Fr33m4n

I have a very curious bluetooth driver problem. I purchased a wireless microsoft branded bluetooth mouse. Because my HP laptop does not have built in bluetooth I have to use the accompanying bluetooth adapter. The first time I plugged the adapter in it was recognised and a Microsoft wireless bluetooth 2.0 driver was installed. The first time I rebooted after this the scroll wheel on my mouse stopped working. I discovered that windows had suddenly installed a "Generic bluetooth adapter driver" and that the microsoft driver was suddenly marked as not functioning properly. Once I removed the Generic bluetooth adapter driver my scroll wheel started functioning again. However every time I reboot my laptop that darn "Generic bluetooth adapter driver" gets re-installed and the scroll wheel stops working. How can I prevent this from happening? I find it extremely ironic that this is happening to a microsoft branded bluetooth adapter/mouse!

I´m trying to help out my computer illiterate friend. He just got a new computer with 1x120GB SSD and 1x1TB HDD. He was concerned that he would run out of space on his SSD and that it would abe a pain to manage the space properly so I suggested that he simply junction his "Users" folder over from his SSD to his HDD. I´ve done this successfully on my own system which is installed as english windows, however he has a localized version which comes in norwegian. Thus, in explorer, his "Users" folder is named "Brukere". But this must just be some visual trickery because in command prompt the Users folder still shows up as Users and not as "Brukere". Having done some research on the internet I saw that it was generally recomended to boot from the install disk and use the command prompt in the recovery console to copy over the user files and create the junction. In the recovery console the Users folder was labeled Users. First time I tried it I moved the entire Users folder over to the other disk (using robocopy) and created a junction that pointed to Users. This created havoc when I tried to log back in to normal windows because I guess it was looking for a "Brukere" folder. So I tried again but this time I pointed the junction to "Brukere". This didn´t work either. So I kinda gave up on that and decided to try moving just the one subfolder of the user I was interested in inside the Users folder. Let´s call this user "John". And this is where it gets really wierd. I copied over the folder named "John" into a Users folder on the HDD and then created a junction pointing to it inside the Users folder on the SSD. When I now rebooted and logged back in to windows things were seemingly working for the first time. However upon navigating "SSD:\Users\Junction\" I was not teleported over to the HDD. Insted it appears as if the files now exist in both locations at the same time. It´s like the folders are synchronized. And to further test this hypothesis I downloaded and then deleted a 50 mb file while watching the disk properties of both the SSD and the HDD and it seemed as if the free space on both drives were increasing and decreasing simultaneously. Does anybody have any insight into how to properly set up a junction on a non english windows 7 system? I would really appreciate the help.

I reformated a second time. This time I only got one partition but the partition was still named "arid in pes" and it appears to have the same 0 kb files all over. Strange.

That would be amazing, but seriously, what's the odds of something like that happening? I can't quite think of which text file it would be either. The contents sound more like something out of a novel really.

Diggin through my drawer i found an old 2GB usb stick that I had gotten at work some time ago. I plugged it into my machine and discovered it contained a few old work documents. Since none of it was essential I decided to reformat the drive. I left the name as "untitled" and proceded to format it as fat32. What happened next is complete mystery. The drive somehow formated itself into two partitions where one was a 500mb hidden unaccessible partition with the name "untitled" and the other partition was 1.5GB and had named itself "arid in Pes". I then opened the "arid in Pes" partition and was surprised to see that it contained 81 files all of which was 0 kb in size and no extension but had different file names. If you read through the list of files you could make out fragments of sentances spanning several files. It was really wierd. I'm attatching two screenshot of the files. So what do you guys think this is? A virus or a cleverly hidden message?

Hmm, I'm assuming that the attrib tool is part of windows and that it can be used with the command prompt? I haven't been able to test this theory because the problem is that even if I run CMD as Admin it still won't allow me to view the files at all, even though it reports the folder size as correct it says that there are 0 files and none are shown. Annoying really. Also, would the attrib tool allow me to apply this to a folder, sub-folder and files at once or do I have to do one file at a time. Because if so that would make this incredibly tedious work considering that there are plenty of files and folders.

I have a folder that contains backups pf my installer files. This folder is also synchronized to a server for further redundancy. Today I needed one of those files so I browsed to it's location only to find that the folder was shockingly empty. I then logged onto the server and found that all files were present. Then I ran the backup tool to synchronize my computer and the server but it promptly reported that everything was in sync. Checking the properties of the local folder I found that the foldersize indicated the file should be there but it wasn't visible to me at least. I was only allowed to see the file after turning off the option to hide protected OS files. First of all, why did this happen? It happened for a large number of files actually. Second, even after taking ownership of the files once more, the system will still not allow me to change the file attribute from hidden to visible. The box to remove the hidden status is simply grayed out. How do I fix that? I'd really appreciate some help on this. I'm on Vista x64 Ultimate

Have you checked the event viewer in computer management? Go to: Start > Right Click "Computer" and choose "Manage" to open the computer management console. Then under the event viewer check all the windows logs and look for any error around the time you are booting up. There is an incredible amount of info stored there that might help you.

