jaclaz

Well, you cannot really measure anything "correctly" with a multimeter, but everything you report seems like fine. The "sure" way is to have the PCB completely detached from the drive, when you hit CTRL+Z it should give you some feedback, but you also tried that and it doesn't work, it's strange, unless, and this is what I suspect, you are NOT in one of the two "known" cases (LBA0 or BSY), but rather in another, less common case, see: http://forum.hddguru.com/viewtopic.php?t=11403&start= (seemingly no solution for the 7200.11 , before the thread was hijacked to ES2 drives) See also: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/154413-st32000542as-with-st-m13fqbl/ But the adapter should work anyway with the "other" (I presume "good") Seagate drives . jaclaz

I was meaning about the futility of using addressable memory to hold a pagefile, see also: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/174002-windows-7-possible-advisable-to-disable-the-page-file/ A pagefile in non addressable memory might be OK, though, of course. On XP this is possible using Gavotte's Ramdisk, but I am not sure it will run on 2K (possibly it will, but I cannot recall actual tests on 2K) if really-really more RAM is needed, the use of PAE and "Server like" tricks seems like a much better approach anyway. JFYI, some versions of IMDISK do run on 2K and Olof has a swapadd.exe file that allows to create the pagefile in the IMDISK ramdisk: http://reboot.pro/topic/6745-how-would-you-create-a-ramdisk-on-boot/ jaclaz

Sure it is , possibly with one exception : JFYI: http://www.overclock.net/t/1193401/why-it-is-bad-to-store-the-page-file-on-a-ram-disk jaclaz

Yep there is a lot of over-engineering around, or sometimes solutions in search for problems around lately. As a side note (not IoT related but connected to both MS and over-engineering) anyone spotted the new Surface 4 hinge retention mechanism? https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Microsoft+Surface+Book+Teardown/51972 https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/huKvGB5OOUGxSrY3.medium http://hackaday.com/2015/11/04/microsoft-surface-book-teardown-reveals-muscle-wire-mechanism/ A normal push release button must have been seen as too d@mn simple and robust. jaclaz

Fliipism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipism to the rescue: Heads=7 Tails=8.1 (heavily, and I mean heavily tweaked) If the coin lands and stays vertical on the edge, Windows 10. Some reference to results of scientific experiments: http://journals.aps.org/pre/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevE.48.2547 ...and yes, I would personally use this coin http://www.magictricks.com/double-headed-nickel.html jaclaz

... speaking of google, suggested replies are already available (JFYI)... http://googleresearch.blogspot.it/2015/11/computer-respond-to-this-email.html jaclaz

http://www.networkworld.com/article/3000809/software/its-time-to-update-the-software-update-process.html jaclaz

Anti-drone technologies: http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/29/9631208/drone-defender-regulation-iacp or, more simply: http://hackaday.com/2015/11/04/shoot-down-drones-with-pumpkin-cannons/ jaclaz

Define "legit" first. An OEM version is not really-really "legit" if not acquired together with some hardware (and the discussions of what piece of hardware is "enough" to be considered "valid" accompanying the software would need a looong, separated thread). If you read the opinons on the Amazon site (that one as well as many other ones) you will likely see that what you may actually get is often either a "fake" or some used OEM disk (which definitely are not "legit"). Such opinions are "product related" and not "seller related", so you have no real way to know what you will actually get. If you want the "real thing" you'd better ask/look for a GGK: http://www.microsoft.com/it-it/softwareoriginale/genuinekit/default.aspx https://www.microsoft.com/OEM/it/licensing/antipiracy/Pages/get_genuine_kit.aspx WITHOUT ANY ENDORSEMENT whatsoever for the given links, see here (only examples): http://www.senetic.it/product/6PC-00020 http://www.monclick.it/schede/microsoft/6PC-00022/get-genuine-kit-per-win-7-pro-sp1---oem.htm http://computer.milano.it/catalog/product/view/id/146121 In any case you want to look for "GGK" or "Get Genuine Kit" and/or product "6PC-00022". jaclaz

