DonDamm

Hmmm. this can get tricky, but first make sure the workgroup/domain name on your machine is "mshome", then you must have a login user/password or you won't be able to connect - this is a security thing which came in with SP1 I think. Then you need to have something shared, a folder or something and you need to give permission. the whole network thing is layered and there are differences between different versions that are subtle and annoying. The permission structure is different for German Windows than for English Windows. When I've had to work where both are on a network, things can get pretty squirrly! Good luck with it.

From what I can understand here, you tried to nLite to integrate a number of programs into your install disk. nLite is great for integrating service packs, hotfixes, and some drivers and tweaks into the install media, but it is not set up to generally integrate regular programs. That is why there is an unattended guide here and a forum!! In general, the programs are installed AFTER the OS is installed and that can occur in several ways depending on the method you choose. These are indicated in the Unattended Guide. I've tried most of them and they have all worked, but they do require various levels of effort to make them work. Not every program has a "silent" switch" for example, so you may have to take another approach, and those that do have silent switches don't all have the same ones. The forum here is a great place to search for information on programs that are giving you trouble or to ask questions. to sum up. From what I can see your programs won't "integrate" with nLite because that's not what it is for (except for things like WMP). You need to use a specific method to do this like the "Run Once" method or the Windows Post Installer method created by a genius here on MSFN. Hope this helps.

Hmmm. Anyway you cut this forum, MSFN is unique in what it provides and the depth of knowledge of its members. I run a small board and am a member of several others. I've seen many many boards come and go in the last ten+ years and many of them imploded from internal friction. I cherish the bunch here and the willingness to part with hard-earned information with nothing expected in return. It is a special type of person who sticks with it. I wish all the admins and mods here a great New Year and say many thanks for keeping this place going! :^) Oh, et toi aussi, jcarle! lol

Definitely follow this up. First, I'm sure eBay wants to know about it. Second, it looks like the scammer's native language is other than English. A quick google of Adam & Clark Inc. reveals a load of info of similar scams. this is not new!!! My advice. Get the real seller to send you the item and ignore the other. or, if you want to have some fun, pull a reverse 419 scam on the scammer. That will take some time and creativity, but it could be satisfying. Still, you could try to draw them out. In truth, I don't think they are in England at all, but rather in Nigeria or Russia.

So, you want to follow the rules by not installing SP2 as they asked, but you are willing to mess with the registry and install a beta product?? Something doesn't add up here. Did you ask them if it was ok to install a beta and they said ...yes? I'd say leave your work machine alone and tell them the machine's at risk and they should update to SP2 because the OS is no longer supported at SP1. There's a reason for that. Then I would put that beta, not on my work machine, but on a laptop which I could bring into work. there you'd have complete control fo the environment and wouldn't have to fudge with your IT department (who are going to find out about the beta installation eventually!). I know SP2 had some issues with some applications, but those have mostly been resolved. I'd check with the applications and see if they have updates to the plugins which didn't work before and see if those conflicts haven't been resolved. It seems to me you are worried about your current data, but are willing to risk it installing a beta. I wouldn't do that. Use a different machine, either yours at home or a laptop.

Hmmm. Time will better answer this one, but it seems to me that there are some noticable improvements with Vista as has been mentioned, but there are a couple of things that seem pretty clear to me. First, I've been using 2k3 Server for years now and I've noticed that it seems much more stable than the XP machines I use as secondaries or testbeds. They use different kernels and the Vista development was slowed down a while back when they decided to completely scrap the builds based on the XP kernel and went back to the drawing board with the 2003 Server kernel. So, I would venture that Vista will prove to be a more robust and stable platform than XP. Secondly, I do have grave concerns that most people will ignore or not care about the ever closer implementation of DRM and TCP, the Trusted Computing Platform which is the renamed Palladium of old which everybody yelled about. With the hardware chips in place and this software you won't need any AV software anymore because you'll be monitored and so will your software. If it's not licensed it won't run, Period. If you haven't paid for it, good luck! I think this is mostly aimed at the Russian and Chinese markets, but I'm not sure. lol Anyway, it will prove to be quite a PIA sooner or later, and I've already started working on all-in-one solutions using ubuntu on a stick for small businesses. The ability to use virtual machines very neatly circumvents the need to run any particular OS and you could easily run a linux server and any Win apps in a VM if needed. At home this may not make much sense, but it might in a business. One of the very nice thing about VMs is their portability. As long as it's licensed you can move it to another machine and run it there. In time I think we'll find a way around the parts of Vista we don't like and will find that it offers a nice upgrade to our current XP installations.

