tansqrx

Well let's see what I can do for you. You said that is was "pretty much a rectangle" so I will assume its a DB style connector. DB just means it looks like a "D" when the connector is looked at from the side. You also said that it has "lots of square holes for pins" which I will again assume is a female connector. If you don't know the difference between male and female connectors, just Google it, I don't really like going into a sex-ed class here. This leaves us with only two common connectors; video and game port. Both the video and game ports have 15 pins but the video is in a high density form factor (the pins are closer together) Refer to http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ for pictures and descriptions. Most likely if the second port in question is not located on the same card as your primiary video cable then it is a game port. To make sure simply unplug your video cable and try to put it in the questionable port. If it does not fit then you can't get video. Also: http://www.answers.com/topic/game-port http://www.ctips.com/game.html http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ http://www.computerhope.com/help/parallel.htm http://www.computerhope.com/help/serial.htm

The best AV program is the one that you keep updated. No matter how good the program is, if you don't keep the deffinition files current it will do you no good.On a second note I use Norton. I have never had any problems out of the years that I have used it. It hasn't let a known virus in. Even while surfing the net it has caught malicious bits of code that doesn't exectly classify as viruii. (the good Lord should know that with some of the sites that I have visited I should have been infected enough for 20 people.) The only complaints that I have with Norton is that it doesn't like certain "hack tools" which I need for my job (ackcmd.exe) and you can not exciplitly set directories that you do not want scanned. I have a certain directory that turned up over 8,00, hits on the last automatic scan, lol.Hope this helps.

OK good to hear positive response. Give me a few weeks to get things together. I have tons of Visio charts, Excel spreadsheets, and figures to orginize.

Well quite some time ago I got the crazy idea to research Yahoo! Messenger security. Of course this required me to research the Messenger protocol and to my dismay I found very little. In fact the only way I could find anything out about how Yahoo! Messenger communicates was to fire up Ethereal and packet sniff.Well after that I have compled quite abit of information and have created a lot of supporting diagrams and explinations. I have mapped the login process and many of the more common events. My question is this: Would anyone be intersted in my findings? If I do post it would be in about 5 parts with anything you need to write your own Messenger client.

LOL consider this my good deed for the day since I don't get credit in this particular thread. ok first of all before you kill yourself... *I would really like to use AC over DC* - no you don't there is a reason you don't stick your finger in the wall socket. Besides everything that is running in your computer is DC. Second, LEDs will only run off DC. *Each light runs on 2 3V batteries (cr2016) with no resistor* - Now this one kinda confused me. Are the LEDs you bought already wired with a battery pack or did you simply put the anaode to the + side of the battery and the cathode to the - side and it worked? I will assume the latter. The reason that you didn't need a resistor is because the battery isn't putting out enough current to fry the LED. Otherwise expect to see a very short bright flash and the smell of burning plastic, trust me I have been here before. Now for the stuff you really wanted. Run down to your local Rip Off Shack, err I mean Radio Shack and get the following: 1. Computer Molex power splitter 2. Soldering Iron and solder if you don't have one 3. Blue LED's 4. Assortment of resistors (1/4 watt) 5. Shrink wrap tubing 6. Spool of 30 to 20 gage wire A few basics about the power running in your case. All the power leaving the power supply is DC or direct current. The best place to tap the power is off one of the rails that supply auxiliary components, i.e. the hard drive power cables. The hard drive (HDD) power consists of four wires, two black, red, and yellow. The black wires are the ground. The yellow is +12 and the red is the +5. For our purposes we want to use the +5 or the red wire and one of the black wires. Refer to http://www.computerhope.com/help/ps.htm for more info. Take the Molex splitter and cut one of the leads in the middle or near the end of the female side. Cut an approx. 1/4" piece of shrink wrap tubing and slip it over the end of yellow wire. Leave a little tubing hanging over the end. Take a lighter (if you are of the privileged class you will use a heat gun) and quickly move it around the shrink wrap. You will notice where shrink wrap gets it's name and will close up around the wire. This is actually quite an important step as if the bare wire ever comes in contact with the metal case, the power supply will short out and in the best case cause a restart. Repeat the above step for one of unused back wires. While you are at this step go ahead and strip about 1/8" of insulation off the remaining black wire and the red wire. Now a little bit about LEDs. LED stands for light emitting diode as you might already know. One of the chief properties of a diode is that it acts as a one way valve for current. As such, you will have to attach the anaode (the long lead) to the + side and the cathode (the short lead) to the ground. Another peculiarity to diodes is they do not draw any current on their own (actually they do but not enough to matter here). This is why you will need a resistor in series with the LED. Figure 1 shows the proper circuit for powering a single LED. The next question is what value of resistor to use. For this we will have to know how much current the LED needs to draw. On the back of my Rip Off Shack blue LED package I find that forward current is 20mA (.02A). We also know that the supply current is 5 volts. We then take this and plug it into the well known Ohm’s Law. Ohm’s Law states that voltage equals current multiplied by the resistance (V=I*R). We want to find the resistance so dig back into high school Algebra and rearrange the equation to find that (R=V/I). Substitute the values so that R=5/.02 => R=250 Ohms. Figure 2 shows the resulting circuit. Refer to http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ for more help. You have eight LEDs that you want to use so we will simply put them in parallel as shown in Figure 3. This next part is up to artistic interpretation. I don’t know where the LEDs are going or how far apart they will be spaced or even the over all look and feel of the design so you may to choose to place the components in a different location. I will assume the back side of the LEDs will be hidden so I will put the resistor directly on the LED. Cut the leads anaode side of the LED and the resistor to an appropriate length and solder the two together. Slip a piece of shrink tubing over the bare spot and shrink. Then solder the wire to the other side of the resistor and shrink wrap. Lastly attach another wire to the ground side of the LED. This will produce a LED with two wires hanging off. Of course the length of the wire will depend on how far back to the Molex splitter they will have to travel. After you have produced eight of these and placed the LEDs where you want them, gather all the positive (resistor side) wires together and solder them to the red wire that was stripped earlier. Do the same for the ground wired and solder them to the stripped black wire. See Figure 4 for a crude diagram of this. And that’s it. With any luck you will have your LEDs shinning away when the computer comes on. If you want more there are always components you can add. For example you can put a switch in line with the positive side that will give you the ability to turn your LEDs on and off. Also you might consider putting a variable resistor (potentiometer) inline with the positive side so you can change the brightness of the LEDs. I hope this helps a little.

