snafumaster

I use RAID 0 at work on my five terabyte ghost servers. It, as you must know, is awesome for performance. When doling out 4GB files, HDD performance is a must. On all of these machines, I use Diskeeper 10 Enterprise. They do have a bunch of versions though. I need the Enterprise version because I am running Windows server and because of my drive size. I would check out This page to see if you can get by with the home version. It is a comprehensive product, not just a simple defrag tool. There are many options for automated, or as they call it "set it and forget it", running. Theier site list the following as features... enhanced high speed defragmentation engine is the fastest on the market today—up to five times faster than the built-in defragmenter new! boot-time modesafely performs Microsoft®-recommended defragmentation of critical system files new! redesigned user interface for intuitive and easy scheduling and configuration new! enhancements to i/o smart™ which intelligently monitors drive access during defragmentation, allows transparent background defragmentation so you never experience a performance hit, even during system peak production times "set it and forget it" operation automatically defragments according to the schedule you set—or allow Diskeeper to intelligently schedule itself with Smart Scheduling™ mulit-pass defragmentation maintains maximum PC performance with no long waits or slowdowns or excessive system resource usage screen saver modedefragments your drive while your system is idle Now that you may be sold on this product, I also wanted to mention that the professional version has something that I think you may want that really aids in having your system less likely to need a defrag in the first place. That feature is called "frag shield" and they describe it as "frag shield™ dynamically reduces fragmentation of critical system files, maintaining system stability and reliability" I truly think it's a great product and I have different versions of it running on all of my machines... ...did I mention TRIALWARE? Oh also, IBM is starting to put this as atrial on thier higher-end laptops too.

Nice link. I was going to suggest winrar self extracting file, but that is a much better solution. I just added that to my toolkit.

I personaly would start wit running an sfc /scannow *you'll need an apropriate installation cd for this sp2 sp1 no sp etc.* You can also download a fresh copy of the mmcbase.dll I know you said the client will spend no more dough, but in the futer, consider diskeeper.

A wealth of info on this can be found here http://www.microsoft.com/resources/howtotell/en/default.mspx

Have tried setting the second monitor as the primary on the setting tab?

What did your ISP say about this?

I would still suggest taking a look at bazooka spyware scanner. The link is in one of my earlier posts. It's not the best tool, but what is is is: Blindingly fast Able to find obscure stuff that often goes unnoticed by most others able to give you explicit instruction on removing the problems yourself, thereby teaching you about how these thing infect the machine. I often do not need this tool, however it has found and given me instruction on some of the toughest ones I have come across.

Let the scannow run. I just find that it is most effective running it afterwards. But, there is noharm in running it before. In fact thare is no harm in running it twenty times. What it does is replaces the system files that are not matching the ones on the install CD. I forgot to mention that you should run Microsoft Updates after too. This will help by making sure that your system is up to date and often you will be protected against other problems in the future.

I do a lot of swyware and virus clean outs for friends and for fee. The advice given so far is great. I would like to add a bit though. Run spybot as recommended, but to that I would suggest making certain that you have the latest updates first also make cetain you have the latest definitions from your Anti-Virus too. When you are sure you have them, go to start->run "msconfig". Select the boot.ini tab and below select the option for "/safeboot" and then OK. It will ask you if you want to resart now, choose that. Then run both spybot and your anti-viru in safe mode. Because certain things are not running, these tools can remove more items that may be protected against removal. After you have that done, you need to run msci=onfig again and turn of safeboot. That can be quickly done on the general tab by selecting "normal startup". Regardless of the results, I would ad to this another suggestion. Go to http://www.download.com/Bazooka-Adware-and...2-10247782.html and download the tool and run it. Of course make sure you update it, it will ask you this during the install. If bazooka finds anything and you need to reboot to safemode af=gain, a very helpful hint is to save the removal instructions to your deskop, this way you can read them while in safemode. Feel free to ask for clarification. When all is said and done, I highly recommend running sfc /scannow afterwards. To do this simply go to the Run box on the Start Menu and type in: sfc /scannow You will need you install CD

I have to say I'm a little apprehensive to give out the info, but a little google would have brought you the same... There are at leastt a few, but I suspect more, tools to recover "lost" passwords. Here is one http://www.openwall.com/john/

After reading the other replies, I think you are looking for a product like this http://www.bigbangtraining.com/universal_image.html If you wanted to try the trialware version you can download that via THIS PAGE

I'm not sure what you are trying to do. If you run .reg file, it will execute the changes within it. The short answer is yes, you can create an .exe that does registry changes and that can include your entire registry. However this involves programming that if you knew how to do, you would already have the answer.

This may sound oversimplified, but I have seen it, so I figured I'd mention it... DSL is a dial up service. If you have a program that is set to automatically update, updates via the program itself or you don't get the updates via thier website, you first have to log into the DSL service for the connection to take place. The first thing I'd do if you haven't tried this yet is open a webpage and then try to do the updates with the webpage open. There are ways to make a program be able to login automatically for you, I'd check here for info on that http://netservices.verizon.net/portal/site/msa/

With the single word "warez" in your post, I doubt if anyone is going to offer you a hand in this. I expect that the thread will be locked soon. Having said that, other than asking for help with warez, you may want to tell people what it is you are looking to do. Personally, I wouldn't touch a warexz version of Windows XP with a ten foot pole. You get what you pay for and if you didn't pay anything for an illegal copy of Windows, well...

