jaclaz

Which is probably good. Now why don't you start a suitable thread (containing a proper description of your work, instructions to use it, etc.) in an appropriate section of the board, like here: http://www.msfn.org/board/forum/34-windows-xp/ and post a link to it? jaclaz

Most probably it is the "visibility" setting in the Registry: jaclaz

Try again, with "Failsafe settings" and another cable you can use alright (for the sale of the test) one of those crappy ones you have as spare, then all that remains is a (coincidental) partial failure of the actual CD/DVD drive, which you should be able to test separately by connecting it to another machine. BUT the fact that it started loading and then suddenly stopped may mean something else. I wouldn't (as I never do) totally exclude a PSU issue (I have seen too many of them). Try (again for the sake of testing) disconnecting the power from your hard disks and test again the CD/DVD drive (ideally you should have a spare PSU). jaclaz

You make it sound like we were living on different planets ... jaclaz

Well, laptops are "bad beasts" when it comes to drivers, there is no way to know if another (similar) laptop with a similar video card will work, or viceversa, even if we have an actual, proper, valid report that it is working, nothing really says that is working on your laptop, unless it is EXACTLY the same make and model (and even then a seemingly minor thing such as a different BIOS revision or amount of RAM in a same make/model may make the difference between working or not working). jaclaz

Well, post the EXACT make/model of the "modern" laptop you found (the one you completely failed to specify), if someone has EXACTLY the same make model AND he/she runs XP 64 bit AND he/she has a working driver he/she might post the EXACT version of the driver that work on it. jaclaz

Just so you know, we do have a couple of "solutions", what we miss are some confirmations AND some PROPER diagnosing of the problems. The issue here is that the 7200.11 failed in great quantities and went to either BSY or LBA0 for a known reason. By pure chance a number of 7200.11 went as well into BSY or LBA0 for a similar reason. Here it is described a "cure" for certain symptoms (the BSY or the LBA0) of the 7200.11's and we know that like 95% or more of bricked 7200.11's were bricked by the same illness (which the "cure" is suited for). There are a few - actually "vague" or "unconfirmed" - reports about the same (or very similar) set of commands used for the 7200.11's do work for the 7200.12 BUT the issue is that we don't know how many bricked 7200.12 are bricked for the same (or similar) reasons why the 7200.11's bricked themselves, as such it is risky to use a "cure" for an unknown illness: http://computersciencelabs.blogspot.it/2011/02/seagate-720012-sim-error-firmware-fault.html jaclaz

Before I forget, for those with a recent Windows system (AND actually convinced that having something running in the background AND accessible from the outside is a good idea), there is a new kid on the block: https://ulterius.xyz/ https://github.com/Ulterius Still very, VERY experimental, but maybe worth to keep an eye on. jaclaz

Ok, OT but still relevant, the good MS guys made a mess of the managing of the (in itself already stupid enough) SecureBoot lock on RT devices: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/08/10/microsoft_secure_boot_ms16_100/ As expected (it had to happen before or later) the Secure Boot Debug Policy was leaked with the consequence that many Surface RT's (and similar Windwos RT devices) can be finally made free to boot *whatever*. This is actually good news for the (very few) morons gullible users microsoft trusting customers that bought for a rather steep price only a couple years ago a device that can ONLY run an OS that isn't developed anymore and will be not supported starting 2017 or 2018. BUT it clearly shows (had it not be self-evident enough) that: 1) EFI/UEFI is confirmed to be a stupid way to boot a machine 2) provisions in it are - besides stupid and stupidly implemented - a theoretical only mish-mash that fails in practice, because people are humans and they do mistakes 3) the theoretical idea of a "golden key" or "master key" for *whatever* is as secure as the mindset of the people possessing it, and since they are humans, it will leak (it is just a matter of time) 4) these are the same people you give your data to, believing they will keep it secure, when they cannot even manage properly their own stuff jaclaz

This continues to sound like a cable problem. do try removing the cable from both ends (one at the time) and re-seat the connectors. Of course if the drive activity leds blink and the tray opens/closes at the push of the button it means that the power cable is OK, but it tells us not enough about the data cable, the fact that it doesn't boot from it may well be an issue with it (the data cable), but it can also be that you mis-recorded (or failed to reset properly) the BIOS settings. Now, the Award BIOS should have a choice for "Load failsafe settings". If you choose that one, the CD/DVD drive will work (unless the issue is the drive itself or the data cable). Is the CD/DVD drive IDE/ATAPI or SATA? What motherboard (exact make/model) is that PC? jaclaz

Check cables and connections of the CD/DVD drive. Check Device Manager. What do you see? Check Disk Manager. What do you see? It would be very, very hard normally to "hide" a CD/DVD drive from Windows, confirm that the CD/DVD drive is seen correctly from BIOS, hwever (i.e. try booting from a bootable CD/DVD). jaclaz

Loosely, it may be some (background/automatic) attempt to "update" (the view, the reply, any e-mail account, contacts). What has this particular sender "different" from other ones? Like a particular e-mail address (special characters or similar), a particular way the e-mail is formatted/encoded (plain text, html, etc.)? Do you have the possibility to compare with a mail from another user/sender on the same domain? I presume you already went through ALL the steps listed here : https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2000071 Can you post the event log entry? Maybe some detail in it will give a hint to the possible cause. jaclaz

Semi-random idea , but maybe in SetupAct.log you can find more details on what actually msoobe does before you kill it. and see if it is possible to go from there pinning down what is actually done... jaclaz

Allow me to doubt that there will be an "official" provision for that, see also: Where did you actually read that? jaclaz

