babyboomer

I've not visited this thread recently, but from reading the posts on pages 4 and 5 I think I can see why WFP is behaving as it does with nLiten'ed installations. The problem seems to be that the entries in SFCFILES.DLL for files removed or changed by nLite need to be updated, and nLite does not do this. The guys at bitsum know how to patch out entries for files which have been removed (see www.bitsum.com/aboutwfp.asp#Hack_Method_5), but I don't think anyone knows how to generate new checksums for changed files (or indeed, add entries for new files). So, Nuhi, perhaps the next version of nLite could patch out the entries in SFCFILES.DLL for any files removed or changed. I think this would be good enough, for now at least. I'm sure I'm not alone in hating WFP. Well, not WFP itself, actually, which I think is a good idea, but the lack of any published API to allow developers other than MS from legitimately updating system files. If MS are worried that this might be abused, they could make said API warn the user first, and/or create a 'system checkpoint' before replacing the file. Their current attitude just encourages people like us to sneak round the system. Serves them right.

I'd just like to chip in and say that LAME is absolutely brilliant. I used it to record all my old (vinyl) albums, and the recordings sound just as good (or bad!) as the originals. I used the (default) VBR option as I believe that it gives the best sound quality for the smallest file size (about 1.5MB/min). WMP does not do VBR. Full details at: http://lame.sourceforge.net/index.html

Thank you very much jaclaz. These are very useful links, especially the bitsum stuff, which appears to let me do exactly what I wanted via 'hack 5' and looks like a good source of information generally. Brill. I was not aware that the ffffff9d trick had disappeared, but I would be loath to user it anyway as I believe that SFC offers a useful level of protection most of the time. I just want to be able to sneak round it when I choose to.

This might be slightly off topic, but does anyone know how Windows determines that a sytem file has been modified? I have not looked into this, but I assume it has a list of file checksums or suchlike stashed away somewhere, since it can detect changes even if it does not have the original file available. It would be useful to know how this works as it might open the door to replacing system files (is it OK to mention wpa kill here?) without getting pestered by WFP. Turning WFP off completely is not an attractive option.