Slick...very slick. It's a keeper. Thanks

If your attempt was to clear the drive out, there can't be any harm in wiping the drive clean. Delete all partitions and reformat the drive. You should be able to do this in windows disk manager.

There are a bunch of ways to fix this, so don't fret. If you have a Windows PE disk or a Knoppix Live CD or any of the bunch of the bootable CDs just edit and save the file as decribed HERE. Basically you are looking for a bootable program that lets you read NTFS files and edit them. The Knoppix Live cd is a free download, and you may learn a bit about Linux as well. http://www.knoppix.org/ Don't be alarmed if the page is not in your language. just click the apropriate flag towrds the top of the page. Do not reformat, all you data is fine if it happened as you described.

When you ran the windows "disk cleanup" utility, did you click the "More Options" tab? On that tab, there are three options. The bottom one is to clear out all but the last system restore "restore point". If you are certain that you will not need to go back to an earlier point, you can clear that out and free up some significant space. If you are indeed using system resore, you can also change the setting for the amount of hard drive space windows is alowed to use for restore points. This is found by right clicking "My Computer" and selecting "properties", then click the "System Restore" tab. On that tab, you should see a slider. On this desktop I am on now, it is set to 12%, which because of the size of this hard drive it adds up to 4.7Gb of space. As for your restore partition, they are often protected from windows deletion. However, you should be able to use a third part partion utility or a boot disk and delete that partition. I wouldn't do it unless you have a comparable Windows Install CD or you could find yourself in a pickle down the road. Me personally, I do have licensed windows install CDs and it is one of the first things I do when I get a new machine. I actually go a step further and wipe out the entire hard drive and partion it and do MY own istall. Hope that helps.

I'm not certain of it's limits, but I have used winrar to open some pretty huge files before. http://www.download.com/WinRAR/3000-2250_4...tml?tag=lst-0-1 *edit to add... You should be able to at least browse the compresssed item and see what's in there without actually decompressing the entire thing.

What is the exact error message you are getting? Also, take a good look at the processes that are running in your task manager. Cross them with this list http://www.lafn.org/webconnect/mentor/startup/PENINDEX.HTM

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documen...s.mspx?mfr=true

The other thing I have seen this on is mounted volumes...in particular mounted network drives. Basically, anything that is not a quick connection can bog down explorer when opening. However, you could also try doing a defrag and that may speed things up a bit...kind of a long shot but if you haven't kept up with your defragmentation, it really can hurt performance. Worth a try for sure if you can't remember the last time you did.

you just need to create an bmp file in paint or your favorite image creation program...or do a google image search for an image. All you want to keep in mind is the dimensions of the image. If you stuff a wallpaper bmp in there that's 800x600, it's not going to look right. The other important thing is that you need to name it properly oemlogo.bmp. It's that easy. Oh, and like oioldman said, save them to the system32 directory.

I am a little late to the party, but I figured I might be able to elaborate a bit, as I have come up with a quick tutorial on this a ways back... OEM Info If you have a manufactured compter; ie Dell, HP et al, you may have noticed that when you view the properties page of "My Computer" you see the logo of the manufacturer, info about your PC and a button for support. If not, try it now. 1. Right click "My Computer". 2. Select "Properties" If you see a logo, your PC manufacturer has put it there. You can change it by using the following quick tutorial. If there is nothing there, you can create your own if you'd like. TIP...If you do have a logo and are not certain whether or not you want it later, I suggest renaming the original file by adding "old_" to the name. You'll need to be able to see the filename extensions for this. 1. right click start button and select explore 2. In explorer, click Tools>Folder Options> "View" Tab 3. In the window look for "Hide extensions of know file types" remove the check mark there. 4. Select "Apply" then "OK". 5. Close the explorer window. A basic oeminfo.ini file might look like this... [General] Manufacturer=Dell <---or JimBob's Super Computer Model=Precision <---or whatever the model number is such as Hal2000 [support Information] Line1=1(800)555-1212<---A support number Line2=support.com<---The support site at support.com Line3=Ask For Jim<---additional info you want Line4= Line5= Line6= Line7= Line8= Line9= To create this file, 1. Right click your desktop and select "New>Text Document" 2. open the new .txt file and put the above lines in it "copy-paste" works great. 3. Edit the info to reflect your info 4. Save and close the document. 5. right click the file and select "rename" 6. rename the document oeminfo.ini 7. hit enter 8. Hit ok when the warning asks you "Are you sure you want to change it?" 9. The icon should have changed now The oeminfo.ini file is located in the WindowsSystem32 directory. OEM's normally place two files in the directory, one being the oeminfo.ini and the other oemlogo.bmp (which is the image file). Just make sure when you place your new files there that you only overwrite the original if you are certain you don't want it later. play with it and you'll get it quickly Hope that helps someone.

Completely normal. If you were looking closely when you selected "shut down" from the "turn off computer" window, you would have seen the option to "click here and install updates later". This has to do with your automatic updates setting.