Thinkpad & Dell Password Removal. Using a similar technique to "Joe in Australia" (i2c reader). Info is on the forums at allservice.ro. Thanks to Victor Voinea. Other machines (e.g. Sony) can be done by backing up and overwriting parts of the eeprom data. Dells are super-easy (google "Happy dell files" for information on the paper-clip short method.).
email: carl(at)css-networks(d0t)com (replace with @ and . as appropriate)
I've got a blog! It's at http://blog.css-networks.com
Magrathea Telecom Ltd. Good service. Free international phone redirect (via their www.uknumber.co.uk website), free voicemail, change the ringing tone to your local type so callers don't know you're abroad. Super.
Error message upon editing or creating new Microsoft Publisher documents: "Publisher cannot complete the operation". Check your temp folder. Go to Start -> Run -> type in "%temp%" (no quotes) and press enter. Delete everything you can from this folder - some items will be in use and not deletable so ignore them. It would be easier/better to go to a command prompt (start -> run -> "cmd") and type "cd %temp% [enter]" followed by "rd /s %temp% [enter]" (no quotes). This will attempt to remove the entire temp folder (not what we want.. we just want it to be empty), but because we have changed into the temp folder with the CD command, the temp folder itself will remain unharmed, and instead you'll get an access denied message when it tries to remove the folder itself. All deletable items will be removed from the folder, only locked/in-use items will be left behind. The problem with using Windows Explorer (mousey clicky stuff) for emptying the temp folder is that when Explorer comes across a file that it cannot delete, it will just stop there and give up leaving all the other files there that we want rid of, so you would need to de-select the file that Windows Explorer says could not be deleted and then try to delete everything else again. Better to just do it at the command prompt the way I said.
Reinstall machine-level drivers (e.g. Plug and Play SW device enumerator) by removing line ~20-ish (ExcludeFromSelect=*) from %windir%\inf\machine.inf, and using this as an 'add new hardware > have disk' inf source. Missing PNP SW dev enum can cause broken optical drives (same symptoms as missing upper/lower device/class filters), non-working sound, etc.
Windows XP SP2 Print / Printer Spooler continually terminating itself / stopping / dieing. This is caused by NetSupport Manager Remote Control client versions 8.x and possibly below (also known as PC Duo). This was a nightmare cause to find. Version 9.x seems to have fixed the problem.
Pocket KillBox - Delete/terminate open files & processes
How to upgrade Windows 2000 Professional to (legitimate) Windows XP Home: Setup doesn't allow upgrade from Pro to Home, so use this tool (tweaknt.exe) to change your 2000 Pro to a "2000 Home", then do the upgrade the usual way from within Windows. This will probably also work for legitimizing a dodgy VLK (corporate) XP Pro over to a genuine XP Home.
Slightly bizarre consequences if you forget to remove the 2000 machine from any Domains before doing the upgrade:
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cdrecord: Resource temporarily unavailable. Cannot get mmap for 4198400 Bytes on /dev/zero.
Workaround:
/etc/security/limits.conf:
* hard memlock unlimited
* soft memlock unlimited
TeamSpeak 2 - Looks interesting.
How to re-register Windows XP/2000 Digital Signature dlls:
regsvr32 softpub.dll wintrust.dll initpki.dll dssenh.dll rsaenh.dll gpkcsp.dll slbcsp.dll cryptdlg.dll
How to re-register Windows Update dlls:
regsvr32 wuaueng1.dll wuaueng.dll wucltui.dll wups2.dll wups.dll wuweb.dll
IBM make really good Laptops. Sometimes they just need hacking...
Cloning XP machines properly - Using SYSPREP to Create XP Pro Images by Jon Woodley, University of East Anglia
321098 Slow Performance Copying Files to Windows 2000 DC
321169 Slow SMB Performance When You Copy Files from Windows XP to a Windows 2000 Domain Controller
Designing an Authentication System: a Dialogue in Four Scenes
CD-R drive or CD-RW drive is not recognized as a recordable device