jaclaz

Yep, I think there is no hurry, it doesn't seem to me as a "serious" issue, whatever it is the cause, it should affect only the defrag tool, that you surely don't use very often. The charger catching fire seems like a much bigger problem, did it actually get flames/sparks (rare, dangerous) or did it only let out the magic smoke (common, usually harmless)? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_smoke jaclaz

The issue is with Sunday afternoons. https://www.hhgproject.org/entries/wowbagger.html jaclaz

Maybe useful, maybe not: http://www.tsac.co.uk/javavm/index.php jaclaz

Everything is possible, but what you report is strange, in the sense that (AFAICR) Windows 2000 (like NT 4.00) was essentially a "same" OS with only a few differences in the Registry and/or in a few other files, the installation, drivers and booting should be exactly the same. Errors *like* line 53 of INF file" is wrong may be due to *something* in nlite targeting the specific Professional edition (which is of course the "popular" one) and creating a problem in the .inf on the "other" edition, or maybe those SATA drivers are somehow not compatible with Datacenter edition. Still, if your BIOS has IDE compatibility mode, no drivers (integrated or not) should be needed. You could try not integrating the drivers with nlite but use the "normal" F6 floppy way to install them (it is possible to use a grub4dos mapped virtual floppy to replace the "real" floppy which likely you don't have) but it is of course very little documented and experimental, really tested only on XP installs. (by the time grub4dos came out and floppy drives became extincted the only NT os people were interested in was already XP). jaclaz

The GUID's are uuid's Version 1, even if they appear "random" numbers they encode the date/time when they were generated and the MAC address of the machine on which they were generated. The linked uuid tool can decode them. Since they are generated the first time a volume is detected by the OS, when (as it is in your case) they are all within a few seconds it means that there were no "later additions" of devices or resets/modifications/etc. Decoding the GUID of your ghost volume could give you the date when it was connected first time. The Mounted devices hive contains two kind of key names: 1) beginning with \DosDevices\ followed by a drive letter and colon 2) beginning with \\?\Volume followed by a GUID The content of each key are (in the case of fixed media) the disk signature+the offset to the partition/volume, in case of removable media the "STORAGE path" to the device. In practice the hive contains a (partial) "history" of volumes connected to the machine, as the contents remain "sticky" in the hive until they are overwritten/updated by some other volume mounted. It is possible to either delete all entries but the ones related to the volumes you actually have or delete completely the contents and let the system rebuild them, but in your case, if there are entries related to the "ghost" volume, I would try deleting just those, as it is possible that for *whatever* reasons the defrag tool reads the "ghost" volume from that hive. The other place where some volume info is stored is the (in theory related to Explorer) Mountpoints2 in HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\MountPoints2, though it is less likely to be the source for that "ghost" drive. I would make a search through all the Registry for the GUID of that ghost drive (without the curly brackets) as the data may be in some other places, depending on how it was originally connected. jaclaz

Yep, those are volume GUID's. It is very common to fail to communicate properly because the terminology is very confusing. You have a single disk (hard disk or SSD) with three primary partitions in it (that are also three volumes, of which only one has a drive letter assigned, C: ), which is a "fixed" device. The D: drive letter is assigned to the CD (or DVD) drive. (removable, with no media inserted) The F: drive letter is assigned to some other device (SD or CF card reader). (removable, with no media inserted) In mountvol you have 5 entries (3+1+1=5), each with its own GUID (differing only on the 8th character, 5/6/7/f/a). Everything seems "normal" (exception made for the "some other device" that would normally get drive letter E:, but the assignment to F: could have been made manually or - possibly - during setup at a certain stage the E: was taken and thus the following F: was used for it). The GUIDs are compatible with a system installed around 15:24 of the 25th of May 2022. SInce you have only one drive letter assigned to a defragmentable volume, probably you have that "all disks" item in the defrag tool, but cannot say for sure. You can check yourself the GUIDs (also that of the "ghost" volume) using the uuid tool (use the -d switch to decode the GUID): https://soft.rubypdf.com/software/guidgen-ossp-uuid Then, you could check your registry in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices to see if the "ghost" drive GUID is listed in there. jaclaz

That is probably a 0x0000007b STOP error, "Inaccessible boot device" which means - more or less - that somehow you lack the proper drivers for the internal mass storage device (SATA). It is "strange" as if you have the controller set as IDE compatibility mode in BIOS you shouldn't need any particular driver, so, it may be that (or another error) connected to the ACPI, or more generally to other chipset drivers. The howto/instructions by Jakob99 is seemingly far more complex (and in parts not at all understandable - by me) then just overwriting ACPI.SYS with a modded version, I have no idea why, but it seems like the ACPI.SYS is replaced twice, both in the .cab and then again in the installed OS. Maybe you could try ask for clarifications on that thread. I don't think that the variant (Datacenter vs. Workstation ) makes any difference. If the issue is only related to the SATA (or however internal hard disk/SSD) you may try using SVBUS and a VHD (but it is not easy/straightforward): http://reboot.pro/topic/21787-svbus-virtual-scsi-host-adapter-for-grub4dos/ https://github.com/grub4dos/svbus/blob/master/ReadMe.txt jaclaz

