jaclaz

Well, that is left as an exercise for the reader, if he/she actually uses directories with spaces, however, it still works, only if you run it without parameters, won't find itself and not print the "help" text, but otherwise functions fine. jaclaz

No, I was talking of earlier systems, and of "real" videos, not the Youtube streaming ones, there have been years of issues with codecs and with (crappy) codec packs, besides the issues with WMP (Windows Media Player) that led to the development of the "Classic" version (JFYI): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Player_Classic that eventually evolved into MPC-HC: https://mpc-hc.org/ And some (historical) comments: http://blog.codinghorror.com/video-codecs-are-the-next-dll-hell/ jaclaz

Hmmm. SetupFailOver.cmd (that can obviously be adapted it if needed to the specific needs) came out with Vista, maybe it isn't in 7 WAIK but only because they forgot putting it in, as at first sight I cannot see why it shouldn't be usable with 7 also: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/128727-cant-access-repair-my-pc-option-via-f8-startup/ start from around here: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/128727-cant-access-repair-my-pc-option-via-f8-startup/?p=950779 The Windows 7 version is (publicly) documented here: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd744525(v=ws.10).aspx https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd744280(v=ws.10).aspx etc. Once you are booted in the WinRE, you are to all effects running a Windows PE in which you can do *anything* you want, including applying a .wim to another partition or run an install (attended or unattended). jaclaz

And the 2000's as well, I rarely use/watch videos on the PC at all, but until VLC came out, it was pure hell (at least for me) with codecs. jaclaz

Only to be able to release *something* on February 29, a small batch (a simple adaptation of multiply.cmd): http://reboot.pro/topic/2986-yacbfc-dec2hexcmd-and-hex2deccmd/ KMG2B.cmd :small batch file to convert numbers expressedin Kb, Mb, Gb into bytes, overcoming the 0x07FFFFFFlimit in batch (aka 2,147,483,647)this is about "real" K/M/G, i.e. powers of 1024what would be now called KiB, MiB, GiB.******** Version 1.0 29 February 2016 ********by jaclazThis file is licensed under my "CAREWARE" license:http://jaclaz.altervista.org/Projects/careware.htmlUsage:KMG2B.cmd Integer[K|M|G]jaclaz KMG2b.zip

...intriguing... jaclaz

And it is additionally particularly difficult to know where exactly they are ... http://www.travelandleisure.com/articles/digital-maps-skewed-china jaclaz

And now let's talk of IOT generated metadata and who exactly will access it: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/02/28/metadata_scope_creep/ No more "The Thorn Birds" or similar . jaclaz

Be very aware of Rule #8 :http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?app=forums&module=extras&section=boardrules jaclaz

Well, what I suspect is that your previous 7's boot not in UEFI mode (if they use BOOTMGR they boot through BIOS or actually CMS - Compatibility Mode Support) whilst your new 8.1's are clearly booting in UEFI mode. Somehow your motherboard (stupid) UEFI must be (only seemingly) smart enough to use BIOS for the 7's and autoswitch to UEFI (or viceversa from standard UEFI autoswitch to CMS/BIOS). Again: jaclaz

And for a PE 1.x one can use still the good ol' BartPE builder ... here is a (lesser known but very complete project) using it: http://teutonpe.freehostia.com/ and a lesser known but working alternative builder (just for the record): http://www.kare-net.de/LiveSystempro-e.html jaclaz

