gosh

My only comment is to use 512 mb of ram. Win98 wasn't designed to work with more than 512 mb of ram. It'll work, but performance will decrease. I also avoid winmodem's like the plague. -gosh

could you use a vbs file? -gosh

First, tell us what kind of keyboard you have. Is it wireless or wired? If it's wireless, try a wired keyboard. If that works you know it's a problem with the wireless keyboard, such as the drivers. If a wired keyboard does same thing, do clean boot troubleshooting. You didnt say what your isp is. If you have cable isp, you can use safe mode w/ networking to test to see if that works. If you have dialup or DSL you cant use safe mode w/ networking because the drivers don't load. Next i would use msconfig to do a clean boot to make sure it isn't 3rd party software conflicting. You didnt say if this has ever worked. If it worked before, what has changed? IE, what have you installed/uninstalled recently? try a new profile to see if it's a corrupt registry hive. try that and let us know how it goes -gosh

If you're getting this problem doing a clean install with 2 different OS's on a brand new HD, it's obviously something with the hardware. Since safe mode is fine, i would first check the ram using msconfig in win98, clicked on advanced, select option to limit ram to 64 MB. In win2k and xp use the boot.ini switch /maxmem=64. I believe win2k only requires 32 mb of ram, and im pretty sure xp just needs 64 mb of ram, too, however some features such as FUS (fast user switching) will be disabled by default, but that's OK. Otherwise check your bios settings. There might be a bios setting to "use recommended". Make sure the HD was installed correctly. Check the DMA settings in BIOS? I'm not a hardware guru, but that's where i would start. -gosh

I am not a 100% sure, but i believe you could install win2k3 with a temporary serial, then change it later. I believe you have 15 or 30 days to activate, so simply dont try to activate it. -gosh

When you see the ctrl+alt+del window the network stack is being loaded (i believe there's a group policy to modify that behavior?). So if it's sticking here, it could be a driver issue, it could be a domain/network issue. The first thing i would check is event viewer to see what is being logged, such as dns errors, etc. In general windows 2000 doesnt have a "login issue" -gosh

You could use tweakui to hide the drive letter, but that wont stop people from accessing the drive from windows explorer. you could use a 3rd party disk utility. you could use encryption, they would still see the drive but not access most of the files. -gosh

everything pulled in services.msc comes from HKLM\system\current control set\services. All the services are here. Look for the services, and look for what .dll's they use and depend on. Try sfc /scannow to check the files. -gosh

All of that functonality is not from the microsoft drivers - that always comes from 3rd party .dll's. Usually if you go to devman and go to properties of mouse/keyboard you'll see a 3rd party applet that let's you configure these settings. devman will also show you what .dll you are using (such as logitech.dll). Make sure you got the right file installed, check version. Uninstall/reinstall the mouse/keyboard -gosh

if a new profile works then you know some setting in hkcu is corrupt. At that point you can either copy your data to the new profile by dragging or dropping, or by using the file and settings wizard. The question is: If this has worked before, what have you done since then? ie, if you installed a program and it stopped working, then uninstall the program. Try safe mode. Try to narrow it down to where this problem lies (registry, 3rd party programs, what) -gosh

from memory, stop 50 i remember is bad ram, right? that would make sense why the file system is not loading. check out your ram. add the /maxmem= setting to your boot.ini (such as /maxmem=96 to use 96 megs of ram). You can do this is recovery console using the tool bootcfg. If that works then it's def bad ram, that's my vote. -gosh

if you bought this brand new it should have come with a driver cd (if no driver was inbox),, and there should be a website listed for them??? -gosh

Is it blue screening? With xp sp2 you can press f8 at startup and select option to not auto restart on blue screen. probably something low level like a driver is bonking out. -gosh

.id3 tags i believe are meta data built into the mp3 itself. does this happen to all your mp3's? you could try 3rd party editor such as winamp. and of course try a new profile to see if registry corruption. -gosh

you should just use HKCU, not users. If a program overwrites the settings, you could use ieak to use custom settings. ieak is at microsoft.com. of course you could edit registry permissions so nothing could change the keys. -gosh

If youve played with settings just make a new user account and see if that works, since that would be your personal settings. can you print a test page with red in it? -gosh

just clear the cache. search support.microsoft.com for TrayNotify and you'll find the registry key. Tweakui i believe can also do this. -gosh

Your desktop icon has a commitment issue. Everytime you need him he runs away. I would recommend saying calming words to the desktop icon before you need him. tell him he's valued and you depend on him. Put him away from other icons so he doesn't feel so crowded. -gosh

what program does this happen in? Does this happen in notepad? Does this happen in safe mode? Have you disabled your sound card in devman? Have you updated your sound card drivers? Has anything changed on the system? Has this ever worked? have you tried a new user profile? -gosh

I dont know anything about vista, but this is what i would do. Since it's a network issue, i would suspect NIC drivers. I would disable the nic in devman and see if that works. I would update the NIC drivers. Sounds like a corrupt registry key. I would look at setupapi.log to see what is being logged. I would use regmon to see what registry keys are being accessed. I would make a new user account and see if that works, which would point to a current hkcu registry hive. I would run sfc /scannow if vista has that. i would reinstall the network stack, but i dont know the inf's in vista. It sounds like a reinstall might fix it, it might be deep registry curruption that would be hard to fix. Of course, uninstall anyting that doesnt the inet, such as download managers, web enhancers, crap like that. -gosh

in the windows folder the updates are installed, and the uninstall files are also there. I think the folder is called ProductUpdates or something. -gosh

you have a prob with cd idents, check txtsetup.sif -gosh

you could delete/reg hack keymgr.dll -gosh

well, see what reg keys and folders the program uses, then modify the permissions so regular users can access the registry keys and folders. or you could use the runas command. or you could create a compatibility shim using the app compat toolkit 5.0 -gosh

if your sandisk is a u3 device, you can download a flash drive compatible web browser by using the u3 web browser. -gosh