allen2

Indeed 840 Pro smallest capacity is 128GB and SSD Magician might be able to trigger trim command even on XP (see the release notes there).

For the SSD, all the 3 are good. If you're planning on using XP, then intel would be the best choice unless you're planning to trigger trim using a boot (reboot from time to time on an OS supporting TRIM and let it do its job and there it would be interesting to know if winpe 3.0 or 4.0 support trim properly). This benchmark on SSD drive performance might help you to decide which one to choose.

Of course your video isn't really one : it is a picture sequence hence the codec is JPEG. The proper way to work on it would be to convert it first uncompressed avi or using a lossless compression codec (like huffyuv or FFV1) then you should be able to play it anywhere with wmp as long as the size isn't too big (that won't work because the hard drive won't read the data fast enough) and you have the right codec (huffyuv or FFV1 if you choose one of them). The file will be biger of course (i got 32MB uncompressed and 19MB with huffyuv). You might also try tweaking the ffmpeg parameters as you said you lost quality when converted to h264. Some command line examples are available there.

Did you tried the lenovo website and selected ThinkCentre A50 (8148-15U) ? It seems XP drivers are there.

That's completely wrong. A tool that can do a loseless conversion (demux/remux) can have its own embedded codec for JPEG (just like ffmpeg codecs can't be used natively for WMP12). Perhaps you should upload a sample of your video so i and others can try tools on it.

For ffmpeg, here is the full documentation and yes you can do a lot more tunning than with most tools. If you want to be sure that there no recompression occuring, you should look for tools that demux/remux: - for mov-> mkv, you might want to try mkvtoolnix. - for almost every transformation you might ever want (but with a gui) you might want to try avidemux. There are many other tools that might help. As a side note, i don't know the tool you tried but it might have done a proper job: some video container can store playback preferences and postprocessing so changing container might degrade the visual quality but not the real quality of the video. Most of the time, when you don't exactly know what a tool is doing when converting just knowing the speed of conversion is enough to know if it is only demuxing/remuxing (the speed should be about the same as the time needed to copy the video) or if it is recompressing the whole video (it should take a lot more time even with a really fast computer).

For a current reliable ssd make/model, i'd look there and there. So currently, i'd buy without a doubt a Samsung 840 PRO (for the performance).

You won't shorten easily the life of a recent ssd setting a pagefile on it (see there for full explanation).

Control Panel -> Display -> Settings -> Advanced -> and change the dpi settings change both LogPixel values in keys HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Hardware Profiles\Current\Software\Fonts and HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\FontDPI and AppliedDPI in HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop\WindowMetrics. It is an alternative method that can be with other one if needed. The keys changed are a least the *Font (Type reg_binary) and if i remmeber correctly only the beginning digit are used for the size of the fonts. Indeed this settings doesn't need a reboot but to display everything properly a logoff/login might be needed. And LogPixel keys are not modified in this case. I used those settings to allow people without the rights on the logpixels keys (in HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Hardware Profiles\Current\Software\Fonts and HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\FontDPI) to get big fonts. Yes. But it only change AppliedDPI in HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop\WindowMetrics (not the one from other method). And i don't think the HKCU one is really needed in this case (i suppose it would be reset at next login) as if you log with a new account the value won't be there and will be created. Why ? Ask Microsoft... But the "apply new settings without restarting" doesn't work properly in this case (just try, you'll see) and if you don't do it, you'll have very strange displaying of windows (overlapping, missing or hidden charaters). I think windows need a reboot in this case to release the fonts currently in use and reload them with the new size. Perhaps a third party tool could release the handles (assuming that only that) and force a reload of fonts. I hope this is now clear. Edit: cleared on more thing

Here are my answers: 1) mp4 is quite usual now but .mov isn't. You could also use mkv as it is heavily used for many kinds and should be still supported for a few years. 2) H264 is now a standard and it will stay that way for some years as it is used for bluray. 3) mp3 is still a standard for stereo audio. But AC3 is the choice for 5.1 audio. 4) ffmpeg is most likely one of the best as it can handle almost any source and convert to almost any format/codec. As it is a command line utility, it is very handy for batch conversion of a lot files.

From what i know AppliedDPI and Logpixel reg entries are modified when you change the small font to large size settings in DPI settings and it will ask for a reboot usually. The other are also modified in control panel but those are in appearance tab then advanced. So you can set both using the control panel if you want. AppliedDPI/Logpixel shouldn't be set if you want a per user setting and won't be if set with control panel.

The windows metric settings allow to change the settings on a per user basis and do not modify the computer dpi setting but it needs more tunning to display properly everything. It also don't need a reboot.

You should also be able to change windows font editing those sub key of "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\WindowMetrics".

If you're running windows 7 with UAC, even with an admin account, Seven is a little more secure but as malware/virus always adapt to their target within 2 or 3 years, it won't really make a big difference now.

If you want something standalone and if you are ok to drop wmp12, you could try open source alternatives like vlc mediplayer, or smplayer ... If you still want a standalone codec only for the quicktime format, you could try Quicktime alternative.

Indeed start /wait will usually (in almost all cases) wait until the process launched exit to go to next step but that doesn't mean that the application will be properly installed. When deploying applications, it might be usefull in some case to clone the install instead of running the installer (in this case installrite might be very handy).

There are lot of ways of doing this kind of install but unless, you want/need the tech to stay behind the computer when the install is processing, you could avoid the login thing using autologin feature with local admin account. Then i think the easiest way would to add a run item (yes run not runonce) in "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run" and set it to launch the local batch. The local batch would check (using "if exist") and set flag (using files) for each app install so resuming would work and you could insert reboot in the batch. The last action of the batch would be to remove itself from the registry run key and remove autologin(if used).

The 5.2 client comes with windows 2003 install CD: MSRDPCLI.exe in SUPPORT\TOOLS.

The mstsc coming with windows XP SP3 is a 5.1 version not a 6.1 so i don't see a problem there.

Unless you have an ups you shouldn't let the pc plugged on the same electric circuit. Also, there might be a bigger problem as the air con shouldn't make this kind of things if it were properly connected to an isolated electric circuit (that's a rule here in new buildings).

Except for usb3 ( only a few usb 3 chipset provider have compatible drivers) support most recent hardware will work (ssd won' t use trim but will still work).

Not an answer but you could use regmon and/or procmon when launching the installer until it fail to see which registry entries needs to be temporarily modified. Another option would be to install a clean xp in a virtual machine (so with IE 6) and use installrite to monitor and create an install package of Roxio Easy CD Creator 5 Platinum. I wouldn't even think to remove IE8 on XP, you're most likely going to have problems and to avoid those i would try this in a Virtual machine.

Of course it will work. Why not ?

If you're going to keep the vista hard drive then the easy way, is to just to use the windows 7 install dvd and format the vista hard drive (of you'll have to backup everything needed before) then repair/recreate the bcd store with this procedure (the bootrec step 1 should be enough). If you're going to remove the vista hard drive, you could try to replace it by the windows 7 hard drive (removing the vista one) and follow the same procedure (but the OS might complain later depending on how your boot loader were configured). Also, what you said about the files at the root of the vista drive is strange as grldr is grub4dos loader (not in the least Microsoft) and ntdetect.com and ntldr belong to xp or older desktop os. Perhaps before trying anything, you should provide more information like a screenshot of your boot manager (which might help to know which one you're using) and the output of diskpart commands list disk, list volume in each OS (or provide screenshots of disk management). Also be sure to backup properly your datas/os before trying any solution (and know how to restore them).

Why not use "findstr /V" as it will show everything except the pattern ?