Aw dawg, this is just my whateva-whateva site.

Updated the Product ID article with additional information/corrections given to me by my readers. I also re-arranged the order of the pages on the sidebar.

http://blogs.msdn.com/ryanmy/archive/2005/05/25/421882.aspx

Sysinternals is one of my favorite tech sites, because their utilities are simply genius [and without them, my job would be 10x harder], and Mark's blog is fun to read, because he explains issues he has in-depth. He almost always uses a Sysinternals program to bail himself out of a sticky situation, so it's kind of a nice self-serving blog (in a good way) ;)

I don't know much about Bruce, but I bet he's a genius too. Microsoft respects the hell out of those two, and so do I. Sysinternals products are mentioned, and even recommended, in numerous MSKBs.

Visit Mark Russinovich's blog here: http://www.sysinternals.com/Blog/
Visit their utilities section, too. Specifically, Autoruns and Rootkitrevealer, which are two amazing pieces of software that just keep getting better.

Man, ACPI sucked when it first came out.

skankin and I fought this renegade Gateway machine yesterday… it was a first generation P4 (<2GHz). It was working fine… until SP2 was installed.

Then, on bootup, it got the following error [paraphrased]:
c0000221 unknown hard error - NTDLL.DLL

This error is fully reproducable (format, install XP with SP1a, working fine, install SP2, boom || format, install XP with SP2 slipstreamed, boom) and is always the same. It's definitely hardware-related.

Tested the memory thoroughly, replaced the optical drive, even tried another power supply. I had the idea to flash the BIOS, since that's usually where the original SP2 problems came from [not SP2 itself, but shoddy BIOSes]. I'm skeptical because I know that SP2 brings out the bugs that already existed in hardware [and people usually just blame Windows for "sucking", when in reality it's the hardware that sucks].

We toiled away playing with hardware for a while, and skankin had to go to an appointment, so I started experimenting with it on my own. I decided to force a different hardware abstraction layer [HAL]. To force a different HAL, tap F5 while Windows setup is starting up [at the same point where you would normally press F6 to install a mass storage device driver, scsi, sata, etc]. I chose to force ACPI, to see if Windows was simply detecting it wrong [read: BIOS reporting it wrong]. No go. In fact, it was even worse. I got a STOP 0x8E instead of the hard error, and I got it much sooner than before. Ok, now I've proven that this BIOS' support for ACPI sucks. On to the meat of the experiment:

Standard PC. ACPI is usually tied to APM, and as such, will always present you with the "It's now safe to turn off your computer" message when you go to turn off the computer – which is pretty much the only setback I can think of when not using ACPI. As an added bonus, IRQ sharing is impossible while under 'Standard PC' HAL. Hooray! [IRQ sharing should be abolished. Actually, IRQs should be abolished. Go Mac!]

After installing the Standard PC HAL, the thing ran like a dream. Guess what? The BIOS on this motherboard sucks. Another one bites the dust…

This is the coolest thing I've seen in a while (because it's hilarious): FakeAP

If one access point is good, 53,000 must be better.
Black Alchemy's Fake AP generates thousands of counterfeit 802.11b access points. Hide in plain sight amongst Fake AP's cacophony of beacon frames.

I love the word cacophony.

Anyway, I found Fake AP via this page on tomsnetworking.com, which describes how the feds [and of course, leet hax0rs] are able to bust 128-bit WEP keys in just minutes. That's funny too. I found *that* page via 62nds.com, the authors of Windizupdate [mentioned on the forums here, prior to my site's shift into a blog]. Their site is kind of weird, and contains basically useless, archaic information about old viruses, how to make Grolier's Encyclopedia 7.0 for Windows 3.1 work in Windows 95, and other drivel, but Windizupdate is definitely a gem on their site.

So we should all be using WPA now (not WPA-PSK).