jaclaz

WHICH software? (the page you linked to sports several softwares) I believe you mean Simple Software Restriction Policy: http://iwrconsultancy.co.uk/ssrp/ What happens if you manually click OK on that popup window? The idea should be that the program cannot be executed, once through the mentioned program (or directly by Group Policy) access is prevented, so that is just an information, by clicking OK the program is not executed anyway. There are tens of programs capable to click automatically on a button, example: https://www.raymond.cc/blog/auto-click-annoying-confirmation-buttons-clickoff/ http://web.archive.org/web/20120728031722/http://www.johanneshuebner.com/en/clickoff.shtml http://web.archive.org/web/20120728031722/http://www.johanneshuebner.com/download/clickoff.exe And there is also a "default" setting in registry (cannt say if it applies specifically and/or if this is what you actually are looking for): https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms940850.aspx jaclaz

Well, actually my idea was explicitly excluding the (stupid) Cloud. The Internet (and the Cloud) is good to publish your public data, definitely NOT to hold your private ones. Your VPN and remote access is a good idea, only it won't work for the masses and it is - most probably - not as secure as you would like it to be (I mean your setup is probably secure or secure enough, but the masses will manage to put together terrible security holes). And surely not everyone actually *needs* that kind of computing power you need/use, though MORE is always better. My most used tools (Excel or other spreadsheet, Word or other word processor, some drawing tools *like* Autocad, a handful of vertical, specific programs) have become MUCH faster than myself several years ago on almost *any* hardware, and if the good MS guys (AND the good Linux guys) didn't manage to senselessly slow down everything at each release by adding mostly unneeded BLOAT, requiring me to upgrade the hardware to keep pace with the introduced slowness, I would be very happy with the current average computing power, particularly since we managed to get SSD's . Still, with all this computing power and progress and plug'n play OS's and what not, if we have to do simple things, like simply synchronize the address book of two (different make/model) handies between them and with a desktop is a nightmare. This is something I could do in DOS between a PC and a PSION some 25 years ago in less than a minute ... And I could completely image/backup on optical media (CD) a whole hard disk (500 Mb) in less than one hour ... Progress is something different, as I see it ... jaclaz

What you report is "strange", we will need some more details. Is that UEFI or BIOS (or UEFI/CSM)? If the disk is not MBR then it is GPT, it could be that - somehow - you managed to have a hybrid MBR of some kind, but it is more likely that you have a GPT disk (where the concept of active partition doesn't exist anymore). How (EXACTLY) did you install the Windows 10? How big is the actual hard disk? How (EXACTLY) did you partition it (or you let the Windows 10 installer do it's stuff automatically)? Generically speaking a good idea could be to wipe the first - say - 100 sectors AND the last 100 sectors of the disk before attempting to reinstall (and let the Windows 10 Setup do its thing automatically, at least as an experiment). jaclaz

Good to know . jaclaz

Last version of Opera that works on NT 4.00 is 10.63, you will need the "classic installer": http://arc.opera.com/pub/opera/win/1063/en/ jaclaz