Strange: https://www.wikihow.com/Defrag-Windows-7 I am not sure I understand what you mean by "UNC names"? Mountvol shows GUIDs, diskpart (AFAICR) shows neither UNC nor GUID. jaclaz

@legacyfan I think there is some misunderstanding going on. The present thread is perfectly fine, and you need not to apologize for your posts in it, you had a (real) technical problem and asked for help, which led to some related discussions on the methods used or usable. This is exactly the main scope of MSFN, to exchange ideas, knowledge, opinions mainly on (computer related) technical themes. jaclaz

BUT, once you will have the discs you will be playing another game (suggested by Dietmar), not this one. jaclaz

#1 there are special tools (combs) that can be replaced by some medicine blister (foil pill container) in some cases: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIPZtJyrVPw the real issue is with multi-platter disks, you need to keep them exactly as they are, as well there are special tools/clamps for that. #2 Curiously enough, that applied to very old drives, then for several years boards were exchangeable, then again it returned the need to transplant the chip because of the so-called adaptive data (p-list and g-list ,mainly, but not only) or (with tools like the Pc-3000) it is possible to dump the contents of a chip and re-program the one on the new board. jaclaz

... "a strange game" in which "the only winning move is not to play." jaclaz

I forgot to list in my previous post the game where people post truisms, my bad, though it may well belong to the "something else" category. Next one will likely be about RIS installation ... jaclaz

A blue screen is blue, usually it comes with some white text on it, including a STOP code, see example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_screen_of_death#/media/File:Windows_XP_BSOD.png Besides, WinSetupFromUSB behaviour might depend on the settings you chose. The fact that you tried other tools obtaining similar failures leads me to think that there may be issues with the source, like some driver (missing or "wrong"). jaclaz

Which game is this? The one where other users suggest something and you reply saying "Yeah, I tried that but it doesn't work." and that goes on for several posts until it ends nowhere or the one where you post the EXACT description of your hardware, the EXACT description of what tool/method/whatever you tried using to install XP from USB AND the EXACT description of the error(s)/issue(s) you had and for which you may receive (hopefully) some advice or something else? jaclaz

is ETA in the morning or in the afternoon? jaclaz

I am not following this topic. I access MSFN (which BTW was a technical board with a particular accent on MS operating systems) and click on the Activity button to see what happened since my previous visit, expecting to see relevant posts Before, I could see a number of new posts more or less related to the board scope. Now, I have to scroil/load more several times to find, among all the noise (largely generated by a handful of people), the same content. Since you are one of the people that is using the board as a news aggregator, or news feed, or twitter, or whatever, I am telling you. Your continuous posting of these links to (IMHO largely crappy) random articles makes me waste my time. You can of course continue posting them, but now you know. jaclaz

Paraphrasing: >You should stop with this posting links to random crap ...you are an intelligent person, so you know it does NOTHING but waste or "fill" your time.... Actually it does ALSO clutter the "Activity" results, and waste other people's time too. jaclaz

Sure, but you need to check at a time where your external HD is connected. It is "queer" that a volume or partition remains "sticky" in the defrag tool (because it actually exists or existed on the external hard disk) even once the external hard disk has been disconnected, but surely it would be much more "queer" if this volume or partition never existed. I don't know, but maybe it could be connected to the "Schedule" settings of the defrag tool, I would expect that in some cases it can happen that a volume is scheduled for a periodical defrag (at a time when it is connected) and *somehow* the item remains sticky. Check this thread here, ignore the first reply, open other replies and go to page 2, look for the reply by MikhoulLhaboul https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/strange-volume-listed-by-disk-defrag/00ea7a77-12b7-450b-a6b7-94dae520bcdd he suggests something similar. You may want to try toggling disk defragmenter schedule on and off. jaclaz

In disk manager a small volume is often difficult to see, there is an option to represent the disk partitions all the same length as bars, independent from their size. What you are seeing is probably a volume to which a drive letter has not been assigned (this may be "normal" or an issue of some kind). You can run (in a cmd window) mountvol to check which letters are assigned to which volumes. As well, from command line, diskpart will be able to show you where (to which disk it belongs) that volume. jaclaz

Maybe then the previous scramdisk: https://web.archive.org/web/20080123131324/http://www.samsimpson.com/cryptography/scramdisk/ jaclaz

Alchemy is the most promising approach: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy jaclaz

I still believe (maybe wrongly) that the code for a "filedisk" driver will be very different from a "ramdisk" one. In any case the "base" should be a driver for which the source code - besides being available - is also free to use/modify, besides the mentioned ones, there is the one by rudolph loew that the family kindly released after his death: https://rloewelectronics.com/ https://rloewelectronics.com/distribute/RAMDISK/ jaclaz

Yep, OP should try Adaptec UDF Reader Driver, it should still be available: https://www.techspot.com/drivers/driver/file/information/1018/ jaclaz

Forget about Powershell, evidently the Windows 7 doesn't have that cmdlet. Check the Registry, and use regedit to change if needed, search on that page for: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Parameters but SMB is enabled by default, unless you disabled it. It is more probable that you have something else mis-configured in file sharing settings, check: https://www.stratospherix.com/support/access-files-on-windows7-from-your-ipad.php and: https://www.wikihow.com/Access-a-Shared-Folder-on-an-iPhone-or-iPad jaclaz