Am I having a completely different problem then the rest of you? I have 3 x 1.5 TB 7200.11 drives. All have been updated to first SD1A and then SD1B. Two of the drives have been ejected from my RAID 5 array at different times due to several read errors of sectors on the disks. I am able to reintroduce the disks after a deep format/wipe of the disk. Does this mean that my disks are simply bad and that I need to RMA them or is this related to the freezing, disks not being detected errors that I'm reading about?

Apparently this does not seem to be a much used feature, eh? Anyone care to make an educated guess? I'll be needing to test it out at some point but I'm not exactly sure where to start. I'll see if I can dig up my vlite config at some point and post it. Maybe someone will spot the problem right away.

I think I might have overdone my last use of vLite a bit because I am no longer able to connect to wireless networks that use WPA-Enterprise. Regular WPA is working just fine but the Enterprise variant spits out an "unexpected error occurred" when I try to configure it. Does anyone know what the difference is between the two? I'm not even supposed to connect to a domain.

I'm trying to create a completely unattended install of vista x64 using vLite and WPI. It install just fine but it does not seem to copy the contents of the $oem$ folder to the HDD nor execute the setupcomplete.cmd It should perhaps be noted that I've kept the user creation part of the setup and so it does not autologin to the admin account. Could this be the reason? I'd appriciate some input from someone that has done this successfully before.

Obviously I should have thought of that. I will try it as soon as I get the chance. I have been looking at using different ports, mainly because I thought I might need some kind of port forwarding, though as far as I can tell this will only help WAN speed and not LAN? Furthermore I have looked into what ports the NAS is using and it seems to use a prefixed range of ports that I can't really do much with. I usually use an ftp app for transferring files though you may also map network drives in windows. The FTP apps initiate contact on port 21 and then starts trasnfering on a 555XX port where each transfer automatically gets a new port assigned. I did however try some wireless transfers to my NAS from a windows XP laptop with a Wireless G card. I was sitting just a few feet from the router and getting excellent connedtion quality. I used Filezilla FTP to transfer files. It transferred 2 files at the same time with a combined transfer speed of 2.4MB/s. This also seems rather slow to me. I tried turning off QOS on the router. It seems it might have made transfer speed slightly more stable but has done nothing for the average speed. I just don't get quite that yo-yo effect.

I have Synology DS408 with 2 x Seagate 1.5TB 7200.11 SATA drives in RAID 1. I realize there might be several reasons I might not be hitting the average speed reported by others but the only thing that changed between LAN speeds of 10-11 MB/s and an average of 8 MB/s was that I UPGRADED from a 100Mb router to a Gigabit LAN router. It really seems like it should have been the other way around? To provide more spesifics, my mobo is ASUS A8N-E, and I'm using the built in Gigabit port. I am running Vista Ultimate 32-bit, and have ESET Security Suite as local firewall. Turning it off makes no difference in the transfer speed.

I recently purchased a NAS for file storage and media streaming. It had been reviewed to reach average network transfer speeds of 25MB/s. However, I have a Gigabit LAN port on my mobo, but it was hooked up to my old D-Link DI-643M (or some such) which only had a 100Mbit max LAN transfer speed. I belived this was the reason that the max speed I was able to transfer to my NAS at was around 10-11 MB/s, but that was a nice steady speed. However this speed would not do for some of the tasks that I had in mind, and so I purchased a D-Link DIR-655 N router which has Gigabit lan. I hooked it up and got everything running. I made sure to update the firmware as the one that came installed was quite old. Wireless was blazing compared to the older one and range seems terrific, but that was just a nice added bonus. But here's the funny thing. When I started transferring files to my NAS the speed would start out around 15MB/s. Then it would quickly plummet down to about 6MB/s. It would then go up to about 12MB/s, before going back down again to about 6MB/s. It would then keep yo-yo'ing back and forth between these speeds. The result of this is that the average transfer speed is actually slower then the old 100Mbit router and things are taking considerably longer. This was when transferring larger files. Smaller files were even worse with speeds hitting no more then 3MB/s. I don't have much experience with these things. Usually I just hook things up and they just work, but this just can't be right? Is there anything I can do? I'd really appreciate some help in working out these problems.