Allow me - as often happens - to partially disagree. You are mixing the form factor and available peripherals with the hardware capabilities (and you are perfectly right about the fact that some work *needs* a big screen, possibly multi-monitor, some "sensible" input device, i.e. keyboard and high precision mouse/pen and that such things are now offered only by a desktop system) but - in theory and given the ridiculous speed and computing power of today's small devices - it would be not too hard to imagine that before or later you could have a smartphone sized device that you simply "dock" onto a desktop setup, including multi-monitor, keyboard, sensible input device, etc. The main point is the other one you made, it is the "continuum" idea that is flawed, instead of dumbing down the user interface with simplified (limited) options and ridiculously huge buttons (suitable to be "pressed" by big, fat, fingers on a teeny-tiny touchscreen) and keep that same interface when a desktop setup is connected, they should have made two completely different interfaces, one - simplified - for the teeny-tiny touchscreen and one with all the options available, etc. suited to when you have a keyboard, mouse/pen, etc. and large monitor(s) connected, BUT seemingly there is no-one (since the Office Ribbon was pushed upon the unsuspecting user) capable to "invent" a "desktop user interface" better than the good ol' "win9x-like" (or if you prefer Macintosh System 7) one. And no, both the Mac OsX interface and all the various Linux desktops are either very "win9x-like" or they fail to be as functional as the good ol' way. Whether this happens because by now we got used to it or because by sheer luck that is the best possible interface is hard to say, still while it makes sense to have a "hamburger" menu on a small screen there is no reason why we should have the same on a large monitor where each sub-menu would be more accessible, and (at least to me) having a full keyboard and a mouse with right click and a wheel on the mouse makes a huge difference in the speed with which I can work on a PC. BUT then again, what would be the "advantage" of having *everything* on this imagined tablet or smartphone sized computer? Of course the possibility to consult/have handy all your data anytime, BUT at a much greater risk of losing/damaging the ONLY storage of such data. So all in all IF they could make up their mind and have an OS interface for "real" machines (desktops and "portables" - I consider todays HUGE 15" "laptops" as something I would NEVER dare to rest on my lap) and another one for tablets/smartphones and sub-notebooks and devise an actually working, foolproof and safe "syncing" method (excluding the stupid Cloud) between them everyone would be happy I believe: 1) kids and hipsters would be happy to play and only consume information on their tablet/smartphone devices 2) "serious" users could have the convenience of their "serious" desktop setup when working AND optionally be able to have their data with them accessible through their tablet/smartphone device. jaclaz

Then you didn't have all primary partitions, as expected. And - again - the issue is ONLY with logical volumes inside extended partition, and only if some "featrures" of the disk manager (and also possibly diskpart, but that would need to be tested) are used, (it is entirely possible that the same failed routine that rewrites wrongly the EPBR chain of logical volumes inside extended is used during install without the customer intervention). I know it is confusing, but a partition can be primary OR extended. There is NO such thing as an "extended volume", all volumes are "logical volumes". A primary partition "contains" (actually "is") a logical volume. There is NO "empty space" between the start address of the primary partition and the start of the logical volumes inside it, you may say that there is a 0 offset before the VBR (volume boot record, what is commony called bootsector) of the logical volume inside the primary partition, or, if you prefer, that the VBR is the first sector inside a primary partition. An extended partition can contain one or more logical volumes. The first sector of an extended partition is an EPBR, very similar to a MBR, containing partition address entries. Of the four available "slots", only two are used, the first one points to the next logical volume inside the extended partition and the second points to the following next EPBR (if any), and the scheme continues for each added logical volume. On a cylinder/head aligned partitioning the gap between the EMBR and the VBR is 62 sectors (the relative offset of the VBR is 63, i.e. 62+1 which is the EPBR). On a Mb aligned partitioning the gap between the EMBR and the VBR is 2047 sectors (the relative offset of the VBR is 2048, i.e. 2047+1 which is the EPBR). The defect in the Dsk Manager of Xp is that in some instances it "decides" to rewrite the 2048 value of the offset replacing it with 63, obviously making all logical volumes inside extended not anymore accessible/findable. Primary partitions are UNaffected by this. jaclaz

