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you should be able to go into the ToolsSecurity Options (my memory is vague on Office XP, been a while since i used it) and lower the security settings so it doesn’t flag them, but very very sure, as if you think the file doesn’t contain any of these and have been infected/corrupted, then you might be heading for trouble. You can also reduce the macro security also.

if its not listed in add/remove software, there maybe an issue with your registry. try to run the install from the CD regardless, sometimes it can pick-up from what’s already installed and ask you if you want to add/remove or repair – choose repair option — this will at least check all the file on the CD with what’s installed (you will need to run the patches and SP’s later).

Open Task Manager (CTRL+SHIFT+ESC) and see what resources you have left – lower right, you will see a line of numbers in bytes, drop the last 6 to be MB’s of free RAM, if you do not have more than say 80-100MB, you may struggle running just one Office app, they can typically run up nearly 200MB each depending on what your doing, as i type, i have Outlook on 154Mb and Word on 68MB. If you have more than 3GB RAM in your system, it maybe an issue with your DesktopHeapSize setting, which can be changed to stop the resource errors.

IE8 does seem to have an issue with MS Security Essentials and certain AV products, check if you have MSSE installed, and if so try removing the real-time scan (it will freak out and go red to warn) but then try IE8, and see if its more responsive to loading sites — if not it will normally take 60sec or more to display a website. If this is the case, you can either remove MSSE and revert back to Windows Defender, or change your AV package (unless they intend to release a patch).

as for having more than one, it maybe related to the amount of tabs, but shouldn’t – under Win 7, i always get 2 x iexplorer.exe’s when running one session and one tab. I rarely use IE anyway.

if you set your wallpaper via GPO, you must make sure that your user systems have access to the wallpaper files from their profile. We had a similar issue when systems were off the LAN/travelling, so we put the screen-saver and wallpaper files on the local systems for all laptops, and altered the GPO for the laptop OU to point to the local folder where they reside.

The registry settings of wallpaper settings are located in HKEY_Users, under the full length SID code for the logged in user and in Control PanelDesktop – you should have an entry for Wallpaper – a file path.

To have the wallpaper stay when they log out of when the system is sitting at the login prompt/screen – edit the same setting in the .DEFAULT profile. XP prefers .BMP files, Vista and 7 prefer .JPG images.

If the wallpaper still refuses to appear, you might need to use Autoruns or Process Explorer (tools from Sysinternals) to view the systems and see what apps or settings are being applied, could be malware over-writing the setting, also check the local policy settings.

i think you will manage to get to the bottom of the issue with Autoruns and Process Explorer, that would be my recommendation. If you have sufficient free disk space, i would also consider using Piriform’s CCleaner and Defraggler – CCleaner can clean all temp and junk files, as well as give the registry a good going over (you can create a backup file before telling it to fix all faults). Then defrag the hard drive to increase the application and file read speeds. Also be mindful of the AV package — try disabling it, and then repeat your app launch test — if it works faster, your AV package real-time scanner is the culprit, try AVG instead or another free package.

I guess even though the system has at least 1GB ram, there maybe a shared graphics card which can suck up to 64-128MB RAM from that, though you will see that when you view the System properties page (System icon in Control Panel), if it doesn’t show as 1GB, then you will know it shares the RAM. More RAM may fix the issue, and allow more multitasking/launching of multiple apps and files.

either manually remove the updates from add/remove programs, or restore to a point before the patches were applied. its possible that’s its a coincidence that the adapter stopped working after the restart. i’m more concerned that you cannot use the wired connection to get your browsers to d/l the software updates from HP. why doesn’t the browser allow you to save the EXE files??

if you remove the wireless device from the Device Manager, on restart, the system should auto-detect it again and install the existing drivers — make sure you have no yellow ! marks on device manager. do you use an HP Wi-Fi utility or just the default Microsoft Wi-Fi manager built into XP?

you can create the perfect default profile (not local admin) and then login as local admin and copy profile to Default User, then when other people log into the system for the first time, its all set-up for them, printers, internet access, mapped drives etc…its what we do here on our LAN, when doing system builds for company systems.

it can be done, but your need to edit a file on the CD and re-burn it, so it does not check the build number of the OS

See here for details – http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/3075/how-to-upgrade-the-windows-7-rc-to-rtm/

You might want to check to see if your system BIOS is up to date too, as some power management protocols are controlled from the BIOS settings, as well as OS settings/drivers. On top of that, check your system manufacturer for any possible driver/app update for power management, as this may fix some of the issues being experienced. Lenovo just released a new System Update tool, which helped with some of our ThinkPad’s, as it downloaded the latest drivers for Win 7, and they now sleep/hibernate fine now.

As far as I’m concerned, you may as well go 64-bit. The problems that plagued XP-64 (lack of driver support mainly) have mostly gone away now as more & more users switch to 64-bit. Sure, the system may not go quite as fast with 32-bit apps when directly compared to a 32-bit OS, but for the vast majority of users that difference is not noticeable.

Not only that, sticking with 32-bit limits your future expansion. People have already mentioned the 4GB RAM hard-ceiling & as progress accelerates, that ceiling will become more & more relevant in a short amount of time. Buying a 64-bit OS also future-proofs you for when you upgrade to a new machine.

The pros far outweigh the cons these days IMO. If ultimate compatibility is your aim, then Sun’s Virtualbox is your friend…

I agree, been using Win 7 Pro 64bit RTM since August (Technet is my friend) on a new HP Quad core with 8GB RAM, and my old T43 ThinkPad with 2GB on 32bit. Office 2007 and our AX4.0 ERP (with 64bit add-ons) runs really well, i have none of XP 32bit headaches with DesktopHeapSize problems, NVidia driver issues with dual screen and Firefox not refreshing correctly. Gradually updating to 64 software where possible like Sun Java, AutoDesk viewers and some other utilities, found some good websites for helping such as http://www.start64.com/index.php. Hardest part was installing all my admin tools and uprating things like McAfee Enterprise, Diskeeper and VMware packages. Even new changes such as Windows Mobile connections, Blackberry software and UltraVNC.

I’d say its well worth it, and the driver issues will gradually disappear, for now, i just need to uprate our Xerox printer drivers, and I have everything working as I need for now. Best of all, i don’t have a 3.5GB memory limit.

you should be able to go into the Control Panel, and run Add/Remove Programs. Scroll down the list to the end and look for Windows Internet Explorer 8 and click highlight and then click the Remove button. It may take sometime, as it has to restore IE7 and remove the IE8 files. Once done, reboot and test if IE7 is working and your OE app.

well spotted, another typo i can add to my list….:)

XP system patches are easy to spot, and yes i would leave them for a few weeks, especially the SP ones. If you delete the hidden patch folders in C:Windows, remember you cannot un-install the patch.

Windows 7 updates are stored elsewhere (haven’t found them yet).

XP is at SP3 release and then about 60 odd patches since it was released, Office 2003 stopped at SP2 and has 2007 at present (completely different service pack). I find that doing custom always helps so you can see what its asking to do, and untick things like IE8 if you do not wish to install at this time, express gives you no choice and it hammers away and adds everything selected, and you don’t get to see the optional add-ons such as Root Certificate & .Net updates etc….

also get yourself a good disk defrag program such as Defraggler (free and very good even has 64bit option), once you have done your updates, always best to defrag the drive to keep the system optimised and as responsive as possible.

also if you are swapping a SATA drive, you may require drivers from your manufacturer or motherboard provider to see the disk correctly (if Win 7 can’t see it). Also make sure your system BIOS is up to date and disk mode set to AHCI to get the maximum speed from the drive and controller.