OMG who doesn't set an administrator password?!? Well to answer my own question I suspose more than I would like to admit. This post was actually a surprise to me and I do security work for hobby. I have never installed XP Home and I always assumed that it was like Pro in that you had to set the administrator password during setup. How could Microsoft be so hair brained to leave an open administrator account. This is going to make me look at XP Home in a completely new way - a new toy to exploit. On a similar note, you do not have to be at the physical computer to take advantage of a blank admin password. You can connect using null accounts. You may look into some tools such as superscan 4 http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ or enum (can't remember the site) Damn, I'm going to start scaning for XP Home right now.........

Illegal is all about where the site is hosted. Many of the posts so far have assumed that the site is hosted on a server in the US. What if the server is in some far flung 3rd world country that have no laws, perhaps on purpose, on such illegal activities. Just as some countrys have laws that prohibit extradition to the US, there are some countrys that have systems setup to host "illegal" content in the hopes to gain profit. After the fall of the Russian system, many seedy and sometimes illegal subjects came from the mother land, but because of all the political turmoil there was not a darn thing you could do about it.In this case it is up to the user to sufficiantly police themselfs on where they go on the internet. If you are searching for warez on the net then you should be prepared to pay the price or be prepared by having you system armed to the teeth with the latest anti-virus and spyware checkers. Also when visiting those pesky warez sites turn your IE security setting to HIGH!In short I would have to say your just SOL. Consider this a 67 dollar lesson and have anti-virus installed next time.

Can you give some more specs on your computer, speed, RAM, etc.This does seem quite strange indeed, I have never had a computer slow down after a format but a few things do come to mind. From your first post I assume you also installed Linux along with your XP format. How did you partiton you HDD? Is the Linux partion first and the XP partiton last? If the XP was moved to the last partiton perhaps the latency of the HDD changed (as you may know, as the data moved to the outer edges of the disk the access times increase). Also how much space did you give the XP partition? A standard install can take about 3 GB and of course you need at least another 1 GB for the page file.Another thing to explore is did you install SP2? Did you update all your drivers? This is a strange one indeed. The only time I have had a slow down after a format was due to page file issues.

Putty is one of the better solutions. Another one to consider is SocksCap which can be gotten at http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ SocksCap can control any peice of software through a SOCKS proxy.

