xpclient

Is there no tool for Vista/7/8 to programmatically turn on the Quick Launch which can be run at every startup.

Oh yes good old RSS. I had forgotten that. Becomes so easy then.But is there a KB feed for articles only with hotfixes. The KB feed also includes other crap like "How to" which I already know how to.

Oh great. If it just takes a simple hex edit, then that's no problem. Why do you think MS did that though? Maybe some binaries of XP x64 and Server 2003 x64 aren't 100% identical. Can that be the reason they produced Server 2003-only hotfixes?

Hey I'm interested in testing too. I forgot where we left off our discussion on all the post SP5 hotfixes but I have collected ALL post SP5 hotfixes-by-request updates for Windows 2000 and would like to share them if it helps. Did I upload them or not I don't remember. Anyways, I uploaded them here: http://sdrv.ms/NdoUGA Long overdue.

Sweet and thanks to the guys who created the convenient standalone installer. Just installed this on Windows 2000 SP4, XP SP3 x86, XP SP2 x64, Vista SP2 and W7 SP1.

ToggleQL works only for XP. I know Vista added an official way to toggle taskbar bands according to http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2009/02/02/9388941.aspx but Raymond Chen himself doesn't know if it works for Quick Launch or not. Anyone have a script or EXE (that doesn't use SendKeys) to toggle QL on Vista/7/8?

^ It's a long video. Can you tell the approximate time code where he has trouble? (It has crossed a thousand times in my mind that how would uber geeks like Mark get along with Windows 8).

@Everyone. Nice. Keep them coming. I am reassured to read I'm not alone and it's also interesting to read the various reasons. My concern is inability to run it natively though due to lack of drivers. Sandy Bridge and Sandy Bridge-E are I think the last Intel platforms (if you prefer Intel for performance) where XP will be supported. With Ivy Bridge/7-Series chipsets, there aren't USB 3.0 drivers for Intel's XHCI controller (not even Vista is supported, only W7!!), there may not be AHCI/F6 drivers for XP although I read somewhere chipset drivers and integrated graphics drivers were still made available for XP by Intel. So enthusiasts, now is the time to get your highest end Sandy Bridge-Extreme (X79+Core i7 3960X) and put XP x64 on it. @ allen2, agree 100%. WinSxS is a real downside to Windows 7. In fact it negates the benefits Windows 7 has for SSDs (automatic TRIM etc in MSAHCI) because if you have a low capacity SSD, and you install heavy programs and games you're screwed. I am a staunch opponent of the Component Based Servicing current design that Vista/7 use which contributes to WinSxS growth and is the core reason for the bloat in Vista/7. @5eraph Oh dear. That is certainly a thing to worry about. Maybe they do that because XPx64 is only *based on*, not 100% identical to Server 2003 x64. But yes MS could do that and prevent them from installing. Then we would have to create unofficial updates. (Tomasx86 is doing such a great job for Windows 2000 updates). But at the same time, I'm not intimidated or paranoid about support ending, just a little bit concerned because we don't know how aggressive in-the-wild attacks will occur on XP due to its large market share once support ends. @GrofLuigi, Isn't that Quick Launch disappearing on reboot problem related to the Language Bar? If you disable the Windows 7 Language Bar, it won't disappear. And if you need and use the Language Bar, you can just create a folder called "QuickLaunch" instead of "Quick Launch" and it won't disappear.

So MSFNers, I am new here and this forum seems to "my idea" of what a decent online Windows community should be, where people can talk without insults and belittling. So as a Windows enthusiast, I have a few curious questions: 1. How many of you are XP diehards with no intention of moving to Windows 7/Vista? 2. Are you trying to move to Windows 7 but facing some migration issue or removed features? What are they or why haven't you moved to Windows 7? 3. What will be the fate of poor use XP diehards if MS never fixes those issues? 4. Even if you have migrated to Windows 7, do you miss something from XP or did you like XP more? Some answers I would like to give to these question for myself: 1. XP was my idea of the perfect OS (well not the security before SP2 and UAC is certainly the right step) but otherwise it was really good. Since Longhorn betas, I am trying to move to Windows Vista/7 but was blocked by many issues..mainly removed features (which I'm sure you must have read now). I absolutely love and adore many features of Windows Vista/7 too, these are also great OSes. So my intention is to move to Windows 7 of course, I am not a luddite clinging on to obsolete stuff but I will FOREVER keep XP running natively on at least one PC but the superb backward compatibility for dozens of games and old apps it offers all the way back which a virtual machine can't do justice to. 2. After years of finding alternatives and making compromises, learning the new way of doing things and ignoring the minor issues, almost all of my issues with Vista/7 are gone except the auto sorting problem. (For numerous reasons, I won't use a third party file manager, there isn't one that I like) 3. Good news: XP x64 will get security patches till July 2015 because of Server 2003 codebase. Are you concerned like me about End of Life? 4. I will miss a few things of XP even if I move to W7 like service pack slipstreaming (what better fun place than MSFN to do all the unattended stuff) but Vista/7 have far better deployment tools, and the speed of servicing which was extremely fast. I will miss the surround sound support in old games (but Alchemy fixes some of them), I will miss XP Media Center whose UI I find very much better etc. You need not answer all four questions. I just want to know how many MSFNers still like Windows XP without me getting strange looks.

