bigbroantonio

Thanks for the quick reply. Actually, all the pcs are all acting as stand-alones at the moment, all connected to the switch independently. My doubt, now, is: If all the pcs are connected to the switch independently (including the server) will setting up a domain be possible? Will the router need to be reconfigured? This is, schematically, what we have now: INTERNET | MODEM/ROUTER | SWITCH | |--------------|--------| "SERVER" PC1 PC2 etc (sorry for the poor quality of this scheme) The so-called "server" has no particular privileges at the moment. It's just another standalone. As you can see, I haven't got a clue! I've set up many simple networks, but have never had to set up a domain network. Any help is much appreciated! btw although I see that a domain network is the best solution, could you tell me which 3rd party software I could use?

We've got and I.T. lab at school with about 20pcs with xp home ed, and a separate pc with windows server edition (can't remember which). As far as I can see, all the pcs are connected independently to a single switch, which in turn is connected to the modem. One port on the switch goes into another room. The problem is this. When the lab is being used, at times we need to disconnect the web only for the lab, but still allow the pcs to be used (without web access). But at the same time we'd like to prevent the connection from being unaccessible from the server pc and to the other room. In other words, can I (without physically unplugging the cables!) decide when a pc can and cannot use the web from a pc on the lan, without influencing the other pcs? I had a look around but found absolutely nothing. Thanks

Where would I change/add the reg setting for the LOCAL MACHINE. Yes, I want to change the wallpaper for all users. Basically, I want all users, including the guest account, to have the same wallpaper. I know how to prevent changing the wallpaper (gpedit.msc), but most of the accounts have already changed their wallpapers. I am the administrator, and basically want to set all the wallpapers and then set gpedit.msc to prevent them from changing them again. What I don't get is I mean, I can't find the relative key in the LOCAL MACHINE registry table.

Thanks for your replies, MHz. I'll check to it as soon as I can, and get back to you with my results. I didn't really understand the "scout the forums" bit. Do you mean searching in the forums. I did have a look before posting, but couldn't really find anything - or maybe I didn't look hard enough. Thanks again

I'd like to copy files and dirs from a cd to various point of the hard drive. The problem is that I won't always be using drive D: or E: or whatever. So I'd like the script in some way to work out where it's running from and then copy the files from there (so if it's running on drive E: it will copy from there) Things like just don't work. Even is the dir "setup" is there it seems to need a real path to the file/dir. Thanks.

Another "blue screen of death, eh! Going by my experience, that usually means your installation is definitely gone. I repeat, if you can get your hands on a 2.5inch external hdd box (they don't cost much), you can extract the hd from the laptop and link it to another machine directly. This is only to salvage your data. You probably couldn't repair the installation een with the repair tool. If the data isn't worth it, then I definitely suggest a clean install, with a complete format (not a quick format) of the hdd. Even if you manage to recover the data, you'd have to clean install anyway to get the laptop to work.

Hi zillah. If it took so long to copy the partition then something is probably wrong. You could, if the data is really that important, try to extract the hd from the laptop: You'll probably find it's a 2.5 inch hd, with a 44pin ide connector. You'll need an adapter, in order to connect it to a 3.5inch usb external box (or if you have a 2.5inch external box no adapter is required) and then connect your original hd to a working pc, and read from there. I just hope that the data isn't damaged in any way. Did the machine just stop working, or what?

Thanks, kambui, for you post. You method is NO DIFFERENT to what has already been said, but is MISSING the CLEAR INSTRUCTIONS that were asked in the first post.

I don't get what you mean by Working Folder, Kapo

You are right, in terms of time, dcyphure. But forums like these are also needed to LEARN things, which we can use in the future, even if the short run another solution would've been much faster. For example, when I learnt to install from hd, I managed to solve installation issues on an oldish laptop with broken usb and pcmcia (basically, nowhere to put the cd into). I took the hd out, plugged it into my pc, and once I'd placed i386 on it I put it back into the laptop and installed xp. So I managed to use the resources I had without having to buy another laptop, or a serial cd drive. That saved me money, but only 'cos I'd learnt how to do it that way. There is another advantage to this type of installation, though, and I wouldn't say the time issue is really the best advantage (I mean, XP only really takes, let's say, about 30mins to install). The real advantage is that you won't need your original cd whilst using the OS. For example, when you install a driver or some software, at times the original xp cd is required to finish the installation. Now all you need to do is point to the i386 folder and won't need to fetch the cd each time. On the other hand, I don't remember ever having to fectch the cd myself anyway, and if you install from cd you could gain this advantage by just copying i386 after installing.

