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[François]

Quick question. I've installed windows xp on a new machine, and it automatically called its partition c:. If I put in an old drive that also has a c:, how is it going to work? It's probably no big deal but I'd like to make sure it's not going to make the drive spontaneously generate weapons-grade plutonium, explode, and take out the neighborhood.

[JDigital]

I believe it will re-map the other drive to a different drive letter.

[Shinra]

I believe it will re-map the other drive to a different drive letter.

That's exactly what it will do, as I have done this before. AFAIK, the drive letter is assigned by windows and isn't actually stored on the drive.

[Dooly]

A while ago, I was asked to look at a computer belonging to a friend of the family because it was acting very sluggish.  It was a bottom-of-the-line Sony Vaio from 2002 that had seen no Windows Updates or antivirus software for all that time, so it was obviously more virus-ridden than 14th century Europe.  It took eight or so passes of Malwarebytes in safe mode before it stopped finding new things wrong, but the computer was still showing symptoms afterward.  At that point, was there anything I should have done before just reformatting and reinstalling the OS?

[Shinra]

Non 64 bit OSes can benefit greatly from a once-over with Combofix. Anything Malwarebytes does not pick up, Combofix will.

Irritatingly, Combofix does not work with 64 bit machines, and there is no comparable alternative. Rootkits are harder than ever to deal with in the world of 64 bit windows. :(

[Rico]

Though the real answer is that reformatting should have been the first step.

[Thad]

[jsnlxndrlv]

I don't believe this.

Everyone said I should just reformat—that my Windows install was a lost cause. I'd gotten a new hard drive, a new XP install disc (Home Edition, this time, unfortunately), and I'd copied all my data across. I couldn't connect to the internet, though, because I hadn't reinstalled my network card drivers. Sure, I could look for the install disc that came with the network card—but it was probably hanging out with my original copy of XP. I decided to try to salvage my old install.

I made a SuperUser post explaining the problem and started searching for solutions.

At this moment, I am typing to you from my old Windows installation. Everything works fine, with one exception: explorer.exe crashes and will not operate. The Task Manager runs, though, meaning I can run all my software just fine; I just don't have a desktop, system tray, or start menu. The fact that I'm able to post to the boards from Chrome in this crippled state has me ecstatic. I can resume Exquisite Knorpse 3 without any obstacles.

[Thad]

There are alternate shells, come to that.  I hear they're not great, but it probably beats not having a shell.

[Rico]

I remember Litestep being pretty good about 10 years ago, but I have no idea how it's held up since.

[jsnlxndrlv]

There are alternate shells, come to that.  I hear they're not great, but it probably beats not having a shell.

It's not as inconvenient as you might expect: Ctrl+Alt+Delete, File -> New Task, hit Browse and find the program you want to run. Command prompt also works fine. About the only thing that I might want to do that's a bit laborious is excessive simultaneous file management, like copying+pasting dozens of files at once.

Oh, actually, running Chrome the first time's kind of hard because Google did a great job hiding it in the directory tree. As long as I have one Chrome window open, it's fine; if I close it, I can log off and then log back on, which causes explorer to generate another error, and the error reporting process gives you an opportunity to open the default browser.

Still, I eventually plan to finish the repair. I'm just ecstatic to not be using Julie's slowdown-prone Mac anymore.

[Thad]

I remember Litestep being pretty good about 10 years ago, but I have no idea how it's held up since.

I'm not big on the whole NEXTStep design, but most of them DO seem to be based on it.

Out of all the shells I saw on Wikipedia, the one I found most visually appealing was Cairo, which looks a lot like GNOME.  But it's apparently still beta and has had all kinds of issues getting developed.

There's always KDE, but I'd be skeptical trying to get it to work as a primary shell under Windows.  Hell, the only reason I'm even running it under LINUX at this point is because I can't get GNOME to work the way I want it to with ATI's crummy drivers.

[jsnlxndrlv]

I tried Cairo! It looks very pretty in screenshots. However: I couldn't move my desktop icons, and it still required explorer.exe in order to actually display the contents of folders, so it was only an intermediate crutch. Still, it's better than nothing, and I can still browse my directory tree through the Run New Task dialog, so I'm ALMOST there.

[Thad]

Well, there are other filebrowsing utilities, anyway.  I use FreeCommander for side-by-side filecopy; it's idiosyncratic but it's all right.

[Rico]

To punish me for not pirating Office, I am now getting WGA false-positives.  Thanks, Microsoft.  I appreciate that.  It's a pretty good system.

[jsnlxndrlv]

I am now trying to replace the Notification Area of the taskbar. That'd be the little box with the icons in it next to the clock, which I sometimes erroneously refer to as the system tray (since systray.exe controls some aspects of it). Tried RocketDock, but I can't get it to work; ObjectDock claims that their Plus version includes system tray support, but I can't afford the $19.95 to try it.

Seems like EmergeDesktop was able to do that, so I'm going to give it another shot.

[TA]

I'm unsure how this is less effort than just reinstalling.

[jsnlxndrlv]

Don't have a Windows XP Professional disc, and spent about two months trying to find one with no luck.

[Kayma]

That's noble, but I'd have pirated that shit after 3 days.

[Mongrel]

Okay, this isn't a post for the shit days thread yet, but my computer (which is pretty damned old and has been creaky for some time) may have packed up for good.

Need suggestion on cheap parts for a super-budget rig. The only technical requirement is that it can comfortably play TF2 (not according to the stock specs, but according to the somewhat unknown post-patch requirements*) and that everything stay as cheap as possible.

I'll need everything. My hard drives are ancient, my RAM is probably incompatible with new motherboards, I didn't even HAVE a graphics card, the case prrrrrrobably won't take newer parts, and the power supply has been in such bad shape for so long that I had to keep it outside the case (monitor, etc. works fine).

In general, I'm not so obsessed with penny-pinching that I want to buy a clearly inferior product if a significant performance increase can be had by spending 10% or 15% more, but cost is the dominant concern after meeting the minimum requirements.

*Even if you can't suggest parts, suggesting a set of projected minimum requirements would be appreciated, because as any player can tell you, the official requirements - which are the only ones I can find anywhere - are no longer accurate. Here's the "official" on-paper requirements:

    * Minimum: 1.7 GHz processor, 512 MB RAM,
      DirectX 8 level graphics card,
     
    * Recommended: Pentium 4 processor (3.0GHz, or better),
      1 GB RAM, DirectX 9 level graphics card,
     
No idea what the real minimum and recommended settings are, but they're higher than this. I met the recommended settings with my old rig (barely), and could hardly play sometimes due to appalling FPS. I almost never had a smooth framerate, I can tell you that much.