XP ignoring my settings...help needed

[Alex Johnson]

*Lots of crossposting. Feel free to prune the newsgroups I have chosen.*

I have just moved to Windows XP and have had repeated trouble with XP
ignoring settings I give it. Two major ones that really tick me off are
demand paging and auto-run. I've tried all the controls in the open and
am not afraid of registry tweaks. I am not inexperienced with windows,
just XP. Please provide some guidance to get XP to stop doing what I
have told it NOT TO DO.

#1 I have sufficient memory and I do not run memory intensive tasks.
The vast majority of my RAM gets used by windows as disk cache since I
do lots of data moving. As administrator I went into the advanced setup
and selected "do no use a page file". Windows happily reported that the
page file was not in use, but both Task Manager and System Information,
as well as some 3rd party tools give different information. For example
the Task Manager graph for Page File will steadily grow as I copy files
from place to place and the sum of the Availible Physical Memory and
Disk Cache lines is almost half a gigabyte over the Total Physical
Memory line. In fact adding the numbers and looking at the Commit
sizes, it seems to suggest that after an hour of using my computer
Windows has resorted to paging out disk cache!! The other applications
I've run back up this bizarre assessment.

#2 In other windows versions I could disable autorun on CDs and DVDs
quite easily and permanently. XP provided a control in the hardware
settings for each drive for what action to take when a disk inserted
contains certain types of files. I went through all my drives and all
the file types and set them to "No Action". Still, Windows will look at
what I insert into drives and pop open explorer windows and other
annoying things.

Alex
--
My words are my own. They represent no other; they belong to no other.
Don't read anything into them or you may be required to compensate me
for violation of copyright. (I do not speak for my employer.)

[Stephen]

Please don't crosspost. There are plenty of reason why you should not. Check
out this link to improve your posting:

http://dts-l.org/goodpost.htm

Stephen

--

Drop 123 to email me.


"Alex Johnson" > wrote in message
...
| *Lots of crossposting. Feel free to prune the newsgroups I have chosen.*
|
| I have just moved to Windows XP and have had repeated trouble with XP
| ignoring settings I give it. Two major ones that really tick me off are
| demand paging and auto-run. I've tried all the controls in the open and
| am not afraid of registry tweaks. I am not inexperienced with windows,
| just XP. Please provide some guidance to get XP to stop doing what I
| have told it NOT TO DO.
|
| #1 I have sufficient memory and I do not run memory intensive tasks.
| The vast majority of my RAM gets used by windows as disk cache since I
| do lots of data moving. As administrator I went into the advanced setup
| and selected "do no use a page file". Windows happily reported that the
| page file was not in use, but both Task Manager and System Information,
| as well as some 3rd party tools give different information. For example
| the Task Manager graph for Page File will steadily grow as I copy files
| from place to place and the sum of the Availible Physical Memory and
| Disk Cache lines is almost half a gigabyte over the Total Physical
| Memory line. In fact adding the numbers and looking at the Commit
| sizes, it seems to suggest that after an hour of using my computer
| Windows has resorted to paging out disk cache!! The other applications
| I've run back up this bizarre assessment.
|
| #2 In other windows versions I could disable autorun on CDs and DVDs
| quite easily and permanently. XP provided a control in the hardware
| settings for each drive for what action to take when a disk inserted
| contains certain types of files. I went through all my drives and all
| the file types and set them to "No Action". Still, Windows will look at
| what I insert into drives and pop open explorer windows and other
| annoying things.
|
| Alex
| --
| My words are my own. They represent no other; they belong to no other.
| Don't read anything into them or you may be required to compensate me
| for violation of copyright. (I do not speak for my employer.)
|

[Bob S.]

Stephen,

You cross-posted answering his post - but that's not the reason for this
response. You provided a reference link indicating that it will provide
plenty of reasons why one should not cross-post. I checked it out and can't
find a single reason. It has some good suggestions but it's certainly not
the law. Cross-posting is not a bad thing and can be a time-saver if used
wisely. I'll agree that his post should have been refined a bit and now he
knows that.

When you look at some of the names of the MS newsgroups, you have to wonder
what they're about and that in itself creates a problem. Some others have
self-explanatory names. I've been jumped on when I've posted to a ng asking
if that was the correct group to post to and if not, then asking for which
ng is appropriate. So, it's damned if you do and damned if you don't in
some cases. Such as you asking him not to cross-post AND not offering any
help.

Now neither of us has helped him so far in answering his questions and to
that end I'll offer this bit of help. There are a number of sites that can
answer your questions authoritively and provide you with tips and hints that
makes WinXP easier to use and understand. One of the best is
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp.htm and there are others such as:

http://www.mvps.org/links.html < List of MVP Web Sites
http://www.dougknox.com/
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/tp.porterfield/support/
http://winsupportcenter.com/regfiles.htm < click on "Disable CD AutoRun" to
download the registry tweak
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh;en-us;winxp
http://www.winguides.com/registry/
http://winsupportcenter.com/win5/
http://www.onecomputerguy.com/windowsxp_tips.htm
http://aumha.org/win5/index.htm
http://aumha.org/win5/kbwin2k.htm
http://www.jsiinc.com/reghack.htm
http://www.geocities.com/marfer_mvp/xp_notes.htm
http://snakefoot.fateback.com/tweak/winnt/services.html
http://blackviper.com/index.html

and these sites have links to others. The one site I've indicated has a reg
tweak to disable AutoRun and it works. The answer to your other question
is beyond my knowledge but hopefully one of the MVP's will steer you in the
right direction.

Bob S.