Yep, I understand. But the issue is that once an OS has been installed to a given drive letter (as seen by the OS itself) it cannot be changed (or changing it is so difficult and prone to errors that simply it isn't worth it). Until NT 4.00 the good MS guys made a system that was "portable" to a different drive letter very easily. In 2K they made it stupidly difficult/complicated. In XP they made it even worse. All the various third party programmers in their simplicity additionally used hardcoded drive letters in paths, configuration files and throughout the Registry (and what not). Up to XP, with increasing effort, it was however doable. In Vista and later my guess is that it is almost impossible as they added a number of complications. As you can see each volume gets a different number/are shifted (this is what I was talking about when I said using diskpart list volume is not reliable) depending on whether you have your broadband modem (seemingly a USB device with a CD-like device) but much worse than that is that each volume gets a different drive letter when booted in the one or the other OS. Such a setting is strongly NOT advised, each volume should get a same given drive letter no matter which OS is booted, as before or later you may happen to be booted on the "wrong" OS and thus do something that you will regret to the "wrong" volume. About the Windows 7 booting, I understand that you are using a "firmare UEFI entry" (most probably created by your motherboard firmware ) that loads the second hard disk, but from there on, does it boot in UEFI mode (i.e. does it use the EFI BOOTMGR, \efi\microsoft\boot\bootmgfw.efi) or does it boot in CSM (i.e. it uses a "normal" BOOTMGR), I believe you are using EFI boot since the second disk seems to be GPT (in mini-tool) BUT the Disk Manager screenshot sees a Primary volume and three Logical volumes (that can only be on a MBR style hard disk). Anyway, what happens if you boot "normally" and in the choice menu you posted a screenshot on post #9 you choose the "Hard Drive"? jaclaz

Oh, my. Did you believe that grubx64.efi is a BOOTSECTOR? I guess you should think also about shimx64.efi, consult this (long) page: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2147295 and this one: http://linux.about.com/od/LinuxNewbieDesktopGuide/tp/3-Ways-To-Fix-The-UEFI-Bootloader-When-Dual-Booting-Windows-And-Ubuntu.htm Basically, dual booting on UEFI is a total mess, depending on single machines/firmwares and specific version of windows (and *what not* ) but, as you found out, normally you cannot add a multi-boot entry for Linux/GRUB2 to Windows BOOTMGR BCD on UEFI, you need to make GRUB2 (or Refind, etc.) your main bootmanager. jaclaz

Well SHSUCDX: http://adoxa.altervista.org/shsucdx/ is a (better) replacement for MSCDEX.EXE, it has nothing to do with the bus on which the CD device is installed, it is basically a CDFS filesystem extension. What might be needed (for the DOS part at least) is GCDROM: http://help.fdos.org/en/hhstndrd/base/gcdrom.htm or XDVD2: http://optimizr.dyndns.org/dos/drivers.html jaclaz

Only seemingly unrelated: http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/02/most-software-already-has-a-golden-key-backdoor-its-called-auto-update/ jaclaz

About CurrentControlSet: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/100010 There are several keys that one can check: PE 2.x and later: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\WinPE PE 1.x and later: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\MiniNT but there is SystemSetupInProgress (but this may be re-set to 0 intentionally in the build to allow runnign some programs) and more: http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=2840 jaclaz

It does seem like an issue with the SATA device (not connected to it being a SSD instead of a conventional hard disk). See: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/161982-windows-98-hangs/ It is possible that you are having some issues related to BIOS settings and device ports, see also: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/97588-modern-motherboards-which-are-working-with-windows-98/?p=992381 but the SATA patch should anyway solve the issue. jaclaz

Well, if you are going to look in the Registry, then you could probably check also: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Firmwarebootdevice but this is 7 and later only. More generally, you should always use the CurrentControlSet or check manually the Select hive on a live system, you cannot assume that Current is ControlSet001. jaclaz

