Computer/Technical Help

Those settings are stored in the registry, so you'll need to copy the relevant keys over to your new installation of Windows after installing Office. The settings in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office should be sufficient, but if anything is missing, let me know. If you already deleted your old installation of Windows, you can still read from the registry by using Registry Viewer (the page is in Russian, but the program itself is in English) with the file ntuser.dat.

BTW, when copying files from your user directory in your backups to the new installation, be sure to skip the Local Settings folder, ntuser.dat, ntuser.dat.log, and ntuser.ini, since those will not be relevant to your new installation and may cause problems.

i honestly can't remember if i copied the whole Local Settings and those individual files or not, but i don't believe i did.

took me a min to figure out but i got the program running an extracted the whole key as you said from my old ntuser. it had put this $$$PROTO thing in the keys and i pulled that out, then i merged the keys, and at least in Word some of my toolbars that i had came up, but my custom made toolbars and modifications w/the icons to the ones that were there didn't stick. some settings, like the Menus extending all the way came back, but others, like disabling the drawing canvas, did not.

i didn't realize ntuser was where the registry settings were saved, i like learning something new . is there something i can do to get the other settings back?

Actually, the custom toolbars should be stored in your default template. With Word closed, replace C:\Documents and Settings\your_name\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates\Normal.dot with the one from your backups. You might also want to restore the registry settings again just in case.

Well now, that worked . I guess other than installing a few more bits of software, all that's left is chkdsk that i've kept putting off.

i know FAT32 folders aren't supposed to have the same block from other user accounts as NTFS can, but is there a way around it, so only certain user names can access folders on a FAT32 partition? i'm thinking it's something with permissions or limited user account or maybe a program to password protect folders, i dunno, i just have it set up now that my C: is an NTFS partition for programs, and i have an F: FAT32 for music and pictures and whatever that i'd like to make some folders private.

The problem is, FAT32 doesn't support permissions or ownership for files or folders, so there is no way to restrict other users from accessing files stored on a FAT32 partition using only the file system. The best you can do is to encrypt them using either ZIP files with passwords or some sort of external program such as PGP or Norton Secret Stuff (not sure if they still make that one or if it's compatible with XP).

i've been considering buying myself my own new computer for a long time and i saw a good deal in the office max sunday ads recently.

It's the HP Pavilion dv9210US 17" at $1049.98

this is office max's link, if it doesn't work, u can search for the model number on their site

this is HP's page on it

i have only a few small qualms about this PC (you can't modify or customize it)... it doesn't have dedicated video memory. i may not be a hardcore gamer but that doesn't seem like a good idea to me.

it comes w/Vista Home Premium. I'm going to buy Vista Business eventually, as well as Office 2007. Anyone know any good deals? lol

other than that it does just about everything i want... good sized hard drive (and i have an external now anyway), 2 gb ram, nice screen (tho 15" isn't bad), a number of ports to make use of, dvd-rw w/lightscribe, webcam, it even comes w/a remote control and has that HP quickplay.

making a similar computer through HP's site is like $300 more than that, and a Dell Inspiron with all of the same stuff minus the webcam, lightscribe, and 17" screen is about the same price.

would the lack of dedicated video memory be a problem when runnign Vista Business if at least right now the most i do on a computer is play on emulators, surf on firefox, talk on trillian and use Office? odds are, if i did anything that really required good video, i'd probably not be doing anything else at the same time anyway, and i've seen good 3D programs like AutoCAD run well on 512, though i don't know what kind of video card they had.

or is there anything else i've missed in this computer? or does another reputable company offer an equally good or better computer for similar price?

quote:

Originally posted by NVWC2006 it comes w/Vista Home Premium. I'm going to buy Vista Business eventually, as well as Office 2007. Anyone know any good deals? lol

Check with your university's bookstore and see if they have any software sold at an educational discount. If not, you could check an online store such as NewEgg to see if they have an OEM version that would be a little cheaper.

quote:

would the lack of dedicated video memory be a problem when runnign Vista Business if at least right now the most i do on a computer is play on emulators, surf on firefox, talk on trillian and use Office? odds are, if i did anything that really required good video, i'd probably not be doing anything else at the same time anyway, and i've seen good 3D programs like AutoCAD run well on 512, though i don't know what kind of video card they had.

