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I got a Gateway EC 6000 a few months back with WinXP home pre-installed on it. The way I understood this, the copy protection in this would be keyed to the motherboard, so no activation was necessary. But in the middle of downloading something a few minutes ago I got this:And sure enough it shut me down when the time elapsed. I was able to boot up again right away, but I'm wondering if it's gonna happen again.Anyone seen this before?

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Windows XP glitch or activation? [View All], sniper297, 02:37 AM, Aug-02-03, (0) RE: Windows XP glitch or activation?, bnsf1959, Aug-02-03, 05:42 AM, (1) RE: Windows XP glitch or activation?, jtsdadinaz, Aug-02-03, 06:29 AM, (2) RE: Windows XP glitch or activation?, dgauci, Aug-02-03, 10:26 AM, (4) RE: Windows XP glitch or activation?, dgauci, Aug-02-03, 10:23 AM, (3) RE: Windows XP glitch or activation?, IcyFire, Aug-02-03, 11:03 AM, (5) RE: Windows XP glitch or activation?, sniper297, Aug-02-03, 12:23 PM, (6) RE: Windows XP glitch or activation?, heffed, Aug-02-03, 08:36 PM, (8) RE: Windows XP glitch or activation?, ajwtcb, Aug-02-03, 08:33 PM, (7) RE: Windows XP glitch or activation?, Motley24Crue2, Aug-02-03, 09:34 PM, (9) RE: Windows XP glitch or activation?, PcKiller, Aug-02-03, 10:18 PM, (10) RE: Windows XP glitch or activation?, driver89, Aug-03-03, 02:43 AM, (11) RE: Windows XP glitch or activation?, jm1941, Aug-03-03, 08:38 PM, (12) RE: Windows XP glitch or activation?, whleighton, Aug-03-03, 11:22 PM, (13) RE: Windows XP glitch or activation?, jm1941, Aug-04-03, 06:28 PM, (16) RE: Windows XP glitch or activation?, blocksignal, Aug-04-03, 05:08 AM, (14) RE: Windows XP glitch or activation?, sniper297, Aug-04-03, 12:23 PM, (15) RE: Windows XP glitch or activation?, jm1941, Aug-04-03, 06:36 PM, (17) RE: Windows XP glitch or activation?, sd70mac666, Aug-04-03, 08:34 PM, (18) RE: Windows XP glitch or activation?, dgauci, Aug-04-03, 10:50 PM, (19) RE: Windows XP glitch or activation?, sniper297, Aug-05-03, 02:25 AM, (20) RE: Windows XP glitch or activation?, dgauci, Aug-05-03, 10:17 AM, (21) RE: Windows XP glitch or activation?, chucksc, Aug-05-03, 12:42 PM, (22) RE: Windows XP glitch or activation?, sniper297, Aug-05-03, 12:57 PM, (23) RE: Windows XP glitch or activation?, chucksc, Aug-05-03, 05:40 PM, (24) RE: Windows XP glitch or activation?, dgauci, Aug-05-03, 11:54 PM, (25)

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Hi Sniper,I have never seen that before on my Dell with WinXP Home. I had my PC for over a year now. But, I do get window explore "E.T. phone home" message more often than I should. It must be their patch updates that M$ has been having on their window update page. It's getting annoying to see the error message and I seriously think it has more bugs than fixes.
Ken
Muschka Activity Works
(F-Units are courtesy of Santa Fe Railway Historical and Modeling Society)

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It shou;d have put a warning in the tray if has not been activated and shou;d have had you do that the first time you fired it up.

Conbuilder Debugger/Programmer

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>But, I do get window explore
> "E.T. phone home" message more often than I should. It
>must be their patch updates that M$ has been having on their
>window update page. It's getting annoying to see the error
>message and I seriously think it has more bugs than fixes. It all depends on how you use and maintain your system. I keep mine patched and updated and very rarely ever see any error messages. I also am using a Dell.

