Recovering from 10 hours Windows XP activation horror

[Localjoe]

Get 3 250 gb hds or 160's whatever is in the price range and run raid 5  keep a 4th one spare to rebuild if needed.  Make sure you setup your raid array in the hardware bios for it before you install an os whatever it may be. If you still are using windows i recommend setting up a separate computer p3 generation would be fine with a linux distro of your choice and have that make image files of the whole array at whatever interval deemed necessary. As well, if you don't go with the second machine for backup storage and tasking, Id still highly recommend doing the raid 5 array and then using norton ghost to make image backups to another device. Only surefire way to have everything set for machine the way you want it is to make a ghost image after all win updates app installs ect that you would need, do a check disk then a defrag then proceed to make your Pristine image that you can reload on that machine at will, activated and all. The raid takes care of hardware failure if that happens just pop a new drive in and rebuild

[Pirate88179]

Yes, this is great.  XP has been around for years (years of de-bugging and fixes) and this is what I run. Can you imagine the crap that VISTA has that will take years to de-bug?  No thanks...I am staying with XP and Ubuntu on a dual boot setup.

I like and admire Bill Gates but geeze, if you are supposed to be the best in the business with all of those resources, why do we always seem to get not ready for prime time software releases?

Stefan:  The people here have already given you much better advice than I.  I will say I run Zonealarm (the free one) and it is fine once you learn to tell it what to do, and, more important, what not to do.  Many programs out there have a conflict with zonealarm so you have to be careful.  As far as the "firewall" that comes with XP?  Useless in my opinion.

Bill

[devilzangel]

SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop by Novell is awesome. Why waste so much time trying to custumize, when Novell has done a fantastic job.

@Harti : if you are having so many serious problems with your install of XP .. just wipe out your OS drive partition, and install XP Pro with DEFAULT settings, DONT use XPLite, it will only create headaches if you are not advanced at using it.

Once you have (1) installed, and used a (2) key (if it is a pirate, then just use the crack patches already available on the net.), (3) install all the drivers etc. THEN (4) install SP2 (you can get a copy of this on the net without even going to windows update page).

once that is done, download DirectX, java, flash, etc and install.

About IE, I have found Firefox to have issues with certain sites, IE comes in handy every once in a while.

When you have a chance, try out Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SUSE LED).

devilzangel
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[Overmind]

I never use the XP activation because it's just stupid to do so. I change components in my PC almost every month. Every time I do that, windows will want to be activated and I'd have to call M$ to activate it. So I'll pass. I bypassed their activation and everything is more then fine.