jaclaz

Well, but that use of y'all sounds very unlike the original use of the thou-ye, as still used in other languages, which is a form of respect and courtesy, the whole point of lei, voi (Italian) Vous (French) Usted (Spanish) and Sie (German) is not about it being a plural, but rather a polite singular. @dencorso "Il tuo account, bello" would be so fun as to be even acceptable, at least to people with some sense of humour, but it would carry the gender issue, as "bello" would be implying that the use of the PC is reserved to males only, and the Italian parliament would swiftly approve a Law that prohibits that or imposes that no less than 50% of systems should be shipped with "Il tuo account, bella", until another party would manage to vote another Law to mitigate the risk that this could cause a gender identity crisis to minors of the other sex happening to read that accidentally, and after a couple years during which noone will respect either Law, a third one will be issued, publicized as been derived by the application of an EU norm (which either doesn't exist or says an altogether different thing), which will make screensavers compulsory with a kick in time of no more than 30 seconds from last HID activity, and soon afterwards a fourth Law will come giving six month of time to the Ministry of Culture to create a list of approved screensavers, and since the list won't obviously be ready for at least three years, an urgent temporary decree will be made by the Government to make everyone, until the Ministry list is approved, switch off the devices screen (or the device altogether) within "no more than double the time established by Article 3 bis of the Law 01/01/2016 N.184 in all occasions when a minor is believed to be around the device in a radius smaller than the limit established by Royal Decree 18/06/1937 N.741 as modified by Law 17/11/1971 N°1135 as amended". The good Italians will thus have five more Laws to completely ignore , just like the several tens of thousands they already manage to ignore peacefully. No, all in all, not a good idea . jaclaz

Sure that could be a random number explanation as good as any other one, but IMHO you are confusing "pieces of malware" with "number of vulnerabilities" and with "number of incidents" (as much as the good MS guys and a lot of other people around confuse vulnerabilities with security). There may be tens, hundreds or thousands of "pieces of malware" making use of a same, single vulnerability. There may be tens, hundreds or thousands of "incidents" that could be related to a same, single vulnerability (actually to the corresponding exploit). On the other hands there may be tens or hundreds (possibly even thousands) of vulnerabilities for which an exploit is not practically doable or for which there is not a viable exploit and tens or hundreds of vulnerabilities for which an exploit exists but that never causes an incident. More loosely a number of vulnerabilities in itself is a sterile number. Vulnerabilities are (largely) theoretical, in the sense that very often they need such a complex set of concurrent settings/setups to be not statistically sound. Let's say that I am writing a malware of some kind, and I discovered a brand new vulnerability. The vulnerability needs (say) that: a user runs Windows XP SP3his/her motherboard is an Asrock xyz modelthe machine has more than 4 Gb RAMthe NIC MAC begins with 00:E0:4C (i.e. an additional RealTek network card is in the system)and when a specially forged document (let's say an animated GIF) is accessed on a Friday between 00:01 and 00:09 GMT I can run a payload of some kind, ONLY IF the user is using Internet Explorer 7.0 AND he is logged in as Administrator. It is clear that if the user runs as "normal user" the vulnerability is not anymore a vulnerability, but also if anyone of the other conditions are not met, so that the number and complexity of the other needed conditions makes it so improbable that my evil plan has any actual chance of success that even if all the world users would run as Administrator I will never be able to cause any incident by using that vulnerability. Yet it would be counted among the 90% of vulnerabilities "fixed" by running as "normal user". jaclaz

Good. Let me know when you will have succeeded to LOG IN as Administrator. Check if - by any chance - you have the Whoami command available: http://ss64.com/nt/whoami.html I don't think it has any dependency so you can simply ad the executable to the booting media and run it. When and if it won't give you back “nt authority/system”, then you will have a point (and the *whatever* won't be a PE ). jaclaz

Sure , the abuses we are subjected to are far less subtle (and BTW - generically speaking - we have not a Declaration of Independence and a Constitution as liberal - in theory - as the US one), I would say that we have a greater number of what one could perceive as abuses that are not at all abuses (as a matter of fact they are perfectly legal). But on the other hand English (and this most probably is part of the reasons why it became an "interchange language") lacks the subtleties other languages have, the "you" as "singular informal" thou and the "you" as plural/courtesy ye are the same, while we have a rather neat distinction: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T–V_distinction jaclaz

Well, for the record, that happened on XP only in English (and maybe in some other languages). In Italian - as an example - "My Computer" is "Risorse del computer" and "My Network Places" are "Risorse di rete", and as well "My Documents" are "Documenti", etc. and they remained unchanged since NT/9x times: Still in Windows 8 the "Your Account" is actually "Il tuo account", which adds another linguistic issue as "tuo" implies a form of familiarity that may sound inappropriate to anyone older than - say - 25 years. jaclaz

Yep , we are now at 8.11111111111111 if I am not mistaken . jaclaz

Well, I guess that in due time someone will find which setting/service/Registry entry does that and a way to disable it will be found. If we set apart the sheer fun of it (which is always a good thing BTW) it is IMHO largely wasted time to "fine tune" any program for each new beta build of Windows 10, since the good MS guys continuously change things underneath at each build, while it is nice that Winntsetup is compatible to make installs of the betas more convenient, minor glitches like this one seem not like a priority. jaclaz