"Boycott Michael Moore and his friends in France"

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This error has nothing to do with product activation. Product activation messages only appear at start-up, they appear as a wizard and they don't shut you down like this. When product activation gets tripped it gives you three days to contact MS either through the Internet or by phone to re-activate, those messages I've seen before.According to the BlackViper service guide, all of the other services depend on the Remote Procedure Call service. Side note: a Gateway huh, you sure seem to have a lot of problems with it.

"Boycott Michael Moore and his friends in France"

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Jim, I got a similar Msg once, I was screwing around with ctrl-alt-del closing processes, i closed a critical one i guess and the system got bitchyShawn K,
Screenshot & Yard Forum Mod. E-Mail is in profile.
The NYO&W.. Running from somewhere to nowhere, But never forgotten

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Well, thanks guys, hasn't done it again yet. That "NT AUTHORITY" thing sounded ominous, but programming geeks are infamous for dramatics. I wasn't doing anything other than downloading a file from Avsim, didn't even have any other programs running, and the DSL didn't disconnect or anything."Side note: a Gateway huh, you sure seem to have a lot of problems with it."Dunno, this is the first Gateway I've ever owned. The last store bought computer I had was a Dell 486 SX-33, but I had similar problems with that, altho nowhere near as severe since I was familiar with the OS. That one came with DOS 5.0 and Windows 3.1 pre-installed, and win.com as the last line in the autoexec.bat file so it automatically booted into windows on startup. I tried to exit to DOS and found that option was grayed out, you were just supposed to use the power switch to turn the thing on and off and not mess with it. Ended up having to boot from a floppy, remove the SHR attributes from config.sys and autoexec.bat (!) so I could edit them, then had to edit the progman.ini or whatever it was that locked out changes in Windows 3.1. I think even THAT was hidden/system/read-only, they went to a lot of trouble to make sure the uninitiated weren't gonna screw up their computers. Problem was most flight sims back then required 600 to 610k of that lower RAM free to run, so it was either use a boot disk to run any flight simulator or get rid of the Windows 3.1 autostart to free up that lower RAM.This thing is giving me a lot of grief tho, my first exposure to WinXP after spending all them years learning Win98SE. Took me a couple hours to figure out and fix that Dell 486 so I could play games on it, but this thing has been kicking my butt two falls out of three since March. I even tried to get rid of that silly "DO MORE WITH GATEWAY!" thing that's so prominently splashed all over the start menu, but got an error from that *&&^%$#! installshield "wizard" when I tried to remove it. I suppose "DO MORE WITH GATEWAY!" would be useful to somebody who went out and bought a computer without having the slightest idea of what he was gonna do with it when he got it home, but I don't have any use for it.

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>I even tried to get rid of that silly "DO MORE WITH GATEWAY!"
>thing that's so prominently splashed all over the start
>menu, but got an error from that *&&^%$#! installshield
>"wizard" when I tried to remove it. I suppose "DO MORE WITH
>GATEWAY!" would be useful to somebody who went out and
>bought a computer without having the slightest idea of what
>he was gonna do with it when he got it home, but I don't
>have any use for it. Have you asked them about it? I'm sure they know the way to get rid of it. I had a Dell that had some annoying feature like that, I emailed them and asked how to make it go away. They sent me a little removal .exe.-Jeff

Union Pacific fan.

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Looked like you were downloading something in the background - was it using some sort of download utility, and was it from sort of website that uses CGI? I know from e-commerce experience that those download programs can cause weird problems when dealing with CGI or simlar file serving systems.

Andy Whitcomb

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i have seen that message before but only when doing Alt-Ctrl-DelRobert Steskal
Philadelphia, Pa

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Of the 9 PC's that i own, I have never seen that error message ever. And I have XP Pro, and Home running on two different PC's. Both of them are Dells by the way.

