Tripredacus

Manowar - Warriors of the World

WTF?! It was one of the MSI P4M800 boards, their first rev. I can't remember the p/n for it atm. After they came back those 1000 dead boards we RMA back to MSI. They had remanufactured them as they came back with the same serial numbers, but has a resistor soldered to the board. Those went out as the replacements and then they all failed again. On the second RMA, the client was getting pretty angry about it and we switched them to an Intel board. It was quite soon that MSI came out with a replacement board that didn't have that problem. Although, its quite possible that you can still start your motherboard on fire by hooking the front-panel USB up backwards and plug a USB 1.1 (or higher) device into it. I'll save that story for tomorrow.

I tried to use personal experience for my answer, but being in IT (both as support and production) I've seen just about everything go bad... except heatsinks... Alas some of these "bad things" are due to less technical people trying to do things that either "sound like it should work" or "can't do any type of math without a calculator. CPU: Defective CPUs out of the box are quite rare. Defective people... not so much. Two times I recall: - One time an assembler did a brain fart and didn't match up the "golden arrows" to install the CPU. Seen it both on ZIF and the newer Intel sockets. Doesn't matter if they are keyed. - Sometimes outside forces can cause problems for your CPU. Such as the janitorial staff at a college that decide to close the ventilation doors to the server room and then turn off the internal fans. This would result in the only time I've seen an admin running about the building freaking out... and the only time I've seen a CPU melt. Motherboard: Caps are big issues, but sometimes the error is in the design. The worst case was shipping 1000 PCs which got a 100% DOA rate on install. All were returned, all boards replaced and shipped back out. Then all got 100% DOA again! We then switch to another board manufacturer... no problems there! Except... sometimes people like to spill their coffee in the PC and send it back as "it just stopped working, don't know why" in the RMA notes. ODDs: Lasers going out aren't as common. I've had much more problems with the drive mechanism that opens and closes the door. Lite-On is really bad in this regard. Modems were really weak against electricity. Of course, moreso in products like WebTV. It seems any time there was a thunderstorm, you ran the chance of getting your modem fried, but that was probably due to the telephone system more than the modem. But strangely, you'd never hear about such a casualty rate for telephones.

What is a WIF file? Do you mean WIM file? P.S. Forum rules apply to the PM system as well as the public board.

I can't find anything like that. You may need to use a reg file.

Is the DNS role on the DC or is it on another server? My DC here passes all except the FORW, which isn't strange since it has no access to the internet.

Not many of those for me. Of all the hardware I've owned, the only ones that haven't kicked the bucket have been HDD, Video Card and Sound Card. Everything else in that list I've had fail on me. Of course, I don't have some of those anymore... some due to no fault of the product themselves. There is plenty of hardware out there that is old (in this industry I could be talking about something from last quarter) but does the question about whether or not that hardware is still useful in some way even today? Well back to my idea (at least... your post isn't very specific about what you're looking for) I can say this about my own experiences. As stated earlier, I have multiple pieces of hardware from over 10 years ago that are still used to this day. Hard Disk: Hard to believe that this the case, but I won't jinx it, especially when we even have a sub-forum that was created just for people with broken hard disks. The 20GB IDE HDD in Shiva (my Windows 98 PC) is by far the oldest one I own. It still works and has only had Windows 98 on it. I am fuzzy about the actual age of the drive itself as I know for a fact that it isn't the same HDD that was in Hive City (I name my computers btw) since that computer got recycled by mis-informed family members whose houses I was using for storage when I was in college. I have actual knowledge of it being used in 2002 and I know I had purchased it from CompUSA (now defunct) for $100. Come to think of it, it is one of those sub-grade Maxtor drives that they would have in the "bargain bin" that wasn't even good enough for remanufactured drives. Video Card: I have owned a bad video card, however I had gotten it for free so I'm not even sure that should count. That particular one was a 1MB Tseng Labs PCI video card that was originally used in Shiva during initial setup. Shiva, being my second computer at the time. Hive City was the first and had a 6MB Voodoo Rush. Hive City had ceased to be my main PC for some time (reason why it was in storage) once I got a Voodoo 3 for Shiva. That ended up getting traded to my friend for a GeForce MX in 2000. That particular GeForce was then sold a couple months ago in a Dell system to a neighbor. Supposedly it is still working fine, since I haven't heard any complaints. Shiva's main video card (which I still have but can't use) is the Voodoo 5500 AGP. I had been using it up until 2 years ago when Shiva's motherboard kicked the bucket. The new motherboard had a different AGP slot, so I had to get a new card. While my success rate with video cards hasn't been a problem, that trend may finally end very soon. I have the cheapest MSI nVidia card in my Win7 PC at home and the fan is acting up, amongst causing all sorts of other problems, such as locking up the PC. Sound Card: The sound card story is similar to the video card one, except that I never traded any of them. Of course I lost the one in Hive City, an oldish SB that may have even been an ISA card. Speakers aren't so lucky for me, but all my sound cards are fine. The one in my Win7 PC was purchased in 2000 and has been in 2 PCs. The one in Shiva is from shortly before that period, maybe by a year. It is an SB PCI as well. Prior to Shiva having this, there was another that came from somewhere... Guillemont (sic) or some such, but the quality wasn't as good as SB. I still have that card packed away as well. I'd probably also say that I have not had a failed CPU at any time... And its presumable that the 486 DX CPU I found in the garbage likely would still work properly. Everything else on the list I've had fail on me, but seeing as we are all different, I'm sure others have had good experiences with different types of things as me. And potentially there is some sad fellow that has had everything fail...