I would describe "a couple of OEM's" in a slightly less diminutive way , maybe something like "two among the largest OEM in the world, having combined more than 30% of the laptop market in 2014": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laptop_brands_and_manufacturers would be more appropriate. jaclaz

Shouldn't "RTM" be changed to RTGUBUALR[1]? jaclaz [1]Released To Gullible Users Being Used As Lab Rats

NO, it is NOT. In there it is mentioned how a non-described batch file containing non-mentioned wmic commands is started. I was asking about the contents of that batch (or just the wmic commands used in it). jaclaz P.S.: BTW, and still for the record, even the line described in that thread: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/174723-how-to-do-unattended-installation-without-any-iso-modification/ calling the batch file will NOT work in a number of setups, see: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/144069-batch-find-file-on-the-cd-roms/ http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/137714-install-xp-from-a-ram-loaded-iso-image/page-5#entry895361

For the last question, can you somehow run Accessibility Wizard? http://www.microsoft.com/enable/training/windows2000/ Otherwise try adding osk.exe to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\Cu rrentVersion\Winlogon\System https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc939862.aspx http://support.ablcomputers.com:9996/kb/a70/on-screen-keyboard.aspx Read this, should be the (almost) "complete" solution (using NSSM ): http://e-shop.fccps.cz/download/adv/frr/osk_at_winlogon_and_desktop.htm jaclaz

I wouldn't sleep too well if I had a Vista (or later? ) OS. Just for the record/YI: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/130578-vista-activation/ http://reboot.pro/topic/7288-you-cannot-leave-for-six-months/ BTW it is entirely possible that the good MS guys have changed their approach to it, stopping issuing periodically (for whatever reason) a reactivation trigger, so the aboev may be not only limited to Vista but also to a period in the past. jaclaz

Please define "best", and "your" practice, and more than that, please describe EXACTLY which commands are you using with WMI through the wmic command interface. For the record, dealing with drive letters when non-plain devices are involved (such as card readers, virtual disks, ramdisks, network connected disk devices) is EXTREMELY complex and even dedicated programs can be troublesome. Still for the record: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/123929-updated-batch-file-for-ordering-drive-letter-shifting/ http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/126069-updated-on-feb-27-2011-ordering-messed-drive-letter-batch-file/ http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/125992-switching-and-rearranging-drive-letters-utility-for-windows/ And (actually news): http://reboot.pro/topic/20476-retrieving-devicedrive-information/ jaclaz

Actually here there are 2 (two) concurrent issues: #1 a set of disks originally set in RAID 1 through a dedicated hardware (the Synology NAS) may have unmountable/invalid (under Windows) Partiion ID's (such as the mentioned FD's) #2 the filesystem used may have not an available filesystem driver in Windows (as it is probably but not definitely an Ext2/3/4) Point is that you do not really-really need to mount the volume(s) at all, what you actually need is to access (Read Only) the files/folders you discovered missing from the new disks. To do this you can try using a "recovery" tool like DMDE: http://dmde.com/ which should allow you to retrieve the files you are interested in without actually mounting the filesystem or installing any driver. jaclaz

Only to be more explicit, when you install Windows 7 after XP the XP booting mechanism is modified into windows 7's one. When you install XP the booting mechanism is: MBR->PBR of active partition (with code to load NTLDR)->NTLDR->Choice(s) in BOOT.INI->XP When you install 7 the booting mechanism becomes: MBR->PBR of active partition (with code to load BOOTMGR)->BOOTMGR->Choices in \boot\BCD->Windows 7 (default) or XP In a nutshell, the ARCPATH entry in BOOT.INI is imported inside the \boot\BCD, as a non-default option, because the default is set to Windows 7, so it is needed to edit the \boot\BCD (through BCDEDIT.EXE) to set in it the XP as default. If you want to read a bit about the \boot\BCD and BCDEDIT operation, see here: http://www.mistyrebootfiles.altervista.org/documents/BCDEdit/index.html For the moment, just run (from the booted Windows 7 and from an elevated command prompt): BCDEDIT /enum ALL and copy paste the result or run: BCDEDIT /enum ALL>C:\myBCD.txt and post the contents of C:\myBCD.txt Most probably what you will have to do is to run the BCDEDIT /default {ntldr} command, as in: http://www.mistyrebootfiles.altervista.org/documents/BCDEdit/files/commands.6.3.9600.htm#default but let's first verify that your current situation is what we expect. jaclaz

