Intlharvester

MS Hearts was one of the few applications that used NetDDE. It's possible that this was eliminated from WinXP.

A classic problem with Windows networking is that the incorrect machine becomes the Browse Master due to whatever (mostly bugs in Win 9x). This is due to the fact that Name Resolution uses a different mechanism (WINS/DNS) than does the Network Neighborhood (Master Browser elections). In theory the correct machine - usually the WINS or DC box - should win all of the elections. In practice it doesn't always happen. The resource kit has a tool called browmon.exe which will tell you who thinks they are the master browser on a network. My guess is that there's some sort of conflict going on between the DC and various Win9x boxes on your net leading to a "election storm". If it looks to be the case, the solution to use policy files to disable the 9x boxes ability to participate in browser elections. As for the name resolution issues - could you have 2 WINS servers on the same network perhaps? Other than that I'm stumped. The longterm solution might be to go to active directory and leave all of WINS/Browse stuff behind.

It works fine, but you end up with a newer version of NTFS that's incompatible with NT4 CHKDSK and the NT4 installer.

WMP 6.4 is still included because it is embedded into a large number of webpages, etc.

Check the prefs.js file.

Rdesktop (http://www.rdesktop.org/) is what you need. If you want an official client, you'll have to go with Citrix.

On NT4, IIRC, TCP/IP printing is an optional component. Install it from the network control panel and service pack again.

If you add /BOOTLOG to your boot.ini line, you can see that CHKDSK actually does run and check if the disk is clean or not. I've noted that the startup check is fairly lax. After a crash, you can often run CHKDSK /F and find some minor corruption.

I would say that Microsoft's definite intent is to get workplaces to buy XP Professional. Yes, that equals a price increase for current 9x users. Yes, there's a XP Home to Pro upgrade available. Simple file+print sharing will probably work, but you can't add machines into Domains (NT4 or AD), and that means you are deprived of the management features and you won't have single login, etc. They almost did this with WinME (betas had restricted networking), but backed off.

Re: Windows .NET (XP) Server I'm currently running Windows 2000 Server (legally) which was upgraded from NT4.0. Since I don't feel like reinstalling everything, and have no plans to buy new hardware, it looks like I have to wait until the Server version ships. Any guesses on when this might be? It looks like .NET will go through a couple more betas (Microsoft really wants to get this right or Sun will ream them), and then maybe a service pack before they are going to ship it with the OS. By my recongining, that means mid-2002, if not later. I also somewhat fear core changes which would make Server less adequate as a workstation. For exmaple, are there any plans to drop DirectX support, etc in the Server version?

Anyone know anything about MS Interix? It's only $99, so I was thinking of giving it a try just to see if I could get certain apps running 'natively'. (For those that don't know, Interix is a NT Subsystem peer that provide a UNIX API to NT/2000). Of course, there's no pre-built packages, so I would be hoping that the buildscripts could grok the Interix environment. And that's the big IF, because I know nothing about C and Unix porting. There's also RedHat Cygwin, which has the advantage of a bunch of stuff which is already pre-packaged. But it sounds much more hacky than Interix (sitting on top of Win32 instead of the kernel).

I think you've stumbled upon the "Abandonware" scene, which along with MAME is a great way to waste some time. Much of the stuff is technically w_r_z, but the abandonware guys usually have a code of honor to only post stuff that's off the market. For example, you can still buy Ultima and Zork games, so you probably won't find them on these sites. These sites have been up for a few years and nobody seems very interested in shutting them down. Most focus on games, but there's others with old DOS productivity apps and so on.

Just as a point of reference 3COM 3C509 (this is sorta the 'classic' ISA NIC) are going for less than $5 on eBay. Make sure that you get one with a RJ45 plug (TP). I'd probably go ISA over USB -- USB wasn't really designed for things like network devices, and the ISA stuff is cheap and *very* stable at this point.

There is actually GUI for NET SEND -- or there used to be -- check the Server Manager (srvmgr).