Background I recently had the need to add a few panels to a program that I have been working on. The panels did not need to be shown all the time and I didn't want to spawn a new form everytime I needed to see the extra panel. Additionally, I wanted the new panels to dock to the side of the main form so they would not cover the main content. My program needed three seperate areas, a debug window, options window, and of course the main window as shown in Figure 2. Figure 1 After quite a bit of experimenting I decided to show/hide forms that were loaded with the main form. Another explored option was to use GDI+ to make graphic panels appear and disappear but in the end they were too complicated and I decided to go with the quicker and simplier approach. After getting several requests for code on this particular project I decided to create my own tutorial on how to make dockable pop-up forms in VB.NET. Firgure 2 Structure The project consists of three forms: frmMain.vb - Main form for the project frmDebug.vb - Add on pop-up frmOptions.vb - Add on pop-up The number of forms used can be modified. I started with just the debug form but later added functionality for an options form. The work of creating, showing, and docking the forms are split amoung the three forms. frmDebug If you have not already done so, the first thing to do is to add a new form to your project, in my case it is the debug form. The forms apprearence has nothing special about it except in my case I decided to remove the ControlBox from the title bar and set ShowInTaskbar to false. In the frmDebug form create three global variables: Private _myParent As New FormDim _bFormLock As BooleanDim ptFormLocation As New Point The _myParent form represents a link back to the main form. This is need so that if the debug form is moved and the debug form is docked with the main form, the main form will also move. _bFormLock holds a boolean value showing if the current form is docked. ptFormLocation is a drawing point used for showing the location of the forms. Next create two properties: Public Property myparent() As Form Get Return _myParent End Get Set(ByVal Value As Form) _myParent = Value End Set End Property Public Property bFormLock() As Boolean Get Return _bFormLock End Get Set(ByVal Value As Boolean) _bFormLock = Value End Set End Property This of course provides a link between forms. Add the LocationChanged function: Private Sub frmDebug_LocationChanged(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.LocationChanged If bFormLock = True Then ptFormLocation.X = (Me.Location.X - Me.myparent.Width) ptFormLocation.Y = Me.Location.Y Me.myparent.Location = ptFormLocation End If End Sub The LocationChanged function handles the task of moving the parent form (frmMain) if the child form (frmDebug) is moved and the two are docked. In this case you will notice that the x location is the width of the child from minus the width of the parent form. This puts the x location the width of the parent form to the left of the child form. The y location remains the same so the two forms will be even on the y-axis. frmOptions The options form is identical to the debug for with one exception, the LocationChanged function positions the form to the bottom of the child form. Notice that the function is similar except the x and y points have been changed. Private Sub frmOptions_LocationChanged(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.LocationChanged If bFormLock = True Then ptFormLocation.X = Me.Location.X ptFormLocation.Y = Me.Location.Y - Me.myparent.Height Me.myparent.Location = ptFormLocation End If End Sub frmDebug The main form needs four buttons: btnDebug - used to show the debug form btnDebugDocking - dock the debug form btnOptions - used to show the options form btnOptionsDocking - dock the options form Of course the main form is where everything is tied together. Add references for the debug and options form: 'Docking Forms Friend WithEvents DebugForm As New frmDebug Dim ptDebugFormLocation As Point Shared bDebugFormLock As Boolean = True 'Options Form Dim OptionsForm As New frmOptions Dim ptOptionsFormLocation As Point Shared bOptionsFormLock As Boolean = True In my case I want the debug form to be shown as the program starts so I added an OnLoad function: Protected Overrides Sub OnLoad(ByVal e As EventArgs) frmDebug_Show() End Sub The function LocationChanged, moves both child forms if the parent is moved. Private Sub frmMain_LocationChanged(ByVal sender As System.Object, _ ByVal e As System.EventArgs) _ Handles MyBase.LocationChanged If bDebugFormLock = True Then ptDebugFormLocation.X = Me.Location.X + Me.Width ptDebugFormLocation.Y = Me.Location.Y DebugForm.Location = ptDebugFormLocation End If If bOptionsFormLock = True Then ptOptionsFormLocation.X = Me.Location.X ptOptionsFormLocation.Y = Me.Location.Y + Me.Height OptionsForm.Location = ptOptionsFormLocation End If End SubThe function is similar to the code in the child forms except the minus is replaced by a plus function. Two seperate event handlers are needed for each form. The creation of the debug child form: Private Sub frmOptions_Show() If OptionsForm.Visible = False Then If bOptionsFormLock = True Then ptOptionsFormLocation.X = Me.Location.X ptOptionsFormLocation.Y = Me.Location.Y + Me.Height OptionsForm.StartPosition = FormStartPosition.Manual OptionsForm.Location = ptOptionsFormLocation OptionsForm.Width = Me.Width OptionsForm.bFormLock = True End If OptionsForm.Visible = True OptionsForm.myparent = Me Me.AddOwnedForm(OptionsForm) OptionsForm.Show() btnOptions.Text = "Options <<" Else OptionsForm.Visible = False OptionsForm.bFormLock = False btnOptions.Text = "Options >>" End If End SubThis handles the start location of the form and part of the docking buttons operation. Next is the btnDebugDocking.Click event. This sets the property in the debug child form bFormLock. If true then the form will dock. If false the child from can be moved freely of its parent. Private Sub btnDebugDocking_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, _ ByVal e As System.EventArgs) _ Handles btnDebugDocking.Click If bDebugFormLock = True Then ' To Unlock bDebugFormLock = False DebugForm.bFormLock = False btnDebugDocking.Text = "L" Else bDebugFormLock = True 'To Lock DebugForm.bFormLock = True ptDebugFormLocation.X = Me.Location.X + Me.Width ptDebugFormLocation.Y = Me.Location.Y DebugForm.Location = ptDebugFormLocation btnDebugDocking.Text = "U" End If The code for the options form is once again very similar to the debug form. The only difference is in the x and y-axis point needed to place the options form. Instead of located to the right, the form is located to the bottom. Creation: Private Sub frmOptions_Show() If OptionsForm.Visible = False Then If bOptionsFormLock = True Then ptOptionsFormLocation.X = Me.Location.X ptOptionsFormLocation.Y = Me.Location.Y + Me.Height OptionsForm.StartPosition = FormStartPosition.Manual OptionsForm.Location = ptOptionsFormLocation OptionsForm.Width = Me.Width OptionsForm.bFormLock = True End If OptionsForm.Visible = True OptionsForm.myparent = Me Me.AddOwnedForm(OptionsForm) OptionsForm.Show() btnOptions.Text = "Options <<" Else OptionsForm.Visible = False OptionsForm.bFormLock = False btnOptions.Text = "Options >>" End If End Sub btnOptionsDocking.Click: Private Sub btnOptionsDocking_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, _ ByVal e As System.EventArgs) _ Handles btnOptionsDocking.Click If bOptionsFormLock = True Then ' To Unlock bOptionsFormLock = False OptionsForm.bFormLock = False btnOptionsDocking.Text = "L" Else bOptionsFormLock = True 'To Lock OptionsForm.bFormLock = True ptOptionsFormLocation.X = Me.Location.X ptOptionsFormLocation.Y = Me.Location.Y + Me.Height OptionsForm.Location = ptOptionsFormLocation btnOptionsDocking.Text = "U" End If End Sub Conclusion I have found this code to be quite useful over several projects. In the future I may work on a GDI+ version of this project but that may be a ways down the road as this implemention works so well. Attached is the project that holds all the files needed for this project. Docking_Forms is written is Microsoft Visual Basic.NET 2003.

