Deja Vu!!

Post Reply New Topic

Also, any MS operating system called "Home" is deliberately crippled. Moreso than their other ones.

I think that might only be on the face of things, however, but I do not know which operating systems might apply here. I have heard "Anytime Update" simply turns features on after a fee is paid. The stuff is already there, just disabled.

You probably guessed the reason already, it's permissions again. But first, are you sure you wanted to share the IE temp directory? Besides the obvious privacy concern, you will likely run into trouble if you log on to more than one of those users at the same time (eg Fast User Switching).
If you still want to go ahead, the easiest way is to format that partition in FAT32. If you want to keep using NTFS, all the users that share that directory has to be in the Administrators group and you have to change this registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa\NoDefaultAdminOwner=0
That will make the Administrators group as the owner of objects created by an administrator. If you have already moved at least one account to that directory, move it to another location, make sure the directory in D: is deleted, and then move it back.

This all seems a cluster euphemism to me, and a lot of fiddling around for little effect.

Yes, maybe, but we are talking about two computers going to people who neither understand nor care much about anything beyond their desktops and I am going to be moving away. So, the challenge is to set things up for minimal disk-space usage of the temporary variety.



Yes, and along with the matter of permissions, I thought about that at about the same time I was asking the question. But, I will keep this in mind for one thing or another in the future:



Something I read somewhere earlier this evening introduced the idea of using "All Users" for common folders, and maybe that would be similar to have multiple users in an Admin group? But for now, I just have everybody's Temp folders in a common folder where I want them and I have CCleaner set to delete their content at Startup.

I'd say you are missing several points, here, leejosepho.

I allocate 50 Mbyte cache to my browsers. Each of them... that is... SeaMonkey, Firefox, Opera, Dillo, Links, Lynx, Elinks, Links 2 and Konqueror - well maybe I lie a little. Most of those I don't use more than once in a blue moon, and I doubt I've checked exactly what size cache they use). By default, IE allocates a percentage of the drive size - which is insane, these days. So, anyway, make sure the cache is set to a sensible size. I reckon 50 Mbyte to be generous. And yes, once in a while I use IE, and it certainly gets no more than 50 Mbytes to play with.

Deleting the cache is not a good idea. It just wastes your bandwidth, every time, by having to reload most of what you had in there, every time - which all slows down your browser.

You might also want to look at http://www.squid-cache.org/ or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWWOFFLE for methods of reducing bandwidth. This will merge requests from multiple users, each with a minimal cache, while the local proxy maintains a single cache (across both users and browsers).

Personally I use a ram drive cache for mine. A certain portion of my system memory is set to emulate a physical drive and the internet cache is set there. This clears it on shutdown as well. Another benefit is that my hard drive doesnt spin every time I access a new site.

I will check those things out, and yes, I see my need to take a better look at how to handle browser files. But for now, I still have a problem to solve in XP accounts ...

I have an .exe file sitting in a folder in a hard drive (G:), and I cannot get a shortcut placed in C: to consistently find its way back to that file. This has me baffled. I make the shortcut right there by the file and it works just fine ... but then it (the shortcut) will only work just once (and no more) after I move it to the other drive unless I place it on the Administrator's or one other desktop.

Does anybody know how to make any sense out of that?!

Fuzzy and Orwell: Windows 7 might have set me right up for booting into Mint here! It is the fourth OS on my new drive in the Systemax (the P4M800 machine), and it left an empty (dead-end) option in the boot menu:

1) Previous Operating Systems (leads to choice between 98/2k/xp)
2) Windows 7
3) Microsoft Windows (leading nowhere)

So, maybe there is a way to connect Mint to option 3?

When Mint installs, it will install the Grub bootloader which will give you the option to boot either Windows or Mint. I'm not sure how it would play with ancient versions of Windows, but I'm sure it can be done.

Ancient, eh?!

Oh well, Orwell!

Anyway ...

I will first have to learn about whatever Win7 did. It was installed last in partition 4 of my first drive, and it shows as F: in 2k and XP. However, it shows itself as C: when running, and with 98 as allegedly being in D:. It put a 14mb folder full of "bootmgr.exe.mui" and font files in sub-folders on C: (with 98), and the initial options it presents are different than what I already posted from out of boot.ini. So, it might take me a while to figure out what it is doing so I know what to watch for when considering the addition of Mint.

Question: Can Mint go into the second partition on a drive? I have already put a small "swap" partition at the beginning of my second drive while planning to put Mint right behind that ... and in NTFS?

Linux (e.g. Grub) will boot anything from anywhere... roughly speaking. I never even consider where I put my installations, these days. Grub has a habit of finding them.

Windows has a habit of throwing drive letters up in the air, and allocating them to whatever it happens to like today. It is not impossible to persuade it to allocate them the way you want. When I used to have a real XP install on this machine, I managed to get it to run from F:, which was a secondary partition. However, it still insisted on putting its boot files in C:, and that being the first primary partition. Maybe I could have tinkered with that, but having a small FAT partition at the start of the drive was fairly convenient. Nowadays, my XP only has existence as a VirtualBox drive file.

PS. Swap partitions... think about what's going on with them. If you have a reasonable amount of RAM, they may not even be needed (E.g. I upped the RAM to 1.5Gbyte on my netbook, and left off the swap file.)