Hmmm. Will need to start from the bottom and then jump up and down a bit 11) you NEED a tested, safe, alternative way to boot that machine, access the BCD while offline in order to restore the backup, this could be the Windows install DVD or a PE of some kind. So we must solve the "cannot boot other device" issue before anything else. About the volume numbers you used in your description they are not "extremely" reliable,if I look at your diskpart output, I cannot see the MSR (128 Mb in size) partition, while I can see it fine in the mini-tool one. You'd better run diskpart and issue a list volume command. Anyway your primary Wndows 8.1 is on the volume that has drive letter C: and your secondary one is on the volume that gets drive letter F:. And you should repeat this when booted into the Windows 7 (BTW, how eactly are you booting the Windows 7(s))? However, there is certainly an issue (why and how this was created may depend on the exact sequence/method you used to do the various installs). As seen from 8.1 the volume you call "Windows 8.1 On volume 4 is the W811_1" (should be 4th partition on first disk) gets drive letter C: As seen from 7 the volume "X647" (should be 1st partition on second disk) containing your 1st Windows 7 install ALSO gets drive letter C: As seen from 8.1 the volume you call "Windows 8.1 On volume 5 as W812" (should be 5th partition on first disk) gets drive letter F: As seen from 7 the volume "NVT" (should be 4th partition on second disk) containing your 4th Windows 7 install ALSO gets drive letter F: If you prefer, at the time you installed your 1st Windows 7 the volume on which it was installed had letter C: and at the time of your 4th Windows 7 the volume on which it was installed had drive letter F: whilst at the time you installed your Wndows 8.1 those same volumes got letters D: and L: respectively. You need to somehow fix this "drive letter overlapping" as this can be a serious issue, leading to "mix" things up (if those volumes can actually boot). But right now I have no idea on how to solve the problem . jaclaz

Would you think that the title of The Finder was arbitrary? (please note the capital T and F ) And of course, it's a state secret ...: http://www.literaturepage.com/read.php?titleid=man-in-the-iron-mask&abspage=294 jaclaz

OT @Acheron That seemingly assumes that there is only one volume with label "BACKUP" and that it has already a drive letter assigned. Also what is the reason for the cmd /c? I mean, wouldn't this do as well? for /f "tokens=3,4 delims= " %%i in ('echo list volume ^| diskpart^|FIND /i "Backup"') do set SVNPATH=%%i:\SVN depotjaclaz

JFYI, diskpart has some "shortened commands", *like*: sel=select det=detail par=partition etc. jaclaz

The tool I normally use to create a 00's file is fsz (part of the dsfok toolkit), but still it uses bytes as argument. Technically you can even use a loop in plain batch, using the powers of 2 (as long as you want sizes that are multiples), but since you need anyway a third party utility (mke2fs), you could use a file creating one that accepts suffixes like K, M or G. Here: http://www.henrynestler.com/colinux/tools/ http://www.henrynestler.com/colinux/tools/file-utils-mingw-bin-stripped.zip meet mkfile.exe : C:\appoggio\Filetests>mkfileUsage: mkfile [-s] [-r] [-k] [-m] [-g] filename filesizewhere filename is the name of the file to createfilesize if the size of the file.-s means create a sparse file ( only supported on ntfs 5 or greater )-r means resize an existing file-k -m -g means the size is in KB, MB, or GBjaclaz

And, unless you go for the "special" SELFIE edition you also save a lot on screen cleaning products . jaclaz

There is a limit (actually more than one) in batch math. Besides the fact that only integers are accepted, there is a limit which is 0x7FFFFFFF, i.e. 2,147,483,647. Numbers bigger than that are NEGATIVE numbers, i.e.: SET /A max=0x80000000 will output: -2147483648 and SET /A max=0xFFFFFFFF will output: -1 But if you want a file exactly 1 Gb (a "real" one, what to be "politically correct" we should call a Gib), i.e. 1024x1024x1024=1,073,741,824 There should be no problem. Otherwise you will need a trick or two (or more). Check my multiply.cmd: http://reboot.pro/topic/2986-yacbfc-dec2hexcmd-and-hex2deccmd/ The file you create with fsutil is not actually "blank", it is filled of 00's: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc788058.aspx Then, in order to have an EXT2 filesystem applied to it you need a tool capable of formatting a file with that filesystem or capable to format a volume once you have mounted it in a virtual disk driver. The Ext2dfsd project: https://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2fsd/ does contain a mkefs2.exe, a Windows port of the mke2fs Linux utility (through Cygwin), which may (or may not) do what you need. mke2fs is not exactly a tool with a "friendly" syntax, but usually it auto-calculates all parameters, so that something *like*: set CYGWIN=nodosfilewarningmke2fs.exe <full path to the image file>set CYGWIN=should work jaclaz