jaclaz

Well, we also have a much longer (several centuries) experience than you in the US about abuses by Kings and Governments, maybe that's the difference. Now whether this will actually bring people to a "revolution" is another matter, all in all it is more likely that the people will do nothing about it, but at least the actual detection of BS is something automatic and spontaneous. jaclaz

Well, but actually it is as well not fashionable to have non working apparata, so while it is entirely possible that the masses of people will just replace the devices, I believe they will then buy *something else*, and this in the end will produce an even worse level of failure. The whole point that I completely fail understanding is what actual advantage do the good MS guys expect from the "continuous updated" model when compared to the "classical" Patch Tuesday . As a side note, and probably not particularly relevant in terms of "large numbers" the (BTW IMHO stupid) new approach about BYOD: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/163387-byod-ideas-opinions-whatever/ may make the division between "business" and "the rest" more thin than expected. jaclaz

Well, I wouldn't confuse superficiality with stupidity. The masses may well be not fully aware of the workings of an OS, but in relatively recent times the very same paradigm shift that made the PC (or however a computer) change from a working tool into an entertainment apparatus[1] has also moved the focus from "let me fix it" to "it should just work". So the second or third time people will wake up in the morning to find their beloved tablet/whatever botched overnight by a MS update (botched in itself or conflicting with some other piece of software) will actually become vocal. Consider also how little by little people won't have anymore cabled connections (everything being Wi-Fi) and won't probably have anymore a "real PC" (with a more "sane" OS) to use in emergency. I hope that this never happens, but in a household with (say) three devices all running the new Windows 10 and set with "automatic updates" a "buggy" update would equate to cutting their main communication lines. jaclaz [1] or if you prefer as a "primary utility", not entirely unlike (say) a TV, a fridge or electricity/running water, i.e. something that you expect to have working 24/7 without any intervention

Well, it all depends on the privileges in which the *whatever* is run. To give you an example, see here: https://securelist.com/blog/incidents/57784/shamoon-the-wiper-further-details-part-ii/ basically the malware, in order to be able to install/use a proprietary driver, sets the date to one compatible with the "time restricted" authentication code/serial that the Author of the driver provides as "trial period". jaclaz

It is entirely possible that changing that would workaround or solve the issue, though that would mean that *something* *somehow* raised that setting from Low to Medium-Low two months ago (but then the old .vhd should have worked) Maybe you have to check the Registry directly: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/182569 jaclaz

Well, if that thing ran in Windows 3.x, easier would be running it in DOSBOX: http://www.dosbox.com/ or even in a Qemu VM, a minimal Windows 3.1 is almost instantly booting. jaclaz

Well, that could be backfiring though. We have a common example of "continuous updating" with Google Chrome, but essentially at each update nothing "visible" or "relevant" (to the final user) is changed (and surely it is is easier to maintain with continuous updates a browser than a whole OS). But the day these "continuous updates" will start hosing systems (and they will as they did before) and altering the working of programs or their looks, not only the "technologically advanced" but also the "common user" will start to protest.... As a matter of fact in this particular case it would - ad absurdum - be "better" if these (hypothetical) shell replacement would cost good, hard earned money and not be Open Source/Freeware . I mean, once your average John Doe will have realized how poor is the UI experience and will have paid (say) 50 bucks for a shell replacement of his likings, he will become very vocal with MS when Windows Update will botch its working, over and over, no matter how quickly and effectively the shell software authors will fix the matter. In the case of Freeware, there wouldn't be probably the basis to start the revolution, after all historically all revolutions were born when the King or the Government simply asked too much from their subjects... jaclaz

Oww, come on, that one is clearly a fake! Windows Executive 10 only runs Office Cloud 2016 , and that would be README.DOCX . jaclaz

Yes. http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/questions-with-yes-or-no-answers.html Now the point would be if you would like to play with it yourself, in which case the "right" choice is IMNSHO grub4dos: http://diddy.boot-land.net/grub4dos/Grub4dos.htm http://reboot.pro/forum/66-grub4dos/ Get latest version from here: http://grub4dos.chenall.net/downloads/grub4dos-0.4.5c-2015-05-18/ http://dl.grub4dos.chenall.net/grub4dos-0.4.5c-2015-05-18.7z (as long as you have BIOS based machines) or if you want a "user friendly" and "automagic" kind of tool go for Easy2boot (which is based on grub4dos but also offer some support for EFI/UEFI based machines, making use of Clover and other UEFI compatible tools): http://www.easy2boot.com/ jaclaz

your answer: See also: Of course you may well re-ask this same question over and over, but it is not like the answer will change, if you actually need User Accounts, then a PE is not a suitable choice. jaclaz

Though, to be fair, it could be worse than that jaclaz.

