I prefer yahoo messenger to AOL IM.

Thad: Actually I don't use any IM program. But iChat, is that one of those that connect to all the different programs or ?? Can you tell me a little more about iChat?

I use Miranda.

harley: I agree there with ya Harley... I like my Yahoo... the smilies and audibles are so kewl..

BIG BAD WOLF: by Microsoft messenger ,do u mean MSN messenger....no no no dont use it not safe.it permanently leaves a port open easy access for viruses..myself & 3 others I know who used to use it learned the hard way...dont believe me..do some research.

nobleheart: I know as well it does Noble.. I used to use it years ago.. even recently downloaded it for use with friends on web tv.. but prefer really to not have it even installed

Ten little gigabytes, waiting on line
one caught a virus, then there were nine.

Nine little gigabytes, holding just the date,
someone jambed a write protect, then there were eight.

Eight little gigabytes, should have been eleven,
then they cut the budget, now there are seven.

Seven little gigabytes, involved in mathamatics
stored an even larger prime, now there are six.

Six little gigabytes, working like a hive,
one died of overwork, now there are five.

Five little gigabytes, trying to add more
plugged in the wrong lead, now there are four.

Four little gigabytes, failing frequently,
one used for spare parts, now there are three.

Three little gigabytes, have too much to do
service man on holiday, now there are two.

Two little gigabytes, badly over run,
took the work elsewhere, now just need one.

One little gigabyte, systems far too small
shut the whole thing down, now there's none at all.

I got a good question for ya'll. My system refuses (yes, REFUSES) to remove MSN Messenger from the 'add/remove software'. It seems to have been installed when I installed Windows XP Pro. I have a little applet called Starup Control Panel 2.8, by Mike Lin, that I use to control what starts up. I will remove MSN Messenger so it won't auto start, but after 2 reboots, its back again! If it didn't keep starting up at reboot, I wouldn't care that its on my pc.

Any ideas?

ScarletRose: oh, I forgot to add.... Love this, SR!!!

Eriisa: format your harddisk and install linux

that would rather defeat the purpose of Windows XP Pro wouldn't it?

I also use this pc for business, so don't think reformat is an option.

Eriisa: are you able to just go to the program list and uninstall it through there??

And to add.. hehe.. I found that in my email and just had to share! ;)

Eriisa: You can turn off the startup on Windows reboot at the Messenger's Tools / Options panel.

Fencer: duh! I didn't think of that! I've given it a try, and bet that will do it. Thanks!

ScarletRose: Nice

Eriisa: When I reformated my hd and reinstalled windows xp(firewall issues with XP & norton...) MSN messenger installed thinking it was needed to help with windows updates so it may not be possible to completely shut it off...

tinksbell: What Fencer said should work. I come across a few computers at work which will have this loaded by a user, and basicly you have to start up the program to go to the options to tell it not to autostart to get it to stop.

I also use a program called "StartupRun" which I find very usefull

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/strun.html


Basicly it will show you everything that starts up automaticly on your computer, and you can choose and item and "disable" it from starting up. (You can delete also - but I like disable since if I mess up, and can go back in and reenable it.)

But like everything - BE CAREFULL in what you tell not to start up. Some things are system files and NEED to start up to run your computer. But sometimes I find all kinds of junk which only slows things down. (for example, I don't need no adobe acrobat thing starting up so if I do use acrobat, it will save me 3 seconds.)

Of course now that I look, I'm still useing version 1.20 - guess I will upgrade now while I'm thinking about it.

EDIT UPDATE: Plus the program is VERY small & free

tinksbell:

MSN messenger cant be downloaded unless you go to the site..
When U install XP it comes with a windows messenger (looks just like msn messenger) and thats probly what u have...

