dencorso

I do have yet a third one: a USB 2.0 64 GB Corsair Flash Voyager GTS (the yellow & black one), which is not very fast, despite its name, but otherwhise works all right, too. Of course, since my 9x is Win 98SE, my drivers are Maximus-Decim's NUSB, from the time he started creating them. These experinces I'm reporting refer to NUSB 3.6 (although I may have used the Corsair with v. 3.5, too).

I confirm that: my USB 3.0 WD My Passport 2TB is detected and works normally in USB 2.1 mode (= USB 2.0 compatibility mode). It's partitioned internally into 2 partitions of a little less than 1 TB, however, because of the 1 TiB bug (I have, of course, applied a patch for it in my main 98SE machine, but that's not the only 9x/ME machine I service). As for pendrives, just for the record, both my USB 3.0 64 GB Kingston DT Workspace and USB 3.0 64 GB Patriot Supersonic Magnum are detected and work normally in USB 2.1 mode.

Hi, jaclaz! Yes, it looks like my machine is having an error. Thanks for chiming in and for the suggestions. Before reading you reply, I tried swapping all three memory sticks (3x 1 GiB DDR 400 @ 333 MHz) by other three actually older sticks, but known to be good. Done it because it's the easiest thing to do. If the BSOD persists, I'll move the HDDs and PCI cards to another identical motherboard / processor assembly (which is where the removed RAM sticks are going to be after cleaning). If that also proves useless, then I'll get the full dump.

Thanks for the swift reply! Yes, it was the 1st time ever for me... some weeks ago... but, since then, it has been happening from time to time in the oldest of my current machines (running XP SP3).

Have you ever encountered the BSOD referenced in the title? It's aka Bug Check 0x000000A7, BTW... Can any of you all tell what is it related to? I'm betting on intermittent hardware failure from hardware about to die, but any solid info on that is surely much appreciated.

+1 (in reference to bphlpt's post #43 above). Those are wise words. And consider multibooting... 9x/ME brought me to MSFN. Here I learned about multibooting. Nowadays, I just wonder how did I manage to survive using single boot machines for so long. With XP x64, Vista x64 (and a bootable image of Vista PE x86 or a Live Linux image for emergencies) you cover all the bases.

The reason I think XXCopy can do it is because MRGCAV or Dietmar used XXCopy Pro for it in the already mentioned (in post #2, bynuser Ffin) How to install Windows Vista on a FAT32 partition and the differences between XXCOPY Pro and Freeware are mainly irrelevant for this purpose, so the free version should be able to do it (then again, that was actually done with Vista x86...).

If you can give it one last try, for the time being, do try: xxcopy d: c: /clone /yy More info: XXCopy Technical Bulletin #010

I think you may get to fix it by playing with the numerous command-line options offered by xxcopy. Then again, using two different apps to copy the partition contents could be a solution, too, even if a somewhat more awkward one.

@TmEE: Please do it. It's findable nowhere else. Regretably it seems the reference repository at Tech-Assist stopped being updated at v. 3.3 (v. 3.4 wasn't ever released, but they've missed v. 3.5 and v. 3.6). Edit (in view of the post following this one): Tanks a lot! You rock! BTW, just found the russian NUSB35r.exe

Your apologies are warmly accepted. What I wrote *is* easy to misinterpret, and you don't know me enough to be able to guess how I meant it. ...And emoticons help little in cases like that, regretably. Now, the subject is really involved. You've ventured into one of the long-standing open problems about Vista and successors. Dietmar has proven it's doable to boot Vista sp0 x86 from FAT-32. No one knows how good it's long-time stability is. And nothing more is know about all other Vista+ OSes, except for the experiments Tripredacus has just performed. I hope to be able to join the experimentation after Dec 20 or so. Before that I'll have to be content to provide suggestions and discuss results, but I won't be able to contribute any original experiments myself, although I'd much like to. For now I have to say I keep betting the best way to copy the proble directories and files is XXCOPY, which is very powerful and up to date. IIRR it does have a x64 version, but that's not free. [Later edit: I stand corrected. Thanks, bphlpt! ] The free version is a command-line application, although it may use an independent progress-bar window (which I deem absolutely unnecessary, but some users love). I think XXCopy and FAT32Format are the best alternatives to perform their respective jobs, in this case. Please do you all kindly give a good look at XXCOPY and Reparse Points... I'm sure one of those options may solve the issue you found, Tripredacus.

Apparently, Tripredacus, what really matters is the copy (file-by-file) to a 2nd place, then back, with the conversion to FAT-32 in the middle, and then the correction of the bootsector to a FAT-32 bootable one. Whether it was actually booted previously seems not to affect the result. And how does it work over an extended time period has not been reported at all, AFAIK...

@Jody: Well, for starters... I'm dencorso, not jaclaz, and you replied to my post as if I were jaclaz... Now, the fact I couldn't care less for Vista if I tried, does not mean I didn't read *very* carefully *all* of Dietmar's posts, which sometimes require some deep reflection due to the way his German interferes with his English. One of the few who experimented with moving Vista (x86, but Vista nonetheless) to FAT-32 and reported it in very fine detail is Dietmar. And his method consists in: Install Vista normally and confirm it's working.Save a (bit-by-bit) image of it, as backup.Copy all the files in it, except pagefile.sys and hyberfil.sys to another partition (preferably in a different HDD) using copy, robocopy or xcopy (I'm sure xxcopy can do it better than those). Replace the rare files > 4 GiB by 0 byte dummies, if any is found.Format the original partition Vista was installed in with FAT-32 (fat32format is the fastest reliable way to do it).Copy back all the files from the original Vista installation that were copied to that different partition, again with, say, xxcopy.Restore the boot sector to a bootable vista FAT-32 using bootsect.exe (despite what I said above, maybe the one from Vista sp0 may be required).Now Vista should be booting and working from FAT-32All may other comments, too, were not intended to be mean, just to point out that the questions you were coming with are actually *unanswerable*, unless one actualy checks the answer experimentally. I never even though about Google while writing my reply, because the numerous Dietmar threads across 3 forums are about all that matters in this case, or do contain pointers to any other relevant materials, so once one is aware of them, Google, Yandex, DuckDuckGo, etc. are all useless, even if a German-English dictionary may come in handy. I'm genuinely interested in what you may find out, once you start experimenting. I intend to do so myself with 7 x86, as I said. But, for now I simply don't have time to do it properly, so I didn't start. I really meant no offense at all. Cheers!

