Nakatomi2010

I say you call it 'Bob'... It's catchy.... On a more serious note I recommend nLiteVE, while Veestah sounds neat, everyone is used to nLite as the product name, so nLite would have to be a part of the name for the Vista version for fear of confusing the user... I could be underestimating the average suer of this program, but you know.. Hell, nLiteV would probably just as effective....

What people don't realize is that by "It'll be out Monday" it'll be out at 11:59pm on Monday, just before Tuesday...

Install was NOT a sucess on XP Home OEM... Looks like this addon only works when activation is not an issue... Installed it twice to be sure.... If the OS needs activation it cannot be integrated....

Install was a success with this IE7 addon using XP Pro Corporate... Trying with Home OEM....

@ ZcWorld: Which version of Windows are you doing the install with? Corporate, OEM or Retail?

I could see the spyware if you clkick on one of the Google ads on the page, but that's not their fault, they can't control the ads....

You can use Orca to edit the MSI and go to the 'ConteolEvent' in the left hand pane, in the right hand pane click on "Order" at the top to sort it for easier viewing... Scroll down to under the "Dialog" look for "InstallWelcome" and in the same row under the "Control" column look for the word "next", once you're looking at that row you should see "CheckWGA" under the "Argument" column, change this to "LicenseAgreement" (Case sensitive), no go to "LicenseAgreement" section and look for the "Back" control and change "CheckWGA" to "InstallWelcome", save and quit... This skips the whole WGA step and installs it properly.... Why did I bypass the WGA? I incorporate Windows Defender into my my WPI installs of XP, and I do installs on machines which sometimes can't be activated over the phone, so rather than activate over the phone THEN install Windows Defender, this allows defender to be installed before I activate XP, so it gets installed properly on the first run....

As often as I've done format and reloads my understanding is that you don't want to do it too often in a short time frame... Microsoft runs servers for which contain all of the activation requests for about 180 days or some such, at the end of that time frame the older requests begin to get purged and you can re-activate online properly. The key, in my opinion, is the frequency of dsoing it, if you install it on one machine, and another machine every other week yeah Microsoft will catch on, but I highly doubt their going to maintain a database for a 5 year span, let alone a single year, containing every activation request in and start denying people, and as such I would assume that, in theory, you could probably do an effective overhaul about once a year on average and get away with not running into trouble... Hell, I've had to activate some computers 4 times at the store I work at just to get it running right, Microsoft always lets me activate it each time.. Same day too...

I have ghosted Windows Vista properly using the DOS based version of ghost.... Conduct the ghost operation cloning one drive to the other Disconnect old drive and get your new boot settings properly... Put Windows Vista disc in your DVD and boot off the disc into the vista PE setup After selecting your language settings on the lower left click on "Repair your computer" It should just sit there for a few moments realizing that your the startup ability of your current Vista install is not working properly and fixing it automatically. It'll then popup with a window that says "Go ahead and repair the problem and restart the computer" Voila, problem solved... So Ghosting IS entirely possible it just requires an extra step....

I'm using the old Ghost 2003 version, so it's the DOS based variant... I went into the Options section and forced it to do a sector by sector copy right down to the boot tracks and I got nothing.... Still not bootable.... Tricky thing is that I'm at work and only have a 32bit version of Vista RC2 here, and the machine is Vista 64, so I need to wait till I get home to use my Vista 64 DVD to see if the repair option this thing is telling me to try will work... Boss is going to let me borrow a hard drive tonight, so worse scenario I get a clean install of Vista RC2, which would probably be best since it used to be Build 5536, then 5600, then 5724, and now 5744.... Also, Ghost said the file system was NTFS/HPFS, which I've never seen it say before, so I'm sure that's part of the problem... Other suggestions on cloning software are welcome of course.....

Sounds like that makes sense, and would explain things... Sadly this may complicate things further in the future when it gets released for us simple folk...... How would I use XImage to copy the drive?