In the latest version of my homemade Yahoo client I would like to connect to the Yahoo services through a proxie server. Now the question is how would I do such a thing? I am starting to explore the GlobalProxySelection attribute but it seams to me that this will affect the entire system if this is set. The program can log multiple users in so I don't want to tie every user to the same proxy. Additionally. I am using raw sockets to make my connection. Has anyone used GlobalProxySelection or know of a way to tie an individual socket to a proxy.P.S. Yahoo uses port 5050 to make the pager connection. Will a proxy forward this port or will I have to get fancier and find a SOCKS proxy?

I would like to add a little to what MSE has already said. To bruteforce is to try every possible permuntation that a particular, usually encryption, algorithm can produce. I have written a DES brute force application before so I will use it as a reference. DES is short for Data Encryption Standard http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/fips/fips46-3/fips46-3.pdf and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Encryption_Standard . Basically DES was created by the NSA as a standard encryption means for the US government. DES uses three elements, a 64-bit plain text, 64-bit key, and a 64-bit chipher text. The key and plain text is feed into the algorithm and the chipher text is the output. Another interesting point is that the 64-bit key is actually not 64 bits but 56-bit due to 8 parity bits. So the question is this. There is a finite number of bit combinations that 56 bits can make. The combinations are 2^56 or 72057594037927936 keys to be tried. To brute force an algorithm one must try every possible 72057594037927936 keys. This may seem imposible and it is without computers, and a lot of them. Simply start with the bit sequence of 0 and work you way to the end, ie: 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000001 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000010 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000011 ... 11111111 11111111 11111111 11111111 11111111 11111111 11111110 11111111 11111111 11111111 11111111 11111111 11111111 11111111 This will give you every possible key and one of them WILL be correct. On average the result will be found in half the time it takes to compute the entire key space. In my results it would take 10,000 Penium 2.5GHz computers about 1.53 years to break a DES key. With specialized hardware the process can be scaled down to about 15 hours. Electronic Freedom Foundation, âCracking DES: Secrets of Encryption Research, Wiretap Policies, and Chip Design,â 1999. A simplier and more widely used method is to use word lists of common passwords. Instead of trying every possible combination, encode a word, compare it to the password hash and see if a match is present. One of the more common programs is John the Ripper http://www.openwall.com/john/ . John is portible across almost any platform including Linux and Windows. If you want to brute force across the network you will need several proxies and an http brute forcer (I'm just assuming you want to crack website paswords).