What you want to do is largely "outside the scope" of DMDE, which mainly is about "recovering files" (as opposed to "repairing the filesystem"). The virtual reconstruction BTW is not something "necessarily valid", it is just an attempt to - maybe - access (otherwise inaccessible) files in a way similar to a "normal filemanager" would, but what you see in the "virtual reconstruction filesystem" is just an attempt, there is no guarantee that an item in the reconstructed filesystem is "good" or "sane" and anyway a number of filesystem metadata will be either missing or faked. Particularly in the case of a USB stick (which will surely be of limited size) it is easy and quick to create image(s) of the stick and work on those images (it will definitely be faster, once the initial image has been created) to extract the files from the virtually reconstructed filesystem and then create a new filesystem and copy back the recovered files to it. More or less the only tool we have to actually repair a NTFS filesystem is CHKDSK, but the repair process not necessarily will recover or make accessible again files, on the other hand FAT is a much simpler filesystem (btw having far less filesystem metadata) and if a file is simply deleted there are tools to undelete them (provided that the actual file locations/extents have not been overwritten). More or less a "simple delete" in FAT consists in marking the entry in the FAT table as "available" by overwriting the first character of the filename with a special character (this is why most FAT undelete tools will ask you for the first letter of the original filename) and 00ing the cluster chain in the FAT table. If the file (originally, before being deleted) was occupying a single, contiguous, extent on disk, it is trivial to undelete that file with a a hex/disk editor. see as an example the good ol'way using Norton Diskedit: http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=339042 but if the file was fragmented or we are talking of several files and/or the undelete process is not started immediately after having realized that a deletion wrongly occurred, things become more complex, and there is a likely possibility that part of the file(s) have been overwritten and/or create a cluster allocation conflict, so, for obvious safety reasons, most tools will only attempt to extract files and not modify the actual FAT tables of the original filesystem. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undeletion jaclaz

yep, my bad, I insist forgetting that I used the FreeDOS Fdisk for this kind of installs, see: http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=16713&st=0 exactly for that reason (though Ranish is of course OK) or - for that matters - also grub4dos would do it nicely. jaclaz

Well, you copy the DOS system files to D: you need to change disk in fdisk and create a primary FAT32 partition on the internal disk then you copy the DOS system files to D: (hint: use format /s or sys.com) then you copy from C: (temporarily your USB stick) to D: (temporarily the partition on your internal hard disk) the setup files, then you reboot without the stick inserted, thus you boot to the internal hard disk that will be C: alright. Since you copied the install files to the same C: you run the setup without anymore the USB attached. If you use the RMPREPUSB way you will boot to grub4dos where you can exchange the disks before booting (if - for any reasons - you cannot reboot after having removed the stick). This method of booting DOS from C: and then running the setup from files already on C: is historical, it was commonly used because it is much faster even if using a CD (it takes less time to copy the setup files from CD to hard disk and run the install from hard disk than to run the install from CD, and besides you have already the .cab files handy). jaclaz

Sorry , from the suggestions you posted it seemed you had not understood what the base issue is (that cannot be mitigated through special Admin accounts or similar). It is the WYSIWYG editor that is unmanageable, not permissions/accounts/etc., and unfortunately the MSFN Administrators cannot do anything about that, short of changing the Board Software altogether (which would create a nightmare to convert the existing data), it is an IPB issue that hasn't been fixed (and very likely will never be). jaclaz

Well, whining is already something frowned upon, but whining about the wrong issue is even worse (you are barking up the wrong tree). The issue (JFYI) is about the (stupid) update to the IPB software, NOT any change in MSFN policies/accounts/whatever. Simply the Authors of the board software decided that having something simple and working (BBCode) was too d@mn simple and "old school" and removed the feature in favour of a very poorly working WYSISYG editor that makes managing complex posts with quotes, code, links, etc. a total nightmare (when and if it works, i.e. "never", or at least "never as it should"). See: jaclaz

Sure, you install it "normally". Just make a DOS bootable USB stick and copy to it the contents of the 98 CD. You boot from USB, fdisk the disk creating partition(s), you format and make it active, and install DOS to the internal disk, then copy the whole contents of the 98 CD to the internal disk partiton (in a directory *llike* C:\W98Setup), reboot (booting from the internal disk this time) and install the 98 by running setup from the C:\Win98Setup directory. There is a specific RMPREPUSB/EASY2BOOT tutorial that makes use directly of the .iso image instead, see: http://www.rmprepusb.com/tutorials/117 jaclaz

You CANNOT make bacon better! jaclaz

Naaah, I was only try to convey the idea that not all endorsement/confirmations/recommendations are good/reliable. Those that come from people that know where their towel is are generally useful, those coming from evidently clueless people maybe not so much. jaclaz