So, I'm curently doing a hardware upgrade on my computer, adding a second 80GB hard drive to it to create a RAID 0 array, the process I'm using is as follows... Connect a 80GB or higher drive to the machine and ghost my current 80 to that one. Disconnect the drive I made an image to and reconnect the 80GB drive I'm creating the array with and turn on the array. Connect image drive to the machine and reghost the data back into the array.... Now, I DO understand I could run into a whole host of issue moving data from a single drive into a stripped array, but I want to try it and see what happens.. Here's my problem, everytime I try to clone Vista to another drive (I'm at a computer store so I've got alot on hand), Vista comes back and says its damaged and needs to be repaired... I was wondering if other people have run into this problem, or if maybe its my SATA ports giving me my issues... I've tried running Ghost off a floppy, and off my PE, and neither works properly... Thoughts? Edit: See below to see resolution

So, I'm going to have an extra 80GB drive tomorrow and I was thinking I'd make a RAID 0 array for my gaming rig using to 80GB drives, I'm planning on ghosting my current Vista install to a third drive temporarily while I make the array, then ghosting the data back to the array, it's going to be a hardware driven array.... Should it work flawlessly or am I going to run into trouble?

If my understanding of the Vista install procedure is correct then by including the product key in the unattend file will tell Windows to install the Ultimate version... Because the Vista discs include ALL versions of Vista inside the Install.wim file the differetiator is a proper Vista product key. And because the first thing Vista does when you start the install process is ask for a proper product key it chooses which version to install for you because that key will only be valid for a certain version of Vista... If my understanding is correct....

So I've been using ATi cards pretty much ever ince 3Dfx sold themselves to nVidia... From the Radeon 9000, to the 9600 to my current x700 Pro... it's currently just not cutting it anymore and pretty much time for an upgrade.... Problem for ME is that one of the biggest reasons I buy ATi in the first place is because they make their own video cards, which to me says that their built to their standards like you'd expect... Not sure if that logc makes any sense... So I've basically not bought anything but Built by ATi video cards (As opposed to the Powered by ATi cards like Sapphire) Now, I was going to order a Radeon X1900GT while the rebate was going on, but I missed that offer by about a day, so today I hear that the Radeon X1950 Pro is going to sell for about 200 dollars and perform about the same as a GT, so my question is this.... Basically I'm working with about 220ish dollars, after any mail in rebates, to put towards a card... I'm contemplating even doing the unthinkable and buying a GeForce 7900GT since I can get one for 220 after shipping and mail in rebates from Newegg (XFX GeForce 7900GT), but i'm not sure how the XFX stacks up compared to others, let alone if its worth shifting from ATi to nVidia... I know you people are going to say "Wait for DX10", but I need to replace y card, and I figure I'll let the DX10 cards mature a bit first, games wont just suddenly be DX10 only for at least another year or so because not EVERYONE is gong to rush out and buy DX10 cards at once.... Thoughts, opinions please...

Is there a way to have Vista ask to use the answer file? Biggest reason I ask is because with Vista having a single master image file for all versions of Windows the DVD is technically already a multiboot DVD, and so the largest thing to overcome is being able to have Vista use or not use an answer file, I mean there's the obvious method of "Just put the floppy in when you want it", or memory stick, or whatever, truth of matter is sometimes that can be a bit inconvenient having to remember to always put it in there each time.... Obviously I'm like 4 months early with this question, but it is nice to be prepared in advance....

Due to a somewhat killer deal on 400GB hard drives at Fry's I'm now getting another 400GB hard drive for yet another single payment of 100 dollars... So, new question.... Now that I'll have two 400GB hard drives I'd like to create some sort of redundancy without losing too much storage space.... The motherboard I'm using has 4 SATA ports on it, it's the Asus A8V Deluxe, it's got 2 standard SATA controller (Populated by the 160 and 250SATA drives), and a Promise RAID controller which has the other 2 SATA ports on it, meaning that I can basically put 2 SATA drives in a RAID array... My understanding of the RAID arrays is that RAID 0 is stripping without parity, meaning that I'd be looking at a logical 800GB drive, but if one failed I'd lose all data... RAID 1 is mirrored, so I'd have a single 400GB drive, but it would be cloned in the event of failure... RAID 5 is stripping with parity, which if I understand correctly, is stripping the drives while maintaing a parity block for each block being written so that in the event of a drive failing you could easily swap out the old drive and replace it with another one and the array would repopulate the second drive with all the lost blocks, but is useless without a replacement drive.... I'm thinking about doing a RAID 5 array with the two 400's, so I'd be looking at a rough total of about 800GB, but with redundancy where in the event of a single drive failing I can easily replace the dead 400GB drive and not lose any data... I'm I right, or am I wrong about my understanding of RAID 5?