I'm on Vista Ultimate. So after reading your post and realizing the potential power of the Computer Management Console to catch the culprit I started mucking around in there. I eventually found the tool for creating custom views in the event logger and so I thought I'd create one to show me all the events around the time this occurs, and guess what. I did find the culprit. I forgot I even had it installed, but as I hinted at earlier, this is not a machine I use a lot. But in order to avoid the crap that the people who do use this machine a lot put on here I installed SteadyState. I had no idea that it would override the default Windows Update settings. I have now turned it off and I'm looking forward to seeing if that did the trick.

I don't know about "Log on to a desktop" as this all happens when I'm sleeping and I've never watched it happen. I'm just reading what is recorded in the logs in computer management. As far as I can tell there is nothing out if the ordinary listed by process explorer. I'm also running ESET security suite so there should not be a whole lot of things that could have slipped by. I'm not entirely sure when this all started to happen but it has been happening for a few months now.

There is some kind of automated task that runs every night and I can't figure out what is happening. Nothing is scheduled to run. Here is what happens: At around 3:30 AM the computer restarts. It doesn't matter if I have any overnight processes running, it shuts down regardless and ruins any attempt I have at doing stuff at night. The computer then logs in as NULL SID and shortly after as SYSTEM. It starts up the windows firewall service which I normally have turned off. At around 5:30 AM the computer logs in as SYSTEM, again, with special privileges. There is no record of it ever logging off from the previous thing though. Then, as far as I can tell it starts the VSS service briefly before shutting it down again. When I arrive at the computer hours later I am greeted by the login screen and login proceeds as if by a cold boot. The above info is gathered from the Computer Management Console. Windows Update is set to "Download, but let me choose when to install". I am on Vista Ultimate x86. This is really annoying and means that I can't ever run any overnight stuff. Anyone have any ideas? TIA Fr33m4n

Well, that would explain one part of the problem, and it has given me some clues as to how I can fix the real problem which is the whole reason I'm trying to uninstall codecs in the first place. I'll report back when I'm actually able to explain anything.

Yup, you read that title correctly. I want to know why I'm still able to perfectly fine play back ANY media file on my system when I've spent the last couple of hours trying to uninstall anything even remotely codec related. There should be no codecs left on my system yet for some reason I can still play AVI, MKV, OGM, DIVEX, FLV etc, etc. Anything goes. I'm on Vista x86 ultimate, using mplayer classic to play back files.

I'm not using the english version of Excel but I'll try to explain as best I can what features I'm talking about. I'm using Office 2003. I have created in Excel a map over a room full of boxes. Each box is represented by one cell and I have used the edge marking pen to draw the edges of each cell this is a box. Inside each cell I have written the label and content of each box, this has been done over multiple lines using the alt+enter method to change lines inside a cell. Thing is. I've been updating the spreadsheet far more often then the actual labels on the boxes and now the boxes are in need of a mjaor overhoul when it comes to labelling. So what I'd like to do is mark the cells that represent boxes, and have excel print each cell on a separate page where each cell fills an entire A4 page by itself. Is that possible?

I am having some very weird problems when I try to get online. My setup is configured so that I have a broadband modem, a d-link router with lan cable to my machine. When I restart my machine I am unable to get online and when I start IE7 I get that default page that asks me if I want to diagnose my connection problems. So what I do is that I check the command prompt and type "ipconfig" and find that I have been assigned a correct IP address. Furthermore I find that I am able to ping my router and that I am able to ping my modem but I am unable to ping any websites at all. First thing I did after that is turn off my firewall "look'n'stop", and not surprisingly after turning it off I was able to get online. But this is the same firewall that I have configured and have working on two other systems in the house so I thought that something was just screwed up with it. So I then uninstalled it and re-installed it and configured it from the ground up so that it matched the settings of the two other machines that I have working. But to my surprise, after re-booting the problem was back. So then I ran the windows xp connection diagnosis utility that you can lunch from within ie7 and after it was done I could get online again. Which I thought was great because I believed things were fixed. I mean, I had not touched anything in the firewall and the diagnosis tool had somehow managed to get me online. BUT, again, after re-boot, the problems were back. I don't understand this problem at all. Any help would be greatly appriciated.

Is there a way to make Vista Media Center recognize and play video files and music from an external hard drive?

Ah. Found a very good guide on how to backup the license file from the installed version and inserting it into a clean install. This should solve my problems. thx

I recently ordered (not arrived yet) a new laptop that comes with Vista Home Premium 32bit pre-installed. I'd like to slap a vLited version of the OS on there but I am not sure what my options are. The system will come shipped with a recovery DVD but most likely not a regular Vista setup disk. Does that mean that I'm screwed or are there any ways to work around this?