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.

For the ConvertXtoDVD alternative, try DVD Flick. Not nearly as flexible, but it gets the job done

IIRC the VIA C3s have a 64KB L2. Wow, definitely haven't seen one of those for a while. Thanks for the nostalgia trip.

Actually, the NVIDIA nForce 630i/MCP73 boards are pretty sweet stuff. LGA775 45nm support, 1333MHz FSB, SATA2 + RAID 0/1/5 with PATA, integrated GeForce 7 graphics, DVI and/or HDMI, SPDIF, GigE, and heck, even eSATA! Be assured that the onboard GeForce will beat the crap out of any Intel's GMA chips. Take a look at this board, the XFX MG-630i-7109: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16813141007 Oh, and not to mention great overclocking

I noticed this behavior too at my school, which is also a Server 2003 AD environment. Perhaps it is a default group policy setting?

Just checked it out, it's the real deal. Hopefully they will consider adding Vista

Honestly, the best free firewalls are not open-source. I have been using Comodo for quite some time now and am very pleased with it. True, open source is nice, but sometimes it isn't the best.

Try Recuva, a free undelete utility. It will tell you what deleted files still have a trace and their integrity. http://www.recuva.com/ I would recommend that until you have attempted to recover the files, DO NOT do any downloading or anything that will write extensively to the hard drive in order to keep the deleted data intact as possible.

Out of curiosity, why do you want Office 2000? 2003 is pretty much everywhere in my experience.

Your motherboard is quite new and you have a SATA hard drive. Try going into the BIOS and looking for an option like "SATA Legacy emulation" or something like that. This will allow the XP installer to recognize the HDD without any drivers. Once you finish installing go back to the BIOS and set it to native mode.

The WinXP SP2 Pro laptop in my sig exhibits this problem - whenever I put in and remove a CD/DVD, the disk's label remains; e.g. a disk labeled MOVIES will cause the computer to keep showing MOVIES for the drive in My Computer. How do I fix this? Does anyone have an idea of the cause? It seems to have started recently, but have no idea what (Google searches didn't seem to turn up much.) This is quite an annoying quirk that I would REALLY like to get rid of...