jaclaz

SIV: http://rh-software.com/ remains the usual reference tool. jaclaz

More than ridiculous it seems (very) confusing. The step 3 talks of a "Fileformatconverters.exe" file without any references. The step 7 references 3 patches in step 5 that aren't. The step 8 makes no sense whatsoever. Maybe you could try re-checking the steps you listed and make them more clear. Ideally you should check if you actually can replicate your instructions/steps following ONLY what you have written and add at each step what you omitted (because you already know it). jaclaz

I see , thanks. More or less we need to find someone willing to compile a somewhat modified SDK DLEDIT: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa364014(v=vs.85).aspx https://github.com/pauldotknopf/WindowsSDK7-Samples/tree/master/winbase/io/dledit jaclaz

Good . You just won the contest. jaclaz

However, could you expand a little bit on?: "However it assigns the Z:\ as a dosdevice, so disk management or unelevated explorer will not show it." jaclaz

Maybe should be titled "Fake Screenshot Showoff v2". Out of curiosity what is the scope or usefulness (if any) of these? The "original" thread was started by a new user that posted only that initial post and never came back, and to be very, very kind to him, at the time it might have had some satirical purpose given the never-release of a Windows 9 and the doubts on the name of the next Windows versions. But yours? Show how clever you are in using paint.net? jaclaz

@JFX Only to keep things as together as possible and to give you some context to the otherwise seemingly unconnected question above, devdevadev has a particular ability in flip-flopping here and there without giving any hint about what he is after (the general idea). He is trying to put together a batch capable of automating the backup of some systems (that of course needs to be smart, automated and foolproof), the thread is here: http://reboot.pro/topic/21566-please-help-me-to-go-ahead/ the relevant part starts around here: http://reboot.pro/topic/21566-please-help-me-to-go-ahead/?p=204324 but starting reading from here will be enough: http://reboot.pro/topic/21566-please-help-me-to-go-ahead/?p=204348 (only a few posts) jaclaz

ONLY as a side note, this doesn't sound right. Maybe - before and outside the Windows Update issue, disassembling the CPU heatsink and fan, thoroughly clean them and apply some new thermal paste wouldn't be IMHO a bad idea. jaclaz

Is it a BOSE or a BOSS? https://community.bose.com/t5/Bluetooth-Only-Speakers/Soundlink-Color-II-will-not-power-up-or-charge/td-p/28487 jaclaz

Broken google? https://ofekshilon.com/2016/03/27/on-api-ms-win-xxxxx-dll-and-other-dependency-walker-glitches/ Welcome to the wonderful world of API sets (whatever they are besides being an added layer of complexity). Use the page above to get to Geoff Chappel's site with the full list and a nice explanation (or copy and paste the following). http://www.geoffchappell.com/studies/windows/win32/apisetschema/index.htm?tx=3 http://www.geoffchappell.com/studies/windows/win32/apisetschema/api/index.htm jaclaz

It's queer. At least the kernel and hal should be logged. In any case with a single ntbtlog.txt you are not likely to go very far. The idea is to have TWO of them, on the same machine, with same hardware drivers, coming from two installations, one "old" (and not working with the PAE patch) and a new, clean one. Or having two of them from the same install, one when it is working (without PAE patch) and one when it is not working (with the PAE patch installed). It is by comparing the two logs that you can likely find the issue. jaclaz

Which is good , though an s is missing. And the word for today is "among": http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/between-versus-among jaclaz

That would be interesting. Outdated by what, by a new Release of XP? jaclaz

I presume that any date, past, present and future was, has been, is and will be "between two weeks". The two beta testars must have a lot of work to do, and of course the single "currently" release that "are" is puzzling. It is not about been picky (which I am BTW) but really you could pay a little more attention when you write something. jaclaz

Define "lots". (and divide between hardware drivers and "software ones") I mean, out of say 1,000 (one thousand) programs maybe 10 (ten) will have the need for a service/driver that may interfere with PAE and these would normally affect only the specific application working (i.e. only a small subset of the 10 should prevent booting or however affect other programs). On the other hand hardware drivers will be the same no matter if it is a fresh install or if it is an older one (on the SAME hardware). If you have (on the same hardware and with the same hardware drivers installed in both) 2 installs of XP, one PAE patched and one not, and if the issue is at boot time, making a boot log for each and comparing them should be enough to restrict the suspect to a handful of drivers, very likely one or two. jaclaz

Sure, like - say - sandboxing high risk attack surfaces, such as Windows Defender. No, wait, they didn't : https://blog.trailofbits.com/2017/08/02/microsoft-didnt-sandbox-windows-defender-so-i-did/ jaclaz

Hmmm. It seems like a recent machine, you may have issues with finding suitable drivers for XP. jaclaz

@Dybia It makes NO SENSE WHATSOEVER to provide a link to Softpedia about a program that has been developed RIGHT HERE on MSFN: http://www.msfn.org/board/forum/157-install-windows-from-usb/ @Roffen The given section of the board is choking full of different ways to install Windows XP from command line (and with a GUI). The Rufus is AFAIK still compatible with XP, I have been "fighting" as much as I could with Akeo to have him keep the compatibility: http://reboot.pro/topic/20358-rufus-20-has-been-released/ any source for these news? The document you are making a reference to: is either inaccurate or wrong (or both), as (see again the given board section) it is like 10 years that we do install XP from USB just fine using command line tools. jaclaz

