ago caved in to the now popular negative connotation. There is no getting away from it, so I'd prefer to smile and just refuse to use it. We need to find a new moniker that isn't related to the old. I don't think that "hobbyist" will win any awards, either, so we need to be creative and come up with something new. "Geek" and "Nerd" are already overused and suffer from other connotations which may not apply. Something like the word "tech" might cover a lot of ground and be sufficiently vague to keep from pigeonholing anyone. Any other suggestions? We might just start something here! :^)

Anyone want to try the "hacker" debate!!! lol Personally, I think that one is lost. Mainstream computer journalists bought into the negative use long ago, so I just refuse to use it now as it is really meaningless. Even the public can't properly tell you what it means with the negative connotaion. It has become a perjorative somewhat like "terrorist". It conjures up all sorts of scary images and is widely misapplied. Sigh.

The first reviews or the R600 are in a word - disappointing. At the prices they charge for this level of graphics card you have a right to expect excellence. The new nVidia Ultra 8800 XTX is coming in around $800+!!! Sheeesh!

You can find this on the many torrent sites. However, note what has already been mentioned about the licensing. If you use your own copy, thinstall it and carry it with you to use when you aren't using your main copy, the spirit of your license is problably intact. Don't know if MS condone it, though. You can always ask. Just a thought. You might also think about using open source software for this purpose. Open Office is legally portable and is very compatible with Word doc formats.

Windows uses its own IE engine in Explorer and so any access, even if local, will invoke the 127.0.0.1 address (that's the loopback addy). ZA, and other firewalls will register this as an "internet access" when if fact, it's not. This is a Windows "anomoly". lol! :^) Why they haven't excepted that access to not trigger firewalls and other processes, I don't know. Anyway, for the most part, it isn't access the internet or any other computer but your own when it is doing this. If you were behind a router, you'd be able to test this. Just block all access at the router, but not in your software firewall and you'll see.

Stik62, this is a function of the permissions structure and the default limitations imposed by Vista. As you may have surmised, you need to take ownership of the file and then you can manipulate it. I found this one of the many annoyances of Vista, but another way to address this is to login as Administrator. While you may think you have all administrative privileges if you have "Administrator" rights, the truth is you don't. Think of Administrator as having Super Administrator rights and you'll be much closer to the truth of what's happening. By default, the built in Administrator (or root) account doesn't show on the Welcome screen and thus poses a bit of problem for normal users who want to access it. (Hint: MS doesn't want normal users to have access. In a way, I don't blame them, except if they include me!! lol) So, to access that account you need to activate it first. This you can do in a Command Box (Run... / type "cmd" (no quotes) ). Enter this: net user Administrator /active:yes Now, you will see Administrator on the Welcome screen and you may login. Note there is no password, so you will have to set one once you log in. You can do this in User Accounts as well as through the Management Console. Hope this helps.

Just wanted to say thank you. :^)

Hmm. I'll have to check this out! What happens when the install process reboots? The typical MS boot sector on an installation disk requires a "hit any key to start from CD...." message and if no key is pressed, control is handed on to the next booting device - normally the hard disk. Without this intervention it seems to me the installation process would be caught in an endless loop of somekind. Not good. Pressing the Shift key is a good idea, but certainly not the expected required behaviour of an installation disk. Am I missing something here?

Thank you! This is good information. Though I don't like Fast User Switching and recommend against it, many of my customers want it or insist on it and it's good to have some info about it.

Well, excyooose me! I wasn't talking down to you and apologize if you felt so. Thank you for the bio. It's clear you have more experience than I do, but I stand by my post within the context of what I was saying. Of course, the issue with Office is because of mixing and matching 2003 and 2007. But that is the point. This wasn't my client but a friend in West Virginia, but it was a real world problem that caused many headaches. Tasks are an aspect of Office many never delve into. As for the hardware, I live in Austria and while there may be one or two out there, none of the main online electronics outlets or computer stores here sell monitors with HDMI conectors, and even the LCD TVs which claim to be HD-ready just aren't. Most people I know don't have the spare cash to spring for an 8800GS card either. And it would be well to mention that nVidia are having great problems getting their drivers to be fully compatible and they've now decided to charge money for them! That's good or bad depending what side of the fence you're on. The fact is that most of the HD content will be constricted on a Vista system with most of the hardware that folks have now. That means to access it, they'll have to invest in new hardware beyond just more RAM and a heftier chip. Many buying a new machine won't realize this until later. They'll be shut out until they spend more money. At least if they want to use Vista, because as I said, Vista will constrict the video stream. Using AnyDVD is only a partial solution and certainly not the most desirable one. People like you know about it, but most of my customers don't and they are the ones who end up paying. Yes, I've known about the security descriptors and file access for quite a while, but DRM goes far beyond the Hollywood content providers. The TCP neé Platinum is slowly but surely putting the pieces in place that will severly hamper the use of your own machine. I have nothing against the concept of protecting content per se, but I do have great misgivings about the overall concept based on copyright laws which need to be revisited to restore some of the original intent. That is another issue entirely, but it does play into it. Again, I meant no offense to you in anyway and only wanted to comment on my own experience in relation to what you said. I also said that most of the problems with drivers and such will be ironed out over time. You might glean from that that I'm not an MS basher by trade or hobby. I'm glad your system is stable for you and that it has not caused any of the problems others seem to have had. We benefit from your input.