No need to blush , some of the PE projects around, just like the good ol' XPE or Reatogo, do attempt to provide an "as much windows as possible" experience, and it is easy to be mistaken. Yep. Are you hinting that we may be in xyz problem? : http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/put-down-the-chocolate-covered-banana.html @hiddenpower Seriously, please try to explain what is the final goal, if you really need something with Administrator and Guest user profiles that is "portable" there is a "parallel to Make_PE3" project that delivers an (almost) universal "full OS" (reduced) in a .vhd image that may be suitable. jaclaz

Wow, I would have never thought of googling for that. It's incredible what kind of informations you can find this way. And google picture! That is a nice idea. Curiously when I typed exactly that in google (since I find nowhere "pictures" I clicked on "Images" but I believe the results would be similar), I found quite a lot of images of actual sleds chassis, similar to this one: So I had some issues in getting an idea about your working environment, from those results. 100's of thousands of PC's need to be at least 200,000 (twohundredthousands). So, accordingly to this piece of info (which I also found via google, this time typing "largest datacenter amount of servers", without quotes): https://storageservers.wordpress.com/2013/07/17/facts-and-stats-of-worlds-largest-data-centers/ you are working in the Largest Data Center in the world. Which should mean any among: GoogleFacebookAmazonMicrosoft(or of course some secret Government thing, like NSA or similar) Each one using - I believe - very different hardware, some even not using "sleds" at all. However I was trying to point out how "sled" and "chassis" were more "jargon" than "proper names", as I believe you were referring to Blade Servers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_server Thanks for sharing the solution . jaclaz

The procedure is described step by step (for Windows 8.1) here: http://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-switch-your-windows-8-1-log-in-to-a-local-account/ I looked for that to see what was the actual text nicely described as: And I happened to find this other (older) one: http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/windows-and-office/quick-tip-change-microsoft-live-to-a-local-account-in-windows-81/ And - OT - something struck me as "odd" and then it finally dawned on me. Instinctively I would look for my account on my computer, not for a "your" one. I have been used for years to see on my computer elements created by by the good MS guys with a caption of "My Computer", "My Documents" (and "My Network Places", "My Music", "My Pictures", etc.). I understand how later they started to take some distance, becoming more "neutral" re-tagging more or less the same items as "Computer", "Documents", "Network" etc. but the switch to "your" is possibly a linguistic Freudian slip proof that my computer (as well as my account) is not anymore mine , at least in their perverted minds . jaclaz

"on the internet" is a bit vague. Here: http://spkcorner.tripod.com/ http://spkcorner.tripod.com/spkwin.htm Would be slightly more accurate and some other members interested in the matter may find additional resources/info/whatever on the given site. jaclaz

Yep, it is entirely possible that *something* in those drivers don't like a device which overall exceeds the 28 bit LBA limit (around 128 Gb). You should try them on a smaller disk (just to exclude this if it is not connected with the problem). jaclaz

Ok. Tell me HOW exactly you LOG IN as either Administrator or Guest in that *whatever* you built a long time ago. Next. please, check in that *whatever* whether you have a user profile folder for "Administrator" and for "Guest". (as these were the questions actually asked) jaclaz

Maybe it is because the disk is "out of range" . Try describing the actual hardware you are testing those tools on, maybe there are size limits in those softwares, i.e. the disk you tried them on are simply "too big" jaclaz

I have NO idea of what you are talking about. Winbuilder is a builder, it can build a PE or something else. Something is EITHER a PE or it is not. A PE has NO users, the only user is System in a PE, if you prefer, if *antything* has users, it is NOT a PE. jaclaz

Sure it is . Most of the controversy about UAC (particularly with the initial setup in Vista ) was with the fact that it was far too "intruding" than actually needed, and it's use has been largely mitigated in later Windows versions (while in the meantime a number of third party software writers evidently learned how to write programs requiring less privileges). I believe that it is not very easy to balance the actual *needed* protective measures with the actual common *needs* that a user (particularly an "uneducated" home, "average Joe" ) might have, and all in all the good MS guys have IMHO reached in 7 (and I presume also later versions of Windows) a good compromise. Still it is not evidently a much working in practice "security" mechanism, it is simply a way to "invite" people to pay some more attention on what they allow to run on their machines but seemingly people keep pressing "yes" to those prompts anyway or downright disable UAC because they are annoyed by too many prompts. jaclaz

Have you checked this : AFAIK you should have as in the given link the subkeys related to the Perceived Type, see also: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ee872121(v=vs.85).aspx jaclaz

