jaclaz

Which was the reason why sometimes times I had to remind you how some of your perceptions, when using powerful systems with an array of SSD's (and/or a gazillion Gb of RAM), can be very different from those experienced by a large part of the users base. As you well know, history repeats itself, one of the reason why Vista at the time was such a huge delusion for most people (much more than what it deserved) was that it was installed by users (and even installed by OEM's on new machines) on too low power machines, and as such it was slow as molasses. jaclaz

It is one of the classical yes/no answers. The good guys that put together the EFI/UEFI "standard" (and then summed it up in some 2,200 - that is twothousandtwohundred - pages of specifications ) had something (actually pretty vague and fundamentally "wrong" when it comes to backwards compatibility) in any case each and every UEFI vendor may have read in those pages everything and the contrary of everything so *anything* may happen. In theory UEFI would provide an EFI "shell" which could be as powerful as a real mode OS, like - say - DOS, allowing to do almost anything in the phase before the OS is booted, in practice not only this shell has become a mere replica (with senseless graphical effects) of the settings you find in *any* BIOS, but noone (with a few exceptions that I can count on the fingers of one hand) develops any software for the EFI environment. But (with some few exceptions of "pure UEFI" systems) most firmware implementations have - inside or besides UEFI - a CSM (Compatibility Support Module) which is simply a BIOS, just like the good ol'one. So you shouldn't have any problem in booting in BIOS mode, and even in UEFI mode, there are anyway ways. Some UEFI are (poorly IMHO) coded in such a way that they automatically disable CSM if they detect a EFI loader, that is an issue (that can be also fixed with a workaround or two, still it is more complicated). The main "mistake" that people makes (BTW induced by the - I have to presume intentionallt UNclear communication from Intel, MS and friends) is that GPT "style" of partitioning (while part of the UEFI "standard") is totally independent from it. An OS may (quite a few are) not able to boot in UEFI mode but perfectly capable to access a GPT disk (and most with a few tricks can be made into also booting from a GPT disk, even if the OS is said to be not able to). Anyway the main thing that one must understand is that BIOS (or UEFI) are largely irrelevant once an OS like NT based systems are booted. Typical boot sequences: BIOS: BIOS->MBR of first disk->PBR of activepartition on first disk->OS loader->rescan of system, HAL, drivers->booted OS UEFI: UEFI->OS loader listed in NVRAM, but residing on some device->rescan of system, HAL, drivers->booted OS or: UEFI->OS loader in FAT EFI partition on disk->rescan of system, HAL, drivers->booted OS So, once booted, the system will be essentially (like 99.99999%) the same, of course ALL OS that can be booted in UEFI mode surely support GPT "style" disks, while systems that only can boot in BIOS mode usually do not support GPT disks for booting (but as said there are workarounds) but most support GPT for "data only" disks. So, if you have a CSM in your UEFI you can ignore the UEFI and continue booting through BIOS (and from MBR), if you have not a CSM module you can most probably (but it may need a tweak or two) boot from MBR, or you can have your boot disk as GPT (besides being in some regards a "stupid" standard it has some advantages over MBR, namely a replicated partition table that may come of use in case of disk corruption for recovery). If you are going to multiboot different systems the BIOS (CSM) is still the best choice IMHO, one of the (senseless and evidently imposed to "push" something on users) is that with UEFI the OS must have the same bitness of the hardware, i.e. you cannot use a 32 bit Os on 64 bit hardware. If you are going to use only one OS or a couple of new ones that support UEFI and GPT you may also use GPT only devices without issues. jaclaz

I trust this more: https://www.forensicfocus.com/Forums/viewtopic/t=15588/ https://www.forensicfocus.com/Forums/viewtopic/p=6589197/#6589197 Just creating a %windir%\perfc file is enough, but for added safety (you never know) also creatre a file %windir%\perfc.dat AND set it as Read Only. jaclaz

Easier is to use contig to make the $MFT file contiguous (and of course UltraDefrag is an exceptionally good tool IMHO): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contig_(defragmentation_utility) but the issue you are worried about is not about defragmentation of the $MFT, it is about unused entries in it, and about its size. You want to "compact" the $MFT or "shrink" its size. I am not so sure that a free tool exists with this exact feature, surely there are a couple (Commercial) tolls from Paragon that can do that, and also Ultradefrag has a "MFT Optimization" that does more or less the same: https://sourceforge.net/p/ultradefrag/discussion/709672/thread/a7a67d93/ jaclaz

Not so surprising, since it pre-dates most of them by years. We are talking 1993/1994 here. Use this Nirsoft little tool, adding psapi.dll should work on NT just fine: http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/driverview.html jaclaz

There wasn't even internet (as you know it) at the time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_web_browser https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners-Lee jaclaz

