Windows XP startup question

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Get a dedicated computer already. Cheap enough. Craigslist, < $50:

Michael

That's certainly not the same thing as having text files. OTOH, XML or some such would be fine.

One distinction here is 'files', plural.

There isn't one single API or object that can be attacked or corrupted to trash many bits of the O/S.

And on actal production systems, different admin accounts can be set up and given permissions for various services. So the dbms admin isn't the sysadmin. and doesn't need to get into global files.

necessary.

I was thinking in terms of a fanless Mini-ITX in one of those little bread-box things. Or maybe a laptop/netbook sort of thing, so that I'd get a basic display and keyboard too. Some of them are under $300 and wouldn't use much power, and they often run Windows so all my software should work.

John

Agreed. Trying to reliably track down all the 40 character keys is=20 mind numbingly stupid.

Well, at least for applications, how much it's human-friendly vs. binary and the organization is up to the programmer. (For the OS, Microsoft makes those decisions, and, well, I guess once one chooses to run Windows one just have to live with it... it's clear Microsoft has all kinds of programmers up there, some crappy, some decent, plenty inbetween...)

Heck, with your PowerBasic programs for configuration files do you always write human-friendly text vs. sometimes just dumping raw binary data and reading it back? The later is often pretty tempting for quick & dirty applications...

I used a netbook for a weather station for my mother last year... worked great. It was something like $180, running Linux.

In your case... here, a very-low-end (but plenty powerful for your needs, I think) netbook running XP:

---Joel

True, although on a *NIX system I don't think it's much harder to just "rm -R" important directories instead of "del *".

The registry has very fine-grained security -- all the usual restrictions on who can read, write, modify/create, etc. any given branch or individual true based on user, group, etc.

It really is just like another file system in many respects...

Those gadgets could be platforms for all sorts of interesting apps. Consider that a PC/104 or COM processor module, no drives, no power supply, no enclosure, no display or keyboard, can cost $400.

John

Have you ever looked at 'Brute Force Uninstaller'? It is a script based system to rip unwanted software from a computer, and the registry.

I use text files whenever possible. They make debugging and maintanance much easier. Parsing is so fast and easy nowadays that ascii files are fine for most apps.

John

They're fairly easy to understand. For instance in HKLM/Sofware/Microsoft/Windows/Current Version/Run you can just delete the offending keys.