Naah, most XP installs are ALREADY in a state of submission after having be sysprepped, particularly if sysprepped offline. Usually only some good ol' fashioned SHOUTING is enough to have them enter the .wim image without fuss. Some people BTW believe that it is better to give them orders in German, but I never needed to use that. jaclaz

Just for the record jaclaz would have NEVER use the verb "to install" together with either DISM or Imagex, as what both normally do is to "apply" a WIM image. BUT the whole point was not only about the assumed running of setup.exe (which version BTW?, AFAICR the XP one didn't use images at all), but rather on the exact nature of the actually cited "sysprepped XP WIM image". Such an image - besides been sysprepped (online or offline) would have been needed to be "captured" (other verb useful in the context of using a .wim image), and the exact way it was captured may make an additional difference. In other words, whatever the tool used, it could have been a case of GIGO (Garbage In Garbage Out). But I can also make a generic response : Do the right thing! jaclaz

Heck! I would have never thought that your crystal ball worked so much better than mine, that street dealer that sold me the special washing solution must have been a crook. Or maybe I really need to buy a new one as even when mine was new and perfectly tuned I would have not been able to see that Setup.exe was used instead of Dism (BTW from an unknown PE attempting to apply an unknown XP WIM residing on unknown media to an unknown hardware). jaclaz

Well, you mean that you would have WAKED ME UP IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT? Be aware that EXACTLY that (having neighbour knock on the door at midnight) is the ONLY case allowing to act non-nicely in my generic Careware license: http://jaclaz.altervista.org/Projects/careware.html Seriously now, the improvement with 4K alignment (on 512 bytes sectored media) is largely the usual over-hyped idea. Admittedly on "slow" and cacheless devices (such as USB 1.1 or 2.0 sticks) it is noticeable, and - maybe - it could be noticeable on AF 512e drives (though I doubt it, as they are anyway fastish SATA drives AND with large caches). SSD's (that are overall AF drives) won't also likely get that much noticeable advantage, but it is a very good idea to align to 4k because of other reasons, like the way TRIM and garbage collection works on them and their "page" size. This post: http://reboot.pro/topic/9897-vistawin7-versus-xp-partitioning-issue/?p=85960 touches the matter, the test made here (though a "2048" test is missing): http://thebackroomtech.com/2008/09/10/perfomance-test-windows-server-2003-r2-partition-alignment-on-an-emc-san/ (which is one of the few I could ever find with some actual data) clears how different partition "alignment" may (or may not) differently better access times OR burst throughput (seemingly hardly both) on different file size ranges, so it is not a "solution for all problems" nor a "one size fits all" solution. And results may well vary on different devices due to the specific device internals. On USB sticks, it is usually a very good idea to have aligned partitions (if NTFS) while FAT16/32 need a more complex approach to actually align the filesystem, see these: http://reboot.pro/topic/16783-rmprepusb-faster-fat32-write-access-on-flash-memory-drives/ Still the advantage, which is very noticeable for booting sticks, is mostly related to when you need to read or write a zillion smallish files, when reading or writing large files there is not that much difference. jaclaz

There are no real issues with running XP on a 4Kb aligned disk. BUT with a VERY notable exception, as soon as you "touch" the XP disk manager to change *anything* it will likely corrupt (not really, only mis-address them) each and every logical volume inside extended. See here: http://reboot.pro/topic/9897-vistawin7-versus-xp-partitioning-issue/ http://reboot.pro/topic/9897-vistawin7-versus-xp-partitioning-issue/?p=124095 Particularly, see: https://web.archive.org/web/20150204103538/http://support.microsoft.com:80/kb/931854/en-us http://www.dcr.net/~w-clayton/Vista/DisappearingPartitions/DisappearingPartitions.htm Most probably right now you have no real choices than to reinstall from scratch, but only because BEFORE asking for help you attempted doing everything (and the contrary of it), after having used - without actually knowing what you were doing - one of these auto-magic do-it-all tools that surprisingly are often not-so-magic and only-do-something. It would have been perfectly possible to fix the mess BEFORE you attempted the reinstall, and very likely it is still possible, but it implies examining the current situation, correct manually the addresses and fix the various mis-addressing here and there. If you are game for it, no problem we will try and help you, but be aware that it won't be "easy-peasy". Start by posting an exact view of the layout of the disk, a suggested tool is DMDE: https://dmde.com/ Post the screen shot of your disk corresponding to this: jaclaz

Sure , it is right below the Vista Beta 1 download. jaclaz

Sure , undoubtedly a very serious flaw, but over the years it happened to me more than once to find "crappy" BIOSes that checked "strange" parts of the MBR and simply didn't find it valid, so - somehow - I am not so much surprised. At least a couple ones from Insyde/H20, for the record, admittedly the issues I found were related to booting, but the same BIOS programmer that checks "jump bytes" and does not execute them unless they have an arbitrary pattern he/she decided by himself/herself to be "right" is - in my perverted mind - perfectly capable of doing any kind of "crime" when implementing a CSM. jaclaz