Dave49

Just a comment on the Vista Drive Status utility. I installed the BricoPack Vista Inspirat Ultimate 2. Then I ran the Vista Drive Status utility which produced the status bars. Recently an XP update removed the status bars and put the Vista Drive Icons back. I re-ran the Drive Status utility, and it produced generic windows icons. Not a picture of a drive, but a sheet of paper-like icons. I was able to get drive icons back with the uninstall.cmd Just for your info. Thanks, ~Dave

Works good. Thanks very much, ~Dave

With the BricoPack Vista Inspirat Ultimate 2, I notice the hdd icons in My Computer do not have the drive status bars. Is there a way to add this without messing up the new shell? Keep it simple please. ~Dave

Yes it helps, as i am running SP3. Thanks very much again, ~Dave

I do have one question, though. Do you think future Windows updates could mess this up somehow? Thanks, ~Dave

WOW! That's very nice. Even a novice like me couldn't mess that up. Thanks very much. ~Dave

I ran the Drive Status program and it replaced my XP hdd icons with generic Windows icons. Thanks for including the uninstall.cmd so I could get my XP drive icons back. ~Dave

Maybe you could try the one in msconfig. It has it's own tab, and is ready to be modified. ~Dave

Repair XP Maybe some will find it helpful. ~Dave

I see. Then I'm wondering why this thread is pinned as an "important topic". ~Dave

Well, as someone who does not know much about computers, I am wondering what good a password is if it can be discovered by anyone who wants to gain access to the protected system. Presumably you password protect your OS so that you are the only one who can use it. A password doesn't seem to be very effective if there are ways to find out what it is, and or reset it. ~Dave

So I'm wondering why one can set a password, if someone who doesn't know it can reset it and gain access to the system. ~Dave

Being an old novice, could someone tell me what is the benefit(s) to using the rollup? ~Dave

That's right. And I have no idea what's happened to my system. Everything seems to work just fine except the desktop icon reorganization. But now I know something is wrong with the profile as well. Or maybe the profile system is the whole problem. I'm looking forward to SP3 for XP. I'm hoping that will have enough new fixes to take care of this problem. That is, if Micro$oft ever does release it. Thanks for trying to help, ~Dave

Sorry it took so long to reply. I created a new profile. When I rebooted, I was locked out of Windows. Right at the XP screen where it started loading my personal settings, I got the message that the password had to be reset before login. The trouble is, I never set a password for my system. I wanted my whole family to be able to use it. I also has autologin enabled. So when I got this message, there was nothing I could do. It never gave me the choice of logging in as a different user. So I was completely locked out. It took me a few hours to restore my system from an 18 hour old backup from an Acronis Rescue CD. Suffice it to say, I'm not comfortable trying that one again. ~Dave

I have ntuser.dat files all over the place. There must be dozens. (Just did a search on the file name.) There are no .man files that I can find. ~Dave

Thanks, N1K. I did the regedit manually, and nothing changed on reboot. So I then ran your .vbs file thinking I might have done something wrong. Still no joy. So I'm still using the IconRestore program as a work-around. With this program, I can right-click on the desktop and click save. Then upon reboot, or a desktop refresh, I can right-click the desktop and click restore icons and all icons go back to where I put them. I have posted my problem on other forums, and the only suggestion I got was to use the IconRestore program. This is the first time someone has offered a possible fix for me. Thank you very much. ~Dave

My computer has lost the ability to remember the order in which I place my desktop icons. Whenever my OS refreshes the desktop, or I must reboot, the icons return to some kind of default ordering. The Recycle Bin is even in the lower right corner again, like when XP is freshly installed. This happened over night one night. My machine runs 24/7. Overnight it scans for viruses, spyware, and does a full system back up. I woke up to the back up program (Acronis) stuck without completing. No programs would load. So I rebooted, and this is the only thing that was messed up, AFAIK. I tried a system restore, actually several of them, with no change in this condition. I am currently using a program called Icon Restore to deal with the problem. Dell XPS Gen5 computer. Can anyone tell me if there is a fix for this condition? Thanks, ~Dave