jaclaz

Well, you will need to provide a timeline for this change, I don't think they had "deliver a good, serious computing experience" anywhere on their list, most probably in the last 10 (ten) years, surely not in the last 5 (five) years [1]. jaclaz [1] to give some context, Windows 8 was RTM on August 2012, i.e. roughly 6 (six) years ago and soon Windows 8.1 will be 5 years old.

I don't think that TRIM will remain enabled on a non-SSD, but it is easy to check/enable/disable TRIM on Windows 7: https://www.howtogeek.com/257196/how-to-check-if-trim-is-enabled-for-your-ssd-and-enable-it-if-it-isnt/ jaclaz

Allow me to doubt that the setup allows to make more than one primary partition . The "standard" (more exactly the *whatever* MS - mainly through mis-information - pushed to the final user) has traditionally been: 1) one single, primary (and active) partition 2) optionally one single, extended partiton containing one or more logical volumes Their stance AFAICR did change, but later than the time the XP setup/install was made (which actually is essentially the Windows 2000 setup[1]), and DiskPart (for XP) came much later than the release of the OS, so - while possible, it's years since I used it to install a XP and I never used its partitioning features anyway - I don't think that the plain setup allows to make more than one primary partition. jaclaz [1] which is actually the NT one [2], and the behaviour in XP (set aside the 4/8GB limit) should still be along the lines of this KB "Rules" (via Wayback Machine): https://web.archive.org/web/20071224011157/http://support.microsoft.com/kb/138364 [2] which is actually largely that of MS-DOS FDISK [3] [3] In the good ol' times Partition Magic or Ranish Parittion Manager were widely used to make non-MS-approved partitioning setups.

It is more complex than that, there are six different possible acts that may (or may not ) be legal: 1) circumventing any copy protection of the original 2) actually copying the original 3) distributing the illegally made copy(ies) 4) be in possession of such illegal copy(ies) 5) use false credentials or authorizations or however circumventing any install protection/authentication method 6) using such counterfeited software And now, for really NO apparent reason: https://web.archive.org/web/20110611083541/http://www.funnymotivationalposters.info/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Piracy.jpg jaclaz

Sure grub4dos can boot a .iso as a "virtual" CD drive. That is essentially what WinsetupFromUSB uses It is possible that Rufus - since XP was never a "real" target and it is now unsupported by Akeo (aka Peter Batard, the Author of Rufus) - has some "queer" behaviour that is good in 99.99% of cases but that somehow breaks the install in your specific case. Not that WinSetupFromUSB is actually guaranteed to work 100% in ALL possible scenarios, but surely it has been tested (and corrected/fixed/modified) for a much longer period of time, so more likely your same situation has been already found and solved. jaclaz

We could play this the other way round . Please list at least 2 (two) drivers that DO NOT work on an Eglish installation of Windows 9x BUT that work fine in ANY of the gazillion other languages/countries versions. jaclaz

Yep , but only one day elapsed, you will need to be more patient. However - and as a side note - In my personal experience nothing more than the prospect of spending a non-zero amount of money can make people suddenly become slow-thinkers, at least among the non-gamblers . jaclaz

Maybe the fact that the GPT scheme has not a "real" MBR, but rather a "protective" one with NO code and a single partition table entry spanning the whole disk might be the reason ... jaclaz

Hmmm. Maybe the partition ID on the USB stick is not 07? (like 17 or 27) Another thing, how (EXACTLY) are you creating the partitions that are shown as "RAW" in the screenshot you posted? jaclaz

Hmmm, too bad for them , however I bet they weren't that many anyway. jaclaz

What you report does not sound "right" in the sense that if the USB has no drive letter, it should not be possible to install from it. Anyway you can usually pre-assign the USB stick drive letter, however, i.e. make it so that the USB gets - say - drive letter U: via migrate.inf, this is one among the many "special" features that some of the methods talked about here: https://msfn.org/board/forum/157-install-windows-from-usb/ provide, but nothing prevents you to use the same approach "manually". You will find details in the "historical" thread: but essentially all you need to know basically is here (via Wayback Machine): https://web.archive.org/web/20091125065150/http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=19663 jaclaz

And now the connection and dependencies are explained here (thank you ) BUT without ANY hint on where to actually find this "servicing stack", nor on how EXACTLY to integrate it. It would be nice (and useful) if you could detail the missing parts. jaclaz

Yes, that would be fine. Well, you will need some SEO and marketing to make the thingy "visible", unfortunately the whole intended audience (presumably made of both gamblers and non gamblers) is not very large, basically only people that want to install 2K on a bigger than 128 GB disk AND that for some reasons don't want to or cannot use the Registry edit AND that read this thread on MSFN AND that are willing to pay a non-zero amount of dollars for the patch, Additionally please understand how statistically people actually willing to pay a non-zero amount of money are only a subset of those saying they will be willing to pay a non-zero amount of money . jaclaz

Good. Bonus (in theory, needs to be tested), should you need for any reason to have a "normal" device. If from the IMDISK GUI you have available the mounted drive and press the "Save Image" button, you should have the option to save the image "as is" (aka volume or "superfloppy") or to prepend to it a MBR (without booting code but with valid partition table) and 62 empty sectors[1], in practice a valid "whole disk" image that you can dd to another media, essentially stripping the Ontrack overlay. jaclaz [1] this is the behaviour under XP cannto say if newer IMDISK and/or having it running on windows 10 makes that 2047, but I doubt it.