I will give you the point that it will be harder to implement some paloads but it will far from eliminate the problem as a whole. One common technique used is the NOP slides. Simply pad the payload with NOPs until the code gets to the correct memory address. Also does this adress using very common libaries, which many popular exploits use to break out of a certain memory space?

While I am on the subject I should explain why I'm not that worried by booters. 1) While I do use Messenger for the majority of my communications, the people in my buddy list are somewhat trustworthy. I don't have to worry about them launching an attack on me. 2) I never use Messenger in chats. Chats are where you pick up most of the crap Yahoo has to offer. I use Yahelite http://www.yahelite.org/ which is in my mind a great chat program. Yahelite offers updates all the time that takes care of the booters and goes a long way to protect you against the latest crap floating out there. 3) If you insist in using Yahoo Messenger for chat rooms then pick up YTunnel!. YTunnel works like a proxy between Messenger and the Yahoo network. It will filter out bad packets before they can get to Messenger. 4) Run all the standard security products that EVERYONE should be running. Up to date antivirus, windows updates, firewalls, spyware scanners 5) Don't open unsolicited IMs. I done this once and payed for it. After recieving an IM with an http address in it, I was wondering as to where it went, so I opend it. As expected it was spam but unexpected was the results. From that point on I would get unsloicited IMs even if I was invisible. The only thing I can think of is the sire recorded my IP address and can tell when I am online. Don't open the http addresses, simple ignore the user and close the box.

One of the biggest questions that pops into my head with this question is censorship. I do almost all my chatting on Yahoo and I have to agree that there is alot of unsavory things going on. My question is who's place is it to say who is right and wrong and which rooms should be shut down.IMHO I think Yahoo is starting to self destruct but for other reasons. Over the past few months I have noticed an increase in server problems. The biggest problem that I have seen is the chat listing server locks up from time to time so you can not get the latest listing, sometimes for several days.Another problem that needs adressing are the booters. I have done quite a bit of research into booters, and have made a few programs on my own. Before you yell at me, I do this mostly to prevents the booters and find new ways to stop the attacks. Much like hacking, you have to know how to hack before you can stop it. Anyway, back to the subject. The largest and most effectice boot has been around since the middle of next year. It involves sending multiple conference requests in a short amount of time that results in a race condition within messenger. This problem can be fixed by Yahoo but they have negelected to do so! Yahoo even has an auto update feature that checks before Messenger is started. Why didn't they push a patch ohh lets say 8 months ago? To me it looks like Yahoo is having personal problems above anything else. If they can't get enough programers to create a patch, I seriously doubt they can get enought personal to censor the rooms.

As always thank you microscopic^earthling.

This seams pretty simple but I can't seam to find it out on the net. I would like to include the build information in my help dialogue box.Ex.----------------------------| Welcome to help || Build 132 |----------------------------after the next recompile----------------------------| Welcome to help || Build 133 |----------------------------Sorry for the cheesey ascii but I figured it would be the best to get my point across.

I don't want to spam by posting the entire article but this was brougt to my attention by an email posting at work. Since I have not seen it in this thread here it is. The full atricle can be found at http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ "Firefox has unpatched "extremely critical" security holes and exploit code is already circulating on the Net, security researchers have warned. The two unpatched flaws in the Mozilla browser could allow an attacker to take control of your system." Security focus also has a note http://www.securityfocus.com/advisories/8430

Nope that's it thanks!

