disgraceful33

yeah you got a long way to go and it only gets better. there's some cheap thrills - monsters that jump at you and stuff, but all in all, the scariest game i've played since the first aliens vs. predator. i heard clive barker's undying was supposed to be a great horror game. i'll have to check out painkiller as well. oh, and i think my favorite scene in doom so far was the part in alpha labs with the old scientist on the bridge with the lantern....

if you are just looking to take over a pc, there's always other options. look into VNC. it's fast, free, and really easy to use.

i could be wrong, but isn't the version of netmeeting used in XP tied to their windows messenger? i thought it was slightly tweaked for messenger in the same vein that windows messenger slightly differs from msn messenger.

create an .iso file, mount it with daemon tools, and test it on a virtual machine from either VMWare or Virtual PC. saves you a lot of time, effort, and extra cd's.

my reg files dont work. not sure why your theme service isn't starting. it should be starting on its own by default....... why not try taking out all those lines concerning it and see what happens then? for me, still doesnt load the theme for the newly created user...

Ok, I've found a few reg keys related to styles (which might affect this more than the theme does) and i think i might have something here to add to the reg files we're each using. personally i'm using the royale theme. i'm going to test this out, but see if this helps anyone:

i've tried a few different things to no avail. i'm currently exporting ALL registry keys that reference the current theme on my pc and then will post here a list, maybe putting that into the reg file will work.

actually on a related note i have a problem beyond this - i've gotten past everything in this thread. hacked uxtheme file, shell setting in winnt.sif pointing to theme, theme copying over fine to windows\resources\themes\, theme service starting fine, but here's what happens: - in my winnt.sif, i only set an admin password, no autologin. - i have a cmdlines.txt and runonce.cmd and useraccounts.cmd per unattended.msfn.org and they work fine - no other reg setting or anything else related to themes in my cd settings when i get into windows, the new user account is set to default windows theme. HOWEVER, if i log out, and log in as administrator, then the custom theme defined in [shell] in winnt.sif is present there. so how do you get the theme set in the winnt.sif file to show up for the user defined in useraccounts.cmd? (i figure this may end up being the next question asked in this thread anyway...)

i agree with most here - getting these pc's onto a domain is key. not only will you be able to lock them down quicker and more efficiently, but you'll also be able to monitor them better and deploy them faster if they need to be reimaged. 120 pc's is a fair amount, i'm surprised you'd have them all standalone pc's this long.

that depends on what you want to do. please dont do what many have done and just whored all the certs they could without real life knowledge of it. that widespread practice is what has cheapened them to begin with. the best thing to do is get the cert that best describes what you want to do. there's ones that flow along paths of teaching, developing, system administration, support, etc. figure out what you want from a job, and get the cert relevant to that. dont get me wrong, it's good to have other qualities to fall back on, but the fact that there's an army of people out there who have loads of certs but dont know their head from their a$$ has made them not worth nearly as much as they should be. best advice i could think of is not to be one of those people.

yeah i have to agree, if microsoft released all the new features of XP, it would be silly to upgrade. If there's an SP5, it'll be patches and not any features inherent in XP.

looking at this...... is OEMFilesPath necessary? shouldn't $OEM$ be the default?

as far as NT certs... you'd be shocked how many companies are still running NT, so while M$ may not recognize the cert, it's still valid in helping to get a job. i agree with prathapml that there are much more jobs for M$ engineers than Novell, and Novell does appear to be fading a bit, but look at it this way - get a cert in a field you wish to work in and something you know. if you're good on Windows servers, dont go out and get a Novell cert so your resume looks good, because you might end up working on those and then you're back to having a cert with little experience and that doesnt help you either.

those programs are all bought and paid for, right?

a very interesting and relative discussion... i took a few certs back in the NT4 days, and they helped a bit in getting a job, but not much. i havent bothered since because i agree with many here that experience usually counts better, and is always more relevant than some test. that said, many people who actually hire IT people generally dont have a clue about computers, so they look for stuff like certs and diplomas rather than what counts. best advice i can give is get the cert to get your foot in the door, but make sure you have experience to keep the job once you get it.

wait...... hypothetically, if i had a copy of windows xp mce, it's not possible to build a pc to use it?

correct me if i'm wrong, but unless you've created one, there shouldn't already be one there.

get a recovery program like Ontrack EasyRecovery Pro, or Runtimes' software. the cost of the license is cheaper than if a tech did it for you (yep, can easily cost over thousands of bucks) and you have the program in case it happens again.

thanks for the help, much appreciated. i assume ctfmon is needed for the OCR functions of office, so that has to stay. and i unchecked all the sync options in IE so hopefully that'll fix that as well.

a "ctfmon.exe" that keeps popping up no matter how many times i delete it, and sync manager called "mobsync.exe". i have ad-aware and spy sweeper, and i'm sure they're not spyware, but no matter how many times i delete these, they keep coming back. the first one is in the run key in HKCU, the other is in the run key in HKLM

no, no problems like that. that's not the issue. it's not like it's a homepage that keeps going back or something. just random programs that just dont want to leave the startup keys in the registry like HP startup utils and M$ scheduling stuff. really odd.

I've noticed in my Win2k machine that i can delete things out of the startup keys in the registry, but on every reboot, they're back again. is there some kind of rollback i dont know about? and if so, how do i shut it off? thanks

likely, i've done quite a few changes like that. what file is that, does anyone remember so i can change it back?

not sure how or why, but somehow in the cd i made, the auto administrator default login has been changed from "administrator" to "theadmin" and i can't seem to find where that is happening. it's obviously causing the build to fail as it cannot log in to complete. anyone have any ideas where this is happening? thanks

ok i've tried using Ghost 7.5 AI Snapshot, and i've tried the vbs script and i'm sure they work great for the newer slysoft clonecd, but for 4202 is the version i have (the last one elby made) and it installs a virtual drive that doesnt work correctly on these silent installs. anyone know a way to get this to work silently?