jaclaz

The kernelEx is not AFAIK a wrapper: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/149233-kernelex-for-win2000/ KernelEx is intended to replace some "main" .dll's on the system, while both the "old cigarette" and the blackwingcat's "KDW" are intended to "stay local" on the specific program/game/whatever directory. Hard to say how the KernelEx will interact with the one or the other wrapper, in theory there should be no issues, in the sense that IF there are issues with KernelEx, they will be independent from the wrapper(s). jaclaz

Basically it means that IF someone physically enters the room where your PC is AND he/she logs in with a valid login/password THEN he/she might be able to get full control of the machine. These kind of vulnerabilities make no sense[1], meaning that IF someone can put his/her hands physically on your machine there are tens of ways he/she can get full control of it, including by-passing or cracking login password, and what not. Now if you leave your home front door open and have on it a sign to the effect of "Please come in and feel free to use my PC, login is "Admin" and password is "password", THEN it is possible that the "guest" will use one of these vulnerabilities, though it is very unlikely because as said there are tens possible (and actually proved/working) ways to get full privileges. The issue - generally speaking - revolves around the differences between "vulnerability", "risk", "threat" and "probability" and they are interconnected. As I see the matter: A vulnerability is something that in theory can be done.A risk is something that in theory and in practice can be done and that has a given (low) probability of being done.A threat is something that in theory and in practice can be done and that has a given (high) probability of being done. Let's use an example in another field, let's start within your home, specifically your front door lock. Your front door lock is vulnerable, as it can in theory be opened in several ways.There is a risk of the door lock to be opened, as there are several documented ways to open it, let's say by picking it or bumping it.Bad guys are known to go around opening other people's door locks so there is also a threat. The probabilities of your front door lock being opened, i.e. the "step" between "risk" and "threat" depends on a number of factors, the place where you live, if it is a flat in a combo or a family house, your habits, etc. You can change your front door lock with a high security one that cannot (in theory) be picked nor bumped, this way you have eliminated a vulnerability of the lock, BUT this wont' prevent the burglar from opening it with the key copy that is under your door mat or in the flower vase on the left. As well, nothing prevents the burglar to kick open the door, nor to enter from the windows on the back you left open . You have eliminated a vulnerability or two of the lock, but you have not in anyway reduced the risk or the threat of a burglar entering your home. This does not mean in any way that you should remove the lock from your front door or leave it open on purpose, only that the difference in reducing the risk or nullifying the threat between having a "common" lock and a "high security" one is in practice non existing as a given vulnerability has been patched but there are several other vulnerabilities, actually easier to implement or more probable to be used, that would allow anyway the burglar to enter. As it is common to say, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and usually, when it comes to computers, that link is the actual user. Previous discussions: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/163539-are-ms-updates-for-xp-really-necessary/ http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/171606-xp-os-vulnerabilities-after-april-8-2014/ jaclaz [1] in any "controlled" environment, i.e. they may apply to - say - a PC in an Internet Cafe or in a public Library, but not on the average PC at home or in an office.

I don't know , but maybe this thingy is becoming a mountain out of a molehill . If you check the actual CVE's supposedly "covered" by KB3013455, the first three: CVE-2015-0003 CVE-2015-0057 CVE-2015-0058 are about a LOCAL AUTHENTICATED USER possibly being able to gain elevate privileges. The last two: CVE-2015-0059 CVE-2015-0060 are about being tricked into opening a specially malformed TrueType Font and/or a specially crafted document. ALL FIVE are rated as "Exploitability: Unproven". The first three are not a threat as long as you don't allow local access to your PC, the last two while more preoccupying in theory are very unlike to happen if you use some "common sense" when browsing the Internet. Call me reckless or crazy as much as you want, but personally I will sleep fine tonight (and slept also really fine yesterday and the night before) even if I have not patched these vulnerabilities. jaclaz

Isn't this covered by the first 4 FAQ's here? http://www.techspot.com/community/topics/windows-2000-oldcigarettes-windows-2000-xp-api-wrapper-pack.167843/ jaclaz

You mean the Registry as a filesystem driver? http://reboot.pro/topic/7681-the-registry-as-a-filesystem/ jaclaz

@Dencorso NO. The issue was expected and it should be connected to the writability of disk sectors without LOCKing the disk (or the drive/volume/partition) Trustedinstaller should have no connection with this, and however the idea is again to make things as simple as possible, and using TrustedInstaller would be an overcomplex addition, we'd better shift back to "wasting" a few Mb and make a (slightly) more standard partitioning scheme @Dave-H Your last report makes no sense to me *Something* must have changed between your post #180 and #182. in post #180 you posted: The bolded part comes from the SUB :doswitchDA, which means that the CALL to it, which is near the end of this snippet: The post #182 is instead the message that comes from the check in red above. This can only mean that somehow the previous diskpart command failed, which makes no sense as it worked before. However, try running manually. Make sure you are in the right condition, i.e. PC1814096. Make sure the disk is \\.\Physicaldrive5. Run in diskpart: select disk 5 list partition you should get the same output as in post #176 The Partition 2 has offset 32 Mb, (as expected because we know that you selected 32 Mb size in the batches when you created the disk) so it's bootsector is at absolute offset 32*1024*1024=33554432 and you want to run: lockdismount -lock 5 dsfi \\.\PhysicalDrive5 33554432 4096 as4kbNTFS.bss and then a diskpart RESCAN. jaclaz

