jaclaz

Their wording is very confusing. The whole stuff (set aside for the moment their naming it an "OS") is simply a set of modifying scripts that you run after having installed a Windows,seemingly not particularly different from other "liting" or "de-bloating" tools. Their install page refers to the method to download an official .iso (Windows Media Creation Tool) besides a couple other ones that may (or may not) be legal: https://docs.atlasos.net/getting-started/installation/ as well they state the need to procure (legally) a legitimate Windows key. IANAL, but it seems to me like there are not any blatant violations of MS licenses. Whether - given the mess with terminology they managed to create - the tool is reliable is another thing. Personally I wouldn't let those scripts go near a real install of the OS, but - to be fair - the scripts are published on github so they can be reviewed (should anyone want to): https://github.com/Atlas-OS/Atlas they seem to be mostly .cmd (batch) files and .ps1 (Powershell) files. jaclaz

2K was (almost) perfect, both NT 4.00 and 2K were rock solid, the only issue with NT 4.00 was that the drivers had to be installed manually and not all the hardware of the time had proper drivers, NT 4.00 today (unless you have an old machine with its drivers or use a VM, and it has to be seen which VM has drivers for NT 4.00) is in practice impossible to install/use if not in a very basic manner, due to the lack of drivers. jaclaz

Sure, that would be a serious leak of advanced technology and trade secrets. jaclaz

Well, if you skipped over NT and 2K you missed a lot of fun with bootpart (in practice the only program that could "fix" dual/triple boot systems in case anything was different from the way MS designed it or in case of issues), JFYI: https://www.winimage.com/bootpart.htm jaclaz

No, sorry but I have to correct you. The MBR code only chainloads the active partition PBR (bootsector), it is this latter what loads NTLDR (under NT). In this case the active partition is the C: (NTFS) and win 9x won't touch it. BUT, exactly because the active partition is NTFS, it won't be easy to dual boot XP and 9x (without using an advanced boot manager like grub4dos or a "special" MBR such as MBLDR). @Mcinwwl Normally there are no problems in dual booting Win9x and XP with the "plain" NTLDR only, but the disk needs to have the active partition the FAT one (and the NTLDR and BOOT.INI would go there together with the DOS system files and - usually - also the Win9x ones), this implies that the FAT partition get drive letter C:, and so the NTFS one will get another letter. This kind of issues with drive lettering can usually be solved, one way or the other, but it is not exactly easy or straightforward. Using grub4dos you could set it up in such a way that the two OS are hidden the one from the other, this way the OS drive letter will be C: (but it will represent a different volume under each OS), and you won't have a "common" volume to exchange data. Besides (my personal stance, not necessarily the right one) it is "dangerous" to have the same drive letter representing a different volume as - before or later - you might delete a file on the "wrong" volume (because you are booted to the "other" OS). The "ideal" situation would be a setup with: 1) a small FAT16 or 32 partition holding both the NTLDR+BOOT.INI and the DOS/9x system files <- this would get C: 2) a FAT32 partition with the rest of the Win9x files <- this would get D: 3) the NTFS partition with XP <- this would get E: or a higher drive letter In your current setup there is also the (possible) issue of the offset to the second partition, depending on the size of the first NTFS partition, the second one might be "too far" on the disk to be reached by the DOS files. As Morris suggested, adding another disk would be the easiest. Second would be having the two OS completely separated. Third the "proper" way described above, but this, while possible, requires some "advanced" manipulation of the disk partitioning and drive lettering, prone to errors or incompatibilities. All in all, if you have a (tested, safe) way to image your current system and restore it in case of troubles AND you want to mess with this kind of things, learning and experimenting, it might be worth the time and effort, otherwise, forget about same disk dual booting and procure a second disk for Win9x. jaclaz

No, that is not possible. Neither Bios nor UEFI read the BCD. BIOS reads the MBR and its code then loads the bootsector of the partition, the bootsector code loads the BOOTMGR that reads the BCD (the one in \boot\BCD). UEFI reads the BOOTMGR.EFI that reads the BCD (the one in /EFI/Microsoft/Boot/BCD). The cause of the slowness must be *something else*. jaclaz

If you need to provide a DNS server address (shouldn't be mandatory, but possibly that depends on the os), they are (often/usually) provided by your ISP, there are a number of free ones (available to everyone) here is a list: https://www.lifewire.com/free-and-public-dns-servers-2626062 Or you can manually enter the DNS that is now provided by your DHCP, open a command prompt and run ipconfig /all to see all the settings you have currently. jaclaz

