Tripredacus

Well you might have a SATA controller in there, but typically if you are using RAID it shouldn't show the SATA controller. You never know, since this Dell BIOS doesn't seem to give you standard RAID terminology in it either.

Yeah Scite already has the All Source option. When you save under this option, it makes extension AU3. If you choose the drop down to all files, it does not make an extension by default. I understand why it does this, since Scite is designed to be used for AutoIT. I only use it at work because I do not have extra licenses to use UltraEdit, which I use at home.

If you are only redeploying the image multiple times to get drivers, you should use PEIMG to inject the drivers into the Master image instead.

No bubble to burst! I'm still a 3Ware guy!

It depends on how you connect to your community. I have a website that was Transformers related and I integrated with that community. This was able to "Get the word out" in a way that plain old search results wouldn't do. I do not know how many hits I get because I haven't had stats on my website for a few years now. In fact, my current website is out of date and was only re-uploaded for the use of people in the Transformers community. I think my glory days are behind me. My best was I got 1 million hits in October 2005 and since then I wasn't really concerned about hits anymore.

I'm of the opinion right now that MalwareBytes is my current favorite. My old favorite used to be Giant Anti-Spyware, which used to be the #1. But then Giant got bought by Microsoft and eventually became Windows Defender and now MSE. I do not know if MSE's Anti-spyware component (yes it does this too) is better than MalwareBytes, but I haven't gotten infected with anything since installing MSE. It is possible that I'll never have to use MalwareBytes on my PC as long as MSE is installed but that's probably wishful thinking.

When HP created your computer, when they made the recovery partition, it writes data to a part of the hard drive. This is a "lock" or a bit of data that the recovery software (either the partition or the media) looks for before recovering. If that data is not present, it won't recover! Depending on how you formatted the drive, it may have removed this data! You may be able to find some way to put that data back onto your hard drive (look in the HP Recovery Partition cannot be found thread) by using MBR tools. Unfortunately, I can't tell you what that data is or where it goes. This process will require a bunch of learning, which you can see there is a lot of stuff in that thread. I can't do much for you except lead you in the right direction. EDIT: I forgot to add this. If the data on the hard drive is not there, it should not make the recovery media give you an error like that. It should just give you a simple message like "you are not allowed to run recovery on this machine" or something along those lines.

I had a question about MSPaint as well. There was a case last week where I needed to take a screenshot of the PE (in WinRE) after I modified it for support purposes. I was wondering if you hit the Print Screen key, and opened MSPaint in the PE (from the command prompt) if you could paste the screenshot in there and save the JPEG or BMP. I didn't try researching it and just took a picture with my cell phone.

As I noted, you don't need to (or probably shouldn't) skip user creation. After you install, you'll still need to have a local system account that COULD be logged into. But since you are using a domain, you set it up where your Unattend creates the local system account (using a name other than Administrator) and then you use the Domain account as the login. Look in the help file (or technet) for UserAccounts and AutoLogon containers of the Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup component.

There should be a setupact.log file in the Panther or Sysprep folder. Need to know exactly what the reason is. Also, is this Vista on its first install (ie one generalize used) and you are sysprep from Audit or User mode?

Deleting the RAID will lose the data. If you want to keep the data then you don't want that option. Because you plan on making Windows switch from RAID to IDE mode, you are in effect changing its mass storage controller. You are correct in thinking that the Reset Disks to Non-RAID will take the RAID off and not lose the data. However, once you boot into Windows, you will get a STOP Error 0x0000007B because the Mass Storage Controller driver will have changed. You did not mention if you can currently boot into the system. If you keep only 1 drive in the system, you can boot into Windows and it shouldn't be slow because it won't be rebuilding or reinitializing the array. Once you get in there, you can remove all SCSI, RAID or IDE Controllers from Device Manager. Then reboot into the RAID BIOS and set the disk to non-RAID. Alternatively, if you can't get into Windows atm, you can do a repair install which should save your settings but will use the correct Mass Storage Controller driver. I've done it this way, not from RAID to IDE, but from one controller to another. EDIT: you can get into the RAID BIOS by pressing CTRL+I at the RAID BIOS POST screen.

