Windows Forum

Ask something
Discussion Locked

Windows XP Questions

0 helpful
6 replies

by shanghai sam

Closed to new repliesThis discussion is closed. It stays readable, but it takes no new replies.

I have a couple questions regarding Windows XP Professional.

1) Is there any way to get into dos where you have access to all of the drives like you can on the 9x platforms? Whenever I go into dos on xp I only have access to the A and B drives unless I go through and select the option to go safe mode with command prompt.

2) Is there a program out there that will let me extract my Product ID seeing as the dumby I am misplaced my certificat that had it on there? I have my product ID forall my other operating systems BUT XP.

3) Administrative Tools - this is different than the WinNT/2000 workstations and servers. Is there someway I can view the user manager for domains the same way I can on NT workstations/servers to make it easier to set permissions for each user account?

4) I seem to have a problem installing some hardware. for example new drivers for my video card. the drivers WinXP has for my video card has a cache of nvidia drivers that I don't want. When I goto install my video card I have to go through a headache of a process so the cached drivers are not used when I install new drivers. My intent on installing the new video card is removing the old drivers manually, and then installing the new drivers. I always seem to have a hard time with that. Is there an easier way to do this? The process I go through to install is this? Somehow I end up doing what I want to do but its a pain in the rear when I am able to do it.

Thank you for your answers.

I assigned 400 points total, 100 points for each separate question.

6 replies

by maxwell edison

Bill Gates said the release of XP "marked the end of an era, the end of DOS and also the end of Windows 95."

DOS is the text-based system that powered Windows PCs, and still lurks underneath Windows 3.1, 95, 98 and Windows Me.

Even though Microsoft has downgraded the DOS presence in XP - the Command folder under the main Windows folder no longer lists familiar DOS commands and files - the new operating system will still run DOS programs.

To help you do that, XP includes an extensive "help" file on all aspects of using DOS programs. It will even remind you how to set up program information files, which, once upon a time, allowed DOS users greater control over the resources allocated to individual programs.

DOS used to be the acronym for Disk Operating System. It is now, and will soon be the acronym for (only) Denial Of Service (attack).

Maxwell

by thechas

Question #2
I don't know if this is the same for XP, but found this at www.webtechgeek.com

How~2 find windows serial number: By Raymond, WebTechGeek.com - Question: Once windows 98 is installed, is there anyway I can find out what my Windows serial number is? The serial number that was on the CD case that I lost. Is it stored in the PC memory somewhere? Answer: Launch regedit than search for ProductKey It's also in c:\system.

#4. This may be a problem. The new nvidia XP drivers are only for a few specific chipsets. If you have a different card, you are limited to the native XP drivers.
I have always found it best to follow this sequence to remove specific hardware.
Remove software items from add/remove programs.
Remove hardware from device mngr.
Shut down, remove/change hardware.
On startup, cancel driver install.
Search for remnent files and registry entries for the old hardware. Purge as much as possible.
Reboot, and install drivers for new hardware.

With video cards in particular, this seems to be the best way to avoid conflicts.

by timthetoolman

Hi,

Question 2

You can download a free PC analysis utility from Belmarc.

http://www.belarc.com/

This utility pulls out the license key from all your installed programs - XP included. It also give all sorts of useful information about your PC.

Cheers,
Tim.

by timthetoolman

Hi again...

Question 1

The problem you're likely seeing is due to the fact you have installed WinXP with the ntfs filesystem. If you were to boot to DOS (say, with a DOS boot disk) then DOS cant read the new filesystem.

There is a workaround to this through a third party utility...but it costs money...

Take a look at...

http://www.winternals.com/products/fct/ntfswin98.asp

(remove spaces from the above URL)

Cheers,
Tim.

by timthetoolman

Me again,

Question 3

I'm not exactly sure where you're doing your administrative tasks from right now but... You may find the following interface to the user management better...

Control Panel -> Performance and Maintenance -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management

Then in the "Users and Groups" part of the tree you have access to the users and groups in a manner much more like the older style interface.

Hope this helps,
Cheers,
Tim.

by timthetoolman

Hi,

Question 4

With XP... When you click "update driver" from the "device manager" area in on the computer management screen (mentioned earlier with the users and groups answer) I believe your new driver will be the one used and the old driveris "remembered" but not used - for if you need to rollback. Which incidently is another option off that screen.

You dont really need to uninstall the old ones - they're "moved out of the way" for you.

Cheers,
Tim.

This discussion is closed to new replies.