CurlingSteve

This should work: [URL=http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com]Kelly's Korner[/URL]You use "URL" here instead of just "L" (on the G4 boards). Kelly's Korner TaDa!!!

Those numbers are mighty suspicious! It's rare for a file, especially a DLL to be exactly a power of 2. Let me Google a bit... MSCONFIG.DLL is raising Trojan flags on a Google search. You might want to do "the scans". Run your anti-virus. Run your spyware checker(s). And if they don't find anything, post a Hijack This log in the HJT forum. (I'm just starting to learn how to diagnose those or I'd say post it here. "Certified" HJT people are more likely to see it there)

Big fan of this one too. Don't boot up without it!

Thanks for reminding everyone.

Are you sure that's msconfig.DLL? Open the C:\WINDOWS\ServicePackFiles\i386, select Details View, and sort by Name. On my system it's msconfig.EXE. (With msconf.dll above it and msconv97.dll below it, sorted by name). I wonder if something got renamed/misnamed somehow? Open C:\WINDOWS\ServicePackFiles\i386. Right click your msconfig.DLL and select properties. I'm curious about how its stats compare to my C:\WINDOWS\ServicePackFiles\i386\msconfig.exe: Location:C:\WINDOWS\ServicePackFiles\i386 Size: 154 KB (158,208 bytes) Size on disk: 156 KB (159,744 bytes) Created: Sunday October 19, 2003 10:2

Bootvis is one of my all time favorite tools. I don't for the life of me understand my Microsoft chose to stop supporting and offering it on their website. Bootvis has a boot cycle optimization section that will for the short term improve your boot times, it's better to let XP handle the boot optimization. Apparently (this is from Microsoft) Bootvis's opinion and XP's opinion of optimum are different, and the competition will degrade boot times after a while. That said, the charts that Bootvis generates gives a wonderful view about what actually is going on during the boot cycle. One major th

When the list stabilizes it might be interesting to start a thread asking what "package" the members use. I don't think the standard poll process will do it. You'd be able to vote for "which one do you use" but can the board software handle a checkbox style poll where one can indicate all that one uses? For instance, I use the following on my (Windows) systems. Spybot Search and Destroy. (And therefore TeaTimer) AdAware AVG Anti-Virus ZoneAlarm (Free) WinPatrol If someone volunteers to do the work, the first post in the thread could contain the current results (updated with an edit, which woul

The SP2 package itself isn't likely to change for quite a while. Like SP1, they'll probably issue a series of patches until there are so many they make an SP2a. You do not have to have SP2 installed to make this slipstreamed CD! You can burn it and just keep it on standby while they release the "fixup" patches. And doing a clean install with this CD will avoid a lot of the pitfalls folks encounter doing it through Windows Update. Since on a clean install there are no stray viruses or other running programs (like firewalls and AV) there should be fewer problems.

Burn yourself an XP install CD that already includes SP2. Slipstream XP with SP2

Got a burner? When you get that SP2 CD you might want to try this: Slipstream SP2 with XP You'll end up with a bootable XP installation CD with SP2 included already.

Read through this about using the System File Checker. That should restore msconfig for you.

If you're talking about the Notifications (next to the clock): Right-click the Start button and select Properties. Click the Taskbar tab. Click Customize. Highlight the one you don't want to see. Select Always Hide from the dropdown list. Click Apply. Click OK. ------------------------------------ But, you're talking about the Past Items list, aren't you. To clear the Past Items list, perform the following steps: Start, Run RegEdit. Navigate to the key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\TrayNotify Delete the IconStreams and PastIconsStream values. Close RegEd

If you backup to a separate partition on the same drive, you can reformat and reinstall to the original partition without erasing your backup. That said, it's a bad idea to rely on this style backup. If the drive itself fails, you've lost everything. You need to backup to separate media, like CD-R(W) or another hard drive. My favorite is using an external hard drive. They're a bit pricey but they're fast, and I can store it in the safe between backups. (I burn CDs every so often as well). The bottom line is you want a backup set that you can store in a different location, so you have your data

Zone Alarm Free is fixed. It runs fine with SP2 (at least for me).

Well, that is a bit of a mystery! I was going to be a wiseguy and tell you to check your spelling. Then try a search for msconfig (expecting you'd find it moved somewhere). I thought it would be in C:\Windows\system32. I did a search on my system figuring I'd locate a backup copy for you. (There might be a copy in your C:\WINDOWS\ServicePackFiles\i386 folder). But there was no C:\Windows\system32\msconfig.exe!!! Maybe with SP2 it's been moved or put in a DLL somewhere. A new challenge from our friends out west. Anyhow, back to BOOT.INI. There's another way to get at it. Right-click My Computer

Marty: As far as I know, Mandrake should have no problems with NTFS formatted partitions. So if you set up your storage partition(s) as NTFS, both operating systems can use it. Just for sake of good organization you may want to have 3 partitions on the 20G. One primarily for XP stuff, one for Linux stuff, and one for common stuff. On second thought... You could also do this at the folder level instead of the partition level if you want. That might be better from a flexibility standpoint since you don't need to guess at the space allocation beforehand.

Quick Intro to PCE

You want to install XP first, Mandrake second. As you said, XP won't recognize the Linux partition. By installing Mandrake second, the Linux boot loader (LILO) will be in control. LILO does recognize NTFS and XP partitions and will transfer boot control to XP. Use XP to only set up the NTFS partitions you want for it. Leave some free space for Mandrake to partition for itself. Once XP is running, you install Mandrake. Mandrake has partitioning routines that will let you allocate space for it. From Linuxquestions.org

In general, I disable everything I can before doing a major update like SP2. AV off, firewalls off, desktop enhancements, mimimal startups. ---------------------------------------------------- X-Cannon: While this won't eliminate it, it will reduce it to a "blink". Start, Run, msconfig. (Yes folks, it's good for something). Click the BOOT.INI tab. Change the timeout to (say) 2 seconds. You can also choose which boot style should be the default. Highlight the one you want and click Set as Default. (The first one in the list is the default). Click Apply. Click OK. Now when you boot that black sc

I didn't read all the gory details, but I got the impression someone figured out they could steal a piece if Windows 95 and get Windows 3.11 to accept it.

It appears that Windows 3.11 doesn't support long filenames (LFNs) without a patch. This forum seems to have a solution. LFNBLE.zip looks available here.

Nerelda: You might add this to your Cleanup list. Periodically (when your confident your system is stable), turn off System Restore and reboot. Turn it back on and create a manual restore point. This will clear out the stale restore points and free up that space. ------------------------------- You may also want to throw in an Error Check before the Defrag.

I played around with that (it's still here somewhere). But when I found that the BartPE will even copy the stored Registry hives and access restore points, I was sold. And with plug-ins available for things like Ghost, AdAware,and McAfee (command-line) Anti Virus how can you go wrong?

The BartPE Bootable XP CD is a great tool to have around. Makes it easier to recover when (not if) your PC won't boot. And you can do a drag and drop style backup of virtually your entire drive without those annoying "Access Denied" aborts during a copy. About the only thing it won't copy (and I'm still experimenting) is the boot sector itself. Since it will read and write to NTFS volumes you can get a lot of data off when the hard drive starts going "south". And you can install it on your hard drive to have a second OS to boot to if XP hiccups. With a little (well sometimes a lot) work you ca

The size of the download depends on how up to date you are already, but yes, it's a biggie.