Madmanmcp

Well Bill, you know thats not a valid number to use for anything, its the total number people who have registered since the forum opened. Most are no longer here and and the ones who are no longer read here unless they have a problem. Now I haven't voted because most of the things I would want are impossible to give (free hosting for instance or zero downtime do to problems) so I will spare everyone and not waste your time. I am very happy with the service you provide and will continue to bring customers here as long as you can maintain this level of service. Keep up the good work.

Yes, something has changed with my SquirrelMail also. I had two subfolders defined in which I stored the years worth of emails for the previous two years...these are now gone. The SPAM folder is also missing. I really hope they can recover these folders since I would hate to lose those old emails. We should probably submit a help desk ticket. <ticket submitted>

I followed the link and nothing failed. So it is my nature to try and help and think of possible other answers to the questions being asked. Sometimes I get lucky, sometimes I fail. I'm just a user around here, not a part of TCH. Sorry to bother you. If my attempts to help upset you, ignore them please.

What do you mean by failed? Were you perhaps "banned" from the site for abuse? If you use it too many times in a short period you can be banned from the site for excessive use. See if this page has an expanation that fits. h_tp://banned.dnsstuff.com/pages/abuse.htm

Mrs Muddled, try rebooting your computer into "safe-mode" and then run your virus scanners, Trojan Hunter, and whatever else you had. Reboot again into normal Windows and check again.

h_tp://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2071558,00.asp Interesting that these are not being used against the general public but are for attacks on individuals or small groups.

You'll have to submit a help desk ticket, no one out here has control over open ports.

"Microsoft suggests that users "not open or save Word files," even from trusted sources." Looks like everyone can go home and play, the fix is to not use the program h_tp://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2068800,00.asp

Open Control Panel and select Network Connections, right-click on the correct connection and select Properties. Highlight each one and select Uninstall.

Networking with Windows can be a hair pulling experience and my bald spot is proof . Sometimes the littlest change can cause major headaches and you were not even aware that you made a change. For instance you could have originally set the network up with a workgroup name and while trying to fix something you ran the network wizard and it was changed to the default of MSHOME. Once this happens the links you originally had to printers and hard drives start breaking and not working. What I usually end up doing is starting from the beginning and redo everything. I remove the network by starting with removing all the "shares", I unshare the hard drives and the printers on all the computers. Next I remove the protocols, "Client for Microsoft Networks", "File and Print Sharing", "TCP/IP", etc. Next I go into Device Manager and remove all the Network Adapters. Now I will turn off all the devices and start reloading one at a time. At Bootup the hardware should be detected and the drivers for the cards should be found and loaded automatically. If the Network Wizard does not start, start it to setup your network. Make sure you use the same Workgroup name for all computers and reply yes for Print and File sharing. After this is done go in and setup your shares, in Control Panel you set up sharing your Printers and in Windows Explorer you setup sharing your drives. Once you have done this on all computers turn them all off and reboot them one at a time and see if the network works in both directions. Yes its a lot of work but sometimes its easier then fumbling around trying this or trying that and failing over and over again.

/me goes to Bills house anyway and brings a six pack an some chips

Sometimes you need to boot into safe mode and run the program to remove these things. When you are normally in windows these files are "busy" because they are running when you boot up. When you run in safe mode only the necessary windows files are loaded and these other files are not so they are easily deleted.

Did you install the Spam Killer program that comes with the Security Center package? Have you configured it to run and scan your email program? These programs don't always get everything but 500 sounds way to high. Have you been "programming" Spam Killer to start blocking common types of spam, there are several ways in Spam Killer to do this. You can manually place subjet titles or text strings or you can do an automatic block and Spamm Killer will block similar emails.

No operating system is secure and now that the Apple has been gaining ground in ownership, the attention of the hackers will also grow. Soon there will be no place to hide ht_p://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2064221,00.asp

For the Trillian fans out there here is the newest product. h_tp://www.ceruleanstudios.com/ap/

That sounds like you reinstalled over the current version of windows which kept all your settings including the old problem. There are several options to select that would have wiped out the old version so this would not have happened. Sorry, you must be posting this information elsewhere because I didn't see this. I've been asking for specifics and have gotten very little so I made decisions based on what I assumed would be the best path to get you working. A clean install is a term the tech's use to define what they want to do to a system. Wipe out old data on a hard drive and install new data, and this can be accomplished in several ways. The "cleanest" way is to repartition then reformat the hard drive, this not only erases the data it erases how the drive is structured. The problem with this way is its more difficult and prone to having problem if you are inexperienced. Another way to do a "clean" install is to format the drive, this wipes out the data on the drive and allows you to write new data to it. It leaves the partitioning information the way it was. If it was a FAT32 one partition label C:, it is still a C: drive with FAT32. Other information would be the sectors and clusters that are marked as "bad" and are not being used. If you repartitioned the table of "badspots" would have been deleted and during the format they would have been retested and some would possibly been found good and others found as bad. From the description on your problem I assumed it was a data problem, not a drive or partition problem so an fdisk was not necessary. A format, which you did, wiped out the old data and allowed you to install a "clean" version of windows. So technically you did do a "clean install", you installed new data to a formatted drive. Thats why the problem is now gone. Why have you been trying to use the XP Upgrade CD? Ok, count me confused. You want it...you don't want it. I think we accomplished what you wanted. The computer is up and working. Is there something wrong with it and did you really need to do total "clean" install with repartitioning? You can still go back a redo things if needed...it will not hurt. But remember the old saying, why fix something if it ain't broke.