I have troubles understanding the questions then. We are talking of two different things. You are talking of replacing the current MS shell with one replicating bit by bit the MS Windows 7 one. I am talking about replacing a MS shell with another one, not necessarily similar to the Windows 7 one. I provided the given link only to give you proof that changing the MS shell with another one, which has always been possible, is still possible, the fact that this replacement shell is completely different form the Windows 7 one is another thing.. Of course tomorrow the good MS guys may well decide to further lock down the OS and make this impossible or extremely cumbersome. It is as per today possible. Again, nothing more, nothing less. About the bolting pieces together "a little from here and a bit from there" is basically asking "will the several developers of the currently several different little utilities (either Commercial, Shareware, Nagware or Freeware) join together an provide a single, consistent, shell replacement identical to the Windows 7 one?" or "Will a software house produce a Windows 7 shell replica that can be used to replace in one single pass the stupid NCI?" And the answers to those are of course blowing in the wind. jaclaz

If I get this right, the issue is with the "bypass proxy server for local addresses", that, if checked/enabled adds the 25 seconds delay? Could it be some conflict with the Hosts file? https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/262981 Is there any chance that the addresses have been added in IE "Internet zone"? Can you run a trace route in the various cases? (particularly the one with the 25 seconds delay) Is the behaviour the same if you use web addresses like http://myniceweb/mypage.htmand iP addresses like http://192.168.0.100/mypage.htm? I.e. could it be related to a DNS issue of some kind, are the result of running nslookup correct? Is it possible that one of the Windows updates in the last two months caused this? I.e. can you install a new "dummy machine" with a non "fully up-to-date" OS and see how it behaves? jaclaz

Additional related threads: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/173732-xp-apocalypse-one-year-review/ http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/171606-xp-os-vulnerabilities-after-april-8-2014/ http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/171674-mass-hysteria-on-the-interwebs/ jaclaz

Using Xp is one thing (good ). Hacks (WHICH ONES?) are another, if you refer to the POSReady updates, there is a thread here: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/171814-posready-2009-updates-ported-to-windows-xp-sp3-enu/ Using Internet Explorer 8 is yet another thing (bad ).Actual answers are: Yes. No. No.http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/questions-with-yes-or-no-answers.html jaclaz

Maybe a little bit too aggressive as a solution Wouldn't a clever use of CMDCMDLINE and COMSPEC do nicely? Like: @ECHO OFFSETLOCAL ENABLEEXTENSIONSSET isdoubleclick=0ECHO CMDCMDLINE=%CMDCMDLINE%ECHO COMSPEC=%COMSPEC%ECHO %CMDCMDLINE% | FINDSTR /L %COMSPEC% >NUL 2>&1SET isdoubleclick=%ERRORLEVEL%SET isdoubleclickIF "%isdoubleclick%"=="1" ECHO SORRY, NO DOUBLE CLICK ALLOWED&PAUSE&GOTO :EOFECHO You won't see this line if you double click on the batch from Explorer.jaclaz

OT, and probably unrelated. Over the years I have had every kind of *queer* hardware issues as the effect of storms (or of power surges or of both). While the most typical one is obviously the PSU not working anymore, I had one case several years ago that may be loosely connected to your issue. During a storm a lighting struck near the building and (presumably or at least this is the most logical explanation we could find) *somehow* raised the "ground level" in such a way that several devices (on the "low voltage" side, not on "mains" side) were affected, namely: a couple of modules of the telephone PBX the serial printer connected to the PBX (but not the serial port module on the PBX) a couple network cards on different PC's (replaceable) some ports ONLY on a network hub/switch (but NOT the ones to which the above and the below computer were connected to) a small VIA EPIA motherboard (with an integrated network card stopped booting, as a matter of fact it took like three minutes to boot to Windows 2000 and then the network card wouldn't work properly/reliably). The strange thing is #5 as the network card diagnostics (in DOS, i.e. NDIS or whatever it is/was called) gave a fully working card as a result. However, in the immediate I disabled the embedded network card and added a PCI one and everything went back to normal. Later the motherboard was replaced and - just for the fun of it - I tried using the old, defective one for running just DOS (without network connection) and it worked fine, then I tried re-enabling the embedded network card and it did work (from DOS) just fine, still Windows 2000 would take forever to boot and then the network card had "intermittent" working. @Murf So, I know that it sounds crazy , but since the issue revolves around rpcrt4.dll, which is connected with network, if that machine is a desktop, can you try and see what happens if you disable the network interface and/or use an add-on network card instead? jaclaz