I think it's pretty standard for laptops to use shared video memory. Plus, this one has 2GB of system memory with up to 288MB of it available for graphics. Although I have a dedicated graphics card on my PC, I can perform similar tasks to the ones you listed without a problem with only 128MB of graphics RAM, so you should be fine.

quote:

or is there anything else i've missed in this computer? or does another reputable company offer an equally good or better computer for similar price?

Looks like a good one to me, and you're getting a lot of value for the price.

quote:

Originally posted by Krang Check with your university's bookstore and see if they have any software sold at an educational discount. If not, you could check an online store such as NewEgg to see if they have an OEM version that would be a little cheaper.

Haha I'm working at IT at my university, we aren't selling the software until each one of our office computer have been upgraded and we each know it enough to support it. And that probably won't happen until this summer I HAVE heard some rumors about other schools having a certain license deal with Microsoft.. more on that after I can confirm it.

quote:

I think it's pretty standard for laptops to use shared video memory. Plus, this one has 2GB of system memory with up to 288MB of it available for graphics. Although I have a dedicated graphics card on my PC, I can perform similar tasks to the ones you listed without a problem with only 128MB of graphics RAM, so you should be fine.

I just want to be able to fully run Vista and Aero without a hitch and other people seem ancy about having any less than a full 2 gigs of RAM for the computer.

Others also seem to be worried about security and want to wait for the first service pack or major update to come out, which I don't think will be for a while.

Do you know anything about the support from HP as compared to say, Dell?

quote:

Originally posted by NVWC2006 I HAVE heard some rumors about other schools having a certain license deal with Microsoft.. more on that after I can confirm it.

Yes, some universities are part of the MSDNAA program, which allows students to legally download full Microsoft operating systems for free as long as they are enrolled in a computer science course.

quote:

I just want to be able to fully run Vista and Aero without a hitch and other people seem ancy about having any less than a full 2 gigs of RAM for the computer.

According to the minimum requirements, Aero can function on computers with only 1GB of RAM, so you'll still have plenty of leeway with that setup.

quote:

Others also seem to be worried about security and want to wait for the first service pack or major update to come out, which I don't think will be for a while.

Other than rare cases like XP SP2, service packs are usually just roll-ups of security and bug fixes, so waiting for a service pack won't help much unless something major is found (then again, something major could still be found after a service pack is released, so there's no guarantee either way). If you use Microsoft Update regularly, you'll pick up the same fixes anyway.

quote:

Do you know anything about the support from HP as compared to say, Dell?

I haven't dealt with either one, so unfortunately, I can't help much there. I do know that HP has a good online knowledge base, though.

Hey, can anyone reccomend a good Graphics card for a low price? I need to do a graphics upgrade to my computer, and have a really limited budget.

quote:

Originally posted by snakemarcato13 Hey, can anyone reccomend a good Graphics card for a low price? I need to do a graphics upgrade to my computer, and have a really limited budget.

For the best value, I would recommend looking for a used high-end graphics card on eBay rather than a new budget card (unless you can't or don't want to use eBay). I personally prefer ATI Radeons, but you could also look for comparable nVidia cards. This Wikipedia page gives a good general overview of the various generations of Radeons to help narrow down how recent of a card to look for.

I was still unsure about the video RAM, so I looked more and had found a model, up, dv9220us. It took care of the video ram and upped the HD. It was $1500. and i kept searching, and found this this.

HP pavillion 9225. It's supposed to be the same as 9220, only with a few key differences.. an AMD processor, and Vista Ultimate. and it's still cheaper than 9220, at $1350 at CompUSA (I thought they ceased to exist a while ago...).

Up to this point, I haven't found a better deal. And this price isn't limited on time like the 9210 from office max.

unless any of my friends at IT can give me a better reason to not get this one (they keep saying Dell has better hardware support) then this may be the final machine i go for. i don't need to go up another level to 9230, that adds like another $150 to add the name Intel to it and that's about it, so this model seems like the most well rounded yet.

Hey, I gots me a problem having to do with sound.

I use a USB headset for Ventrilo, and a 4 speaker + sub woofer speaker set for everything else.

What happened was that sound would not play out of my right speaker. I tried it with a different set of speakers, and it still would not work. I assumed that my sound card, integrated Realtek one, was broken, so I got a few new ones. Sounds did not come out of the right side with them either. So, I returned them and used my old one again. Amazingly, it worked all of a sudden. Sound played out of both the left and right sides.

Today, I reformatted my computer because I hadn't done so in ages, and it was running very slowly. I reinstalled everything, up to date drivers and whatnot, and now sound isn't playing out of the right side again. It works fine on my USB headset, but no sound at all from my right speakers.