BIG BAD WOLF: cool, note: your link has the <br> within the a tag...

tinksbell: Oh yea... sometimes when you edit a post that has a link, it adds that <br> in there. Fixed now. :-)

ScarletRose: LSHIPMP ...were did you find that?

nobleheart: I got it from and email.. isn't it kewt?? :)

I thinkg MSN messenger and others application in Windows XP that I find useless to have it installed can be uninstalled completely from system and register by this very nice utilities: nLite or XPLite. Also I recommend to switch off several services that XP is using when running but for a common user they are useless and can only caused vulnerability and problems of system.
You can uninstall at least these applications (from register):
Advanced Components:
Active Directory Services,
Distributed Link Tracking Client,
Error Networking Service,
Network DDE,
Secondary Logon,
Web Client,
Windows Time,
Internet Authentication Service,
Microsoft Message Queuing,
all MS Networking Services (Alerter, Computer Browser, Messenger, Microsoft Network Redirector, Net Logon, NT LM SSP, RPC Locator, Server, Server Message Block Redirector, TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper, a Workstation),
System Restore (I can tell you this is very dangerous app.,
Terminal Services.

Accesibility Options:
Accesibility Mouse Cursors,
Accesibility Wizard,
Magnifier,
Narrator,
On-Screen Keyboard,
Utility Manager.
Communication and Messaging:

Addres Book,
Fax Service,
Chat,
NetMeeting,
Outlook Express,
USR/3Com modem drivers,
Windows Messanger,
(Wireless Zero Configuration).
Internet Utilities:
Internet Connection Wizard,
Internet Explorer (!) (use Opera - now is free or Firefox, or Maxthon)
MSN Explorer,
VB Script for MSIE,
Windows Automatic Updates (místo používání Windows Update
Windows Update Manager,

Multimedia:
ATI SP1 driver.
Common Files,
Dokumentace,
Modul snap-in IIS,
service FTP,
web service,
Operating System Options:
Clipbook (Cltr+C, Cltr+V, Ctrl+X will still function),
Help and Support Center,
Microsoft Agent,
Out of Box Experience,
Program Compatibility Wizard,
Search Assistant (instead of it use Copernic Desktop Search),
System Information,
Windows Tour.

Server Components:
Indexing Service,
Indexing Service Language resources.

System Services:
Remote Registry,
Smart Card Services,
Telnet Service,
UPS service,
Universal Plug and Play (UPnP).

System Tools and Utilities:
Briefcase,
Dr Watson,
Files and Transfer Wizard,
Remote Assistance,
Security Center,
Security Center Background Service,
Task Scheduler,
Windows Script Host,
ZIP Compressed Folders.

You don´t expected it can be so much :) Am i right?
Just wait few minutes, then reebot and your system will boot much quickier and safe.

a lot sucess :)

temo: A few versions of Windows ago, I removed IE, and had severe computer problems. MS at least at that time had made IE necessary for several of their other programs to function....

temo: I have a wireless home network, and share files with 2 other PCs along with my printer.

Do I need to keep any of those files with that in mind?

When we got up this morning, Jim's HP (bought Feb 2005) was sitting looking very unhappy.

The exsisting desktop is defaulted to Windows XP's with no desktop icons. His wireless connection is not working. No programs will run, we get dll errors. All settings appear to be gone.

My guess after searching around is that his registry is wiped out.

Ideas?

Eriisa: If you really thing that your registers has crashed and other problems cannot be fixed, the only way how to solve this problem is reinstallation.
Perhaps, you can try to find some appropriate utilities to fixed your register on XP and it could help.
What did you mean with "no desktop icons"? It sound strange to me... :)

The files are still on the hard drive, but nothing would run. We had shortcuts and icons on the desktop that are now not showing.

It alnost looks like a different profile is running. When I go to documents and settings, I see a All Users, with the desktop there showing all the usual shortcuts that I expect. But they are not on the desktop running.

Also, I have a little applet showing start up files, and there is NOTHING there. Almost like everything was wiped out.

We went to do a system restore and go back a couple of days, but there seems to not be anything there past today either.

I did get the Wireless Assistant to install and run so he has internet access and he says he'll just re-install any programs he needs to run (which installed the dlls etc,) and just go from there for right now. Since all his data did not seem to be lost.

The really wierd thing is even Windows XP is now saying its a trial version. It was all registered before.

Eriisa: I would start backing up all data files which aren't backed up..

Signed..

One who recently lost her puter due to the HD

LOL, SR, I can feel for ya!

I still think its strange that it did not show any system restore points, My Dell did for everyday.

oh well, onward and upward!

Does anyone know if you can download microsoft excel free using windows xp 2000?

Universal Eyes: No, but use OpenOffice instead of it. Highly recommended!