Did this program come from a CD or from a Microsoft download? There may be different types of installers that use different commands. Being able to look at the actual installer would be helpful. Also, those instructions are for Intellipoint 5, which might be a bit different on an install.

Haven't been able to listen to music all week while at work. Has something to do with this noise maker in my office:

I don't think FreeNAS (its some kind of Linux) cares about that so much... Although I can partially relate it to that time I had to take a tech call about a mouse... But it turns out a Serial mouse won't work in Windows 7... Great picture! My new wallpaper! Its also another thing about that screen. You'd figure it would ask you if you had one of those, but notice its only a Yes or No option. Its not one of those types of screens that will enable mouse support if you choose yes, since it is already enabled and you can move the cursor around. After you choose yes it doesn't ask you any more questions about the mouse.. although I bet it would disable mouse support if you choose no.

Of course I knew of that bus mouse... also found something about a Cat Driving a Schoolbus... However I am guessing this is a typo in the program, rather than expecting someone installing the x64 version of FreeNAS to actually have a real Bus Mouse connected to their system. Might say something about a working jaclaz but...

Thanks FreeNAS...

I think ALL! is a typo. The ! (exclamation point) is used as a "NOT" operator. It seems perhaps a parsing error that WLSETUP will actually do something with this as you posted: /AppSelect:ALL!,Messenger,MovieMaker,silverlight I would think that the above arguments wouldn't do anything. Take this one as an example instead: /AppSelect:ALL,!Messenger,MovieMaker,silverlight The above example would instruct WLSETUP to install ALL included packages except for Messenger. It is possible that WLSETUP may read this command as install ALL except Messenger, Movie Maker and Silverlight. You'd have to test it out.

Did you have another account?

When using Promoted Icons in NotificationArea, you need to specify a GUID. How can I go about finding the appropriate GUID for a program to put in there? <NotificationArea> <PromotedIcon1> <Path>%PROGRAMFILES%\Fabrikam\Application1.exe</Path> <GUID>{d8742dcb-3e6a-4b3c-b3fe-374623cdcf06}</GUID> </PromotedIcon1> <PromotedIcon2> <Path>%PROGRAMFILES%\Fabrikam\Application2.exe</Path> <GUID>{a1bc23cb-3456-bcde-abcd-feb363cacc88}</GUID> </PromotedIcon2> </NotificationArea> GUID on TechNet

I've never used that setting. I'm not sure how you can disable sounds, but you could specify a desktop background image that is a solid color square. Windows should stretch it.

Yep that's what I saw. I'm going to presume that it did indeed work for RTM since I had seen it in other people's XML posted here, and is also in maxXPsoft's examples.