The drivers are up to date, I made sure the balance under the volume control is set correctly, for the SOUNDMAN thing that the Realtek uses I set it to 4 speakers, quadraphonic I think the word was, and all that jazz. I cannot get it to work. I do not know what I did before, it just started working, and now it does not after the reformat.

If anyone has any idea what this is, or knows what demon possessed my sound card to do this, I would greatly appreciate the help.

Oh, and I got this stuff:

Windows XP Home Edition
Realtek Sound Card
1536 MB Ram
2.0 GHZ processor
ATI X700 Graphics Card
And yeah

First, make sure that the audio plug is not loose. If not, try another sound source with the same speakers to see if the speakers are the cause of the problem. You could also try looking at the audio properties for your sound card (Control Panel > Sounds and Audio Devices) to see if there are any settings that could affect the sound in the right side.

Well, in my endeavors to fix it, I actually succeeded.

I unplugged it, completely uninstalled/disabled the sound drivers, plugged it back in, reinstalled the drivers, checked my speaker wires, and now it is working.


Thank you for your help.

Vista Question, so i'm not sure if anyone knows the answer or not.

i'm wondering about activation and product keys

from different things i've seen and heard, it seems like Windows Vista does one of the following:

1. have a single DVD with all installations, and ur produect key determines what install you get
   
2. the DVDs actually have some coding on there that make them specific to each product key?
   

i had assumed that Vista would be like XP, in that, if you have the product key for the same machine, then as long as you have the right installation disc you should be able to use that product key without a hitch, but a guy at work was saying it may be otherwise.

seeing as new computers don't always come with installation discs, but crappy recovering partitions instead, i thought i could just borrow and copy or download the DVD data and burn an installation DVD, then use the product key on a new computer, if i wanted to format and reload.

is that still the case, or have things changed? (and if it is the same, anyone got a Vista Ultimate 64bit torrent or something?)

From what I've heard, it's the first one you mentioned, although I can't verify that because I don't have Vista. You should be fine with using the same product key to reinstall as many times as necessary on one computer, but if it's anything like XP, you'll need a new key if you get a new computer or make a significant change to the hardware.

i've put my order in for the previously mentioned HP dv9225us from CompUSA. AMD 64 Duo Core 1.6 GHz processor, 2 GB DDR2-SDRAM, 160 GB SATA 150 HD, Dual Layer Lightscribe DVD burner, 16-bit audio, 256 MB NVidia GeForce Go 7600, 17" Brightview screen, numerous ports and a remote, running Windows Vista Ultimate.

I'll find out if it's a 86x or 64x edition of Ultimate once I get the computer, I guess. Should come in during this week. I'll have to burn HP's recovery software off their recovery partition to be safe, seeing as they don't give me the OS disc (that's why I was asking about discs before).

I'll probably install XP and then reinstall Vista to dual boot the two once I know I can set that up w/out a problem (and then install a Virtual PC Mac OS X just to mess w/people).

Yeap.

So not really a question for help, just saying that's what I'll be getting... So once I have that, if anyone has questions on simple stuff about the OS, I may be able to answer?

Actual useful question!

I went to a career fair today and a number of companies were giving out free stuff. Among the things I got were an optical mouse and USB hub. i'd like to know if they are USB 1.1 or 2.0

one of my friends looked at the plug itself and set it was 1.1, but I've never known there to be a visible difference in the actual plug.. a metal outside and 4 connectors on the inside.

I did try hooking the devices to windows computers that hooking up legacy USB stuff would cause it to pop up saying 'this device can perform faster' and whatever, and hooking both this mouse and this hub up didn't bring about that, so I'm guessing they're 1.1 but I want to be sure.

Also, assuming they are, it's right to assume that at least in terms of the mouse, that doesn't matter? for the rate of data transfer. that may matter for the Hub, though, if i use something like a flash drive through it

The plugs for 1.1 and 2.0 are the same, so there's no way to tell the difference between the two just by looking. For the mouse, you're right, it doesn't matter since 1.1 and 2.0 are fully compatible with each other (2.0 devices will even work on 1.1 ports/hubs, although that would be at 1.1 speeds).

For the hub, I would recommend checking the packaging or documentation. If you don't have either one available, check the bottom of the hub for a model number, then try a Google search for it which should tell you right away (if it doesn't, it's probably 1.1).