Messages

1

Software / System Tray - WinXp

« on: May 18, 2003, 11:55:45 AM »

AutoRuns from SysInternals will show you where every program that is autostarting is located.
http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/source/m....shtml#autoruns

Quote
\"This applet shows you what programs are configured to run during system bootup or login. These programs include ones in your startup folder, Run, RunOnce, and other Registry keys. You'll probably be surprised at how many executables are launched automatically. AutoRuns works on Windows 9x and Windows NT/2K. (The complete list of auto-run locations was obtained from David Solomon's \"Windows 2000 Internals\" seminar)\"

Pretty much any program that claims to optimize your RAM on an NT based OS such as XP is simply lying. Maybe some of you recall the \"RAM Doubler\" fiasco on Win95?
XP does a very good job of managing it's memory all on it's own. That's why simple apps don't crash the OS when they crash unlike Windows 95, 98 & ME.

To me Memory Blaster looks like a rip off of $29.95 from blissfully ignorant computer users who don't know or care to know the difference. http://images.thetechguide.com/forum/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/mad.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\':angry:\' />

2

Software / Program the WinPE

« on: May 16, 2003, 11:47:49 AM »

You can get Boot Scriptor @
http://www.bootscriptor.org/

Seeing that most of the tools on Michael's \"Super Utilities 2003\" are commercial software, it's unlikely that you will easily find his CD's outside the warez channels.

I sent you to Michael's page so that you could get an idea of what is possible, now it's up to you to figure out exactly what you want your WinPE CD to be able to do, for me all I really need my WinPE to do at the moment is to run diskpart and an Apple RAID admin interface. Your needs may be different...

If you read Michael's page closely you can figure out how he has created his CD's.
Take a read of
http://members.rogers.com/khauyeung/SUPERWINPE.HTM

3

Software / the Open with menu

« on: May 15, 2003, 10:28:16 AM »

It could be in a number of different places in the registry, the first place to look is
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.txt
(where .txt is the extension that is having the problem with extra \"Open with\" entries)
There might be a subkey named \"OpenWithList\" under this key, look in there and if the video player is listed, delete it.
Another subkey that might hold the info is the \"OpenWithProgIds\" key, again delete any bad entries.

IIRC there is somewhere else in the registry that also can hold this info, but those two locations are the primary suspects...

4

Software / Program the WinPE

« on: May 14, 2003, 08:49:08 AM »

Forget about DOS when you are working with WinPE, WinPE is just a cut down version of XP that just happens to be able to boot off of a CD.
So you need to use Windows utilities and scripts to work with WinPE, most of the old DOS utilities will not work in WinPE.

Take a look @
http://members.rogers.com/khauyeung/SUPERUTL.HTM
I think that is what you are trying to do...

5

Software / Windows 2000 unnatended with drivers on CD

« on: May 11, 2003, 02:01:11 PM »

In the post I posted in this thread a few days ago I had some errors that will cause the bootable CD to not work, how exactly it worked on my system with these errors is not something that I have not figured out yet...
Anyway I figured out the right way of getting it to work and have posted the how-to on my web site @

http://patrick.naoise.com/articles/windows/bootablecd/

6

Software / bug check

« on: May 11, 2003, 12:57:04 PM »

Well if it is a video related problem, then I would first check for updated video card drivers for your system.
If your video card is using a nVidia chip then you could try using nVidia’s latest reference drivers rather than the OEM drivers, same principal goes for any other OEMed video card.

Maybe the problem might be related to some autoloaded program for your video card. Try unloading everything unnecessary from your Autorun and Start folders, use this little utility to help you find them all
http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/source/m....shtml#autoruns
Lots of video card lot up lots of junk that is completely unnecessary. Get rid of anything that you don't use and see if that helps...

7

Software / download post win2k sp3 hotfixes

« on: May 11, 2003, 12:47:52 PM »

What I use is Shavlik's HFNetChkPro, you can download a free 50 computer version from
http://www.shavlik.com/
(It's the commercial version of Microsoft's HFNetChk & MSBA products)
It will scan a system and then allow you to easily download all the appropiate patches for that system to a folder on your system.
So just build a default W2K SP3 system with no patches and then have HFNetChkPro get the right patches and integrate these into your CD.

8

Software / bug check

« on: May 10, 2003, 07:43:45 PM »

Usually you can get an idea of what driver or utility is crashing the system from the list of loaded drives listed on the BSOD. It's a real pain to have to write them all down though...
SysInternals used to have a great little utility called BlueSave that would save the text on the BSOD to a file before it rebooted the system. It dosn't seem to work on Win2K or XP though.

The first drivers to suspect are almost always the video drivers, run the system in VGA mode for a while and see if it crashes then.

9

Hardware / \"Read only\" hard drive

« on: May 10, 2003, 12:48:33 PM »

Some hard drives have a jumper that can be set to make the drive read only. This is useful for embedded systems that need a lot of storage or master image disks etc.
See:
http://www.hgst.com/hdd/support/dk/5/514s/write.html

Not many (if any) modern drives have this jumper though, it's been a few years since I recall seeing such a jumper on a new drive...