You need to create the file. People usually put it in the root of their install media, or you can put it on a USB key. The first thing you should get is the WAIK, it has the XML builder and the help files to walk you through how to use it. Also, most of those topics are mirrored on Technet. WAIK info is here. General examples and questions about making the XML is here:

Aero is disabled in Audit Mode even if you have video drivers installed. You can enable it and create a theme, however this theme will be saved into the Administrator account and you won't see it after sysprep. To use your theme elsewhere, look into creating a ThemePack or even a Theme from scratch: http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/coolstuff/How-to-Make-Your-Own-Theme-Pack-for-Windows-7

If you are still using Thunderbird, try playing with your Account Settings. The Outgoing Server will show up on the bottom. Try changing the Connection Security and Authentication Method drop downs. JFYI I had used Thunderbird for years on my old companies Exchange server, but new company doesn't allow Thunderbird to authenticate on a send, just like your error. However I do not know how to fix it so it works.

It looks to me that the GUID for the powerplan is not the same every time you import it. I had it on two different machines with different GUIDs. In any case, having it installed and being the active plan while in Audit Mode survives the sysprep process and is active on a deployed image. I just find it strange that it was deprecated for SP1 but not RTM.

I have exported a Power Plan on another system to a .pow file. I can use powercfg to import the .pow file onto my Reference Computer. I take the GUID that is then displayed and put it in my unattend in the specialize pass: <component name="Microsoft-Windows-powercpl" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"> <PreferredPlan>552a37f0-e021-43b4-aa92-b7149486156e</PreferredPlan> </component> After sysprep, Balanced (the normal default) is selected as the active plan. Any reason this wouldn't work? EDIT: looks like this option is not supported in Windows 7 SP1? PreferredPlan

Well in that case, I'd recommend you use some other type of editor to work with your HTA file. I can see WinPE may have a lot to complain about with code like that.

Found a bug with the custom partition values option. HOWEVER this will only work if you put a value in the first box, but leave the second box zero. In this section: '**************************************************************************** 'Two values '**************************************************************************** Suspect line ObjFile.WriteLine " ElseIf form.Custom2.Value = 0 Then" Should be ObjFile.WriteLine " ElseIf form.Custom2.Value > 0 Then" Here is a Beta Beta version - NOTE: Does not work in WinPE4 RTM x64 For Server 2008 R2 deployments and support for GPT. You cannot PXE boot to this and expect it to work. It can only work if your WinPE boots from a UEFI enabled CD/DVD or USB key. You can still use the non-GPT options with PXE, but if you choose the GPT Disk option when you PXE boot, you will have a 2TB C: drive. I have a separate boot.wim that uses this "Server" class files. Here are those instructions. 1. Need to change the x:\windows\system32\misc\diskpart.txt so that it will do a default deploy of Server correctly. sel disk 0 clean creat part pri size=100 sel part 1 active format fs=ntfs label="System Reserved" quick create part pri sel part 2 format fs=ntfs label="LocalDisk" quick assign letter=c exit 2. I have modified the HTA to run a program called GPT check, which checks for the presense of the MSR partition. In my test boot.wim, I have the EFI components saved into the ramdisk, however the appropriate method would be to have a WIM to deploy the appropriate EFI files. And that will get tricky as well because any UEFI deployment is HDD size dependent. I have not yet been able to test same size drives among different manufacturers! GPTCheck.exe (autoit) src here: This program is called during the reboot MsgBox, which means if you elect to do the other option, it won't run the prorgram. So if you choose to do a shutdown, next boot will result in an error. 3. The second option for the Diskpart.hta "Make one primary partition" now says "use GPT Disk". 4. Changed it so the custom partition values will work and create the System Reserved Partition. This only works with having 0 in the second box. ALSO this does not allow you to do a custom partition on a GPT disk either. You can test it out. Hopefully I modified the file appropriately. Server_ImageX.7z

I'd recommend either using Cable Select or make the HDD the master. If you are going to use the SATA drive, make sure the DVD-ROM is set to master if the ATA HDD is not present.