Start by reading the guide: http://diddy.boot-land.net/grub4dos/Grub4dos.htm Although now more than a bit dated (more recent grub4dos 0.4.5c and 0.46a series have countless added features) it still cover the basics nicely. I see however that there is still a communication problem between us. Our conversations are becoming pretty much pointless as you (I have to presume deliberately) continue to largely ignore the information I try to share with you and attempt - at every interaction - to shift the topic at hand to something else, I won't even try to comment on these As I tried to tell you before it is YEARS that several different methods to run XP entirely in RAM exist, there is nothing to be invented or added to them: Personally I believe that using either Winvblock or Firadisk is easier and more handy than using the good ol' Euhenio's way (making use of the MS Ramdisk.sys coming from server 2003 SP1) but of course beauty is in the eye of the beholder. jaclaz

I don't know. On one side this kind of lists are a handy way yo know about existing applications, on the other a "full review" that omits benchmarks (when we are talking of tools that are - or should be - intended to speed up things) and focuses on lists of (often theoretical only) features (present or missing) is pretty much useless. Besides the 15 defraggers list (that very likely almost entirely use the same plain MS defragging API), there is another list with 42 (fortytwo) "Free Data Destruction Software Programs": https://www.lifewire.com/free-data-destruction-software-programs-2626174 with *any*, really *any* kind of tool mixed up together, good, extremely good, bad and pure crap, without any sensible evaluation of WHAT they actually do and how much time it takes to do the ONLY kind of wipe that is needed is appalling to me. There are only 3 tools among the 42 listed that do "the right thing" of using Secure Erase, and the Author perfectly knows about the differences: https://www.lifewire.com/what-is-secure-erase-2626004 still he puts all together in the same basket. I fear that by putting out too many options it will only confuse the reader. On the other hand (you may be less lucky than me ) I appreciated the image on the ad for "Hot Russian Ladies". jaclaz

Hey peeps, do we really need yet another burst of posts on this matter? And Dybia, you know how I appreciate your enthusiasm :), and believe me, I have a lot of sympathy for young people and for there eagerness to learn, their sometimes brilliant ideas, etc, but you shouldn't really make statements like "When back in 2013 I bought a new desktop" or however pose yourself as a long time professional user of any OS that was ever run in the world (unless you actually are one of those). How old were you in 2013? jaclaz

Yes and no, while 65534 (or roughly 32256 if "normal" long file names are used) is very hard to be reached normally, but as soon as you create stupidly long filenames it is relatively easy to reach it, the given reference shows how the good MS guys reached it alright in a Windows 7 "standard" install. But you are right, it depends more on the user's (wrong/absurd) habits than on sheer size of the volume, but besides the above reference I have seen more than one hard disk with thousands (really thousands) of (possibly - let's say - of dubious provenance) MP3's with the file name composed of the song title AND the singer AND the Author AND the year AND the label AND comments like "this_is_a_cool_one_must_give_a_copy_to_George_and_one_to_Franck" all put together in a directory like "Music" or "Downloaded Stuff". jaclaz

On other news, the strange case of the recommended updates that became UNrecommended (at least for some users): https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/26/dotnet_4_7_not_ready_for_skype_for_business_or_exchange/ jaclaz

Why don't you cite what EXACTLY Jason Hood (Author of SHSUCDX) wrote? Ora are you talking of mkisofs (Author is Jörg Schilling)? Again, there is NO such thing as a "DOS ISO", let alone a "Windows standard ISO", most probably you misunderstood the meaning of the *whatever* you read or you took it out of context. jaclaz

The limit of 32 Gb in XP for FAT32 is "political", but people should use some "common sense" (a very UNcommon thing BTW) anyway. 64 Gb? OK. 128 Gb? OK. 256 Gb? Maybe. Anything larger, though possible, is simply not "smart", the size of FAT tables will become HUGE, the filesystem (and its drivers) are simply not adequate to that amount of data, and all in all file access will slow down noticeably. Besides the single 4Gb file size limit, FAT32 has another one (actually not that common to reach) which is the number of files in a same directory, see (seemingly off topic): http://reboot.pro/topic/19643-winsxs-hardlinked-files/?p=182961 So, if it is for testing or similar, it is fine to make huge FAT32 volumes, but one should know how it would be way "better" or "faster" to have several smaller volumes instead. jaclaz

No I am not. Rest assured that I know what I am doing. I am writing the FAT tables on a pre-wiped (all 00's) device. Actually wiping a large device (and/or checking it for bad sectors) is something that takes hours/days, and it makes no sense whatsoever to do it when formatting. Although I don't normally use such stupidly large devices, I do have a "dedicated" machine to wipe disk(s) overnight (actually using the internal ATA Safe Erase which is WAY faster than *anything* software). Wiping just the area where the partition table will reside is more than enough in any non-tinfoil-hat, non-national-security, non-mission-critical environment, which comprises probably 99% of computers and 100% (more likely 101% ) of those running DOS/Windows 9x/Me. jaclaz