10

Software / Re: Autocomplete Passwords And User Names

« on: May 08, 2003, 11:17:03 PM »

Internet Explorer stores its autocomplete information in the \"Protected Storage\" database. Supposedly it's encrypted but there is a very nice utility called Protected Storage Explorer that will let you browse through this database.
I guess it's not as encrypted as Microsoft would like us to believe...

http://www.codeproject.com/tools/PSExplorer.asp
 http://images.thetechguide.com/forum/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/ph34r.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\':ph34r:\' />

11

Software / Windows 2000 unnatended with drivers on CD

« on: May 08, 2003, 11:00:19 PM »

I just found some interesting threads on Google about a Microsoft recommended solution for adding 3rd party drivers to the CD. Read @

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=txtsetup...sftngp10&rnum=1

&

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&...0.phx.gbl#link3

It's pretty much just as jiimmy has described here before...

12

Software / Windows 2000 unnatended with drivers on CD

« on: May 07, 2003, 01:34:07 PM »

You could use WinPE and the DiskPart tool from MS.
It's not exactly what you are looking for I think but AFAIK it's the only tool that will easily create NTFS partitions...

13

Software / Windows 2000 unnatended with drivers on CD

« on: May 06, 2003, 12:06:30 PM »

OK, after reading the steps described in other posts I finally got one driver added to my Win2K Server CD, here is a very basic step by step of how I how I did it.
Plese keep in mind that what I got to work may not be the optimium way of doing it and that I may have included extra steps that are unnecessary, as I have to time to debug every possible scenario I will pare the process down to the mimimium steps required...

For this example I first created a slipstreamed SP3 Win2k Advanced Server ISO with the great Windows CD compiler script available @
http://berns.cae.wisc.edu/pages/wincdman.asp

In the following example we will add the VMWare SCSI drivers for a VMWare 4.0 Workstation

1) Obtain the latest version of the drivers from
http://www.vmware.com/download/downloadscsi.html

2) Copy the expanded contents of the driver disk to \$OEM$\$1\Temp\Drivers\SCSI\VMWare

3) Add the path \"Temp\Drivers\SCSI\VMWare;\" to the WinNT.Sif file on floppy

4) Copy the file vmscsi.sys to \i386

5) Edit the file \i386\TxtSetup.Sif with the following changes taken from the txtsetup.oem & vmscsi.inf files

In the section [SourceDisksFiles.x86] add the line
vmscsi.sys = 1,,,4_,4,1,,1,4

In the section [HardwareIdsDatabase] add the line
PCI\VEN_104B&DEV_1040 = \"VMscsi\"

In the section [SCSI.Load] add the line
VMSCSI = vmscsi.sys,4

In the section [SCSI] add the line
VMSCSI = \"VMware SCSI Controller\"

6) Edit the file \i386\DrvIndex.Inf with the following changes

In the section [driver] add the line
vmscsi.sys

7) Edit the file \i386\HIVESYS.INF with the following changes

In the section [AddReg] add the lines
HKLM,\"SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\VMscsi\",\"ErrorControl\",0x00010003,1
HKLM,\"SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\VMscsi\",\"Group\",0x00000002,\"SCSI miniport\"
HKLM,\"SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\VMscsi\",\"Start\",0x00010003,4
HKLM,\"SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\VMscsi\",\"Tag\",0x00010003,259
HKLM,\"SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\VMscsi\",\"Type\",0x00010003,1
HKLM,\"SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\VMscsi\Parameters\",,0x00000012
HKLM,\"SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\VMscsi\Parameters\Device\",\"NumberOfRequests\",0x00800003,128
HKLM,\"SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\VMscsi\Parameters\PnpInterface\",\"5\",0x00010003,1
HKLM,\"SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\EventLog\System\VMscsi\",\"EventMessageFile\",0x00020002,\"%SystemRoot%\System32\IoLogMsg.dll\"
HKLM,\"SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\EventLog\System\VMscsi\",\"TypesSupported\",0x00010003,7

Recompile the ISO file and you should now have a CD that will recognise the SCSI adapter in a VMWare 4.0 workstation session.

Notes: I'm not sure if steps 2, 3 & 6 are really necessary, I put them in just to be sure it would work...
Also in my winnt.sif file I added the following line in the [Unattended] section
DriverSigningPolicy=Ignore
See
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...b;EN-US;q250380
for why this must = Ignore

I am still trying to get my Compaq Smart Array 5i drivers to work in this fashion, AFAIK I have everything entered correctly but the system BSODs as soon as it enters GUI mode... Anyone else got this card to work?
I have starting on adding the following cards to my boot CD
IBM ServeRAID 5i
LSI Logic SYMMPI SCSI/FC / Apple FC HBA (Same driver)
Emulex LP950
If I can get all of these to work then I be very happy http://images.thetechguide.com/forum/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tongue.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\'\' />