It's not going to make much difference. As noted, they both work for movies, but neither is sufficient for a proper backup. Let's just hope they both get superceded in a big way and the whole thing dies. They both deserve to considering what they want to charge for both the drives and the media. Blu-Ray was out and available some two years ago...at least in Japan, and they waited and waited to release it in the US and Europe and never agreed on a common standard. What a bunch of turds they are. Let's hope they lose their investment to a fast solid state random access 150+GB medium.

As a general rule, it's a good idea to rename the administrator account. Then, the first account you create is an administrator level account. to delete it later youeither have to do it from another administrator account, or as noted from the built in one which you gave a passwrod to when you set it up. Indeed, the Ctrl-Alt-Del trick will get it to show on the start screen or you could just change the way the welcome screen presents itself and use the classic logon where you'd just type in the Administrator and Pass you created. Once you've logged on with the built in account in regular mode it will create the profile on logon and you'll see it in the list. From there you can delete any other profile as long as you have at least one user account. If you want to use any customized permissions you have to do that in Safe Mode, which is one of the big pains with Home. (not to mention lack of remote destop).

Nicely done! Thank you, jcarle. :^) I know you can get the updates through the administrator links, but when you've made the choice the whole thing comes wrapped and layered into folders which makes it a bit of pain to move them all into one file. This makes it easy to collect them all in one place for use in nLite or a script. Looking forward to being able to do it for German versions which I have to maintain for some customers and for Server 2003 (and Vista when it comes....). Once again, thank you.

Have a look a miniPE. It runs a Windows PE environment and can access all drives and run programs.

This is an ongoing question which sems to have no one answer. Most of us rely on our experience and that of friends, but as with many things, things are not always as they seem. Every manufacturer has had batches of lemons. Every single one. Large numbers of people had problems with IBM's notorious "DeathStar" drives, but (I bought three of them many years ago and they are still going strong! Go figure. I have stacks of dead Quantum, Seagate, Maxtor, and particularly WDs (apologies to Kel!). I had great luck with IBM/Hitachi for years, but currently I've settled on a new champ - Samsung. The reason I like the Samsung drives (I'm currently running a 160GB, a 250GB, and 300GB in my machine) is that they, as a rule, are quiet - very quiet compared to all the others, they are several degrees cooler than Seagate, Hitachi, or WD of a similar size, and they tend to be aggressively priced. That combination is hard to beat. Seagate performs very well and is in the forefront technology wise, pioneering perpendicular domains resulting in much higher density drives. They also have finally given some competition to HItachi in the ntoebook drive arena of 7200rpm drives. Depending on what your needs are, you may make different choices. If you work with video stuff and need a very fast system drive you would look at the Seagate 10K or even 15K drives, whereas if you plan to have three or more dirves in the same3 case you might want to consider the noise and temperature issue and go with Samsung like I do. Whatever you do, have a backup plan, just in case! :^)

I'd guess that a.) he has a real life, b.) got tired of the increasing cost of bandwidth, and c.) felt he'd contibuted his fair share so far. Or some combination of the above. BV if you see this - many thanks. When Vista arrives, finally... I'm sure there will be no lack of those willing to post their version of services and other tweaks which may or may not be necessary. I'm also sure some lists will show up here, and we all will welcome them and debate them. In the meantime, thank you iWindoze for posting the site. I have a copy or two of the services list, but it is an excerpt and I've made my own personal list since. Having another source for BV's list is very handy, and especially since I'll be on the road for a couple of months soon and will not have a laptop with me.

