IcemanND

Dell Precision and Optiplex system will Auto detect hard drives attached to a system, both IDE & SCSI, but it the IDE selection is set to AUTO and none is found it will error out like you are seeing. The same thing happens if no drives are attached to the SCSI controller. If nothing is attached to the SCSI controller turn it off in the bios, and make sure each IDE selection in the bios has a coresponding device attached.

in the majority of cases Dell has both bootable floppy images and OS run images of the bioses, depends upon the model.

Ifyou are only doing this for one machine type with a known config that would work fine, but if you have multiple adapters/configurations it doesn't always work, but the utils will.

Skyfrog is right, Dell's S.M.A.R.T. software has detected a problem with the drive. If it happens to be the 160gb drive try upgrading the System BIOS from Dell. It may not be properly detecting a drive that size.

What are you trying to do?

Check out the ICFutil at: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default..../icf_enable.asp - ICFUtil /AddService <enable/disable> <service name> <external port> <internal port> <name/IP address> <tcp/udp> [/Q /L [pathname]] For example: ICFUtil /AddService enable "ftp server" 21 21 localhost tcp and you can use it to enable the firewall on all connections and view status of the firewall on connections.

Does not necessarily need portablility. But less power and less heat is nice. I'm looking into the same kind of thing, just need 3 apps to run, Virusscan, Ghost, and Datarecovery software. But I want the system to be highly portable, box less than 200 cubic inches. The idea to have a portable computer more powerfull than a laptop, and use the customers KVM while working on their drive out of their sysem, using firewire.

if you use Mcafee Virusscan 7 or 7.1 enterprise edition open the Virusscan Console. Select Tools menu -> User Interface Options... -> Select Password Options -> set a password either for all items or lock down just the features you want. to reaccess these menu items open Virusscan Console -> Select Unlock User Interface and enter password when prompted.

Here's what I use to set up mine: Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate] "WUServer"="http://updateservice.mycompany.com" "WUStatusServer"="http://updateservice.mycompany.com" [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU] "AUOptions"=dword:00000004 "NoAutoUpdate"=dword:00000000 "RescheduleWaitTime"=dword:00000001 "ScheduledInstallDay"=dword:00000000 "ScheduledInstallTime"=dword:00000001 "UseWUServer"=dword:00000001 Windows 2k sp1 or 2, and XP without SP need the automatic update service installed first, 2k sp3+ and XP sp1 do not.

Norton Ghost includes a similar utility, dos and 32-bit versions. Intro to Gdisk

I keep a dos 3 machine around to play those old games that just don't run any other way, or you can't play because the new system is to fast to even see things move.

what kind of sound card does he have?

encrypted in SAM file in C:\windows\system32\config

Try this: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...kb;en-us;320558

Does the problem still exist if you either boot into safe mode with or without networking, or if you disable all startup items from msconfig?

I don't see anything too suspicious. I have seen different versions of Mcafee cause problems like this, you might try disabling it temorarily and see if the problem goes away. Usually has to do with the On-Access scan and the background scanner. Sorry, no other suggestions

is there a specific process using alot of processor? or can you post a screen capture of your task manager process list.

avlm - check the TCP/ip filtering settings. Proerties of TCP/IP -> Advanced -> Options -> Properties. Set all to permit all, if this is not it try winsoxfix.exe it reset all the registry keys, reloads some of the TCP/IP files, and in general fixes most hosed tcp/ip stack problems

Have you changed any other hardware in the system since you originally loaded it? You may be running up against the hardware change rules with Windows XP, try reactivating.

why not? You have to break the mirror first in some cases and then turn it back on after applying the image back to the drive but other than that it should work fine.

took them long enough

or change one line of code in the FirewallTestByName subroutine from: EveryConnection.EnableInternetFirewall to EveryConnection.DisableInternetFirewall as shown in the following subroutine (copied from original post and modified). if you want to do all of them at once. sub FirewallTestByName(conName) on error resume next DIM Item DIM EveryConnection DIM objNCProps DIM szMsg DIM bFound bFound = false for each Item in EveryConnectionCollection set EveryConnection = NetSharingManager.INetSharingConfigurationForINetConnection(Item) set objNCProps = NetSharingManager.NetConnectionProps(Item) bFound = true EveryConnection.DisableInternetFirewall next end sub

@screwz luse - your probably right, I missed that he was doing autologin.

that should do it.

As un4given1 said: will ask for anything not in the winnt.sif which is required for setup with unattendmode=fullunattended. It will give an error message when it needs the cd-key that values provided where invalid, but when you click OK it continues with istall and asks for cd-key.