What about: "there's no such thing as a free lunch!" ? Almost, but not quite. Right now it seems like there's no such thing as a good lunch (free or paid for). jaclaz

Not possible (in the sense that the partnew command is about Primary partitions only). It can be done of course through some scripting, but it is not the easiest of the things to write a grub4dos batch for. About the .vhd booting as partition, this is "normal" as the sheer moment you clone the .vhd to a partition, it is not anymore a .vhd but a partition/volume, and it is as well normal that you cannot boot that way from a .vhd inside a partition (unless you are using an edition of Windows that allows "native" .vhd booting) without an additional third party driver (such as Firadisk or WinVblock). You will need to take some time on reboot.pro to understand the differences between "native" .vhd booting and booting through Firadisk or Winvblock, start here: http://reboot.pro/topic/15516-create-native-boot-vhds/ http://reboot.pro/topic/15407-booting-from-vhd-in-grub4dos/ http://reboot.pro/files/file/321-vhd-w7-compact-make-mini-7/ jaclaz

Good. Another happy bunny in the basket: jaclaz

What puzzles me is that since obviously: adding a given feature may cost a lot of time and effort not adding a given feature (senseless as it might be) may cost in terms of less sales of the productthe decision for the one or the other needs to be pondered, but WHY (the heck) removing an existing feature (BTW for no reason)? It costs anyway some effort and you can be sure that you will pi** off at least a part of your customers. jaclaz

No alcohol involved he meant this (JFYI) : http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/110717-alky-project-is-discountinued-direcx-10-for-xp/ There are in the wild some other (like the one Dibya linked to) patches/hacked files/whatever (I believe of Russian origin), namely the one that Dibya referenced is also reviewed on Softpedia, the issue being that the Alky project seemed at the time to deliver far less than what promised and also these later *whatevers* (once set aside the legality of distributing them or linking to them) appear to be not working or at least the very few reports of it working do not sound "right", there are allegations of something smelling fishy inside the files and there is no home page, named developer and similar, let alone any kind of support. If you search around all you will find are people posting on forums here and there about the thingy either working flawlessly or not working at all, but I could not ever find a single report (not among the successes, nor among the failures) that I would call "reliable" or "credible". jaclaz

Sure, you didn't notice the fingers crossed behind the back when they wrote that . Just in case, a reminder for the good MS guys: To be picky, that would be more like an omission, you know like: After the download the tool runs one time to check your computer for infections by specific .... ... ... and several other times whenever we feel like it should run to do whatever we see it fit doing .... jaclaz

It makes perfectly sense to me. (not that I "like it", only saying that it makes sense) If it was plain http or plain text anyone could probably find a way to (say) spoof the server and fill the database with every kind of crap, imagine that someone manages to insert in the database as "malware" a few tens of MS's own's .exe's . jaclaz

Could be a nice guess, but if you try to re-read BM's original post (possibly taking also in account the attempt I made to make it more clear) you are NOT forced to do experiments, as a matter of fact you are NOT EVEN invited to do so, you are ONLY allowed to use these DEBUG builds to perform your experiments (and ONLY IF you are willing to attempt using these builds for whatever reasons you find worth running such experiment) with a SOLE and ONLY condition/recommendation: Please, DO NOT whine about it. jaclaz