As you can see there definitely lots of personal preferences out there! :^) First, NTFS is a journaled file system and thus, takes the time ot journal or write information to the disk when there are changes made to a files. To help keep the performance hit down, small files are maintained directly in the MFT (mater file table) itself. As noted this makes NTFS a much more robust system. This is because the system is more resistant to fragmentation (reports from Executive software aside...! - the truth is that fragmentation is nowhere near the problem they make it out to be), has security feature not available in FAT in the forms of file level permissions, and can be compressed and encrypted. Also, as noted, the chkdsk utility in NT/2K/XP - NTFS is a very thorough utility and fixes many common faults when they appear. Now, interestingly, compression can sometimes speed up the performance of some types of files if the compression ratio is good. I find that I prefer NTFS across the board. I use a 15-20 GB system disk for C: and the OS, while I keep data and the rest, including the paging file on D:, which I keep compressed along with any other volumes I add. That being said, the poster asked the question in regards to speed only, so.... I would say that if it is only speed you are after that I would put the OS and installed programs on a 10-15 GB C: drive and all the rest including the page file on a 25-30GB D: drive all formatted as FAT32. You could make C: NTFS, and Keep D: FAT32. That would probably be the fastest.....technically. However, I'm almost certain that if I were to setup a machine properly for you either way, I'll wager you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. If you really need speed consider using an scsi controller and 10K or even a 15K rpm harddisk like one of the Barracudas from Seagate. I guarantee you'll be able to see the difference then!! You can also tweak your system by removing most of the menu delay which defaults to 400 millisecs (almost half a second!!) and not using all the eye candy (set the visuals for performance) etc, turn off unnecessary services a la Black Viper, turn off unneeded startup services, and for heaven's sake do not install any Norton stuff, or deinstall it if you have it. You'll see that your machine will feel very much more snappy which ever file format you choose. As for recovery, FAT is accessible by DOS floppies and such, but really, with BartPE Tool and so many others out there, this really isn't much of an argument anymore. I've recovered both NTFS and DOS partitions and lost files, replaced the first 512KB with a copy from the middle of disk with a disk editor to retrieve a partition which disappeared, etc etc. If you have the right tools then either of the formats can be recovered from. I prefer NTFS, but then I like it. FAT can't be permissioned the same way nor encrypted by the OS, but I don't think that's the concern here. If it's any consolation, Fred Langa still runs his non OS partitions on FAT!!! He likes it. Whatever you decide, just make sure you have the tools you need to work with it and make back ups (and test them) so you don't screw yourself if the disk fails. That's what's really important. :^) Good luck with it.

Hey, Ryan, you're supposed to be a mind reader!!! Haven't you learned that yet??? lol @antonio_king You do know what that file is for, yes? I mena, you don't really need it. It just makes things go better. Did you check your System32 folder to see if it is in fact there? If not, please do that first. Then make sure it is in the $oem$ folder, which as noted gets copied as a whole during the text setup phase. To be more precise: it gets copied over to your hard disk immediately after all the windows files are copied over and befgore the first reboot. If that is not happening, then something is wrong with either your placement of the file or the command path. Check those, look for the file, and pay attention to these folks who are answering you. They are seasoned professionals who know what they are about. When they say "refresh", don't explain why you didn't - just do it, maybe apologize for not doing it sooner, and then say thank you. You'll find things go smoother. :^)

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to anything out there on the market which comes close enough to Outlook's function and integration, which is why many of us still have not abandoned it, though many of us have wanted to! Sunbird is evolving and as soon as it develops the capability to connect with Exchange server, Outlook will find a massive drain IMHO. Sharing calendaring would be useful to us all. Until then.... sigh.

That's a good explanation for first timers about the paradox. If you're interested checkout the work of Alain Aspect of Paris as he's one of the foremost researchers in the area. One of the more curious quantum puzzles to come out of it all is the seemingly instant (read no delay) communication between two photons which are paired (released at the same time going in opposite directions. A chaqnge in the polarity of one photon appears to register in the other even though they are apart and do not seem to be bound in any other measurable or observable way. This is strange stuff indeed! :^) Have fun in your course. It was my favorite area of physics when I was in university and great advances have been made since then. Make sure you check out the work of Aspect and you'll see what I mean. You might also enjoy Bose-Einstein condensates.... :^)