It is just a matter of "trust". In 99.99% of cases people run programs (compiled .exe's) trusting blindly the Author that running them is "safe". In the case of batches there is one advantage and one disadvantage. The disadvantage is that since batch files are intended (generally speaking) to be run from within a command prompt there is a concrete probability that the batch will not be suitable for drag 'n drop and for running by double clicking it. (it is not the case of this one as correctly the Author has added PAUSE statements needed to keep the Command windows open and the batch is "interactive", but you will find a number of batches around that if double clicked will, just like a number of command line executables, smply briefly flash a black window on your desktop, and this is a very common issue reported "I double clicked on the file and it did nothing but flashing a black window"). The advantage is that since batch files are essentially "plain text" they can be easily inspected BEFORE double clicking on them, particularly where their scope is to run a potentially distructive command). This batch "automagically" chooses the drive letter on which the Syslinux.exe command is run getting it from the "self-position", the %~d0 parameter of the batch, which is a good thing that - added to the check for the drive letter NOT being the %systemdrive% will, when the user will follow instructions work fine in say 97.38% of situations, BUT IF it is run from a non-system partition/volume residing on the SAME disk as the %systemdrive% it will likely botch the booting of the system. Generically, the rule of the thumb with batches is to run them in a command window unless you are positive that they support correctly the other alternative possibilities to start them, i.e. double clicking or drag 'n drop. jaclaz

And even slightly better in a 9.5 mm hole : I will also risk to state that a 5 mm will fit BOTH a 7 mm and a 9.5 mm hole: jaclaz

It was only a proof that changing the shell on a modern system is possible. Nothing more, nothing less. Considering that - as you have noticed - the thingy is the result of the work (as a hobby) of a bunch (like "I can count them on the fingers of my left hand") of amateurs, consider what the good MS guys could do (if they wanted to). jaclaz

Strangely enough, I didn't mention blackbox casually http://blackboxdesktop.deviantart.com/ Hmmm. Possible logical flaw detected : if the new stupid windows 10 is being turned into spyware, it implies that current Windows 8/8.1 is not, which in turn would mean that the senseless pushing that MS makes to have customers use "online accounts" is done for the actual benefit of the users and to offer them a better experience .... jaclaz

At the end of the day isn't it what they already did with Media Player (or whatever is supposed to play DVD's)? The difference is that this way they will BOTH milk some money from the user AND be able to claim a raise in interests/visits to the Windows Apps Store. Conversely even if the "Enhanced Metro Photo Viewer App" will be given away for free, it will raise the visit counts and of course the number of apps available[1], it's seems to me like a win/win situation. Can anybody speak knowledgeably as to the feasibility of this idea? Define "knowledgeably". At least until XP it was a piece of cake to switch shells (possibly to something nicer/more useful than Wordperfect, like - say - blackbox, though . jaclaz [1] please read as "senseless metrics"

Translated to "good practice" the instructions mean: Once you will have copied the whole contents of the .zip file onto the USB partition (which will have in windows a drive letter assigned, let's say G: ), you open a command prompt (if you are running one of the stupid windows OS with UAC you will need to open it as Administrator) then in it type: CD /D G:\utils\win32 and press [ENTER] the prompt will change to: G:\utils\win32> and then you type: makeboot.bat and press [ENTER] As a side note I find that it makes little sense and represents a potentially dangerous thing to release a batch that can make damages if not run from the "right" device, the batch does have a check: but it is limited to the %systemdrive%, and the confirm goes through the *any* key press so it is perfectly possible, by mistake, that a non-system drive can pass the check. I would add a more explicit check *like* SET Confirm=NOECHO Syslinux will be installed to the disk where the volume %~d0 resides.SET /P Confirm=Type YES to confirm this is the right drive letter:IF "%Confirm%"=="YES" GOTO :OKECHO Batch aborted.ECHO Press any key to exit the batch.PAUSE > NULGOTO :EOF:OKjaclaz

Well, in this particular case, you will need to pay , and that would be one pound for a five minutes argument or 8 pounds for a course of ten) : http://www.montypython.net/scripts/argument.php jaclaz

I see , it is one of those "extra-thin" disks. Let me know if you need assistance anyway for the data recovery from the old disk. jaclaz