You could put it differently, making it a bundle-gamble choice . The user is asked 50 US$ for the LBA48 fix, with the possibility to flip the (virtual) coin and have - if he/she wins - a license for another of your programs/tools included without additional expense. jaclaz

There are (or there may be) a number of sometimes slight and undocumented, sometimes huge and documented, sometimes small or huge and mis-documented changes in each OS release to the underlying NTFS. NO such issues with FAT12/16/32 which were not changed, Officially (and in practice) the largest (and worst) change was between NT 4.0 and Windows 2000 because it was undocumented and "destructive", JFYI: But there were a few minor changes even later, between 2000 and XP there were a few major changes, and also between XP and Vista, though these latter if I recall correctly only revolve around softlinks and hardlinks and their usage in the OS, The NTFS (and CHKDSK) is however always "backwards compatible", in the sense that a newer NT will (should) always be able to read (and CHKDSK to fix) a previous OS NTFS, the point is whether the NTFS "fixed" by CHKDSK on a newer OS will be readable on a previous version. Of course the same OS in desktop and server version use the same NTFS and are fully interchangeable. jaclaz

Yep . The MBR (shifted to offset 63 sectors) has these data: #0 0C 80 0 1 1 1023 254 63 63 31278492 The PBR which is at offset 63 from the MBR, i.e. offset 126 of the physicaldrive and has these data: 3 0003 OEM String: MSWIN4.1 11 000B Bytes per sector: 0200 512 13 000D Sectors per cluster: 10 16 14 000E Reserved sectors: 0020 32 16 0010 Number of FAT(s): 02 2 17 0011 Max ROOT entries: 0000 0 19 0013 Small type sectors: 0000 0 21 0015 Media type: F8 248 22 0016 Secs per FAT (small): 0000 0 24 0018 Sectors per Head: 003F 63 26 001A Number of Heads: 00FF 255 28 001C Sectors Before: 0000003F 63 32 0020 Large Sectors: 01DD459C 31278492 Since IMDISK mounts the volume you need to double the offset offset=(63+63)*512= 64512 whilst the length is correct: length= 31278492*512=16014587904 jaclaz

It is not at all harmonized worldwide, in most places it is 70 years, but it will be fun in some 27 years time (when the software will be 50) what will happen, as countries such as New Zealand and South Africa have this shorter term: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries'_copyright_lengths Bahrain will be earlier (40 years porotection for computer software). jaclaz

I don't think they are admitting anything, they simply found a way to take the money the enterprises owed them for the Windows 10 licenses in another form , I would call it "simple pragmatism". jaclaz

Another way would be to put the target price at (say) 50 US$ (please not the stupid 49.99) BUT play head/tails with a coin on each purchase. On average you will get 25 bucks ... This way there is the added vaue of the entertainment provided by the gambling ... jaclaz

Well, you will need to provide a range for "reasonable", my previous suggestion would have led to a random price between 1 and 100, what is your reasonable range? (so that we can remove some numbered balls from the sack ) jaclaz

Well, technically, we don't have any actual evidence that it was the original counter (not buffer) issue. Not that it helps you in any way, but the actual reason may well be any among the zillion ones that can brick a drive (and that by pure coincidence the known procedure can partially solve). About attempting to change the PCB, simply DON'T: On a modern hard disk replacing the PCB implies replicating the so-called "adaptive data", this is (poor man's method) achieved by transplanting (desoldering/resoldering) the "ROM" (actually EPROM) from the old PCB to the new one, or by professionals by using specialized hardware to save its contents and then restore them to the "new" PCB. To complicate the matter some hard disks use to store "internal" (and "vital") data part on the ROM and part on the platters (cannot say specifically if it is the Seagate 7200.11 case). There are tools (either software or hardware+software) to (hopefully) repair failed drives (assuming that the failure is not mechanical - i.e. heads/platters/motor) but they are in a range of price (between 400 and 10,000/12,000) that exclude the use for a DIY job (and besides they are usually terribly documented or so complex that you won't be able to use them without taking some courses and some experience). jaclaz

What about drawing a ball from a BINGO sack? jaclaz

Well, you first check the heatsink (visually, by prodding it, etc., even better dismounting it, making sure that thermal paste/grease is fine), if it is properly seated, good (and of course, as Yellow Horror suggested the CPU fan shoulf be spinning). A common issue (when a computer shuts off quickly) is that the processor is overheating, like when there is no heatsink properly connected, there is a thermal protection on it that will switch off the computer. Then, if that is OK, you do the routine of stripping each and every unneeded piece of peripherals, leaving only the video and jetboard connected and see what happens. Typically it is likely than an "external" (in the sense of anything not physically soldered to the motherboard) device or that cable/connection to it is either defective or mis-connected (or badlt seated), so removing everything often makes the thing "stay on". jaclaz

Two separate answers. You may want to try (on the recovered 49 GB chunk) the DMDE tool, since (normally) the $MFT starts on LCN 786432, i.e. sector 6291456 of the volume, or roughly 3 GB from the start, it is within the recovered chunk, so there should be no issues with recovering path/filenames: https://dmde.com/ For the rest of the disk you may want to try a disk tool that can read/image the disk "backwards", in some cases it can help recovering data that "forward" reading does not. Unfortunately, though, I suspect that the rest of the disk is actually "bricked" in such a way that recovery - even if maybe partially possible - is outside and beyond the possibilities of DIY, only a professional (maybe) can afford the needed tools and has (maybe) the knowledge to recover that data. You may want to try asking for support/help/ideas here: http://www.hddoracle.com/index.php jaclaz