Da Techguy's (no longer backup) Blog

Well the new B system is in the Dining room (yes you read that right) but since it’s in the dining room it can’t reach the router. So the time came to get a wireless for the system. (This predated the download of video drivers).

Since I didn’t want to spend a lot on a “B” system I picked up the least expensive product. A Netgear Wg111 wireless G adapter. This is the low end product in terms of speed but this is meant as a “B” machine so speed isn’t a vital consideration at this time.

The install was fairly routine, I disabled the netgear manager to use the standard windows one and after a few false starts connected without issue, that’s when I got my surprise.

After reboot the standard friendly interface for XP logon was gone and the enterprise style logon replaced it.

When I went to switch it back (I don’t mind that version but it can be a pain for the non-pc people) I got a grey screen and the following error:

A recently installed program has disabled the Welcome screen and Fast User Switching. To restore these features, you must install the program. The following file name might help you identify the program that made the change: RtlGina2.dll.

Lucky for me a simple fix was written by a fellow named Doug Knox. Simply click here and download the fix file, and run. Reboot and Viola! You have your screen back without losing your internet!

Have just finished getting a new “b” machine all ship shape and Bristol fashion.

It’s an old P4 2.40 with a gig of ram that I’ve threw xp home onto, to replace the old Dell laptop that has finally bit the dust for the last time.

It’s amazing what you can do with leftover parts. The machine was a cast off from my nephew that wouldn’t boot. The Monitor was a gift from a friend who had an extra, the monitor cable came from a neighbor.

I of course since I buy dells had the xp cd’s and simply added my spare mouse and a new keyboard and presto, a worthwhile system to use as a B machine in the other room!

the only other thing necessary was a few drivers. Sound video and LAN drivers were not functioning so I popped open the box and discovered we were using the Intel D865GBF. All the drivers were available online here.

Glenn point out that windows XP is still alive and Slashdot says it will remain so at least for another couple of years.

I’ve run Vista since week one, it has a lot of pain in the rear stuff but as a computer guy it wasn’t all that hard. I “upgraded” an xp system to vista for experience reasons and found it went from damn fast to ok.

The debate at slashdot ignores several things:

When I purchased my finally dead Inspiron 1150 my 512 ram and Pent 4 was more than fast enough, now even a cheep machine is at least dual core and 2 gig of ram. With that kind of firepower XP flies.

The systems that will be running windows 7 will be at least this strong or stronger, how fast do you think XP will run on those by comparision?

For business it is a capital expense to replace computers and a large expense to re-train people and software for their use.

As a person who once ran a business let me tell you this:

Computers are a TOOL, they are there to make their business run faster and better, if a computer or system doesn’t do that its not worth the expense. Business owners don’t give a DAMN what operating system they are running, they give a damn that they are able to use the applications that allow their business to make a profit at a minimum of expense.

And as for windows 95, they were the first computers really in a lot of homes, people accepted the problems because they didn’t know any better. XP is now the best known operating system among people that don’t know computers.

It will take a really big shock to force business off of this comfort zone, I don’t know that windows 7 is going to be big enough to do it but we will see.

Finally to most people a computer is an appliance. People may want to know how to use them in the abstract but they don’t want to put a lot of effort into doing so.