I've said it in other posts but hereit goes again, you might also consider using Microsoft's Virtual PC https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/products/windows From a high level the performance is about the same as VMware but VMWare still beats it in several areas. I will also agree that dual booting is also the best approach in most cases but in a few, virtual machines are just what the doctor ordered. My particular case involves penetration network testing. There is nothing like firing up Fedoda Core in windows and running both platforms at the same time. If I need to launch a windows tool, just start it. If I need to run a Nessus scan while that is going on, just start it in the virtual machine. Virtual machines save alot of time this way, you don't have to constantly reboot just to run a minor tool that is not ported for windows.

Here is another point to ponder with reguard to hackers. National security. Now I know not all in this forum are from the same background as myself, American. I have no intention of starting a flame war but I do have an observation to make and it requires my own view point.For may years it has been know that Chineese hackers have been training to infiltrate the US information network if so needed. It has been recently shown the the Chineese governemt even holds training camps for this activity, akin to military A-school for hackers. Now as for Americans or any other country for that matter, what keeps us save from these types of attacks? Hackers of course. If the hackers can find the security holes before another governemt can then it makes us safer all around.P.S. How do you get the usage statistics for your site on the botom of your posts?

A question by my wife got me started to think about how hackers both take away from and add to the fairly complex software engineering ecosystem. We were both home from work over lunch today and we were watching Fox News. We started talking about the stock market and the subject of Microsoft came up. Shortly the question was asked, what keeps Microsoft from literly taking aver the world with their software by adding a back door of some sort. She cited the movie "The Net" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113957/ where a security company put a back door in their software and started to mess with fairly high level political decisions and the such. A little about my wife. She is far from being computer savy. She uses the standard Microsoft programs at work (XP, Office, Publisher, etc) and is fairly internet savy. She can perform many of the basic tasks required at work and home and can usually figure out how to do relitivity simple tasks that are new to her, such as using a new CD burning program. She knows next to nothing about how computers really work and really doesn't want to. Her knowledge of the darker side of computers are pretty much limited to our random discussions where I get going on a tangent and any papers that she helps me write. But she made a good point at lunch. What does keep a big corporation such as Microsoft from taking over "the world" and who keeps them in control. My initial response to her was that hackers do this work. Just as the natural ecosystem needs certain at first unsightly critters, so does the computer ecosystem. My first thought on this was the lamprey fish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamprey These critters are for a lack of a better word, parisites. They attach to other fish such as sharks and suck on the host's blood. At first this seems like a creature that should not exist at all, it should be eraticated from the face of the earth. But where whould the shard be with out it's parasite? Does the shark actually need lampreys to survive? The same is true with mosquitoes. How many of us wish they never existed? But they are there are a reason. How would the larger ecosystem fare if the mosquitoe no longer existed. My thoughts have brought me to the conclusion that hackers are the same in the computer engineering ecosystem. At first they may be seen as a total parisite and should be destroyed but they do hold value to even the most anti-hacker personality. Without hackers who would keep certain big company in control? If a back door directly connected to Redmon was ever detected who would find it? Lawyers, Law-enforcment or hackers? Of course it would be the hackers. By constantly probing, scanning, and trying to defeat security measures, they are makeing the software scene better. By finding backdoors or simply picking off the weakest of the heard, hackers have evolved to fit a certain role and are needed in the greater ecosystem. Tell me what you think and if there are other areas that hackers help the greater ecosystem.

Only small suggestion that I could make is to turn off the "simple file sharing" on the Windows XP box. This is mostly from a security point of view as it resticts who you will let see your shared files. Also be careful what you share, you never know who is looking at it.To turn off simple file sharing:From My Computer Window > Tools > Folder Options > View >uncheck the last entry "use simple file sharing (Recommended)"

I believe your major proble is HEAT. I have seen many laptops and even a few desktop systems that have had heat related issues that result in a shutdown. Laptops are in particular prone to this problem, mostly because they are ment to a portable computer and not ment for high end computing or gamming. Laptops have build in circuitry that will allow them to shut down in a simi-controlled manner when an over heat occurs. This can make it harder to diagnose a heat problem. Try this. Prop your laptop on a couple of books to allow air to flow under the unit. Make sure you don't block the CPU fan with the books. Start up the laptop and play your games. If you can get even a few more mins of gameplay compared to the non-ventalated version you are most likely the victim of over heating. If overheating is the problem then you might want to consider one of the products listed below. http://www.cluboverclocker.com/reviews/coodevices/bytecc/ http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ https://www.coolerguys.com/products/spire-pacificbreeze-laptop-cooler-2usb-port-model-sp300

BTW, I forgot to post the other like I have been using for Virtual PC vs. VMware http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ http://arstechnica.com/features/2004/08/vm/