Tripredacus

By default that button is set to sleep and not shutdown. Here's how you can change that Control Panel, Power Options. Select the Plan you're using and click on Change Plan Settings. Select Change Advanced power settings. Scroll down the list to "Power Buttons and Lid" and click the + sign. Click the + next to Start Menu Power Button and set the option you want. Naw man, I know the Standby button in the start menu. On the right of it there is a little triangle and if you click that it brings up a menu. You get options like Restart, Shutdown, Standby etc. In this case I clicked Shutdown but the PC went to sleep instead. And when I push the power button (on the case) it would wake up instead of turning on because I guess it never really went off. After swapping the hard drive to the blank one, it attempted to reload Windows from standby but it never actually got into the Desktop. It would show the Secret Boot Screen and then give an error. Its because it kept the Standby state in memory, and gave the appearance that it turned off but really didn't.

For computer items I use newegg or if I don't like the deal I go through pricewatch.com. For the other stuff I buy online its primarily eBay, 20west and BBTS.

YEs you can disable the DHCP Client service in Windows. You will see it in Computer Management. You could create a .cmd (batch file) that runs when you boot the computer, and have that in your image of course, so after the image is applied and the computer restarts, it would set the IP for you, or whatever else you need it to do. You can manually set IP information with Netsh http://www.petri.co.il/configure_tcp_ip_from_cmd.htm I do not know what effect disabling the DHCP Client service will have on trying to run netsh. Best to do a test in Audit mode before deploying.

The plastic part is just a little protecting peice so the buttom doesn't get scratched or something. I wouldn't think it would be in the instructions. Pads? It isn't really grease tho. Thermal Paste is the term to use. Grease sounds scary and "traditional" grease would probably start the computer on fire! lol.

Your best bet for testing images would be to go into Audit Mode and do a reboot. That way you can test to see which drivers get blown out without imaging another computer.

XP OEM CDs get redone every now and then. We recently encountered one of these changes when a new "Version" came out. It was the same CD, which was SP2 2002 version but the COA was a little different. We couldn't use the new COA on the "old" OEM CD and vice versa. We didn't realise this at first and decided to defect out a copy of Windows where we took the new CD out and put one of the old ones in. They are exactly the same and have the same part numbers and everything, but their crypto is different so you can't interchange the numbers. So we have to write the date on the new CD with a sharpie so we don't throw it out!

Yes, the one you see in Windows is the Volume License. If you were to run a recovery or install the Windows OEM CD you got with your computer, you can activate Windows using the number on the case.

Occassionally I run into some problems at work where Vista goes into Standby instead of turning off when you select the Shut Down. To the naked eye, you can see that the computer actually turns off. All the fans stop spinning, the hard drive spins down, the power LED turns off and the monitor goes to sleep. You'd think that the computer was off for sure. But last week I had an incident where I shut down the computer because I needed to swap the hard drive out. So I swapped it out, and hit the power button. Then the "secret loading screen" came up (the black and purple/green one) saying it was resuming from standby! Suffice it to say Vista didn't handle coming out of sleep mode with a different hard drive in it (albeit a blank one) but we eventually finished the order. Any idea why Windows would do this? We even manually select the Shut Down (or Turn off) option by clicking the arrow next to the standby button on the Start Menu.

I have no idea. We only receive orders for single drives (IDE) or RAID and not for AHCI yet. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Host...oller_Interface

Generally speaking, Ebay is your best bet. Card stores aren't going to pay you big money on cards unless they are really old or in real high demand. It doesn't seem like your cards are. It might be different in your area, but the best I can get on trade ins (for credit and not cash) that I have found are a dime per 1,000. This figures in my last trade in I did a few years ago where I traded in 36,000 cards for $40. The problem is that card stores have problems GIVING cards away from that era because they are EVERYWHERE. You could get away with possibly making more on Ebay but don't get your hopes up too much I guess.

Yes on my old Windows 95 computer, it had the Earthlink IE 5.5 browser with the Google Toolbar. That was just a test PC tho I accidently threw it out anyways. That Earthlink browser was horrible.

I've only seen 90+ Celcius twice. The last time it was because the person who built the PC left the plastic film on the heatsink AND put CPU paste there. Removed plastic and it went down to normal lol. The other time was when the CPU melted into the motherboard on the server at college when someone decided to lock the door to the server room.

We have encountered this problem also. There are two solutions we use. 1. Replace the CD Drive cable 2. Install the Chipset or SMBus drivers for the motherboard/controller instead of using the generic Vista ones.

Well first of all, the XP CD won't see the hard drive if you have it set for AHCI unless you pull an F6 and put in the AHCI driver disk that came with the motherboard.

We got an x50 here a couple days ago on a system and it turned out to be the RAM.

I do not use any either in IE or Firefox.

Correction. If you change your drive setting back to IDE you can get back into the OS. If you want Vista to run on AHCI, you are going to have to do a reinstall and put the AHCI HDDC driver in your new ISO.

Usually foreign versions of Windows are total conversions. You have limited ability to change the wording in the OS, but text on dialogue boxes such as System Properties for example, will still be in the original text. You'd be better off installing a new OS. It just means you'll have a German Windows on there but have the ability to restore the Portugese version.

I am planning on getting some flavor of Windows Vista for my next computer but I have some questions. The comparison charts have led me to believe that I will get either Vista Business or Ultimate. My question is if there is a big difference with the Business distro, such is there lower support for DirectX 10 or video processing? I would use this Vista to play games and I don't want to have to hack it out to play games like I had to with Server Enterprise. I would also not wish to get Ultimate since it would have a lot of stuff in it that I wouldn't be using in the first place.

OEM Recovery Partitions are typically not accessable from Windows, although you may be able to see them from Disk Management. They are set up so that you hit a key or a series of keys during boot up to trigger the system recovery. What is it you are trying to do? HP may have an option during their recovery to keep your files (but not your settings) otherwise you will lose all the data on the C drive. You aren't likely going to be able to pick and choose which files you want out of there. Mostly because Recovery partitions aren't in a disk format that Windows can read. If the computer is fairly new, you should be calling HP especially if you still get the free tech support. The reason being is that you could just randomly do something from what people say online, and what if you goof it up? Well HP could decide to not respect your product warranty if there is one.

Hmm, yes third times the charm it appears. I didn't have to install the 3rd CD anyways because the OS isn't going to be activated by us. We don't do updates on machines that the customer has to activate or the WGA will lock us out. It said it needed .net 1.1 to install CD3 anyways so I just skipped it.

OK I will try that next. I tried the 2CD install before. We never got to the third CD because it wouldn't run.

Hey I am having problems doing an OEM install of XP Media Center 2005. I first started out by installing the software. After install was complete we went into Windows to install the 3rd disc, which is a "service pack" from Microsoft. We got errors such as: "This application has failed to start because SRCLIENT.dll was not found" and we were also unable to view the event viewer. IPConfig showed us a NIC with no IP but Network Connections was blank. I did some research and found that MCE will sometimes not install properly. So I did a repair install. Now it boots up with the 0x7e / access denied stop error. The Microsoft site has a hotfix for Server 2003 (it won't install on mce) and the XP articles say it is a problem with drivers (there are none loaded). Should I do a format and reinstall of MCE again or what? This is the first time I've had to install this software, and the first time my company has gotten an order for it. PS: At this time I can get to Safe Mode only.

HD-DVD took a serious blow with the release of the Transformers movie when it was revealed that they did not have enough space on the disc to put in HD audio, so it only has 5.1 audio instead of 7.1.

I do lock it because some people at work have been known to try doing stuff with it. Not at home though. It never goes to sleep.