Laser2100

Many of the services listed in the ElderGeek's guide are also included with Windows Server 2003. Try going through the same process. For the services not listed in the guide, just post them here and we'll let you know if it's safe to disable them or not.

Restarting Explorer only reinitializes the shell, i.e. the user interface. To restart XP, you must reboot in order to reinitialize the kernel (ntoskrnl.exe), device drivers, and system services. If you don't like rebooting, just leave your computer on.

Yeah, pnpballer is right. You guys need to put a firewall on your Internet Gateway. Content filtering is also a good idea, as some programs can scan all ingoing and outgoing network traffic for malicious code. Check out http://www.kerio.com/

Get 2 36.7GB WD Raptors in RAID 0 and a third drive to store data on. Run Windows, applications, and games off of the RAID array. If you're worried about losing data in RAID 0, you shouldn't be. The Raptors come with 5-year warranties, and as long as you keep them cool they should last you a long time. Good luck with the new system. Personally, I'm holding off until PCI-Express goes mainstream. Then we're going to see some huge performance leaps.

Knoppix. It's the only thing you'll need when you break Windows by installing all of that software. And, it's free! http://www.knoppix.net/

Nope. But, if you find something that does test the writing capabilities of a CD-R let me know so I can patent it. Who wouldn't want a CD-R with writing capabilities? The question is, will it use a laser or ink? Perhaps toner?

First off, your 30 MB file is not the boot image file. [That would be impossible]. When your computer starts up, the BIOS searches for a bootable partition. If one is found, the boot sector of that partition is read into memory at location 0000:7C00 (Yes, memory locations are always in hex). [Each operating system has its own boot sector format. The small program in the boot sector must locate the first part of the operating system's kernel loader program and read it into memory.] The load segment of sectors should always be set to 0x7c0 [in Nero], as this is where the boot sector is stored once it's been copied into memory. The number of loaded sectors specifies the number of 512-byte sectors to be loaded from the boot image. Essentially, 01 specifies a 1.2 MB floppy disk image (512-byte boot image), 02 specifies a 1.44 MB floppy disk image (1024-byte boot image), 03 specifies a 2.88 MB floppy disk image (a 1536-byte boot image), and 04 specifies a hard disk drive image (a 2048-byte boot image). Do not confuse the number of loaded sectors with the emulation type being used. They are not the same! Check the size of your image file (which you select on the Boot tab of the New Compilation window in Nero), and specify the number of sectors to be loaded according to the number of bytes it contains. Most likely it'll be 2048-bytes, so set the number of loaded sectors to 04 in Nero. =] If you do not have the correct boot image file (which cannot be more than 2048-bytes), I suggest you run a search on Google for more information on how to obtain, or make one, for whatever operating system you're trying to boot from CD. Hope this helps.