VIsta doesn't support well GPT/UEFI AFAICR (and even 7 is more than a bit flaky with GPT/UEFI). Besides the issue reported here on MSFN on that given thread: https://msfn.org/board/topic/179532-installing-vista-or-7-using-uefigpt/ there could be also a mismatch of architecture, 32 bit vs. 64 bit if you are booting UEFI, on the other hand if you attempted booting a GPT style disk via BIOS, there will be probably no code in the (protective) MBR, so it won't be able to boot, though I thought that in this case the system would halt and not reboot. If your motherboard has CSM, it would be much easier to install in BIOS/CSM mode on a MBR style disk. In theory it is possible to convert (most) GPT style disks to MBR (without losing data), though the manual way is complex and although dedicated third party tools exist (I believe Commercial only) it isn't worth the hassle for a new install (IMHO). @D.Draker jaclaz is not a clairvoyant, unfortunately, he usually relies on his crystal ball but currently it is under maintenance[1]. jaclaz [1] and unfortunately also the I-Ching I use as a backup/temporary solution was unavailable

For all we know it could be a glitch in the install where the AHCI drivers didn't install properly and the standard ATA ones were installed, or *whatever else*. The suggested registry change is only to allow the machine (IF it crashes with a BSOD) to not reboot automatically, allowing to read the STOP error number (which with similar disk issues would be 0x0000007b). The really strange thing is however the reported difference in behaviour between SSD and HDD. jaclaz

Not so simple, you touched one of the "tough" topics in English (but many other languages have similar peculiarities). People is a plural noun, but in some contexts there is the plural, i.e., as an example, you can say "the peoples of Asia": https://www.britannica.com/browse/Peoples-of-Asia Chicken is singular, one chicken, two chickens. Children is the plural of child. Hair is singular, but it is usually used as a collective noun, to mean the whole amount of single hairs, so depending on the context it can have a plural, i.e. you may find a few hairs on your comb, after having combed your hair.. jaclaz

And Server 2003? (NT 5.2)? jaclaz

Then boot with IDE, and manually set the option or change the setting in the Registry: https://tweaks.com/windows/36885/disable-automatic-restart/ this is XP, but the setting/registry key is the same in Vista and 7 But if it happens before you can invoke the F8 menu and the issue is before the actual boot of the OS changing the setting won't change anything. It is strange as at BIOS and BOOTMGR level there should be no difference between IDE and AHCI (and also this queer difference between hard disk and SSD). Maybe it is something mis-configured in the \boot\BCD, but I wonder what could it be. Are you familiar with editing/modifying the \boot\BCD? Ever used BootIce? Or Visual BCD editor? An attempt could be adding a choice/entry to the \boot\BCD (even a "dummy" one) and see if you get to the selection of the choices. If you have a spare USB stick you could make it into a "Vista floppy" and edit the BCD on the stick, so that you don't risk modifying the one on the internal HD/SSD. jaclaz

Question 1: AFAIK the request is made but is not resolved Question 2: Yes the 10.238.x.x is the VPN network From what I understand, your computer asks for a DHCP and in your first posted table you get: 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 10.204.0.1 10.204.1.182 20 i.e. it gets IP 10.204.1.182 and gateway 10.204.0.1, these are your local lan addressses, and all traffic (0.0.0.0) is routed through them. In second table you have deleted the first (and only) 0.0.0.0 route and not yet added the second (VPN) one, so it should not connect to anything for most addresses. The idea of routing should be that the computer asks for an address, looks in the routing table and goes through the interface and gateway that matches the requested address, I believe that if you try pinging, you will get an error "Destination Host Unreachable", which means that it tried to connect to that address but found no way (interface and gateway or "next hop") to reach it. Since you add 219.100.37.86 mask 255.255.255.255 10.204.0.1, traffic to 219.100.37.86 will be routed to your lan gateway. Third table: 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 10.238.254.254 10.238.118.29 20 your VPN *somehow* creates a new instance and asks for a DHCP, it gets 10.238.118.29 and gateway 10.238.254.254, and all traffic is routed to them, the VPN *somehow* routes requests to its gateway 10.238.254.254 to the "real" lan gateway of 10.204.0.1 . When you print the routing table it is essentially shown inverted, the 0.0.0.0 entry (which is normally at the top of the shown routes) is the last one used, it is a sort of "catch all" that gets used if the required address is not caught earlier by any other (narrower) entry. But what happens when the fourth table is in use (with two routes 0.0.0.0 with the same metric): 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 10.238.254.254 10.238.118.29 20 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 10.204.0.1 10.204.4.59 20 is to be seen, the OS should prefer the "faster" interface, but cannot say what happens in this case, very likely the "real" lan interface is prevalent on the VPN one. jaclaz

