doodr

Hello, No i wasn't wanting to run gaim as a service, it was a test, as stated. used > http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=251192 to finally just hand make my services from scratch, and made a bat file that runs somewhat like "launcherservice" but using sc commands.

Awesome thank you, i'll check out all these. already nabbed the LauncherService from the link, downloaded, read the readme part on how to setup the settings file for the service you want to create while i edited it, ran it, worked perfectly! until i actually tried to use the service, started with gaim, wouldnt actually open gaim, owell, used the uninstall, uninstalled fine. i'll try another program later, one that i'll actually be using. also i'll go through the rest of your suggestions sometime later and post back with results. i might end up just going through commands till i find the ones needed to make a service, or find a bat or vbs file for on it somewhere online. thanks for your help everyone!

Thanks! only i can't get it to work, downloaded the package from microsoft and then followed these instructions to install the autoexnt.exe as a service. When i try the " To install the service, open a command console and type the following command: instexnt install ", is gives the typical windows error instexnt.exe isnt a known blah blah ... when i change it to autoexnt.exe (i assume it was a typo anyway) it does something, i dunno what then when trying the next step to test the bat file, it displays "the service name is invalid" any ideas?

Anyone know of a way to have programs run before the welcome screen, or with it? somewhat like the windows utilities Windows + U ?

Technically, as long as you never have both of those harddrive booted and running the same version, i cannot see any thing illegal with having it installed on 2 drives for backup reasons. just my thought though, might call ms and ask?

very strange, i have had troubles with yahoo toolbar installing with programs and adding itself to internet explorer, but not firefox, ill have to watch for it. there are afew places i can think of you could quickly check, first just the extentions manager of firefox, under tools > extentsions. if the yahoo extention is there, you should beable to remove it just by clicking the yahoo toolbar extention in the extention window, then click the uninstall button for it. next thing i would check would be the folders for extentions, assuming your using windows xp, these would be them (only 2 that i know of, might be more, someone correct me if im wrong), you will need to replace <username> with w/e username of the account is, and the ******** will be some random alpha numbric combo C:\Program Files\Firefox\extensions C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\********.default\extensions the extentsions are put into folders with things like {9e96e0c4-9bde-49b7-989f-a4ca4bdc90bb} as the name, each of these folders is an extention, go through the folders and subfolders till you find something about yahoo and delete the {x-x-x-x-x} folder it is in, start firefox and it should be without the yahootoolbar. hope this works! edit : alternatively, just delete all the subfolder in the two extention folders listed up there

If there is a dvd drive on the laptop that is fairly new, you should beable to make an xp installation disk(Dvd) with all the drivers from the HP/Compaq cd added to it, even if not, you should beable to try and yet again reinstall, and simply switch out the xp cd with the HP/Compaq cd when it starts asking for different files. Aslong as you dont format the drive and just install windows there shouldnt be too many files that would be lost, if any at all. You can select to install windows to an already formatted harddrive and use an alternate folder name (other then "c:\windows"), doing this should allow you to boot the computer long enough to backup any files you might need. after backing your files up (webspace, external drive, cd's/dvd's, etc), you could/should then do yet another reinstall of windows xp, reformatting this final time.

Not to sound harsh, but it is the answer he asked for. IMHO, it's much better to find out how to toggle the switch, and therefore how the system works, than to throw a shortcut in as a workaround. it wasnt a normally created shortcut, it was a copy of the one from the startmenu which is clearly not a normal shourtcut. and why would it be harsh (rhetorical) "though your method is the more so proper solution"

theres a number of changes i'd like to do, all if possible. its hard to describe exactly what i want to do but i will try, as some of these are able to be done without changing much more then registry keys. afaik, there is very little easy way to change things like the wallpapers(for the login dialog), the login dialog style, size, colors etc, display settings of the welcome screen, screen saver, timing, usericons, running programs before logging in, autologin based on timing, and afew other things that i've currently forgotten. easiest way to alter most of these were to set them for my current desktop session, then use tweakui to copy the settings to the login screen.

my method does work perfectly fine, though your method is the more so proper solution

ok, thankyou for clearing that up for me, ill make sure i backup profusely while altering partition's. anyone have any ideas for a replacement of the userinit or welcome screen/logon dialog?

hello, i'd love to possibly beta test this if arrangable. i found a 180-ish meg version of xp that was stripped down, installed it was about 500 megs, had many things missing and made it impossible to use without adding dll's all the time and enabling services. anyway, this looks/sounds fun, and funcional. any prospects for vista stripped?(i dont assume anything would be done before the final release from microsoft)

after a fresh install of windows xp i always do the following, if not done already by the install xp being customized itself #1 - Update windows using windizupdate, reboot. (usually done by nlite) #2 - Limiting startup and automatic services (usually done from nlite) #3 - limiting programs and dll's that are opened/ran/loaded/registered on boot with autoruns from systeminternals #4 - turning off all visual options and making sure these are on, commontasks, themes, font rendering, smooth scrolling and show window contents while dragging(partially done by nlite) #5 - setting all drives to have 0 swapspace, turning off auto updates, turning off system restore, turning off the windows firewall, reboot, and defrag, then on all drives set the pagefile swapspace size equal to the largest stick of ram in the computer, rebooting twice. and im done Edit: Note: usually i notice i have about 50 more megs of ram free'd when using a pagefile then when it is set to a size of 0, also when set to a size of 0 many 3d games fail to play properly.

i would suggest spending abit of time reading on how to make your own custom xp install cd from the msfn unattended guide, really does cover alot of things that come in handy. possibly, with the drivers (which one would believe would be downloadable, but sometimes companies are stupid) you can create a cd to reinstall windows, simply using another folder other then "windows" and weird user account foldernames, point being you will be able to boot and backup any files needed because the driver files would be on your custom xp install cd/dvd. then using the same xp cd, do a complete reformat, and copy over the backed up data after reformatted and installed. most all of this relies on one thing, that you can get the drivers loaded into an xpcd and they actually work. hope its some help sorry if not

Hello, Had a fresh install of xp on a virtual machine, dragged the link from the start menu and zipped it up. probably isnt exactly what you were looking for but hopefully its close. I did test this on my real pc just before posting this, i have firefox set to my default browser on here, and it was reflected as such through the links actions. Internet.zip

"If you want to be absolutely sure, that your data is not corrupted, you've got to save the partition to modify to an external HDD or something similar." is this correct, there is chance of re-partitioning causing my file's and filesystem to become corrupt? what would cause this? fragmentation, and attempting to alter parts of the disc/partition that are allocated for files and not just free space?

I know it is possible with some work to replace the kernel and explorer that windows xp uses, is it possible to change the userinit.exe, welcome screen, any? edit: to save the forum from another post:: Anyone know of a program that will let me repartition a drive without reformatting it, partition magic will do this correct?