Hmm. I've heard pros and cons for just about every make of drive there is out there. Seems they all screw up at one time or other. Take a look at the 250GB Samsung from the the same vendor. It's almost the same price and, IMHO is a much better deal. Why? First they are QUIET, and significantly more so than the comparable Hitachi, WDs, or Maxtors. The current Seagates are comparable in dB ratings,but ... Secondly, the Samsungs run up to about 10 degrees cooler than just about any other disk out there. The Seagates run hot! and so do the Hitachis. If you are running more than one disk in a box these become important considerations. Otherwise, not to worry. :^)

You took the words out of my mouth! lol My first thought was "Norton". If you insist on Symantec stuff, at least use the corporate client. It seems to be very light on its feet and doesn't cause so many problems. Here's a hint if you really want to speed things up: Use Hibernate. Really, it works great and you'll be up and working in 30 seconds. Try it out. It just copies your RAM contents to a file and replaces it on startup instead of loading all the drivers from scratch. I use it here on my Server 2003 which normally takes a few minutes to start from scratch because of 'the large number of services I have on it.

I'm sure you have good reasons for approaching your install that way, but I can't help but wonder why you don't a) integrate all the service packs before you install, and b) integrate wmp10 before you install? There have been ample tuts here on both those topics and it really is much simpler to integrate wmp10 and all needed hotfixes and serivce packs into the build. I struggled a bit with wmp10 when I first was doing this and then found the integration scripts and stuff here which made life very much simpler. Do a search for them, and use nLite.

God I love this place! Thanks for the post, BoardBabe. :^)

I knew I was on the right track! :^)

I won't make it for you, but I'd suggest a small flash implementation. These work extremely well and are easy to configure and make into an exe file which you then can set to run on first startup!! Just use something like flash mx.

b&b, I'm not sure we understand what the problem is other than "it doesn't work". by "outside of Windows" he meant either booted into safe mode or using a boot CD like ERD Commander or DigiWiz's miniPE which will boot into a Windows like environment and allow you access to all the files. Do you know what Safe Mode? Did you try that? If not, then do that first. Copy the patched file and overwrite the existing one. As a general rule, I don't overwrite any file. I tend to add a non-functioning extension like ".orig" to the original file and then copy over the new one. That way I always have the original file in the original place if I need it. Whatever the case, tell us exactly what you did and what isn't working or no one will be able to help you. the advice about xpize was good and easy to follow. You haven't said if you tried that or not. One of the problem I see is that you are trying to patch a live installation of XP and some fo the advice here is for patching the files used to install XP, and it seems that is confusing you. You can do either, but if you don't understand a point like "do it from outside Windows", then stick with that until you do understand it and then move on. It will work better if you do it that way. :^)

Any one of the three would be more than enough for what you've got with huge room to spare. Your not gonna stress that PS with what you've listed. The drives are what take the most power and that only on startup. you have only two there. I have four with two DVD burners on a 400 w PS and it does just fine. My opinion which you asked for is that over $100 is way too much to spend on an ENermax. I like Enermax, but I pay way less here retail and we have a 20% VAT to contend with. Take a look at pricewatch.com or others. I'm sure you can do better. There are also many other PS suppliers which will do you, like TopPower, Antec, and even CoolerMaster. They all make very quiet PSs. If I was going to spend over $100 on a PS like that, I'd seriously consider going with a fanless design - not just quiet, but noiseless for a few dollars more. Anything above 400 watts will comp[letely cover you, as you have described. That being said, there is nothing wrong with having a stronger supply like a 485 or even a 550, but you will pay a bit more. I'd say do a little more research into what you really need, or might need in the future, and then do some more price checking and I think you'll come out ahead.

For the status bar, list view and sorting by type, I use the following in my regtweaks.reg ;---======================================================== ; ### Status bar, list view, list by file type for Explorer ;---======================================================== [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Streams] "Settings"=hex:09,00,00,00,03,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,e0,a5,1f,0e,73,35,cf,11,ae,\ 69,08,00,2b,2e,12,62,04,00,00,00,05,00,00,00,43,00,00,00 This is easy to check. put it in a separate file called something like test.reg (make sure the proper heading is in the file-"Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00") and then turn that stuff off and then merge the file, log off and then log on. :^)