Agent Ransack is fantastic. The paid version, FileLocator Pro is too awesome. It has real-time search combined with power of using iFilters to look inside file formats without any indexing required. I use FileLocator on Windows 7/Vista because the file search GUI turned into an abomination.

Why RTM when SP3 can be integrated into XP Gold? Just integrate SP3. Then an easy way is to find the F6/AHCI floppy drivers as already mentioned for your disk controller manufacturer and slipstream them with n-Lite (makes it easy). Then transfer XP setup to a USB flash drive using a tool like WinToFlash and boot from it to start Setup. Installing with AHCI mode enabled in the BIOS will give the benefits of SATA, notably native command queuing for your HDD. If F6/text mode drivers aren't available, set the controller in the BIOS to IDE mode and XP will install without the need to slipstream the F6 drivers.

Biggest joke quote by JLG: "I think change for change's sake is what gets people into trouble,". <= Change for sake of change is what Windows 8 is on the desktop and lady, this is going to get you in trouble. "We'll continue testing until we release - that's the real test."<= LOL OMG WHAT? "I like to go to the thing that scares me and overcome it". <= So she's scared of using the regular interface so she designs one for her to play Cut the Rope. The woman probably only checks Facebook and plays games and shares photos. What does she know about PowerShell scripting or debugging in Visual Studio or working a CAD program or 3D rendering using Maya? She has probably never use professional applications or never seen the job an IT admin does. How did this woman get to this position and why is the fate of Windows and Office in her hands? She's ruined Office with Ribbon (okay, some may argue Ribbon is great, but she had no right to strip off all backward compatibility of the UI), the toolbars and menus could have continued to ship with Office as just another tab like all the addins that reinstate them work. Same thing with the Start Menu, just give us a freaking choice you dumb woman, we do not want to play Cut the Rope and "immerse" ourselves in the joke called Metro-style apps. How does Ballmer and Sinofsky approve of this nonsense? Windows 8 is the beginning of the end of serious computing to turn the PC into a toy. She's also probably scared of the dozens of Control Panels and settings Windows has so she removes one or two settings from here and there to "simplify" it and further reduce the system configurability. Even if Windows 8 fails spectacularly, who's going to undo all the damage that has been done to Windows by randomly removing features from here and there? They're not going to re-instate them. I think this woman only got so much power because of Office 2007 which appeared to "succeed" while Vista badly flopped. So Ballmer thought everyone who worked on Vista=bad and Office 2007 people got charge. Except the morons don't know a thing about usability, productivity and have no Windows expertise.

Btw XP's TweakUI, if you run it as admin and with compatibility mode set to Server 2003 or XP on Vista/7, it runs just fine to tweak many of the settings that are the same.Of course, for things that have changed like the thumbnail size tweak in Explorer or the search platform, it won't work. Still it allows you tweak quite a lot. For 64-bit Windows 7/Vista, use this TweakUI: http://www.softpedia.com/get/Tweak/System-Tweak/TweakUI-64-Bit-Edition.shtml

You mean this one?:

Yes I certainly don't use that search UI with Agent (Dog, Earl, Courtney etc) but the Windows 2000 UI you can easily get with a registry tweak or TweakUI. But they also improved that in XP: the path field accepts environment variables and there is an option to search system and/or hidden files. I also love the background music of the "tour". It was composed by Bill Brown. Listen to just the music minus the voice in

So every once in a while I still read somewhere that Windows XP was a warmed up Windows 2000, which is incorrect. In fact, XP deserves a major version number increment. I want to dispel the myth and change the perception of those who think XP was a "minor" release just because the kernel version number was incremented from 5.0 to 5.1. XP was a major release. I wrote this article on Wikipedia: Features new to Windows XP to prove it (and show off a bit as well) B)

This woman ruined Windows and Office for me: http://windowmagazine.org/window/index.php?section=Stories&id=234 Can Gates please fire her along with Ballmer and Sinofsky?