Ok, I'm back, sorry it took a little longer...I had to watch Numb3rs As I said the XP Upgrade CD is bootable and you do not need to boot to DOS.

He doesn't need to boot to DOS. The Upgrade CD should be bootable and be able to start the Install on its own. If I remember correctly the Upgrade CD is bootable... Ok, let me take a look. I have an XP Upgrade CD here and I'll test it out. Give me a lttle time to find a PC to test on...

Hi Peter, I'm just not sure where the final destination is here and why he wants to do what he is asking. I at first assumed it was following his first post for help in the "explorer.exe" thread but a couple comments have me thinking that he is being lead down another path (formating drive) by someone else trying to help him elsewhere. I at first thought it was you but maybe I am wrong. There are always lots of different ways to reach a destination with many shortcuts and stoplights along the way, and there are several that are correct and several that could be wrong, we all want the correct ones So, to pick the best way we need to know all the information possible. Are we trying to fix the "explorer.exe" problem or are we just formating the drive. I don't think formating is the final destination, the final destination is a working computer with a working Operating system. So lets give directions that lead to there and not to a point on the way there. Now yes I agree sometimes its best to start over and repartition and format a drive before installing a full version. This starts you off with a clean slate. BUT, this is not always an easy route for the inexperienced person, you need to have all the necessary programs and know the steps involved and what equipment you have to work with. Is the BIOS set in the correct boot order, what size is the hard drive and do you need a boot loader on the drive to be able to access all the space. Things like this will throw a monkey wrench into the whole process and the inexperienced person will be in over their heads. So I would not recommend this route. If there is nothing physically worng with the drive...I would leave it as is. Jayson has mentioned that he has several "Full" versions of Windows and we can work with these to accompish what I believe he wants, a working computer with Win XP on it. We can use the Upgrade XP CD to boot the computer I believe, and if not we can work around it another way, but for now will try using it. So try booting with it and when it asks for the location for the previous version, take the XP CD out and put in the 98SE Full CD. The install should recognize this and ask for the Win XP CD again then begin a full install. You should get another option menu asking you what you want to do with the drive (I hope) and here is where you want to select the "format" drive option. I would suggest you use NTFS, this will make better use of disk space then FAT32. Once the format is done it will do the Install. Hopefully this will bring back the broken computer. If not there are longer ways to accomplish this involving loading an older version of Windows from one of the other CD's and then using the XP Upgrade CD to get XP running.

Fdisk does not "format" a drive, its a utility to "partition" drives. You "format" a drive with the format command. Warning, once a drive has been partitioned or formated all previous data will be lost. I'm still not sure what the final destination here is supposed to be so I'll just sit back and watch and let you lead the way Peter. Too many cooks in the kitchen...

And what good will just formatting do? Sorry if I am being difficult here its just hard trying to guess what you are trying to accomplish and give you correct instructions to get there. If alls you want to do is format a hard drive and leave it completly unusable then go to the bootdisk.com site and create a boot disk. Place the boot disk in the floppy drive and do a format on the C: drive. But this may not work if the drive is an extra large drive and is more then 2.5GB, it will need large drive support and possibly some drivers loaded.

You can install Windows from and Upgrade CD as long as you have an original "full" version available. Windows will check the "upgrade path" and see if a previous version is installed somewhere on it. If it does not find a qualifying product it will display an error and give you the option to point it to the location of these files. At this point you can remove the Upgrade CD and insert an older CD, say a Full Version Windows 2000 or Win ME CD and Win XP will recognize it and do a Full install. Jayson didn't mention having one of these CD's so yes he may not be able to...but it is possible.

Here's an answer to your original question. What you are attempting is difficult and you will need more "tools" then what you have mentioned. To boot to DOS you will need a boot disk and this boot disk will also need CD support so you can use the Upgrade CD. If you don't already have a bootable disk you can get one (make one) from here. h_tp://www.bootdisk.com/

OK, well you are sort of stuck between a rock and a hard place. Depending on what you have to restore the computer will usually determine what steps you need to take. With the items you have told me you have you will not be successful at restoring your friends computer. An "Upgrade CD" is used to upgrade a previous version of Windows and trying to restore XP to a computer that already has XP is a very difficult task. To do this you will need to restore the PC to a previous version of Windows and then use the Upgrade CD to make it an XP machine. If the PC came with XP pre-loaded and you are just trying to fix it with your Upgrade copy I am afraid thats not possible. You will need to find a way to get the original disks that came with the computer or find a "Full" version of Windows XP to use to install.

Ok, now that I know a little more we might be able to lead you in the right direction...but first some more questions Do you have the original disks that came with the computer? Normally they come with a CD or DVD that is called the "Recovery" disk and you would use this to restore the computer. Or do you have the original Win XP "FULL" install disk?