Doh! Should have known that -- 36MB.

The resource kit shutdown.exe allows you to specify a remote comptuer.

You also might want to get the Sun plug-in (JRE 1.3.1) at http://java.sun.com/products/plugin/ . It can replace MS Java in some circumstances and can have much better performance. MS Java is stuck at v1.1 forever due to the lawsuit -- MS didn't have to remove it but did anyway. It's still needed for certain MS products like OWA 5.5.

What's the exact methodology for figuring this out? Anyway my winnt\system32\config directory is 57MB -- NTS 4.0 Server originally installed in 98, upgraded along the way to W2K latest and greatest (including VS.NET beta which seems to have lots of registry voodoo.)

Well if you get a two-way (<-- not the correct technical term) recordset, the db server has to maintain a lock on the data and hold the connection open because you *might* update it. Even though it's only a short amount of time during the page processing, the server doesn't know this and still has to do the setup/removal of the lock. Furthermore, there's more chatter between client and server. ("Have you locked this data?" "Yes" "OK - Do this.") This will affect scalability quite a bit. It's better to get the data client-side, read-only, drop the connection, do the processing, open the connection again, execute a SP or SQL statement to update teh data, and then drop the conneciton. No locks then, except on the serverside in the stored procedure (where it's potentially optimised). Since the connections are pooled, opening/closing connections isn't much overhead.

I can't say if this will work in XP, but it does in previous versions of NT. Be careful while doing this! 1) Run REGEDT32 as administrator 2) Select HKLM and Registry+Load Hive and select the old registry file that you want 3) Type the name of a key to mount ("Test"), you can now look around, even use REGEDIT if you are more comfortable with that. 4) Select the key you created and do Unload Hive when you are finished. This is also how you use a parallel NT install to fix a registry problem in a recovery situation, BTW.

I second the System Commander idea -- it allows you to put DOS on drives other than C:, have multiple DOS/Win installs and so on. It's a much safer option than trying to move existing partitions.

Just a couple thoughts -- generally the slowest part of a web app is the database connection stuff, so that's the first place to optimise. (especially the getting rid of Access part). The SQL Server driver supports connection pooling, so make sure that you are opening and closing connections only when necessary (not in app or session scope). Also, use Disconnected, Forward-only recordsets because those are cached on the client (webserver) side. Other forms of recordsets may require a long-lived connection to and maybe a lock in the database. Something like rs.open(query, conn, adOpenForwardOnly, adUseClient, adCmdText); Do updates through stored procedures rather than recordsets if possible.

The Resource Kit helpfile has such a list. Search for "I want to use UNIX commands within Windows 2000" (mk:@MSITStore:D:\Program%20Files\Resource%20Kit\w2rktool.chm::/topics/iw_unix.htm on my box)

Microsoft supposedly removed Netscape plug-in support because of a patent issue -- someone (not Netscape) supposedly patented the loading of browser plugins. Of course, why this affects NS plugs and not ActiveX is unknown. Still, dropping a compatibility feature is OK, but dropping it in a service release, without any warning, stinks to high heaven. Apple should adapt quickly, but many smaller shops that provide specialized features and obviously don't want to maintain two codebases if they don't have to. It's also a support nightmare to try to figure out which version of IE 5.5 people are on, especially with windows upgrade prompting them to get the SP. (They had a Q article up that listed 'patent office' as a keyword, along with a list of products affected, but it looks like it's been pulled.)

OK, I just want to point out that I ran W2K on a Pentium 133, and it was in fact slightly more responsive than NT4.0 w/Active Desktop on the same system. The system has 112MB RAM, SCSI, all PCI/EISA, and a decent graphics board (Matrox Mistique). I believe the machine was originally sold as a very expensive 'workstation'. Admittedly the average Pentium system has a very slow PIO IDE drive (which NT hates!), limited memory that's difficult or impossible to upgrade, and a crappy Mach64 or whatever video chip.