I wonder if this also works with Scite, which always wants to save files as AU3 extension. I use it as a multipurpose editor (for PHP and ASP also) so its annoying when I sometimes forget to change the type.

And I never understood why some people wouldn't (besides cost obviously). It's much faster and plenty reliable for that. I've been using RAID0 only for my system volume since 2001 (on an old Promise FastTrack100 TX4 & 4x WD 40GB striped) and never run into any problem. And if I'm unlucky enough to get a disk failure (like once every 10 years), then I'll just reinstall my OS & apps, no big deal (as long as your actual data is backed up, of course). The only method I am comfortable with is using RAID1 on a system volume, and RAID5 or RAID10 for data. Those are on work computers. I also would never use any software RAID controllers (like ICH, Promise, Adaptec) and can't really afford the 3Ware for home use. Although Intel's new LSI controllers seem to be on par.

Belated thank you. Would like to know how to fix registry associations/dependencies and bring them back to the default settings. Is there a recommended freeware or maybe a windows XP tip for that? Thanks Dependencies are not in the registry. When an EXE is created, some of the functions it does are actually done by other files on the system. These would be files that come with Windows, or from an add-on like the .NET Framework for example. If you think its a dependency problem, you can use Dependency Walker to look and see if everything is present on your system that EXE needs.

Is it? You may have different sources than myself: http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~garth/RAIDpaper/Patterson88.pdf AFAIK it was designed to meet the growing speed of processors and for cost effectiveness against SLED's, and the fact that they are mainly used in Servers is only because PC's have become so cheap and (most) final users don't care that much about data integrity. RAID has been also commonly used on gaming rigs or graphical workstations to improve performance, typically in RAID0 stripes of two disks. jaclaz I think it just comes down to personal preference. Myself, for example, would never use a RAID0 on a system volume, but people do all the time. It also may deal with how you became aware of RAID. Myself, I first knew RAID as something only in servers, then learned about gaming PCs and whatnot later on. When I was with Sony, they started selling VAIO desktops with RAID on them, so people who bought those machines would first know of RAID being on desktops!

I agree about the media. When I got hired by the company I work for now, they were still using CDs and floppy disks to load computers. Having been in deployment before, I basically did a "WHAT?" and said No Way, I'm changing this up. We now use WDS as well, its a great thing, way faster too.

Welcome to the MSFN!

There might be, but the answer won't be found in General Discussion.

I guess some of you guys are crazier than me lol!

The main differences I have seen between the two are how PEIMG was replaced with DISM. The other is that Imagex writes the XML in a different order.

I do not recommend that you allow a RAID volume to sleep, especially a software RAID. Or in other words, don't let Windows handle that function. Install the Intel Matrix application and if it has that option, set it, otherwise let it always run. Remember, RAID is designed for servers, not workstations or regular desktops. Servers are supposed to run all the time.

Question here... have you done anything to your hard drive at all? Replaced it or something else? The HP Recovery discs made by the media creator reads information from the Hard Drive to make sure it is allowed to recover there. I can't really tell you more than that.

