Oh Weird Harold?.. Draco?..Someone? Anyone? 'Puter Help please

[Draco]

Quoted by Celestial Body : looks like a 2yr old got loose at MS with her crayons: That caused my coffee to hit my monitor. I hate what they have done to the interface, but the good thing is it can be turned off. You can have the 'standard windows desktop, toolbars, windows etc'.

Freaky, Blackice will run with XP and 2000, just download the update (2.9 I think from memory)

It goes to show, that XP was a giant step sideways from 2000.
2000 in my regards is the finest product they have launched yet.

I wont use anything else now, apart from 98SE for technical support isssues.

The Application Compatabilty Layer I mentioned in my previous post is available from the MS download site and is included (I think) in Service Packs 1 & 2. It emulates to the programme either Win 95 or NT 4, forcing many 'non-NT' compatabile programmes and games to run successfully. The only issues I have had with games so far is Need For Speed 3 Hot Pursuit, which detects the NT OS and will not install, if anyone has found a 'work-around' for this, I would most appreciate it.

 

[CelestialBody]

 

[Draco]

To Celestial Body AND Others

I have to agree with you about MS dreaded "Product Activation"
featured in Windows XP and Office 2000 and Office XP. Now correct me if I'm wrong with office 2000 (Product Activation was debutted in New Zealand on Office 2K-if you didn't give it a serial number on install , it would only work for 50 uses before "phoning home to MS" to be activated. My copy has it serial number added to the installer, so it automatically regged itself at install time and doesn't phone home.

Windows XP has a version called "Corporate Professional", this is only issued to Licensed Resellers and MS approved system configurators. Altho it requires a serial number still, it does not need to be activated in the regular way that Home Edition or Professional Edition does. It reads several codes from the hardware (Network card, Video card, Sound card, Modem (internal only) Motherboard and Hard-drive) and makes up a key that you submit by phone or internet to MS and they then generate the Activation Key from the Hardware Key. You type this key in and your XP is activated. This was done in a 'supposed' effort to combat illegal copying and piracy. My opinion is: {A] -its a revenue gatherer for MS, coz after a certain amount of time, you can bet your boots MS will start charging for new keys. It tells MS exactly what hardware you are running and also supplies them with their 'target demographic'.

Now there are a certain amout of changes you can make to your system without needing a new key. I think you can change your Hard-drive, Video card and Sound-card without neede re-activavtion, but major changes including Motherboard DOES need Re-activation because the key is stored in the System BIOS.

Heres an excellent website article that goes further than what I have.

http://www.win2000mag.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=20621

And here is MS own spiel on it

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/evaluation/overviews/activation.asp

Hope this helps you - Draco