Okay, I managed to install RegCleaner using the 7zip installer method. All the other files (the inf, the cmd etc) remained exactly the same, but were just zipped up and called by the installer. Why, if the cmd and inf are the same, should the 7zip installer work and the unarchived version fail the installation?

Sorry, At0mic, I should've said: But I don't remember reading that xerkon'd D: drive wasn't actually his cd. He claims to have hd partitions on c: and f:, and as far as I've understood (presuming!) he's trying to install on C:.Of course, if D: is a hd partition, then your instructions are perfectly right. But based on my experience (here's me assuming again!!) on most computers you get one hd, which is given C:, and one cd/dvd drive (D:). If new partitions are created, more often than not the user will assign the next avaiable letter to the partition, which would be E:, usually. I ASSUME xerkon has two cd/dvd drives (D: and E:) and created a new partition (F:), leaving the cd/dvd drives' partition letters intact. Now he's trying to install XP on C: And here I have another suggestion, which could help xerkon with the first part of my instructions: If you can, you can copy the i386 folder to F: (even by booting Windows using the F: partition), and then run the installer by typing "F:\i386\winnt.exe", which will start your installation on C:, using the F: partition to get all the data from. I didn't remember to say, as Atomic did, that having a FAT32 partition containing the i386 folder is important, otherwise the ordinary boot floppy won't be able to run the installation file. And I repeat, remember to run SMARTDVR

Hi xerkon. I've installed using hd without the cd many times, and it works excellently. Firstly, I suggest you format your hard drive, which is probably C:. You can do this in various ways. I suggest you boot your pc from a windows 98 boot disk (if you don't have one you can get one here) and "format c:". The link is a Winimage self extractor, which will create a boot floppy. It already contains smartdrv which will speed up the installation process. Now that your hd is "clean", you need to copy the i386 folder (from your cd) to c:\i386. To do this, there are various methods. One is: 1 Type "c:" (which will take you to the root of the hd) 2 Type "mkdir i386" (which will make the i386 folder on the hd) 3 Type "D:" (or whatever drive letter your cd has) 4 Type "copy D:\i386 c:\i386" (this will copy all the files you need from the cd to your hd) 5 Now go back to A: and run smartdrv.exe. Don't forget to do this, otherwise the installation may even take hours. 6 Now Type c:\i386\winnt.exe This will start your fresh installation. If you had typed d:\i386\winnt.exe, on the other hand (as someone suggested) it would work, but would still use the cd to install. Another method to do everything would be to copy the i386 folder to your hd root from xp, and then use the floppy boot disk and erase all the files and folders (except i386) from the hd. It really isn't worth it! Any doubts, let me know.

Thanks Yzöwl. I acutally managed to get it to work using the original inf and cmd. The only difference is that I created a 7zip installer. It worked perfectly. What I can't understand is why it failed the install in the first place. I'm no expert, but installing locally actually worked, so there seems to be no syntax problem, otherwise it would've told me there, wouldn't it? Only the runonce failed, using the cmd which called the inf. The method which eventually worked was with RunOnceEx, with the 7zip installer. Any ideas as to why the cmd didn't work with runonce but the same cmd, 7zipped, works perfectly with runonceex? Another question, which line of code adds the link to the desktop? btw, I know that I should have named it RegCleanr, but I renamed the original file to RegCleaner (why? because I can't understand the reason why I should miss the extra e, when it works the same with it!).

hi Kapo No, the installer isn't a 7zip compressed installer, although I could try with one. Do you think it would make any difference? All I basically need to do with regcleaner is copy it into the progams directory (in this case "programmi", but usually "programs") and copy the link into the all users desktop. There are no switches or anything because it doesn't actually get installed, but only copied. btw, I agree, it's definitely better to write English here!!