Who knows? The only way of knowing the answer to that and many other equally abstruse questions any of us may go on inventing, is to stop talking, and proceed to experimentation, with all due respect. I, personally, do not care for Vista x86 at all, much less for Vista x64, but I'm interested in trying to coax (or maybe coerce) Win 7 x86 into working from FAT32, along the lines of Dietmar's work on Vista x86, so your results, if you decide to pass on to experimentation, do interest me deeply. With all due respect, in the immortal words of Jan van de Snepscheut (or, maybe, Yogi Berra): "In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is"... so I do think it's time to proceed to experimentation. IMO, all you need is any good Live Linux distro or, even better, a Windows PE (as a bootable pendrive or CD/DVD), the latest xxcopy.exe, fat32format.exe and bootsect.exe (preferably v. 6.3.9431.0)... plenty of time... and patience galore! A good plan also helps, but with image backups one can recover from almost any mistake, so even a lousy plan is a good way to start.

I've later found out that there are even newer hal.dlls (v. 5.1.2600.5687), but just for multicore processors (and not needed unless one's machne has more than 8 logical processors). They're found in KB958244 and, as above, the KB article is gone, but the hotfix remains available by request from MS. Long live, XP!

Welcome to MSFN, TitoHL!

Is that at all possible? I mean, moving pagefile.sys is well established even to places it clearly wasn't meant to be moved to, like removable disks (the latter, mainly thanks to Karyonix ). Now, moving hyberfil.sys (as opposed to disabling it, which is trivial) is said to be impossible, but so was putting pagefile.sys on removable disks, until Karyonix solved it. I've never pursued that seriously, because I like my machines turned off, not hybernating... but since you talked about it, are there any reliable reports it has been done, and, better still, descriptions of how to do it?

Make sure you didn't tell it to forget who the last logged user was. It's one of the options TweakUI offers, IIRR, in the Paranoia Tab.

No. You might as well edit the registry as directed, of course. But the right TweakUI is findable from MS (err... sort of) or at MDGx's.

Yes. The controller board is toast.

That's news to me... (which also serves to show it's been some time since I last ventured here, of course)... would you please kindly provide a link for more info about these adapters with the added capacitor? TIA. And, BTW, you do rock!

If you're talking drivers, and you're really dead serious about it, then killing the DOSBox bug of Bearwindows VBEMP might be the single most valuable contribution you might make while getting a real tasting of the madness one, of course, must descend into ("Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun the frumious Bandersnatch!"). I don't have my 9x favorites in this machine I'm writing from right now, but I'm sure jaclaz, RLoew or LoneCrusader will gladly provide you the needed links to read more about that.

I'd say he intends to run 9x/ME and/or 2k or earlier... why else?

The list above includes just three on-demand Hot-Fixes: KB948101-v3 contains the latest usbohci.sys, a driver needed for USB 1.x by chpsets not manufactured by VIA or Intel (for instance: NEC or nVIDIA), while KB2828030 contains the latest usbuhci.sys, a driver needed for USB 1.x by chpsets not manufactured by VIA or Intel and the latest usbehci.sys, the driver used for USB 2.x; although no machine needs both drivers for USB 1.x, adding both is harmless. There are also newer Intel chipsets which use neither USB1.x driver, providing USB 1.x compatibility mode via the USB 2.0 unit controlled by the usbehci.sys driver. KB959765 is a bugfix for remote NDIS devices that may not work correctly after a surprise removal and reattachment of the RNDIS device. ======================== Just for the sake of completeness, I list here some selected Win 2k3 SP2 files relevant for those experimenting with breaking the ~3.2 GiB limit of XP SP3 x86, using PAE: usbport.sys 5.2.3790.5203 (srv03_sp2_qfe.130720-0956) from KB2862330. usbhub.sys 5.2.3790.4555 (srv03_sp2_qfe.090718-1230) from KB972659.

The link Tripredacus provided says it supports an Intel Core 2 Duo E4500 (2.2Ghz) only after updating the BIOS to revision FC... So, IMO, yes it really may concern you, all right! Of course this is one of those situations in which YMMV, but my take here is: caveat emptor! Let me tell you why: Recently I bought a used Asus P8Z68-V LX and gave it a brand-new i7 3770K (which the mobo supports since BIOS revision 3703). However the mobo was originally released with BIOS version 0401 and the most current BIOS revision released is 4105, with 3703 being the 4th BIOS revison released, out of a total of ten revisions released up to now... So when the mobo reached my hands I plugged in the i7 3770K and the board wouldn't even POST, let alone boot. And I couldn't find out which BIOS revision the mobo had in, nor flash it, since it didn't even POST. To make short a long story, at the end I borrowed a Pentium G840 (supported since the BIOS version 0401) from a friend, and used it solely to boot the mobo and then flash the BIOS to version 4105. Then I put back my i7 3770K and all worked as it should.