On Fri, 19 Aug 2005 16:49:37 GMT, Leythos wrote:
says...

Right-on Cquirke regarding your point #2: reinstalling would have
resulted in spinning my wheels since I strongly felt that the problem was on
the computer 'out of the box' - which it was. I followed the help file
instructions in order to disable DEP for IE. Everything is now working -
even Access. Before disabling DEP, I created a 3 line wordpad file consisting
of ABC, testing and 123. DEP even shutdown this file.

I hate to say this, but if you had to modify DEP to get Wordpad to work,
then you still have problems with your computer - something is
definitely NOT right with it.

Are you thinking of a hardware issue, then?

I still think this could be av, in that av will be active whenever you
"open" anything. If the way the av handles material picks a fight
with DEP, you may see problems - or just spontaneously restart, if the
duhfault XP "Restart on system errors" setting's still in effect.

I've never seen a computer yet that required any changes to DEP, and
we've got more than 1000 of them running XP with SPS2.

It's been one of the themes post-SP2. Not as common as some problems,
but common enough to come to mind. As to 1000 PCs, it's a bit like a
comment I heard between two academic professionals discussing a third:
- "He's been in that post for 12 years, so he has the experience..."
- ' Yes, but is that 12 years' experience, or 1 year 12 times? '

IOW, if those 1000 PCs are all in one corporate network with
tightly-controlled settings, aopps, the same av rolled out throughout
the organisation, same hardware vendors, etc. then there may be plenty
of configurations you haven't had experience with.

That's certainly my case; none of the kit I use is currently
DEP-capable, so understandably I haven't seen the issue first-hand.

Since AV wasn't your issue,

How do you conclude that? I don't remember really seeing that
excluded, though I may have missed something.

and since you still don't know what the actual problem is, I would
suggest that in order to prevent additional problems that you do a
factory restore on the machine.

Nah, I still think that's one of the worst ideas I've heard so far.

Earlier on, it sounded as if you suspected an underlying hardware
problem - in which case, this is a recipe for disaster; you go from a
code base that mainly predates the start of the hardware issues, and
replace it with a code base 100% subjected to those issues.

As to malware, falling back to unpatched status is likely to make
re-infection a lot easier too.

As to DEP, then falling back to pre-SP2 code is going to "fix the
problem" the same way as disabling DEP would do, but with FAR more
side-effects and lost protection. Disabling DEP leaves him with an
SP2 code base and no DEP, whereas your "solution" drops him back to
who knows what exploitable patch level.

We've got tons of Dell systems and, again, nothing with DEP
had/has to be changed.

Dell are Intel, whereas AMD were the initiators of DEP hardware
support, with Intel recently catching up. So experience on Dell
systems up to a year ago isn't going to expose you to DEP issues.

Before you write back and say it's working fine - consider what you
actually did and why you had to do it with Wordpad, and remember that no
one has reported needing to modify DEP for Wordpad that I've read
anywhere.

Hint: Background tasks :-)

It's not Wordpad that's likely to be crashing on DEP, as much as the
av that scans Wordpad when it starts, and the document file that
Wordpad opens and closes - especially if that's a .doc

Really, if using the relevant Boot.ini parameter to suppress DEP
support solves the problem, then he's in good company with a familiar
issue, and the fix is a lot cleaner than "just" re-install.

Let's Google this stuff... Google(XP SP2 DEP):

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/pro.../sp2mempr.mspx

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/875352

http://www.tech-recipes.com/windows_tips566.html

Zone Alarm has some issues with DEP:

http://www.zonelabs.com/store/conten...id=ts_xpsp2faq

ProTools has problems with DEP:

http://www.digidesign.com/compato/xp/os.cfm

F-Secure has problems with DEP:

http://support.f-secure.com/enu/corp...al/xpsp2.shtml

Kaspersky av and DEP:

http://gladiator-antivirus.com/forum...howtopic=17753

Dongles screw up on DEP:

http://www.scala.com/miscellaneous-f...faq-index.html

OK... I think we see the trend here; usually new versions from vendors
to fix issues with DEP. So what I'd do is:
- build a list of what software's running on the box
(especially underfootware)
- test suppressing these in MSConfig
- if offender's identified, check that vendor's FAQs etc. on DEP
- stay off the 'net while firewall and av are disabled

You may need more than MSConfig on this, as that doesn't cover all
possible underfootware integration points. You can use HiJackThis,
SystemInternals tools, Faber Toys or NirSoft's utilities to get a
better handle on what's running in the background, or as a side-effect
of (say) listing files in Explorer or even a File Open dialog box.





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The most accurate diagnostic instrument
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