Denney

I'm a **** insomniac... I have so much trouble sleeping... I generally sleep for about 4 hours a night (sometimes 6 when I'm lucky)... My record for staying awake is something like 7 days... Then I pretty much passed out from exhaustion and woke up the next day... I went to see the doctor and he prescribed these sleeping pills... They didn't help... He said I have terminal insomnia.

A good example of prices here in Australia is that Windows XP costs upwards of $300 (3/4 of a standard pay week). Games are just as bad.. $100 for a game. Now, add up the cost of food, bills, fuel, etc.. each week and you can see why so many people have pirate stuff down here. I normally place a pre-order on my games at EB so that I can convert them to layby's if I haven't paid it off in time. If I have the bandwidth to spare, I download the game to play it until I finally pay it off. The same goes for pretty much anything like games, software, music, movies... I mean, the USA already has a DVD version of Shawn Of The Dead whereas we're JUST GETTING IT in the CINEMA! I'm going to buy it when it comes to DVD but I don't want to have to wait for so long. People are always asking me to copy things for them because they borrowed it from a mate or such (I say no most of the time). I'm not saying that I don't pirate stuff but I generally end up buying it in the end. Like all my Microsoft products, I've downloaded a copy, trialed it and then bought it (eventually - when I have the money).

Nup... I get a new error now... (null) is not a valid Win32 application.

Are you using WMP10? I couldn't get it to work properly under WMP9.

Hmm... strange... It still works for me... I've also had some mates try it and it works.

I think he wants to know how to silently install all updates onto a machine that already has Windows installed. Am I right? If so, try the command file listed here: http://unattended.msfn.org/xp/installhotfixes_old.htm under "Setting up hotfixes.cmd". I know it says it's for an unattended installation but you can use it anyway. Oh, and look at the Hotfixes for SP2 thread posted above for a list of current Windows XP hotfixes and how to install them.

Yeah. No matter what account you use, you'll get an "Access is denied" error. system32 is the only folder so far that works properly. Ahwell, I don't mind... I only have one exe file so just placing it in the system32 directory doesn't matter.

Nevermind. I fixed it. I placed the StartupManager.exe file in the system32 directory and now it works. Obviously the "Program Files" folder doesn't have the required permission to run programs via the control panel.

I need some help adding a program to the contol panel. I've created a Startup Manager program and have added it to the control panel with the following registry entries: Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{373419B5-F3F9-4D20-9A45-6D4898CE9E04}] @="Startup Manager" "InfoTip"="Manages all programs that startup with a computer." [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{373419B5-F3F9-4D20-9A45-6D4898CE9E04}\DefaultIcon] @="%programfiles%\\Mantra Software Australia\\StartupManager\\StartupManager.exe,0" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{373419B5-F3F9-4D20-9A45-6D4898CE9E04}\Shell\Open\command] @="%programfiles%\\Mantra Software Australia\\StartupManager\\StartupManager.exe" [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ControlPanel\NameSpace\{373419B5-F3F9-4D20-9A45-6D4898CE9E04}] @="Startup Manager"It appears, but the problem is when I try and run it from the control panel, I get an "Access is Denied" error. Does anyone have any information on this or any way to fix it?

@Kleopatra: MSXML 5.0 is only available as part of Office 2003. So Ryan ripped it out for all of you to have.

If you just install the Real Alternative codec, you can play RealMedia files in Windows Media Player.

Sweet... Thanks for the list crahak. There are more places then I thought. Ahwell, just a little more coding I guess...

I'm trying to compile a list of ALL possible locations for Windows startup programs to reside (creating my own startup monitor program). These are what I have so far (I think this is all of them, just want to make sure): HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnceEx HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run %userprofile%\Start Menu\Programs\Startup %allusersprofile%\Start Menu\Programs\StartupCan anyone think or know of any other places?

Well, it obviously depends on what modified files your hosting. If they're user interface tweaks, I don't think Microsoft would care. If they were activation cracks or something similar then you'd be in for it.

OK. There seems to be a bit of confusion about this so I'll straighten it out for ya's. 1. If you host an UNMODIFIED file from Windows, you are breaking copyright laws by distributing it. So that's illegal. 2. If you host a MODIFIED file from Windows, you are breaking the EULA (you're not allow to reverse engineer Windows products) and your breaking copyright laws (again). So that's illegal. 3. If you make a program that MODIFIES a file from Windows, you are only breaking the law is you USE it (goes for both the creator and the end user). You can have it, but you can't use it. So it's illegal to use, legal to own. 4. Telling someone how to MODIFY a file from Windows is legal. It's only illegal if you USE the information. So it's illegal to use the information, legal to have the information (there is a bit of a grey area here, whereby a judge may favor the prosecution if the modification causes great harm to the them). All of those cases would need to be enforced by Microsoft before anything would happen to you. So, yes, what you want to do is illegal but I doubt Microsoft would enforce it against you. I hope this clears things up for most people.

It all depends on your regional settings (more specifically: Regional and language options -> Regional options -> Customize -> Date -> Short date format). For me %DATE% returns 11.10.04.

Good to see you'll keep this up to date. So many things around here do stuff like this but very people keep it up to date. BTW: I tried it and it works great. Good work Ryan. Keep it up.

I just can't seem to remember the answer to this question... When, during setup, are the INF files listed in SYSSETUP.INF executed? Is it before or after T-12 (cmdlines)? This is one thing that isn't specified in the unattended guide's timeline.

Sweet... You finally got this out eh. I'll have to try it now. Edit: I'd like to see a copy with the .NET Framework v1.1 SP1 integrated...

Yeah... I didn't read what I typed... Forget I said anything...

I think this is it. 3. Hard disk You can make hard disk image which is 10 MB as follows. $ dd if=/dev/zero of=./harddisk.img bs=1024 count=10000I've heard about this program but haven't tried it yet. Anyone else have any comments on it? Edit: Disregard above... It's for Linux... I didn't read what I was pasting... Edit: No good for me... A hard disk image file is up to 2GB.Inside the readme file.

You need to add the following to your WINNT.SIF file for that to work: [Branding] BrandIEUsingUnattended=Yes

Yes. Very nice find. I will be using this now.

I think the best thing would be to get the source to extract a RAR archive (from the RarSoft website) and create a small EXE that you can stick in system32 and associate it with .rar files.

Being a programmer of almost 10 years, I can say that adding RAR file support to Windows would be a BIG task (if not impossible). Maybe an addon dll file could be made (using the source code for unrarring a file at RarSoft), that could "hook" into Windows zipfldr.dll file but, as I said, it would be a LOT of work and probably isn't possible.