Hi, I missed your last reply in April, sorry. Anyway I don't really know what it could be. The key in mounteddevices being 12 bytes long should mean it is a hard disk like device made of disk signature (4 bytes) + bytes before volume (8 bytes), but the data in it makes little sense (if I am correctly converting it). The disk signature would be 18 d7 4f 9f (and this could well be) The offset would be 00 00 d0 a7 6f 00 00 i.e. 0x00006FA7D000 that in decimal translates to 479,556,796,416 bytes, such an offset can only be on a large disk 500 GB or more, so, it could be pointing to some area of your disk 0, but if this is the case, the disk signature 18 d7 4f 9f should be the same as the one in your \DosDevices\C:, and you would have noticed it. I think the origin of this will remain a mistery, I don't believe that it could be related to any kind of driver if not a virtual disk one or similar and definitely not graphic or audio, but also not the "standard" disk ones you are using. jaclaz

This whole stuff is nonsensical. Legacyfan (that at the time was called VistaEx) started a new topic on "nothing", then posted that it was solved, then edited the post removing that piece of info, then asked the topic to be pinned, then one year later changed the title of the topic, then 2 years later, re-edited the first post and revived the thread to re-post the info that the whatever issue it was he didn't care anymore about it as he now has a newer PC and changed again the title of the topic. All this on a topic that is in practice missing any useful info for other members and very likely also for legacyfan. The general idea of rule #9 is that there should be a (new) answer to an unanswered question or new (meaningful) information. Of course legacyfan is perfectly free to post, re-post, edit and change titles, the doubt is whether it is smart or useful to the community. jaclaz

jaclaz sometimes makes typos, particularly on forum posts which are not exactly literature, I am correcting the original post, so that anyone else doesn't make conclusions on Italian grammar rules from a single post. Your quoted statement should be read as "I noticed how ONCE jaclaz put a space before a comma"[1]. No space is required, nor intended in Italian grammar, the French are the only ones with that rule, I believe, Portuguese used to have "half spaces" until the 1920's or so, then they removed them. jaclaz [1] BTW that whole sentence has a second comma, and there was no space before that second comma, you could conclude that jaclaz is not very good at punctuation

I don't doubt in the least that MMHID.DLL is related to USB and possibly also connected with audio cards, I only pointed out the meaning of the acronym HID that - in itself - is not strictly related to USB, and has nothing to do with audio cards. The way Microsoft names its .DLL's and how some of them may well have "mixed contents" is another thing. jaclaz

Sure, but the doubt remains. Both your links seem to be VM ONLY related (and as such NOT a replacement/successor for VBEMP on real hardware). Or maybe they could work only on some specific real hardware, in any case they are not intended for use outside (given) VM's, according to their home pages. jaclaz

Actually HID means Human Input Devices, not necessarily USB. Audio cards are not HID, AFAIK. jaclaz

But VBEMP does work on real machines, those are for some VM's only, aren't they? jaclaz

Either one (2 - actually 3 - different possible workarounds, not solutions). But if you don't "own" the network you cannot (shouldn't) change the way the IP is assigned (i.e. #1 is not suitable). The risk is that the manually assigned IP on your machine may be re-assigned to another machine on the network, causing a conflict. The #2 may or may not work but trying should cost nothing, if it works, it is the simplest one. The #3 implies writing a script to be launched periodically, cannot say how it could be triggered,probably it would be possible to run it a little sooner than the DHCP leasing time automated renewal (usually 50% of lease time, but has to be seen), sending first a new DHCP request (ipconfig /release + ipconfig /renew): https://computing.cs.cmu.edu/desktop/ip-renew and then, as soon as the new IP (and gateway) are re-assigned, delete the route. jaclaz

Just in case, the "live" page, possibly updated: https://bearwindows.zcm.com.au/vbe9x.htm jaclaz

poverty? Is that the politically correct term for what in my times was called sloppiness? jaclaz

The data you posted is coherent with the hypothesis, though there are a few entries that are not common, it seems like (before starting the VPN) you are using several networks, and there is a "non common" netmask. From what I can understand from the data you posted: your interface is assigned 10.204.1.182 with netmask 255.255.248.0 <- this is uncommon, usually the netmask is 255.255.255.0, so it must be a largish local network But it seems like you have also a connection as 192.168.56.1 with netmask 255.255.255.0 The VPN uses 10.238.118.29 (since this is definitely DHCP it may change) with netmask 255.255.0.0 In the last set of data your IP has changed, it is now 10.204.4.59 with netmask 255.255.248.0, this confirms that you are getting your IP address via DHCP, usually when a DHCP lease is renewed the same address as before is leased, but this may depend on a number of factors. You could run ipconfig /all to check. So, what are the questions? jaclaz P.S.:The "On-link" seems like something a corporate VPN / protection may offer.

I would be nice if you could make a post listing (a numbered points list would be perfect) what you have learned and which specific suggestions you will actually follow in your future interactions on the forum. (not quoting whole posts if possible doesn't seem like being one of them). This way this thread could be useful as a reference for other members that have similar doubts. jaclaz