Very few things lack "a" standard as ISO9660 (which is actually a standard), there is no such thing as a "DOS ISO" (as opposed to "standard Windows ISO") the whole point is that each and every extension to the ISO9660 (including the El-Torito emulation) might have been interpreted slightly different by BIOS vendors and OS programmers and by the people that wrote iso making programs. If I wanted to make a DOS bootable 98SE CD I would already know very well how to make it, in several different ways, thank you, this: makes no sense whatsoever. jaclaz

Another (small) thing that should probably be taken care of (seemingly the good MS guys do not consider it an issue), clipboard access on locked system: https://hexatomium.github.io/2017/02/15/windows10-clipboard-lockscreen/ jaclaz

Quite obviously SHDUCDX belongs to the same family as the ramdisk I already gave you a link to, SHSUFDRV: http://adoxa.altervista.org/ http://adoxa.altervista.org/shsufdrv/index.html http://adoxa.altervista.org/shsucdx/index.html What do you mean by "how do you create the CD image"? A CD image is a .iso i.e. a dd-like image of a CD, there is not any connection to the os used in making it, though of course DOS may be limited to a given "iso level" (and surely there may be issues with long names, unicode, etc.). You mean a DOS tool to make a .iso? Normally a port of mkisofs is used (but you cannot probably use it without infringing your self imposed ideological limits as it is contaminated by its Linux roots ), just in case: http://bootcd.narod.ru/index_e.htm http://bootcd.narod.ru/cdrtools-2.01-msdos-bin.zip Now, a good question could be "What is the simpler method I can use to convert a 1.44 Mb boot floppy into a bootable CD"? But the answer may be unusable (as it is contaminated by MenuetOS): http://reboot.pro/topic/9916-grub4dos-isohybrided/?p=86679 jaclaz

Hmmm. Las time I created a FAT filesystem by hand it was a matter of a few bytes (F8FFFFFF) in the right locations, starting from a cleaned (wiped) device, maybe the time RFORMAT takes is to make sure that the areas are blank and/or wipes them to be sure they don't contain "old" data. jaclaz

Sure , hence the scoop. jaclaz

The jacket vendor has however the advantage of seeing the physical credit card of the customer, which, in some cases, may contribute to better understand the customer's character, and be prepared to being questioned about (say): 1) the colour of the jacket he sold 2) how the jacket was manufactured, including, but not limited to, the quality of the leather, the choice of the sewing patterns, the specific brand of thread used (and its colour), the way it was folded and stored, the chemical composition of the plastic bag it was in, the temperature (min, max and average) and percentage of humidity of the storage warehouse for the last 10 years 3) how the jacket was advertised, the choice of furniture of the shop and the design of its lighting 4) the size and position of each and every pocket of the jacket 5) the choice of zips instead of buttons (or of buttons instead of zips) and being suggested how to better each one of these items. SCOOP! We have an image of the centurion on 98SE's Amex card: https://tinyurl.com/yc6p7a9q jaclaz

Automatic translation is very often terrible, rest assured that the adjective otiose has been chosen very carefully, hand picked among a number of possible candidates, and intentionally posted in Aldine, what you would call italic. Particularly, it was a comment aimed to Dencorso, we speak languages that share a common latin origin and as such it is often fun for us to use here and there some latin-derived words that an average native English speaker would never use (and possibly doesn't even know), even if they are correct. @dencorso https://maeperfeita.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/preguic3a7a-quino.jpg jaclaz

Well, you wouldn't want the Financial Times to use the same scale as The Economist, wouldn't you? http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/9f128868-68b4-11da-bd30-0000779e2340.html?ft_site=falcon&desktop=true#axzz4kqyy3M5c but I believe the Mars Bar is more related to inflation or differential of buying capacity over time (but "domestic", not as comparison with other countries), just as the Freddo Index (which also is connected to the Mars Bar one): http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/08/this-is-how-much-a-freddo-will-cost-by-2030/ https://www.vouchercloud.com/resources/the-freddo-index While the MarS Bar is "international" the Freddo is a British only brand/name- jaclaz

Grub4dos is NOT GRUB. Rest assured that the bootloaders are the files I mentioned, whatever you call "bootloader" remains a mistery. 9x/Me and NT/2K/XP have a very different booting mechanism. All the rest of the world has made boot floppies for all these OS's, if you want a couple examples, see here: http://www.xxcopy.com/xxcopy33.htm http://www.multibooters.co.uk/floppy.html And you will need some time to read about how Firadisk and/or Winvblock work (together with grub4dos). jaclaz

Well the Big Mac Index was started out by the Economist, which last like I checked was UK based alright (since 1843): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist I would venture to say that it sounds as British as something can be. jaclaz

Still what? I never talked of downloadable drivers, official or not, you managed to introduce the matter. Do we really need to debate about the availability (or non-availability) of drivers for a not-in-the-hands-of-the-OP card? When/if someone will ask for those drivers, then - maybe - they will be looked for (and hopefully found) *like* here: https://web.archive.org/web/20051001102448/http://www.hauppauge.com:80/pages/support/support_pvr250-350.html WHAT (the heck) is the problem? jaclaz