Hard to say. The (did I say stupid) EFI/UEFI/GPT specifications (just like any other specification) are about how things should be, not how an OS should react if anything is not as it should be according to the specifications. The generic idea of a "second copy" of something is that it should be used if the first copy is not good, but, although a GPT partition entry does have a "verify hash" that should (or could) be used to detect data corruption in the entry itself, it is just a self-referencing check (useful, but not foolproof) which leaves us with the fact that if the first copy is not good (though valid regarding the hash), there is no real way to know if not by comparing with the "second copy", if the first copy is actually different from the second copy and the OS would automatically update the second copy to reflect the content of the first one the whole idea of the second copy as a "reference" would be m00t. To give you an example of a similar mechanism (but opposite), the FAT have usually two copies that may go "out of sync" (for whatever reasons) and you usually need to run a specialized program to fix the issue or, more commonly, a NTFS volume on a partitioned device has (outside the volume but inside the partition) a copy of first sector of the bootsector. In case the second copy of the bootsector is missing or corrupt running CHKDSK will - if I recall it correctly - recreate it but windows will boot (or the volume will be mounted) normally. In case the first copy of the bootsector is missing or corrupt windows won't boot (or the volume won't be mounted) normally, still there is not (and it's a good thing that there isn't) an automatic mechanism to fix the first copy and you will need to restore manually from the second copy or use (say) TESTDISK to the same effect. But in that case it is a "plain" backup or "emergency provision", a NTFS volume on a non-partitioned device (super-floppy) has NOT the second copy. It is entirely possible that someone has read the specifications in such a way that an OS *needs* both copies of the partition entries. Actually (though I have never experienced the issue Tripredacus reports) it is only too logic that a "sensible" OS when finding something that is not exactly as it should be would throw an error of some kind, I was only pointing out what definitely cannot be achieved by a "RAW" copy restored to a media with a different number of sectors in the case of a "GPT style" disk, it is possible that the issue reported comes from *something else*. jaclaz

Yes/No. Of course (thanks to the stupid way GPT is designed) the secondary GPT tables will be m00t when you use "simple" or RAW imaging tools (since the GPT uses "relative negative addresses" from the END of the device). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table These might need to be recreated in the appropriate location, as an example using gdisk http://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/repairing.html commands r d Very likely the Commercial "automagic" tools have provisions to move the tables where appropriate at restoring time. Just another way to have something more complex than needed without any actual *need* or *benefit*. jaclaz

What is a "sled"? Why do you plug it in a "chassis"? What do you mean by "fails"? What do you mean by "load temporarily"? You need to describe more exactly what you are doing and what you are trying to do and the exact error/problem you are having, consider that the more you describe clearly, exactly and accurately your situation the more likely it is that you will get an appropriate solution or workaround. Standard Litany, please : http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/problem-report-standard-litany.html Seemingly you are in a situation similar to this one: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/59921-using-winpe-without-a-graphics-card/ The specific hardware details are needed anyway and as well the exact version of WinPE may be involved. jaclaz

Maybe the issue is within the .mp3 extension registration in the Registry or in the Explorer view, see: http://blog.chron.com/helpline/2012/03/viewing-additional-file-information/ It could be also an issue with file association, so you may want to restore the default settings for the specific filetype: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/19449-default-file-type-associations-restore.html jaclaz

In a PE? http://ss64.com/nt/runas.html There are NO user accounts in a PE. jaclaz

Well, why did you remove it from the laptop? I mean did it show signs of malfunctioning? Was it (at the time it was in the laptop) actually have two partitions? What you should do right now. STOP fiddling with that disk procure yourself a 750 Gb disk (or larger) Image every sector you can to an image file on the new disk That read error is seemingly a malfunctioning of the hardware, you won't get anywhere working directly on a failing disk , IF most of the sectors can be imaged to a surely working disk, then there are good probabilities to save/recover most of the data, but these kind of read errors may be limited to one or a few sectors or be the beginning of large unreadable areas, you never know until you try and image them. jaclaz

...or simply running as non-Admin.... The mentioned article BTW is the usual (right) assessment of mitigation of vulnerabilities (which is a good thing, but has not that much to do with actual "security"), if you actually believe what is in that 2010 article, it seems like noone would have been infected by any malware or exploit etcetera since the second half of 2010, and it seems to me like that did not happen. If (completely invented/faked numbers) in 2004 there were 10,000 "security incident" every 1,000,000 online systems and in 2014 there were (still say) 5,000 "security incidents" every 1,000,000 online systems, then the "increased security" would have halved the occurences of incidents. What I failed to notice is such a high drop in this, I am talking here anecdotally, I have more or less the same number of (more or less demented) friends calling me because they have botched their PC through some virus or malware in recent years then I had 10 years ago or so jaclaz

Actually I do NOT allow IE to run AT ALL. But then I am no expert. , not even a self-proclaimed one, here is one: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/127283-experts-say/ Anecdotally on the machines on which I never run IE, but only Opera as a browser (and lately only rarely a Chrome based browser), I was never infected by anything in the last 10 years or more, most probably this means that there is not a direct cause-effect relationship between how good a security model is and actual security. OT but not much also UAC, DEP and ASLR (and what not) introduced in Vista and later are good security models in theory , but in practice I did not notice the dramatic drop in infections worldwide I would have expected since their introduction: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/171674-mass-hysteria-on-the-interwebs/ jaclaz