Universal Eyes: you cant download excel itself .. but you can download a viewer for excel files for free from the microsoft site

does anyone have a suggestion to what (free) program i can use best to create pdf files ?
and to edit existing pdf files ?

preferably running on windows 98 .. but i could also use it on windows xp :)

Yesterday,
All those backups seemed a waste of pay.
Now my database has gone away.
Oh I believe in yesterday.

Suddenly,
There's not half the files there used to be,
And there's a deadline hanging over me
The system crashed so suddenly.

I pushed something wrong -
What it was I could not say.
Now all my data's gone and I long for yesterday-ay-ay-ay.

Yesterday,
The need for backups seemed so far away.
I knew my data was all here to stay.
Now I believe in yesterday.

Hrqls: I've taken free (most likely wrongly) to mean free in the terms of the FSF (Free Software Foundation) and in monetary terms, and a quick google turns up PDFcreator.

A screenshot (if you care) is here:
http://sourceforge.net/project/screenshots.php?group_id=57796

You can download it: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=57796

You proboably want Patch02-PDFCreator-0_8_0.exe

Free as in speech and beer!

Hrqls: I use Adobe Acrobat 7.0. It was free, although I suspect there is a paid version too.

Eriisa: The Acrobat 7.0 Reader is the only thing that is free (and can only be used to view/print the document)

Acrobat 7.0 (full version) cost money, but will allow you to edit and such.

http://img476.imageshack.us/img476/7757/cjumpcc1ty.jpg

Will be BK variant? :)

fra: x+2? I don't see how that does anything. x += 2 maybye... And there should be a void rather than empty ().

I think the following illustrates it:

nrad@peregrine% cat test.c ~
int x;

int main(void)
{
x+2;
printf("%d\n",x);

return 0;
}

nrad@peregrine% gcc test.c -o test ~
nrad@peregrine% ./test ~
0

Infact, looking at the assembly it appears to have been seen as gcc (correctly) as a nothing instruction and optimized away.

bitwisexor: me to ( I don't see how that does anything), but general idea is good :)

gprs to connect a laptop so i can use it at work to play on here ect , as gprs charges for the amount you download ( £3 for one megabyte )
how much would it take to download these pages or put better how many moves could i take to use a one megabyte amount . i havent a clue , just trying to work out if it would be too expensive to use

Jason: Hmm, I could be wrong but I'd expect it to be pretty expensive. You could write a proxy to convert brainking games into a text based format. Would reduce the bandwidth usage *a lot*. Might be a bit hard to write, but I'd expect it would be fun to code.

If your interested in doing that, I'd recommend a high level language that has a good HTTP interface. This allows you to skip over messing directly with the protocol and save you a lot of time. Regexp is proboably useful for gathering data, unless theres some other way to access brainking I'm missing (an RSS feed of games, for instance..)

playBunny: thanks playbunny would be too expensive by the looks of things .. think i will have to look at another option . I was going to use wifi but im not near enough to a hot spot to get a signal
bitwisexor: good idea but its too much over my head i will come up with something sooner or later ;)

bitwisexor: thanks! will check it out :)

Eriisa: *nod* i use that to view pdfs as well, but as bbw said i cant edit the pdfs
i think i have a driver for a pdf printer somewhere via which i can turn a document into the pdf format, but i still cant edit an existing pdf with it, which is what i want

thanks! downloading pdfcreator now :)

Hrqls: LOL, I never even thought about the editing part. Never used it now that I think of it.

there are several sites were you can get an .html file conversted to a .pdf file and vice versa.

nobleheart: For free?

Rose: If you have a Mac, then just choose Print to PDF in the dialog box that comes up when you print. You can make any document into a pdf. ;-)

Thad: IF I only had a MAC

I have a PDF Creator (creater?) but had never heard of a site that converts the files both ways before. Was hoping Nobleheart could enlighten me so that I can pass it on to folks who dont want to buy the Adobe PDF Creater.

Rose: I was thinking that the PC's had this ability too with Adobe Distiller - which I thought use to be free. Was looking now, and it is only available with the full (paid) version of Adobe.

It works pretty cool - in a word (or whatever) file, go to print, print it to the adobe distiller, and it would save it as a PDF - so not really "edit" PDF's, but would let you create documents in other formats and save as a PDF.