Let see if we can continue what was started [URL=http://www.lotto649.ws/showthread.php?s=&threadid=5408&perpage=20]here[/URL] as off-topic....

George was showing how he runs its machine without the windows explorer shell, just with cmd.exe!
There are quite some things we can add, or that you may want to add to that!

One thing is [URL=http://www.cygwin.com/]cygwin[/URL], an unix like environment over windows(to keep the explanation simple)
You can also run a different shell other than explorer, [URL=http://www.geoshell.com/index.asp]Geoshell[/URL] for example! See more [URL=http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Software/Operating_Systems/Microsoft_Windows/Software/Alternate_Shells/]here![/URL]

Then there are plenty of utilities to trace and help understand what your windows machine is doing...look at sysinternals [URL=http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/utilities.shtml]NT/2K/XP page[/URL] for some good ones!

...System Internals... ...now you are takin'... ...the price is right, free... ...there are possible consequences to installing programs like these... ...especially on a crappy O/S like Windows... ...I will need keep a close eye on things... ...before I install any of them, a backup is the first thing on the list... ...is there is a problem, I'll have a way out... ...there is nothing worse I could think of than trying to recover/cleanup a cripple system... ...mind you I have 3 partitions I can boot from... ...being prepared is important...
...have you tried out any of the System Interals programs?...

You may be specially interested in the [URL=http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/pagedefrag.shtml]Pagedegrag[/URL]
utility....

Personnaly I like the processexplorer and the pstools.... but all of their monitoring tools are great!

Talking about good utilities, I recently found [URL=http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/about.php]Notepad++[/URL] which has some interesting features to help my programming..... to bad it doesn't support Rexx [at least I can't see it anywhere]!

...after a backup, I'll give that one a try... ...I do have Speed Disk from Norton too...
...I got no use for a notepad or any kind (most of the programs including notepad itself are garbage)... ...all my editing is done with "THE.exe"... ..."THE.exe" does run with Rexx... ...all my really cool macros I developed on the mainframes work on the PC... ...minor adjustments here and there, nothing major... ...works really well... ...the time spent writing them has not gone to waste... ...that is the most important point... ...if you have no expertise on mainframes then some of these things I use and prefer would be quite strange...

...most of the members reading this thread will have no clue with this stuff... ...I'm going to reBOOT and run a backup before I do anything else... ...mind you, I can still post when I'm in that partition... ...all of them know where the common partition dedicated for e-Mail is...

Thornc:

Send me another e-Mail (same one as before for me)... ...your's has changed.

Regards,
George

PageDefrag, has anybody tried this? Is it safe?

My favorite tools from that site are regmon and filemon

Reply on the way....

fenris,
I have used it several time without any problems... backup you date before running the program and try it out!

Thornc is a gentleman....

...of course...

You don't have to be shy...I meant that statement...I wouldn't mind having you inside the privilege group we have...
Are you hearing me George ???
thornc would be an awesome addition to the elite players network we have set up...

I'll e-mail everyone about that...

I am flatered (typos?) for the comments.
I must however warn you that my free time to look at lotto things is these days very reduced..... but I am sure that you can find me resourcefull....

Same here..and same for most of us...Don't worry about that...