My Game Review Website

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Yeah, most brand name computers have some annoying features, Gateway, HP, IBM and Compaq all seem to have them, some are harder than others to get rid of.
The worst one was one that came from Intel, nothing you did seemed to get rid of it, then one day it just vanished.James.

"Well, you know boys, a nuclear reactor is a lot like a women. You just have to read the manual and press the right buttons." Homer Simpson

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>> Yeah, most brand name computers have some annoying features, Gateway, HP, IBM and Compaq all seem to have them, some are harder than others to get rid of.Hi James,Yes, just read all the hassles over time here at TS forums with manufacturers PC's.
One reason I buy all the computer parts separately and put them together myself, so I do not have annoying features.
I have used win98 since it hit the shelves, seems like a 100 years ago now and 9 weeks ago my old M/B graphic card slot glitched, so I built a new P4 2.66ghz system. Nice I might add, in speed I mean.The only glitch of any consequence I ever got with my old home built system was because of forced upgrading to this new system and with my original Win98, (not Win98SE) would not run on a system with a CPU over 2.1ghz. (win 98 has a cpu timing error with cpu's over 2.1ghz) Something I was not aware of beforehand and that gave me the only headache and some less hair. (There is a patch for it, but its crap, do not even bother with it, just upgrade the OS to a later version) Win98SE is okay.All those years I never had any hassles with my home built PC, nor Win98 of itself. Win98 was always a great reliable workhorse over all those years. By the way, it was still an original Win98 installation with patches till the upgrade. It was very reliable overall system.Because of the new P4 system cpu limit for Win98 and I could not run my org Win98 on new high end system. (big pain) I installed Win98SE for my older programs(so far excellent) and also XP Pro to get the feel (also so far so good) installed in my newly built P4 2.66ghz system and it all runs well to date. Bugger those manufactured built PC's, one does not have to be great PC guru to put a good system together yourself these days. Actually built it cheaper and with better bits than a clone built at a computer store.>> The worst one was one that came from Intel, nothing you did seemed to get rid of it, then one day it just vanished.Yes,....
Those little computer gremlins who live in the either of a PC are humorous little buggers, they're there to test your metal. Regards,
John

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John,That's the only way to go. You don't have to settle for what the manufacturers put into the PC's. (Cheap mobo's, video cards, etc.) Even if you don't know how to assemble a computer, you can still go to one of these small computer stores, select what you want in it and they'll put it together for you and you'll still get a much better computer for the same or less money.BTW, I've been running XP Home for about a year now and this is what Windows always should have been, but never was.Bill

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Bill,Your dead right, learnt that 9 years ago. If you feel you could not put a computer box together (not that hard really)
Pick a small computer store that gives good service, they are around believe it or not. Read up and check out what you think you need or require for your new system. Not good idea to buy one of their on the shelf "el'cheapo you beauts" as you only get what you pay for, (usually old stock, but realize manufacturers do this all the time as well) nothing that is very good and up to date is for near nothing. Checking things out, pays off in long run.
At least you choose the parts and they put it together for you and the other good thing, you can now come face to face with a human being if there is a glitch, instead of getting fobbed off, or getting the run around from some manufacturer who could be anywhere in the world. And if they found to give good service, guess where you go for all your add-ons and upgrades and queries.Regards,
John

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Sniper,
The latest vulernability to NT based systems is called the Remote Procedure Call vulnerability. It has just recently become widely known, and has started to become exploited by the hacker community. I'm not sure if you were victim to this, but you and all others on NT based OS's (NT, 2000, XP) should get the latest patch update from MS immediately. The following is from Reuters TechWeb News:"Once a year, or every other year -- not often -- you see this type of widespread vulnerability with so many systems affected," said Marcus Sachs, director of the National Cyber Security Division of U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Sachs and other attendees said the latest Microsoft security hole affects several types of Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq:MSFT - news) Windows software that are widely used in business. "In theory, you have all the makings of a worm," or a virus that can spread itself to other machines, Sachs said. The so-called Remote Procedure Call vulnerability can allow a rogue computer user to remotely take over a machine or network of machines and put the computers out of service. A government advisory warning of the latest vulnerability issued more than a week ago was updated on Thursday after nefarious programs designed to take advantage of the Microsoft software weakness began to spread on the Internet, Sachs said."Jeff