I have 4 drives because I have THAT much stuff on them.... In the end I pulled the 40 and put in the 160 IDE and partitioned it in two, a 40 and a 120 partition, and ghost the 40 to the 40 partition.... Had to ghost the 250 to the 400, the 160 to the 250... I made this decision because the 40GB drive was making a whirring noise, was 5400RPM and had only a 2mb cahce, so it had to go...

I try to keep my OS different from my data drives in the event of failure... I COULD create two partitions on the 160IDE, a 40 and a 120, ghost my 40 to the Partitioned 40 and use the extra 120 as data storage..... And yes this is a bit of a puzzle, and as such the lives of many bits and bytes are within your hands, so choose wisely because many bits will be killed....

You can get it Here

You're not using the creative drivers... I had to install them manually, look at the date of the drivers when you're looking at its propertied within the device manager, if it says anything earlier than 9/28/2006 (roughly) than it's not the right driver.... To install it manually you'll need to decompress their .exe (I used WinRAR) and tell Vista you have the disk and point it there, don't let it search for the driver....

I've got a MEdia Center PC I'm currently doing routine maintenance on and I'm planning on adding a 400GB SATA drive.... It's a Samsung drive I had gotten for a hundred dollars form CompUSA a week or so ago... Anyways... The Media Center PC currently has a 40GB IDE drive which I've installed the OS to, a 160GB IDE Drive which was something Western Digital sent back when I RMA'd the 120GB that had failed on me, this 160GB IDE drive is a "Recertified" drive, most likely meaning that its refurbished... I've got a 160GB SATA drive, which I haven't had any issues with, and I also have a 250GB SATA drive, also made by Samsung... The case I'm using is a Silverstone LC16M, it's got enough room to hold 6 hard drive and a DVDRW, the catch to putting in 6 hard drive though is that it means stacking 3 hard drives one right on top of the other without much breathing room, and I don't REALLY want to have to do that if I can avoid it.... If I DID install the 400GB drive stacked I would stack it 160GB, 250GB, 400GB, however if I didn't I don't know which drive I would pull out... The 400GB drive is going to be getting all the data from the 250GB drive, so if I pull one of the two 160's I'd put the data from that onto the 250... What would you guys do? (The 40GB drive isn't going to come out unless it fails, all this machine doe is sit in the living room so I don't need a whole lot of hard drive space for the operating system....) edit: I'm thinking about pulling the 160GB IDE drive and putting the 400GB in it's place but then I don't know what to do with the 160GB... I could put it in my gaming rig, but I don't really want to go back to IDE, though the gaming rig does only have a single 80GB SATA drive.... Now... I DO work for a computer store and my boss would probably be willing to let me trade to recertified 160 for another 80GB SATA and I could run them in a stripped array on my gaming rig, but a trade like that would make me lose 80GB.....

For me to get the Creative drivers to work I had to decompress them and then manually install them... You'll know their installed properly cause they'll be dated September 29th 2006 or some such....

At the time of writing the RC1 drivers ATi didn't have the code from Microsoft to properly implement OpenGL. My understanding is that OpenGL has to go through DirectX to get used properly, and that means that it's entirely up to the video card manufacturers to properly implement OpenGL... As for Crossfire support, considering it's ATi's version of SLi I expect it to be enabled within the next release of their drivers, as I also expect OpenGL to be released at the same time. I also suspect the RC2 drivers will be released by the end of the week... I am no grounds for making that guess beyond that ATi was pretty quick to release their RC1 drivers, so I figure RC2 should be about as quick....

If anyone is interested Creative released their new RC1 drivers today... Vista x64: http://us.creative.com/support/downloads/d...p;x=31&y=17 Vista x86: http://us.creative.com/support/downloads/d...p;x=19&y=23 I posted this in the general RC2 thread, but figured it would get more attention here... I'm currently using the x64 drivers in build 5744 and I AM getting 5.1 surround sound... Beautiful surround sound too I might add... Now all I need are my ATi RC2 drivers and I'm set....