A friend of mine has a problem with a new laptop. I've tried to help
him, but I am also stumped by this problem, maybe one of you can help
him. I will let him explain his problem in his own words.

"I have 2 specific problems which are now frustrating me.

Background: I am not a PC professional.

My PC is my toy which I use mainly for
  A-My Virtual Reality eg
    1-Flight simulator
    2-VC++ 5 programming
    3-experimenting with audio-visual stuff
  B-My True Reality
    1-maintaining educational documentation of my own profession on
      Power Point
    2-keep contact with my family when i'm abroad via FrontPage
    3-my finances

Structure of PC:
I run MS XP Pro on my desktop @ home
I do not actively use My documents because i have no control over what
gets written to it
Some 10 years ago i started the following procedure:
my first directory/folder in C: is "#myName" and i put all my stuff in there

Software:
My Visual Studio 97(Visual c5++) uses a browsers for its help files

When I am away from home, i update my website with FrontPage to keep
contact with my kids. These are all done with "relative" links, and they
work off line long after they are no longer on the net eg......
<td><img border="0" src="images/bar2.JPG" width="640" height="480"></td>

Recently I have customized my most used folders with icons that i have
placed in the first folder in c: eg "#Icons"

All these have survived numerous backups and reinstallations after disk
reformats

Problem:
I have now bought myself a new laptop which comes with a bundled XP home.
Installed my software and data. All works except
-internet pages previously referred to displays just those little red X's
-help browser in Visual studio doesn't work...browser settings wrong
blah blah.

OK. This has to be XP home

Install XP Pro on the Laptop
Visual studio help files work but not the old web pages
Can't find a discrepancy between the settings of Internet options
between the 2 XP's the file properties of the undisplayed images
indicates the source as the local file but in the root dir of the
pc...eg ///c:/filename.
I do not know how to set the PC/browser to understand that the root
should be the folder.

Second problem that occurred is that after several reinstallations etc,
the folder specific icons do not appear anymore!
The desktop.ini's are still there and their content is good and valid
The folders are still in their original places.
the references are absolute, so no confusion eg
[.ShellClassInfo]
IconFile=%SystemDrive%\#0 Icons 4 Explorer Folders\_Work_012.ico
IconIndex=0
The folders are "read-only" to force XP to read them.
Manual reinstating the icons renders a desktop.ini with identical content.
XP is obviously not reading the desktop.ini's but why not?
What am i missing?

I've been on MS's technet site but none i get helps!"

Thanks

At Neethling
Cape Town


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