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Swell. I have service pack 1, and according to PC World Micro$haft is not patching the performance problems with SP 1 since they don't consider it important enough (most programmers are geeks, geeks don't play games, and therefore don't give a *&^%$#! how unsuitable DirectX is for 3D games), and the only way to get full performance out of WinXP is to go thru a bunch of complicated processes to uninstall the service pack. Now I gotta get another patch and buy an updated virus checker and firewall."Looked like you were downloading something in the background - was it using some sort of download utility,"Nope, just my plain jane Netscape 7 with Enternet 300 DSL."and was it from sort of website that uses CGI?"I don't know what CGI is, just some add ons from the train simulator section of Avsim. if www.avsim.com uses CGI, then I guess the answer to that one would be yes, otherwise no.So. Anybody got a direct link to this new essential "service pack" (bug patch!)?

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Excellent quip Sniper, that's my good belly laugh for today.
Well one thing, you have not lost your sense of humour.

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I'd like to take him to get him drunk see what happens
Dr. SatanI'm otherwise known as the SatanTrain

High on the roof,
Thin the blood,
Another one on the waves tonight,
Comin' in, you're home
Orange Crush: R.E.M.

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>Swell. I have service pack 1, and according to PC World
>Micro$haft is not patching the performance problems with SP
>1 since they don't consider it important enoughWhat performance problems? I've been running Windows XP Pro since initial release on this same hardware. I updated to service pack 1 when it was released, I haven't seen any performance problems or drops in MSTS. They probably don't consider it important enough because in the real world it isn't perceivable.

"Boycott Michael Moore and his friends in France"

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Lemmee see if I got this straight, YOU (a party of one individual) have XP pro running "on this same hardware" (one computer) and didn't see any performance drop after installing SP1, so therefore the problem isn't perceivable in the real world? Get a P4 2.66ghz with 1024mb 533mhz RIMM and an ATI 9700 Pro, install Win XP home (not pro, home), and run a bunch of benchmarks, save the results. Install SP 1 on that machine, and forget the benchmarks, just open windows explorer and browse thru some of the subdirectories, see how long it takes to load filenames. I never saw that flashlight with 98SE, open train simulator\trains\trainsets and get an instant list, with XP I got a 5-10 second delay on a faster computer, after SP 1 I get a flashlight and a 10-15 second delay, even with the exact same number of subfolders. You wanna convince somebody that Mega$oft isn't an evil empire, you need to find somebody a little more gullible than me! Well, anyway, it happened again tonight, so I went to microsux and hunted for remote procedure call, downloaded Q331953_WXP_SP2_x86_ENU.exe from this link:http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&familyid=94213569-3258-4439-9ae7-5d86813b4d9e
3/26/2003, and this is the first I've heard of it. The install appears to hang at the "creating restore point", but if you leave it alone for 5 or 10 minutes it eventually gets moving again and finishes the install. I keep hearing about how wonderful XP is, but after giving it four months now I still don't see it.

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>Lemmee see if I got this straight, YOU (a party of one
>individual) have XP pro running "on this same hardware" (one
>computer) and didn't see any performance drop after
>installing SP1, so therefore the problem isn't perceivable
>in the real world? And by the same token I have to accept YOUR opinion that there is a performance drop that I haven't seen. I know you stated PC World as your source, so can post a reference to an article or web site that can be looked up.I'm not accusing you of being gullible, but I'm not as willing to jump on the MS bashing bandwagon without proof, especially when my own firsthand experiences are so vastly different from the kind of problems you've consistently posted about Windows XP.As for the delay in displaying filenames in file dialog boxes I have only seen that happen on the DOZENS of Windows 2000 machines I work with every day, but never on ANY of my 3 Windows XP SP1 machines, both Pro and Home editions. This is one of the reasons I prefer Windows XP over Windows 2000.