Well, not really an endorsement worth anything, any "public" machine (like the ones in Cybercafes, public libraries, and similar) should be ONLY setup with SteadySteate or DeepFreeze or similar. Anything different from having the machine fully reset to a known state at each user change or - at the very least - daily would be a serious risk of compromising security or privacy of other users. jaclaz

Nice one! It perfectly represents the poor experience any of us had, before or later, JFYI, a recent related thread: jaclaz

No, it doesn't normally. Maybe you have a "custom" or "oem" install CD that works as you describe, but a normal XP install CD proposes to make a single, huge, primary partition, as large as possible, respecting the cylinder end "boundary". And AFAICR the Win2K behaves exactly the same. Whether the Win2K disk manager (and the subsystem beneath it) is "smarter" than the XP one I cannot say, but most probably it is . GParted (but it may depend on specific version) defaults (if I remember correctly) to the "new" 1 Mb alignment. jaclaz

Well, maybe you didn't search hard enough (on MSFN). Be my guest : jaclaz

@Dibya JFYI, first part here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/46473 deals with the issue nicely and precisely. The "advice" was written around 1895, so it's not an entirely new phenomenon, it happens to everyone to feel angered, the "trick" is to learn to keep that anger under control. jaclaz

Dibya, it is not IMNSHO a good thing to post here badmouthing or attempting to shame people on another forum, particularly by addressing the WHOLE set of members of that forum as "not having knowledge" or as "fools". If you have any issues with any of the members of Beta Archive, solve those issues with them there, please. And yes, though I am very, very rarely there, I am a member over there too, and I can assure you that your generic "labels" of "ignorant" or "fool" don't apply to the whole community. And to be fair, if the accusation is about some of them being Windows 7 (or later) fanboys, you did start as a pure XP fanboy, stating apodictically how much Windows XP is faster than 7, than bragging about how fast and stable is your XP compared to your Windows 7. jaclaz

I know you will love this one. I just received a letter from a DSL provider (which I won't name but that is among the more common in Italy) that I will attempt to translate from Italian: No comment needed. jaclaz

There is not really a "preferred" resolution (which sounds a bit too "politically correct" for my tastes ) things are binary, a LCD monitor or TV has a "native" resolution, you either can make it with your video card or you cannot,*anything else* will be either blurred or deformed (or both ). There could be some better or worse results depending on the interface used (VGA vs. HDMI, etc.), in theory there shouldn't be (if not in the perverted mind of some video fanatics), and in practice on a perfectly working video card and a perfectly working monitor/TV (and with a good cable) there is no difference that can be appreciated, but there are "somehow faulty" monitors and/or video cards that are sensible to using the one or the other, see also: (in some cases it is possible to "force" the EDID to solve auto-detected resolution and/or modify the video card BIOS to support another resolution). We need the EXACT video card and TV make/models. And actually we already talked about the matter some time ago (just for the record): jaclaz

Well, with all due respect , it seems to me like you are creating yourself a problem, I mean how much does it cost to pay a little attention when you eject a USB device? And in any case what is the problem with HotSwap!? (without disabling anything else/without fiddling with DLL's, etc.) The "batch file" is actually a two liner, the first adds/modify a registry key: reg add "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Applets\SysTray" /v "Services" /t reg_dword /d 29 /f and the second (re-)starts Systray.exe Check your registry for what is now in that key, "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Applets\SysTray\Services", it should be 0x0000001d (29). BUT it is re-set by system and need a precise timing, see point #3 here: http://www.v-front.de/2014/02/various-ways-to-address-safely-remove.html maybe it is the timing your issue? The value is most probably interpreted as a binary number where fourth digit represents the "Safely remove" thingy, compare with: http://www.mdgx.com/newtip4.htm (look on the page for "DITCH THAT SOUND ICON") jaclaz

With 8.1 it was mandatory to have a RE environment and most laptop manufacturers (if not all, and definitely including Acer) used additionally a "recovery" partition and an easy way to create recovery media. Specifically the recovery media needs to be a USB stick 16 Gb or bigger: http://acer.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/26287 jaclaz