Hmmm. Most of the people in the scene here (Austria) use geek to mean someone who understands technology and is interested in it. It doesn't say anything else about that person, though many geeks aren't really social animals. Nerd on the other hand has a distinctive negative connotation and doesn't imply any expertise at all. I would much rather be a geek than a nerd! :^)

You could probably do it in the registry by altering the specific key as I'm pretty sure that's where the system gets the info, but I've never done myself. Running in compatibility mode is a better idea because some programs just won't run well on 2003 Server. I run server and while it soes come up once in a while, for the most part it's not an issue. If a program won't load or run in compatibility mode it will eventually cause problems on your machine.

That's a driver problem and it also sounds like a typical problem with an analog monitor. I presume your monitor has a digital and an analog connector. It is not uncommon for the field to be shifted with an analog signal, but not as much as you describe. I, too , use an Intel Graphics Accelerator chip in my HP 510, but I don't seem to have the problem you describe with any monitor. You mention the problem with external and extend, so I presume it looks okay with Mirror? If it does, then you can probably fix it as the signal is there and will display. Your onscreen controls should work to help correct this. part of the problem nmay the difference in the native resolution of your screens. If your laptop screen is 1280x800 and your screen is 1680x1050 then that may be part of the reason for the shift. How does it respond when you set the res to 1280?

Toad21, as far as I know (though it's been awhile since I've done it), turning it on after will not cause you a problem. This was the solution I was going to propose. Turn it off during installation and then turn it on again when all is done. Just make sure those changed files are changed in the cache as well. You can turn sfc back on with a reg file or cmd file run on first boot. Use the techniques from an unattended install to do this.

First thing - turn off indexing on that disk. Right click on the disk icon in Explorer and choose Properties. then uncheck the box at the bottom where it says, "Allow Indexing Service to index this disk for fast file seaching". That may not be the onoly thing, but it is one of them. Second, if you are using Sysmantec AV Corp, the newer versions of that have an automatic scan on start up. If you have that, you can delete it. It's a good idea in a business, but a pain at home. [edit: I see you have AVG.] Third, update to Adobe Reader 8 and you might consider the lite edition. Fourth, put your pagefile on another partition, or even another disk. I don't see anything right off the bat which might cause that kind of thrashing and I don't think it has to do directly with nLite itself. I see you've got AVG, so I'd check for a start up scan of some kind. Also, check what services are starting up with your Startup Monitor. You may find the culprit there.

@nightthief - Yes, Office 2007 works okay under Vista, but try sharing tasks over a network with other machines such as you might have in a real office. Ooops! Notifications don't show on the Vista machine! And that's using MS own software like XP with Office 2003 on the other machines. Intuit now tell their customers not to use QuickBooks, a widely used program by SMBs across the country, on Vista as it just doesn't work! I'm sure MS is working on it as I heard they finally bought Quicken which the justice department disallowed years ago. Oh well. And basic Photoshop works fine as well, but try some of the more intricate things, stress the program a bit and you'll run into glitches. I'm sure these will be worked out in time, too. However, if you were a business, you'd be foolish to adopt this platform right now. It costs a fair amount and delivers less, and quite a bit in many cases. I haven't even touched on the embedded and enmeshed DRM fandangle. To work it must monitor every file on your machine and what you do with it. This has to and does affect the overall performance. You can mask this with better hardware and tricks like SuperFetch and ReadyBoost and whatnot, but the bottom line is that Redmond has decided for you what you can and can't do with your machine in many cases. And it's only going to get worse. The whole video sub system is intentionally crippled if you don't have what they deem as "secure" connections all the way through. To date, o monitor on the general market complies! Or graphics card. That mfeans all that HD content you want to watch is intentionally crippled by your system whether you want it or not just because you might make a copy of something on your hard disk! Do you really want to support this nonsense? Yes, Vista will be a fact of life as it is sold with new machines and we'll have to keep up with it vagaries if that is our business, but personally I'm looking to install Ubuntu as my server and only run Vista or XP in a VM. The new VMware v6.0, though still in beta, is really really fast under Linux. It will blow you away. I'm running Vista with 1GB in a VM right now under 2003 Server and it is pig slow. But under Linux there is hardly a hesitation. The driver situation will only get better for Vista as it did for XP, but Vista really gets in your face, and sooner or later you're going to cuss at it. It is pretty though! :^) (Is that the only reason to adopt it?)

