dencorso

Welcome to MSFN, izuki!

Wecome to MSFN!

Probably because java uses "BIOS" not "DOS" services to write... I'ts a PITA, but, then again, it'd be fun if java relied on DOS, wouldn't it?

Suzi Quattro - 48 Crash Steppenwolf - The Pusher Alphaville - Forever Young

Great! Glad to hear it!

Well, that changes things somewhat, so... Athlon XP-M 2800+ (@2333 MHz) / 3 GiB / XP SP3 / AVG 2011/ Word 97: 11.23 s best, 13.16 s median, 16.67 s worst. Measured in the way JorgeA specified (the file was opened by clicking on it from outside Word... afterwards I closed Word, waited some seconds and did it again). This large fluctuation range, from 11 to 17 seconds, so a 6 second span is related to what other processes are executing during the "opening operation" (as defined by JorgeA), so it's normal and to be expected. It's the main reason why I use 7-value medians, since a 6 s fluctuation surely can blork a 13 s measurement. Much faster or much slower measurements would be less affected. But the fluctuation range is system specific, so it's easier to account for by taking medians than by actually trying to measure it.

The try the following (full manual driver update): Extract the contents of U2v2_1_9.exe to a folder, then go to the device manager, right-click on the device with the exclamation mark, select properties, update driver, don't search, have a disk, then point it to the folder you've extracted U2v2_1_9.exe to. And let me know whether it did work in this way.

Good choice for a test file, BlouBul! Athlon XP-M 2800+ (@2333 MHz) / 3 GiB / XP SP3 / AVG 2011/ Word 97: 2.11 s best, 2.45 s worst, 2.26 s median. Later Edit: It's seconds, of course. Now that's corrected. Thanks, BlouBul!

Try again with HIMEMX.EXE, but this time set MaxFileCache=32768.

Extract the subdirectory "windows" from the zip to a temporary directory and run U2v2_1_9.exe. It should work.

Let's say the Office Forum is not quite a very fast turnover forum, like the Hardware Hangout or the Win 9x/ME forum, so you've maybe become used to faster input than is the norm most elswere around MSFN. However, this *is* the right forum for this problem, so here it has to remain... @JorgeA: Please notice that there is 64-bit hardware and 64-bit software, and the latter requires the former, but not the other way around, as most (though not all) 64-bit hardware is downward compatible and can run 32-bit software. So one can run XP, Vista and Win 7 32-bit versions quite well on 64-bit processors, but not the other way around...

Yes. It should be. But do make sure BlackArmor claims to support Win 7, just to be on the safe side. Hmm... What sorts of things could be going on with that? Well, many. Nothing documented, that I know of. Then again, cluberti, CoffeeFiend or PuntoMX would be better than myself to dream up scenarios where things may go wrong, since they know the x64 NT-OSses much better than I do.

Not yet. Read its documentation/user manual crefully first. While only "dumb", byte-by-byte images are the most foolproof solution, they're also the longest and most tedious solution to use. I always do *one* such whole disk image of any important disk, be it mine or one I'm about to service. Once having it, I proceed to do backups by partition imaging, since they're faster and usually things change only in the system partition of a multipartitioned system (there's little gain however, when, as in your case, the system partition *is* also the data partition). If things get really ugly, I can always restore the full disk image first, an then update it with the newer partiton image to get back to the point i was when things went wrong. Now, "intelligent" images are not useless, but you must be sure the application doing them supports th OS you're intending to backup. If you look in that documentation for DiskWizard I pointed you to some posts above, you'll find out it supports XP and Vista, but not Win7. So, in principle, its "intelligent" partition backups should be enough to use, most of the time, for your Vista. However, it's not clear whether they mean "both x86 and x64" or just x86, so, some testing might be in order before trusting the "intelligent" images. But, in any case, only the "dumb" images would be adequate for Win7, since that version of DiskWizard has not enough knowledge to be "intelligent" about it. All this said, it's irrelevant whether you have good usable images if you don't have the means to put them back. So some bootable device (HDD or CD/DVD) is needed too, for a backing up system to be really useful. I'm certain the BlackArmor system must cater for all this, or, at least, should. I don't know. But you shall, after you read the documentation, with those above points in mind. I trust you'll then let me know. Or lie with the Office 2007 x86 under Vista x64 specific combination/interaction?

GET the CABSDK package and extract CABARC.EXE from it. CABARC is a command-line cab creator/extractor from MS. more info here.

