kz26

Great, thanks for the tip. Should I do this in safe mode, or is it OK to do it in Windows?

OK. But I would expect that initially Windows would assign a new drive letter other than D to the new drive. How do I prevent this and have the new drive seamlessly take over as the new D drive without ever losing access to my data?

You do realize that the Radeon HD 3200 (both the desktop and laptop variants) is not a true video card, but an integrated GPU? The low gaming performance you're seeing is typical of IGP solutions. Since it's a laptop with an on-board GPU, you won't be able to upgrade it.

I'm planning to get a Samsung F3 1TB drive soon to serve as a data hard drive. Right now, I'm running on a single WD 640GB drive that has a boot/system partition © and a larger data partition (D). Basically, I would like to copy/clone everything on the current D: partition to the new drive (which will just have one large partition), and have the new hard drive take over as the new D. In terms of software, what would be the best way to go about doing this? Is it possible to do it within Windows, or would I need to resort to a Linux live environment?

Using MPC Classic from the K-Lite codec pack. Works like a dream, can play any media format known to man.

Well-designed Silverlight site?...lol

They are the same, except that the full version contains download offers for useless stuff like Google Toolbar or Norton Security Scan or whatnot. The slim version should provide full Shockwave functionality w/o any other junk.

Trying to get all that working on a live install sounds pretty tough...why not just install everyone the way you want and then image the hard drive?

I occasionally need to share my LAN internet connection via an adhoc wireless network from my Windows box, and so far have been using Windows ICS to accomplish this. Obviously, this is a very basic solution and I can't really configure much nor see what's going on. Are there any (free/OSS preferred) that performs the same basic functions as ICS but is also suitable for power users and advanced configuration? Thanks for any suggestions!

I'd be happy to try whipping something up for you...I recently wrote an alarm clock in VB.NET, so I don't imagine it would be too difficult to turn that idea around into a countdown.

What kind of XP license do you have? You said that you installed from OEM media, for which you will need an OEM key (typically on the XP sticker on the bottom/side of your computer). Usually you don't need to pay for an XP license when buying a computer - it comes with it. If you said you paid for your license, then that might mean you have a RETAIL key, which will not work with OEM media - only RETAIL media.

Don't know if this fits your bill, but Meebo is a web-based multi-network IM client. It has a pretty slick interface: http://www.meebo.com

I can't believe that no one has yet mentioned JkDefrag. It's ultra-lightweight, free, open-source, and licensed under the GPL. http://www.kessels.com/Jkdefrag/

Can you be more specific? What happens when you try to install the driver? Are you using an EXE-based driver installer from Intel or is it a ZIP driver package? Also, try going into Device Manager. Do you have yellow question marks and "VGA" under display devices? One way to manually install the drivers is to download the INF and drivers manually, then point Device Manager to the INF file.

in an ideal world, DLL hell wouldn't be a problem and so WinSXS wouldn't be needed. However, I don't think the bloat problem is as big as you make it out to be. I have Adobe CS3, Office 2007, and the full VS2005 pro installed and my WinSXS folder is only 42.7 MB. Perfectly reasonable. I think the WinSXS thing makes you better safe than sorry. After all, with today's big HDDs and fast multi-core processors it isn't much of an issue at all.