guides for slimming down xp

guides for slimming down windows space:

http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=80511

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=192199

http://www.windowsbbs.com/windows-xp/54287-no-room-defrag.html

Cleaning up old device drivers

In a cmd window:
SET DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES=1
devmgmt.msc

then set
View -> Show Hidden Devices

Watch out because not all hidden devices are actually not present.


From:
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/remove-old-drivers-after-upgrading-to-new-hardware/

perl read from standard in

$var = 

or
@vars = 
foreach (@vars) {
}


from http://www.linuxtopia.org/Perl_Programming/pickingUpPerl_Input2.html

clean up old installers

Use MsiZap from ms visual studio with the G option to clean up orphaned installer patches.

From comments on http://blogs.msdn.com/heaths/archive/2007/01/17/the-patch-cache-and-freeing-space.aspx

smbpasswd failing with NT_STATUS_LOGON_FAILURE

when smbpasswd fails with "Could not connect to machine 127.0.0.1: NT_STATUS_LOGON_FAILURE" the issue is that the old password you are using is incorrect.

smbpasswd
Old SMB password:
New SMB password:
Retype new SMB password:
Could not connect to machine 127.0.0.1: NT_STATUS_LOGON_FAILURE
Failed to change password for

The old password being used is incorrect resulting in a failure to log into the machine to change your password.

Find which patches are installed on a solaris machine

This is the solaris command to display all the installed patches.

showrev -p

viewing scheduled tasks from the command line

The Windows XP utility schtasks can be used to view/query/change/run the scheduled tasks from the command line.

Remote machines can be accessed using psexec.