"Boycott Michael Moore and his friends in France"

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>Lemmee see if I got this straight, YOU (a party of one
>individual) have XP pro running "on this same hardware" (one
>computer) and didn't see any performance drop after
>installing SP1, so therefore the problem isn't perceivable
>in the real world? Get a P4 2.66ghz with 1024mb 533mhz RIMM
>and an ATI 9700 Pro, install Win XP home (not pro, home),
>and run a bunch of benchmarks, save the results. Install SP
>1 on that machine, and forget the benchmarks, just open
>windows explorer and browse thru some of the subdirectories,
>see how long it takes to load filenames. I never saw that
>flashlight with 98SE, open train simulator\trains\trainsets
>and get an instant list, with XP I got a 5-10 second delay
>on a faster computer, after SP 1 I get a flashlight and a
>10-15 second delay, even with the exact same number of
>subfolders. You wanna convince somebody that Mega$oft isn't
>an evil empire, you need to find somebody a little more
>gullible than me!
>
>Well, anyway, it happened again tonight, so I went to
>microsux and hunted for remote procedure call, downloaded
>Q331953_WXP_SP2_x86_ENU.exe from this link:
>
>http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&familyid=94213569-3258-4439-9ae7-5d86813b4d9e
>
>
>3/26/2003, and this is the first I've heard of it. The
>install appears to hang at the "creating restore point", but
>if you leave it alone for 5 or 10 minutes it eventually gets
>moving again and finishes the install. I keep hearing about
>how wonderful XP is, but after giving it four months now I
>still don't see it. Geeze Jim let me get this straight,
You a Microsoft Averse party of one claim to have significant and perceptable problems in a machine that you take pride in not keeping up to date????I have a similar configuration to yours with the primary differences being an AMD/XP2400 CPU instead of Intel and a GeForce4/ti4200-OATES video card and I don't see the problem, before or after SP1....
Two grandsons' machines, 1 a AMD/XP2000 and the other a PIII-950 abd both with GeForce 4/ti4200 graphics cards and I didn't see the problem there....
Nor on any other gaming rig I've built in the last 6 months (about a dozen for various people).....
Fact, what may appear to be significant in a "benchmark" may not be so "in game"....
Maybe it's a plot by Microsoft to "get Sniper"????????
After all some of the paranoid whack jobs (term of art there) on here have accused Bill Gates and Co. of everything except Crop Circles, Cattle Mutilation and Alien Abduction (and those are only a matter of time before they think of that -
So why not some "Get Sniper Code" in there?????Chuck Schneider
(Virtual) CEO
North American (Virtual) Locomotive Works

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http://www.pcworld.com/howto/article/0,aid,111108,00.asp

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So??????
You're not trying to quote PC World to me as an authoritative source are you?(heh heh! That ought to get Jim going... The rest of you drag up a seat and get the pop-corn out - The fireworks ought to be spectacular - )Chuck Schneider
(Virtual) CEO
North American (Virtual) Locomotive Works

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>http://www.pcworld.com/howto/article/0,aid,111108,00.asp Basically what I thought, no offense to you Sniper, but the source your quoting from really doesn't know what there talking about. Not just my opinion, easily proved. The two issues the PC World article is discussing don't really exist. Perhaps they should actually research their subjects before trying to stir up the anti-Microsoft hysteria.The first case which just is not a valid issue:http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;815411In the second case there has been a readily available patch available to correct the issue discussed:http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;819634Bottom line there is no Windows XP SP1 induced performance drop as hyped in the articles; MS is not ignoring patches for the supposed problems.

"Boycott Michael Moore and his friends in France"

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