I emailed Steven Sinofsky from a fresh email address (the previous one he blocked me ) with the removed features list and here's what his reply was: "Thanks. It seems like you should be more complete and not just say start menu but you should include every single aspect of the start menu that changed and count that as a removed feature. Also note we have removed the capability to run 16 bit Windows apps and DOS apps." Note how is trying to be sarcastic/insulting and mocks me for not listing every feature of the Start Menu. Why should I when I don't consider the Start screen a replacement of the Start menu at all? I consider it some zombie alternative UI that they're trying to pitch in as a replacement. And he's wrong about the 16-bit capability too as 32-bit Windows 8 still has 16-bit NTVDM like all previous 32-bit releases of Windows. I have got hundreds of such jerk replies from him. If I show them all here, some people will be truly shocked. I wonder whether he actually replies or some jerk replies on his behalf. One of my other addresses was blocked from sending any email to him because I repeatedly but politely requested him to fix many broken features in Windows 7 which we eventually fixed with Classic Shell. Then after a while, some rude jerk started replying from his address to me posting inaccurate and rude replies.My guess is if you email him from a fresh email address, it is he who replies until the moment you complain a little bit and say you don't like something in Windows and then he stops replying to you and tells someone else to "handle" replies to you.

Yeah that's a shame the Hotblog shut down. It was very useful to find hotfixes than having to scan the Microsoft KB with its horrible Bing search manually. Google does a better job.

I am furious about the comments this "mdc" made at the Register. He's wrong and clueless about what he's talking about and he loses all credibility when he says he generally approves of Windows 8. Customization was never taken out until Windows XP which is why I continue to use that OS as a stanch opponent of dumbing down. The people who built and developed Windows have all left leaving monkeys in charge who don't know anything. Microsoft died the day Jim Allchin retired and Bill Gates left his daily responsibilities to monkey boy Ballmer. Sure there are some good folks with great technical talent still present but the marketing, management executives, program managers and user experience people are the most incompetent, clueless, arrogant morons who should be fired ASAP after Windows 8 bombs. Surely, 2 out of 3 failed Windows releases (Vista and 8) and the opposition XP still gives to Windows 7 ought to bring Gates and the top management back to their senses?

On my laptop, XP x64 SP2, Vista SP2 x64, W7 SP1 x64, W8 RP. On my desktop, XP x64 only.

^^ First, I am no expert. But are you referring to the ability to drag to sort items? I am not talking about that. I am talking about the case when a file operation like Rename, paste, extract from ZIP/RAR or create new makes the files sort. Suppose, you rename a file, doesn't it get automatically sorted by name? Or you create a new folder or new document from the "New menu"? I don't want it to get sorted immediately. Or suppose a folder already has many files and you are watching that folder for any new files added to it by some program that writes to it. As soon as the files are copied to that folder while the folder's open, they get sorted and thus lost in the alphabetical sorting. In XP, if I renamed an item, it would stay in place and get sorted when I pressed Refresh or F5. Suppose I paste multiple files into %windir%\system32, they get sorted at once. Because system32 is a massive folder with many files, if the file names of the ones I paste don't begin with the same letter, they get scattered due to the auto-sorting. Here's a Windows 7 Taskforce quirk talking about the issue I mean: http://www.windows7t...e.com/view/3357 In this image, the files 'file1new.txt', 'file2new.txt' and 'file3new.txt' should appear after 'file8.txt' when I paste them. Only after a Refresh, they should get sorted. Otherwise, when I am dealing with huge numbers of files that don't fit in one view without scrolling, these files appear scattered/shuffled. Same problem if I extract some files from ZIP by doing "Extract here". The sorting makes them get all mixed up with files already in the folder. That drives me mad. See what I mean?

All those reg tweaks simply disable auto arrange, not auto sort in LIST or DETAILS views. I am the "Anon" who figured that out.If you don't want to do reg tweaks, there's also, Folder Options X to do it through a GUI. But no fix for auto sorting. It is not a big deal, you can surely adapt to Windows 7 even with it. But it is the arrogance of Microsoft and refusal to fix issues like these that rages me. Millions told them not to cripple the desktop in Windows 8 and yet they did. Hundreds of users are complaining about forced auto sort and auto arrange, yet they totally ignore it. As I said, I was requesting a simple fix to disable auto sort since the Longhorn betas when they made this change. When XP support ends, I will have to make a hard decision - either live with it on Windows 7 or find a suitable Linux distro replacement. It's a matter of principle for me - I don't like being dictated how to use my computer by a certain company that has turned evil in recent days.