Hmm. This thread started nearly three years ago and it still is going!! In general, I think defragging is overrated, but I still do it for various reasons. I use it to pack the hard disks I use for TV and Movies. Those are large files and don't change much. Diskeeper is only so so i've found over time. It works, but is finicky. On those drives I mentioned it won't even attempt it. Also, It can take several if not many passes with diskeeper to get it right. Perfect Disk and Vopt8 can do it in one pass. O&O after some early failures years ago finally got their act togehter and produce a decent app that is on par for the most part with the other two. SysInternals app is also good, but nowhere near as pretty! :^) I've noticed that Symantec let SpeedDisk die. Too bad that was shaping up to be a good tool. The odd thing about defraggers is that except for boot up times (and I don't do that often except for testing) they all must tie into the same MS api. I've never pulled it apart, but I'm not sure how they all manage to be all that different given the limitations Windows puts on them. A friend of mine used to run tests when he was the CIO at a big company here in Vienna. As noted, except for bootup times there was little practical difference in the performance of the disks, despite what Diskeeper tries to peddle you. Yes, there is a difference, but not much of a prctical one except in extreme cases of rampant fragmentation and load demand on the drive. I like the new Vopt8 since they've ironed the bugs out of it and Golden Bow was always one of the most reliable software producers out there. I like the feature of being able to point to a little square and seeing what files are there. Useless, I know, but I like it. The color scheme makes more sense to me than Perfect Disk also, but I like that app as well as O&O. Sigh.

Okay, I confess. I sit behind a router and I have Symantec AV Corp running. I even have an old version of ZoneAlarm runnng, though it hasn't had anything in it's log for a very long time. Since 1995 I haven't caught any nasty and hd to reinstall or something. Knock on wood. I've cleaned enough machines, though and reinstalled a zombified machine last week. The owner had been banned from sending email by her ISP! That's how she learned of it. She had a firewall and AV. Interestingly, I had about twenty websites open a couple of days ago, some doing searches, some articles and some forums. Suddenly I saw that rare window from Symantec. AutoProtect had actually run into something. It was the ANI cursor exploit apparently. So, I guess it did it's job. I still have no idea which site or page was responsible. Maybe it was something like megaupload or whatever. No matter. I'm inclined to prepare a known clean image and if anything happens it is much faster and more certain to restore that image. So, I'm inclined to go along with mon ami, jcarle on this one.

While Nero or any other burning program can make you a bootable CD if you provide the boot.bin or boot.img file and make certain you use a 4 sector offset, but if that makes you dizzy you could always use nLite. Create a folder and put all the files from the CD in it, fire up nLite, tell it where that folder is, don't make any changes at all, then tell nLite to make you an iso image and burn it. It will take care of all the little details for you! :^)

Hmm. I used a slightly different, but similar method. I used two files - both in the $OEM$ folder. useraccounts.cmd net user Bolus123 passwordhere /add net localgroup Administrators Bolus123 /add net accounts /maxpwage:unlimited REGEDIT /S autologon.reg EXIT and autologon.reg Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon] "DefaultUserName"="Bolus123" "DefaultPassword"="passwordhere" "AutoAdminLogon"="1" The AutoAdminLogon can be set to more if you want. But then you can use TweakUI to do that too. You can use the first file to set up more user accounts, too if you want, but the login default will be to the oneyou set here. Hope that helps.

Have you ever wanted to export your Outlook calendar items in bulk instead of one at a time? If you have, you'll have found some of the odd limitations of Outlook. First, Outlook limits the total number of items to somewhere between 2000 and 2500. That may seem like a lot, but if you have a full calendar and have several recurring events such as birthdays, you'll find they get cut off. Secondly, there is also a ten-year limit which plays havoc with recurring anniversary events and such. What if you wanted to export your calendar to use in Thunderbird/Sunbird, or maybe in your Google calendar using the iCal format? You'd be flat outta luck! That's why a friend of mine wrote a bulk export utility for Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007 called FreeMiCal. Even though 2007 has what seems to be a workaround (you can email yourself the calendar) the file produced doesn't conform exactly to the iCal spec and has the limitations as noted. The simple way is to use FreeMiCal. It was written with an open license and is freely available through Source Forge. http://sourceforge.net/projects/freemical You do not have to have Outlook open for FreeMiCal to work. Give it a look.

Also, the Quick Launch thing and adding things to it is a registry tweak and not just a simple string, either. It can be 20-50 lines of hex and then some! Check the RegTweaks section here and you'll find a whole lot of things you can include.