shortbus

Well, seems I started high fivin' everybody a little prematurely. I think most of the 'other copies' laying around are worth about the same as I paid for them (and always treated as such). I think I have come up with one other OEM, but at a glance is well used and scuffed up. Before the install, how do you know what version you have? Because I'm in the bad habit of leaving CD's laying around, I'm very interested in the network install .... is there more info within this site?

No way! Oh man, for months I've been dealing with stuff going goofy on me because of a bunch of corrupt files. Seen the popup box 'we're sorry but XXXXX has encountered an error and needs to close. We are sorry for any inconvenience ... blah blah blah' Thats good news, thanks time to clean the slate

Not too sure if I follow whats going on, but it sounds to me like SP2 doesn't have anything to do with it (well ... ah, won't get into it). If it is services, what screwed me up all the time was that I'd turned off the security centre. Maybe start there. Next, check with www.blackviper.com and go through the services and see if its all in check.

sorry guys, haven't been here in a while, hopefully you see and respond to this. I'm a bit confused here, about borrowing a CD from a friend. To be honest I have lost count of how many different versions are laying around here. Dime a dozen. However I do have one purchased legit OEM of XP Pro. Because it several weeks allowance saved up, I don't want to lose out on it, just because I'm bad at putting it back in its case right away. What good would a different copy do (assuming it is the same version)? You can't just put any legit code into any CD (I think?). How would this work? ```````````````````````````````````````` To svasutin; I found out what OEM stands for when you purchase a OS .... same as SOL. Microsoft will not help in any way with an OEM disk. ````````````````````````````````````````` Oh ya, don't tell anybody about those other versions ..... its a secret.

Dunno if it would have any effect, but 'Components', the header for the last section is also misspelled.

I'm going to have to try the 'right click context menu of Windows Media Player', hopefully it will work for Winamp or Foobar also. I read the first page, and it's a bit scary the way people are posting (so in effect advising), registry tweaks that they themselves do not know what it does. The very first post, a tweak to speed up the start menu is changed from 4 seconds to 20 seconds. Never considered myself a genius, but I think 4 seconds is a shorter wait than 20. Of all the people who say you should turn off the QoS, did any explain why? Or do they themselves know the advantage (or lack thereof), to doing this? Another example is 'the broadband tweak'. Did any of the posts go into detail about how this will do more damage than good for ADSL users? Of the group that has cable, how many have an MTU of 1500? Who even knows how to check? (the answer on this page http://cable-dsl.home.att.net/#dns_cache) When listening to the advice of these registry tweaks, be skeptical. The person you are taking the advice from more than likely has no idea what they are talking about. Take the time to test one or two, ... or all. That's what made me so apprehensive. You'll be surprised at the results. There are many really good enhancements listed on this pages, to those who know what and why they posted .... well done.

I was pretty excited when I heard about the beta release of SP2, and jumped on it, had it in within hours. To be honest, it's a giant pain. The security center was disabled that day. Suddenly I am logging in to sites and giving my password more than I am actually looking at the sites. Two in particular, I'm ready to quit the site as I repeatedly give my password for every page I click to. The Windows Updates page hangs, and by default with the beta I have an icon on the desktop to 'Report a Bug'. When I told them about the Updates page, they sent a reply as if I had no idea this was a beta package and treated me like a chimp. I'm sure we're all speechless that so far, they've fumbled the ball.

It was through doing that, in preparation to make an Unattenended Installation CD that I found some to be corrupt. Using the command prompt to compare it with other files didn't seem to be much use either.

More than likely, most people here do a fresh install quite often. It won't be long before the CD that came with the system, or purchased on it's own with the operating system on it starts to falter. The last few reformat - fresh installations I have done did not work out properly. I've found that my XP pro CD has files that are corrupt (I've contacted Microsoft, it is an OEM version and going that route is a huge hassle). So far, it seems all the bad files are grouped together in the i386 folder. Is there a method to find out which are good and which are bad? It is a legit CD, so I want to keep my numbers, just exchange some of the bad files.

I think you'll find there will be a difference between 'my favorte' and 'the one i use' .....

My bad, Thanks for making me read the entire path, not just the bits I like. While on the subject of the registry, I am wanting to put in a tweak for the TCP receive window, and have seen two conflicting values. This first one is from; http://cable-dsl.home.att.net/#IncreasingWindow [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters] "GlobalMaxTcpWindowSize"=dword:00007fff This creates a decimal value of 32767 The second, and different version; http://www.speedguide.net/read_articles.php?id=157 HKLM/SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters GlobalMaxTcpWindowSize="256960" This creates a hex value of 0003ebc0 anyone got an idea what is preferred? (I'm cable with an MTU of 1500)

I was on the page discussing registry tweaks, and earlier scratching my head over the install of drivers. Is there an example of extracting the ATI Catalyst driver? There's so many subfolders, you have to start deleting files because they have the same name. Also, for the registry tweaks, I was adding my own, which is simple for dwords, but when a string came along I went to look for an example. This is a cut n paste from the page on registry tweaks; ;Speed up shutdown [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control] "WaitToKillServiceTimeout"="3000" That key is present in both HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and HKEY_CURRENT_USER. Maybe it varies, but on mine the key is named 'WaitToKillAppTimeout'. Also, I recall reading that the value of that key should be larger than the value for 'HungAppTimeout' in the same folder. Anybody know about that?

Hey, New guy here, just joined a few minutes ago. I've been looking at the site for a coupla days, along with theeldergeek's tutorials. Seems to be two completley different methods of installing the updates .... any tips or links? My heads kinda spinning a bit (does that often, no worries). With the downloaded files, I've kept the originals, also got the renamed 8.3 versions, and extracted with the .cat files ready. I'll admit it .... I'm confused. Slightly off topic question; Was telling a friend about this, saying the CD size is the biggest limitation (for including programs), and he points out burning a DVD. Is that doable? If so, I would guess it's the same steps. Oh ya, I keep seeing XPSP1 referenced, is it all the same with XPSP1a?

Hi, I've been looking at the site for a day or two, was just sent here after questioning about how an unattended install CD is done. Gotta tell ya, pretty impressed .... I had no idea it was more customizable than a normal install (something I do more than I should). Kudos to the creators of the site, not a bad aspect to it.