@glnz Off Topic again, please remember that Word is "by design" a container that can have *anything* inside it, if you circulate for revisions a .doc (and I presume also a .docx) there is no limit to the amount of crap that may be inside it, particularly it happens to me very often to find documents with old revisions/comments and/or corrections that reveal much more than they should, for something "serious" (like a contract or a negotiation) this may result in the leak of sensitive informations. (I have found in my experience documents where the - expected - amount was corrected, leaving the old one, and comments like "hey, this is crazy, let's ask for more" or where a "finalized" document was re-used as "base" or "template", leaving some personal data and amounts/dealings of the original viewable in the actual file ). I will also - in passing by - re-tell an anecdote, many years ago we had some commercial correspondence with a firm, and we faced a queer problem, only some of their e-mails arrived, seemingly at random. The fact was that every letter they were sending us was around 5 Mb in size or more, at the time the limit for a single message in the e-mail server we were using was 5 Mb, so only one out of three letters or so "went through". Upon inspection, it came out that (I presume a secretary or a self-proclaimed computer guru) someone was tasked to make the new template for letters and managed to use directly a huge TIFF (or maybe JPG, cannot remember, anyway something in the thousands x thousands pixels size range) of the firm logo embedding it in the word document and shrinking it to something like 7% or so to make it fit in the top left corner of the page. They actually did mention how their network had become very slow when sending e-mails ... jaclaz

More than impressive, it is "terrifying", it plainly means that - even on 7 - the good MS guys have full (or almost full) control of the software on your machine AND that they don' t care to notify you in any way what (the heck) they are doing on your machine , they add (or remove) software at will, without your explicit authorization. Today this resulted in a good thing, removing that senseless crap, tomorrow it may be *whatever*. jaclaz

Well, you can't have Wireshark without a *pcap* underneath it, the latter captures packets, the former analyzes results. Maybe the thingy you linked to is more similar to ntop: http://www.ntop.org/products/traffic-analysis/ntop/ I believe that that netbalancer is more like having the features of different programs grouped together (i.e. doing - probably very well - what separate freely available tools can do) jaclaz

Sure, online Bluetooth skimmers are a real, concrete, danger. jaclaz

Hmmm. https://www.wireshark.org/ https://www.winpcap.org/docs/default.htm http://www.win10pcap.org/ jaclaz

Sure it still exists, but you need (besides an initial longish training lesson) to have a very good microphone or headset, and it is not like it is particularly friendly outside a restricted number of selected apps (and not even on some version of them), particularly Outlook 2013 and - drum roll - Windows 10 (initially): http://nuance.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/17805/~/information-on-dragon-naturallyspeaking-13-and-windows-10 http://nuance-community.custhelp.com/posts/905182eaea http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/insider/forum/insider_wintp-insider_personal/dragon-naturally-speaking-13-on-windows-10/5fc51812-f70d-471c-a2b4-da9e094dac3b If you actually *need* it (imagine a doctor taking notes while visiting a patient or however anyone that cannot use their hands on the keyboard because they are either too clean or too dirty) or if you have some disabilities that prevent you from using more traditional input methods, it is more than OK and a great little thing, but it is not AFAIK[1] to compare with the speed (and reliability) of mouse/keyboard. I believe that current version (revised and seemingly working fine with Windows 10) is the "professional" version that sells for US$ 300, whilst the "home" version which sells for a more reasonable 74.99 US$ is still a hit and miss when it comes to Windows 10 . The "legal" version (which might be particularly useful as a "transcription" software) and has a specialized dictionary is US$ 500, but that's OK, it's for lawyers . jaclaz [1] To be fair, the one I have seen being used was some 5 or 6 years ago and the software (or the power of the hardware on which it is run) may well have reduced the inconveniences.

@Trip Yep : jaclaz

Too many Star Trek New Generation episodes leave a sign, seemingly. Fascinating! jaclaz

A .wim file is nothing but a container, think of it as you would of a .zip, .rar or .cab archive, *anything* different in the contents would make any two of them different, you need to open them (among the GUI tools 7-zip will do) or mount them (via DISM or similar) and compare the contents. jaclaz

Some - as usual in a grumpy tone - general remarks. In the good ol' days (and today as well) a lot of people bought/buy an otherwise perfectly working machine for office use and thought that adding a videocard and/or an enhanced mulltimedia card made that into a gaming machine (or a graphical workstation or a recording studio on a budget). Reality check, if a motherboard has on-board sound and video, leave it alone, hardware engineers, that very likely, at a 99% probability rate, know more than you do on how a PC works took some time to embed some circuits and they are usually the best ones (limited to the intended scope of the machine overall) for the best cost. If you really want a graphical workstation, build one with suitable hardware, same goes for other "dedicated" machines. Back to topic, most probably the Video Controller is an add-on graphical card (the DVI) output you have, and the thing that looks like being a modem card is possibly the PCI Simple Communications Controller and/or the Multimedia Audio Controller , what is strange is that the Ethernet Controller (which is built-in) has not a proper driver installed (that should be in the original DELL OS install CD/DVD). jaclaz

Well, an unfixed 1997 (yes that is last century) re-known bug is still affecting newish Windows (IE, EDGE, a number of MS apps and even Chrome in some instances). The issue - traditionally - was not really-really an issue, but with Live Accounts things change. JFYI: https://medium.com/@ValdikSS/deanonymizing-windows-users-and-capturing-microsoft-and-vpn-accounts-f7e53fe73834 https://www.perfect-privacy.com/blog/2016/08/01/security-issue-in-windows-leaks-login-data/ But - don't worry - the good MS guys are hard at work on those newish t-shirts and on making the life of a driver developer impossible or nearly impossible: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/windows_hardware_certification/2016/07/26/driver-signing-changes-in-windows-10-version-1607/ jaclaz