Word in particular or Office in general are my prime suspects, too, since you reported your result with Works, which is a very noteworthy finding. In any case, if at all possible, I'd like to ask you to pursue that suggestion BlouBul gave you of opening the big file in the same version of Word/Office, preferably under Vista, in some friend's machine. Since we now know processor and memory are irrelevant, the median time of opening in this other machine ought usefulf to comparable with that obtained in your machine. Whatever the result may be, it should be interesting and tell us about the existance of misconfigurations or other issues. As of now, my main idea is to re-register Word and tweak it and Office quite extensively, after making sure it has *all* apposite extant MS updates applied to it. But since it'll be some major tweaking, I guess having a known-good image of the system as-it-is is a necessary insurance against things going wrong. I'll be less available than usual these next 2 or 3 days, so don't be surprised if I don't post at all, rest assured I've not lost interest. In the meantime, let me point you to some of my previous musings about images, which I think both of you'll find interesting: I, II and III. I think in them I've said things I didn't say here and, even if some of the stuff is specific to Norton Ghost, most of it is general and applicable to all images and the programs used to acquire/deploy them.

Look for FiraDisk, VSuite Ramdisk, Gavotte Ramdisk and swapadd... it's definitely is possible to do what you're seeking to.

I hadn't noticed Google was giving a shot ito Latin, too! Well, it gets near, but not enough. It should be "Helps more he who doesn't hinder" or something like it. And, yes: When things get really ugly, registry backup and System Restore are not nearly enough. Bear in mind I don't envisage things getting *really* ugly, but, then again, who does? So, since we cannot possibly ever foretell it, we must always be prepared for it beforehand.

You can do one then do other things for a couple of days before checking the second and so on... Why do all 3 in a row?

Right. Well, I mentioned the portability factor because I'm suggesting you to buy hardware, so it might be a good idea to think whether it wouldn't be more useful for you afterwards in case it were portable as a wallet. It has no bearing whatever with what I'm envisioning, which, in fact is precisely what you guessed. The ideia is to use the external HDD to hold one, or maybe several images, as we proceed. I use one or more DVD +R DL (Dual-Layers, 7.9 GiB) to store permanatly known-good images. But, at this point, we don't really have any known-good image to store, so that's a moot point. And whatever the tool we use to create/deploy the images must work independently of the OS we're trying to fix, that is be bootable or work from DOS or from Win PE, so as to give us the freedom to mess the OS we're trying to fix beyond bootability and worse. Until we're sure you can do that OK, we don't start. @BlouBul: Images housed in other partittions in the same HDD will be in the wrong place when things go wrong. I'm not thinking about doing anything very extreme here, but things go wrong when what gets done is not what one intended to do. Images are only safe if they are in another media which is *off-line* during troubleshooting and only brought to bear in case one needs to restart from scratch or when giving up for the time being (as jaclaz always points out, giving up for good is *not* an option ).

Yeah. I knew it'd very long. On the bright side, you may never need to do it again, if all goes well. And certainly not all the partitions, in any case. And the normal scandisk, whithout surface check is quite fast, even for such big partitions. So patience. Resist the urge to interrupt it and let it reach the end by itself.

Let's see: 1)Western Digital WD Elements 1 TB Advantages: Has independent power supply (good for booting it), is possibly cheaper, has a turn-off button, has more storage space. Disadvantages: Is big and cumbersome to transport. 2)Seagate FreeAgent Go 0.5 - 0.75 TB Advantages: Is pocket sized and easy to take anywhere. Disadvantages: is powered from USB (bad for booting it), is possibly more expensive, hasn't a turn-off button, has less storage space. The issue with booting is that conventional HDDs must spin-up before they get ready, and an USB-powered external HDD may start to get power too late for booting, in some machines, so one'll get a "Boot sector not found" message on attempting to boot. But, bu then the external HDD has already spun-up, so that a simple <Ctrl>-<Alt>-<Del> will result in a correct boot on the second attempt. But one will be condemned to do it everytime one boots from it, when just after turning on the machine. Nothing one cannot live with, but an annoyance, all the same. Not really, and certainly not at this point.

Sure. And that's precisely the idea! After creating a "dumb", byte-by-byte image *and making sure it can be redeployed correctly* one can mess up one's installation seven-ways-to-Sunday, and then get back to *just as messed-up as it initially was*, so nothing one does is not undoable. Think of it as a bullet-proof form of undo.

As the owner of a Seagate HDD, you've entitled to use Disk Wizard... and it has just the needed imaging capabilities. Read its manual, then get back to me. But in any case, an external HDD of the right size would be necessary to proceed with minimal confort. Uless you have one already, I'd strongly suggest a USB 2.0 Seagate FreeAgent Go from 512 to 750 GiB.

BTW, you should add Usher's tweak (adapted to Win ME) to your machine's configuration, for real safe access to Safe Mode, with more than 1 GiB RAM: just copy your [vcache] section from your SYSTEM.INI to your SYSTEM.CB, that exists in the same folder. This is not related to our discussion here, but I keep forgetting to tell you about it, so I decided to do it now, before I forget again.

Yeah. I use the same page file and a common data partition containing Favorites and My Documents. And a ramdrive to vaporize on reboot the Cookies, History and Temporary Internet Files. The only difference is that the ramdrive is 1.5 GiB for 98SE and 0.5 GiB for XP SP3 (so as not to remove too much RAM from use).