If you are really gointg to have an active swap partition (or more than one), then think about what will be happening. As a general rulle, a swap partition toward the middle of the drive makes some sense. At least have it near the OSes that will be using it. Also have it near any data files that may be intensively in use at the same time as the swap space.

Nowadays, I don't evn tend to use primary partitions much, as they are too awkward, if you want to shuffle stuff around. E.g. one small FAT primary partition, then the rest of the drive as the extended partition... seems a reasonable way to set things up.

Stick all the Windows partitions on the start of the extended are, locate the Linux installs in the second half, with a swap partition at the 3/4 mark, maybe. Maybe keep data partitions shared between Windows and Linux (or whatever) near the middle of the drive.

If you have more than one drive, there's no harm in having swap partitions on both, or even more than one swap on the same drive. Linux will use them all. I had a rather big memory requirement, for a mathematical program, a while ago. It took three weeks to complete its job. After the first week, I noticed that my swap partition was filling up, so I added an extra 4 Gbyte partition as swap - while the program was running. Linux doesn't mind that sort of thing. When the program eventually finished, I just used swapoff to end using all that extra swap space. None of this required a reboot, or even a restart of the program.

My experience here is obviously not all that great, but I have all of my OS partitions on the first drive, and each has its own "out-of-the-box" page file there with it. Then, I have also told each OS to use the beginning of the second drive for a second page file, and I have also sent IE there ... and the difference is definitely noticeable. In the Dell I finished setting up yesterday, I did put a swap partition near the middle of the second drive, but mostly because I wanted to use the beginning of that drive as a cloned backup for the main drive.

I definitely know what you mean about Windows tossing drive letters around, and I have yet to see things go the same way twice! I did once manage to force XP into a given partition that was to be called what *I* wanted it to be called, but I did not accomplish that not on the first try.

Same feeling here.


No, "All Users" won't do. Everyone has read access but only Administrators has write permissions in there. Also when you ask IE to move the temp directory, it will explicitly set the permissions. So no matter where you put it, you still have to deal with the permission issue. That's why FAT32, which doesn't support permissions is the easiest way to do it. If you download the security tab, you can set the permissions manually after moving the directory. Even then, I'm not sure if IE will set the permissions when it creates new files.


If you are worrying about built up of temp files, that's a more sensible way.
Also if D: is a separate physical drive and you were moving the temp folder there for efficiency, you can create a sub-directory for each user. Generally putting the swap file there has more effect, and I've read you've already done that.


Linux or Windows, the boot loader has to go into the active primary partition.
A lot of programs kind of hard coded to look for C:, so it's best just use C: as the Windows partition. For other partitions, you can easily change the drive letter in Disk Management.

Vista/7 use a new boot loader so they won't use the boot.ini anymore. You need to use BCDEdit to change its boot options.


On the accounts that the shortcut isn't working:
1. Right click on the shortcut file and select properties. What does the shortcut page shows. It could be drive letter difference, or if you can't access that, a permission issue again.
2. If you double click directly on the .exe, does it run? If not, it could be the permissions of the .exe itself.
3. Does the .exe supports limited user environment? It won't have permission to write to the system directory or the program files directory (in this case somewhere in G:). So if it does, it may not run.

What we are dealing with here is the executable file that runs "BookShelf" from Disk2 in Office 95, and keep in mind that Disk2 does not get installed -- it simply sits in/on the drive waiting to be invoked. If I double-click on BookShelf's .exe, it all runs just as it should, and a shortcut to it also works fine until copied to "All Users" or a specific one of the limited user accounts. I will go back and re-read your posts to again look at the matters of permissions and how to properly copy-and-paste shortcuts between accounts, but I also believe there is something additional going on here:

As advised by the MS support rep on the phone (to save time, I suspect), I only did a "quick format" just before reinstalling XP on the system in question here (but I still accept the blame since that decision was mine). After that re-installation of XP, all the folders in Documents and Settings had doubles, with the ones from the previous installation having .Windows as extensions. In other words, and for example, there was both an "All Users" folder and an "All Users.Windows". After concluding the Docs and Sets folders with the .Windows extensions were the old ones, I deleted them all and everything was fine until after I got to the very end of setting up that computer and doing a defrag ...

Then some time later and while dealing with the .exe I have mentioned, I noticed "All Users" again had that .Windows extension.

Last edited by leejosepho on 06 Mar 2010, 2:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I have done enough reading to be able to believe it *can* be done, and now I must learn to do it.



I want to get things smoothed out, at least in my mind, before I try.



I have a FAT partition (C:) at the beginning of my drive, and it has Win98se in it. Then, 2k (D:) and XP (E:) and Win 7 (F:) each follow in their own partitions in the same drive, and Win7 pretends to be in front as "C:" when it is running. 98 and 2k and XP are chained together in XP's boot.ini, and Win7 has chained itself (not added itself) to that chain. So, I already have a two-step process going on to go into anything other than Win7, and I am not about to just turn Grub loose on that setup. Instead, I want to direct Win7's third option (that actually goes nowhere at the moment) to Mint, and Mint is going to be in the second partition in my second drive (since the first partition in my second drive is a shared "swap" partition even Mint will be welcomed to use if it can get along with all the others who go there).

Anybody here know how to do that? I want to edit (place) Mint's bootup into (as) one of Win7's existing boot options.