Learn to earn might be a problem for you like it was for me when I was unemployed. At that time, I had a solid 10 years of web development under my belt, however none of it was with a company, aka something on my resume. Many job interviewers told me that it didn't matter what I knew because I didn't do it at a job. Maybe you'll luck out! OK I shall look at your site and tell you what I see. I am going to post my response FIRST and code sample afterwards. 1. You are using an OLD program. There are multiple problems with this. First, it makes it easy for you, you do not have the ability to look at straight code (this is important if you get hired at a company because they probably won't use the same app as you or its hand coded) and know exactly how it works out. Yes some coding is easier to understand than others. Starting out, I would recommend doing things from hand rather than using an app. However, if you do want to use an app, make sure you try to use CodeView and also not an app (such as the one you are using) which adds a bunch of "garbage" (imo) code: <META content="Microsoft FrontPage 5.0" name=GENERATOR> 2. Commenting your code is a good practice to get into, especially if you want to do it in a job. A standard practice for website development is to use three different servers. The first is "test" which you test out everything, even if it isn't related to your project or just trying out ideas. The second is the dev server. It is where you test your final design and the dev server is basically a clone of the "production" server, except that it SHOULD include the commenting on the code. The production server (the website that is accessable to the outside world) should not have the comments. Not only is commenting a security concern, it is extra lines of code that the server needs to process. This may not mean anything at first but once you start getting some major/recurring traffic going it COULD become a problem. Also, I can tell that you got code from some sample on a website. If your prospective employer were to see this, they would know you didn't do it yourself. While this may not be a problem (some people actually reward resourcefulness) it may come back to bite you: <!-- --> <!-- Image note: JPG appears to be the smallest --> <!-- Comment note: Inline only works after a COLON (end of parameter) --> <!-- (may be wrong - works in TR def, but not on a CSS-style line) --> 3. Make sure you validate your code. Obviously, FrontPage is going to try its best to use standard coding practices. Even so, your page code has errors! HTML 4 Transitional is OK if you want a standard that accepts errors, shortcuts or that browsers will fix your errors for them. I use XHTML strict, because I must follow certain rules about coding the pages (do not use my website for this example, as it is not comforming however my redesign will be) and also makes me learn exactly how I should be using my code. <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"> <!-- "http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/REC-html40-19980424/loose.dtd" --> Validator: http://validator.w3.org 4. Check your CSS. You have your CSS embedded in your page. You should have it set to use a separate file. This will allow you to make formatting changes on a large website without having to make code changes to every page. You only get to use 1 file. Also be aware of using CSS code that is not cross-browser compatible. For example, I used Firefox to look at your site, but your scrollbar related CSS will only work in Internet Explorer. .pageScroll { scrollbar-base-color: ; scrollbar-face-color: ; scrollbar-arrow-color: ; scrollbar-3dlight-color: ; scrollbar-highlight-color: ; scrollbar-shadow-color: ; scrollbar-darkshadow-color: ; } Validator: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/ 5. Blinking text is the bane of Netscape's involvement in the early web browser world. PLEASE DO NOT USE IT, EVER. Then again, if it was Flash with blinking text, I'm sure people wouldn't mind... 6. Tables are for tabular data only! Do not use tables for layout purposes. Use DIVs and CSS for layout. I am not going to say that I am a web design master myself! Everyone has their opinions, so I hope mine help you. I can give you some examples of my own. My current website was developed in 2005 as a fully operable CMS. It used to have the ability to create accounts, log in and had a new script that read from a forum. Most of that functionality was removed because the server it used to be on went SOL. I have recently uploaded my old website (it was designed for IE6) because the content on it was helpful to those in the other community I was in. I had decided to NOT fix any code on it because it was way too much work. I am now currently developing a new website design that will use PHP, CSS, AJAX, (maybe) Flash, MySQL. I am also not doing image work this time, as I am having a design professional create website layout graphics. It might be a long time until I can put my new website up. Do not hurt me if I broke some of the rules I stated above in my existing website! Here it is, you can view the code if you like. Note that I am actually using some PHP functions that obviously you cannot see in the browser's source view: http://tripredacus.net/index.php Here is my site in development. It says PHP but it has no PHP in it currently. I am using this "beta.php" as my test server. My dev server is at work (it is not possible to link to it) which has my most updated code: http://tripredacus.net/hist/beta.php Let me know if you have any questions. You will also find this website to be a good place to ask questions... its kinda like MSFN but just for programming. http://forums.devshed.com/ ^_^

In XP you are going to run into a problem making settings to do things to displays, since in the registry they are attached to the actual display GUIDs. You can reference this thread, which had similar questions: http://www.msfn.org/board/unattend-dual-monitors-t140431.html

You don't necessarily need to skip creation of a user. I recommend you still add the LocalAccount, but then you can also specify AutoLogon afterwards to log into the PC as a different account than the one you created. I have already created one on the reference PC I've captured. If you set your image up in Audit mode, you won't have to worry about having 2 users after sysprep, since the Administrator account becomes hidden.