You mean these?: ZIP installer (32/64 bit) | 16 MB Viewer Manual (PDF) | 7 MB <- seemingly the manual, NOT the program EXE installer (32/64 bit) | 16 MB Portable version (ZIP) | 8 MB Portable Version (OCR Lang Files) | 8 MB<- seemingly the OCR Lang files, NOT the program MSI Network Installer (32 bit) | 27 MB MSI Network Installer (64 bit) | 32 MB Language Localization Tool | 13 M<- seemingly the Langiage Localization tool, NOT the programI believe it depends on your exact location and on which time of the day you plan to install the program, Zip installer will work almost always, but reportedly it may have issues every first friday of the month or when there is a full moon (or if you are below the tropic of Capricorn ), the portable version has more or less the same limitations but allows to install on portable computers such as notebooks or netbooks , the MSI network is the more reliable one - as long as you choose the right bitness, either 32 or 64 bit - because being connected to the MSI network will use Greenwich time as reference, though you will have to manually convert to local time. Come on , WHICH one among them is the default selected one? Get that one (the Zip installer), unless you know better. jaclaz

Yeah, sure, guess WHERE WinSetupfromUSB was developed? jaclaz

Maybe "bear" would do http://thesz.diecru.eu/content/bear.php jaclaz

Yep , good (which again means bad ) That is where the difference between what is expected: and what you actually get: Becomes relevant. There are no issues of course to avoid the repetitive loop (that is actually my bad , forgot to put a check about it). The issue is probably about the mechanism that the stupid Vista or later implements to protect parts of the hard disks (but not all of them) unless they are part of something it "recognizes". It is a CATCH22, since it doesn't recognize offset 33554432 as being part of the volume, it doesn't allow to write the (correct) bootsector to it, BUT when it finds already the "correct" bootsector, since it recognizes that offset as being part of a volume, THEN allows potentially to write to it a "wrong" one, it sounds crazy but that is seemingly what happens: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/173265-formatting-an-external-drive-using-different-interfaces/?p=1093173 To be fair, the stupid Windows 8.1 is actually "right" (hard as it is to say this ) as in the specific prilog scheme the beginning of the NTFS volume is in the address actually assigned to the FAT12 partition (not by the actual volume, only by the MBR partition table entry), i.e. the two partitions (but not the volumes) are actually overlapping. There are four ways out as I see it, all to be tested, but basically: 1) change the setup from "prilog" to "twolog" 2) keep the FAT12 volume and partition entries "as they are now" BUT move the NTFS partition and volume further so that they don't overlap 3) keep the FAT 12 Volume and NTFS partition and volume "as they are" but find a way to also switch the MBR making the FAT12 partition entry "tight" on the space occupied by the volume. 4) find a way, like a MBR write or putting the disk offline to be able to get access to the bootsector of the NTFS volume bootsector. I don't like very much #1 as it would make (even on the 512 bytes interface) the disk impossible to be made bootable (unless a MBR+hidden sectors bootmanager like grub4dos is used, though this might be needed anyway, to pre-switch to right geometry to access the NTFS volume) and as well I am not really sure that #3 switching the MBR also, is a good idea (doing it from a batch running from a volume residing on that same disk) or #4 (that implies to either do another kingd of MBR trick or on 7 and later put the disk offline). #2 still seems to me the best one (actually more lke the "simpler" one), though it has an attached string, you will lose overall capacity of the disk (roughly 7 times the size of the FAT12 partition). In practice, this has no real effect/weight until the size of the FAT12 volume is kept small enough, like: FAT12:1 Mb in size=7 Mb unusable area of disk FAT12:2 Mb in size=14 Mb unusable area of disk ... FAT12:32 Mb in size=224 Mb unusable area of disk and it is still to be seen if the non-standard 1 sector Extended partition is an issue, but since it works on the 512 interface, I don't think that it is part of the issue. If you are OK with this latter approach, and willing to try it with either a smaller partition (the 1 Mb one is more than enough to hold just the "switcher related files") or you are fine with having the 1 Tb reduces by at most some 224 Mb, I would recheck/correct the previously posted batches so that you can recreate the "prilog" disk from scratch. To be exact there is even a further approach, making use of a "temp" directory on another disk, let's say your "normal" %TEMP%, by copying to it the Switcher.cmd and thus being surely able (on 7 and later) to quickly put the disk offline in order to write the bootsector. Though 3/4 to 4/5 of all programs you run normally do this (beside senselessly writing to your Registry and what not) I somehow feel like this approach to be "inappropriate". A further approach would be to add (yet another) little excutable to the FAT12 partition. The _K over at reboot.pro put together a little tool that should be doing exactly what needed, Lock the disk and Unlock it after having performed another task (dsfi in our case), it has to be anyway tested on 8.x, as it was tested on Vista and 7 at the time, though nothing should have changed. Get the tool here: http://reboot.pro/topic/12413-lockdismount-v0300-update/ http://www.mediafire.com/download/5q6795h7pp32623/LockDismount0300.zip and add it in the root of the FAT12 volume. Edit the switcherDA.cmd changing this: to: jaclaz

But still there is no real need for an embedded system, among the new features of "normal" Windows 8.x is it's "Kiosk mode" or "assigned access": http://blogs.technet.com/b/canitpro/archive/2013/12/17/step-by-step-enabling-kiosk-mode-in-windows-8-1-via-assigned-access.aspx i.e. something that has been done for years before by everyone else by adding or removing a couple things . Windows 7 (i.e. the "normal", licensed OS corresponding to the OP's PE3) example: http://sysadministrivia.blogspot.it/2012/05/creating-kiosk-machine-with-windows-7.html jaclaz

Well, to be fair, in the good ol' times you payed for the use of a computer mainframe on a hourly base (and/or when computers needed to be booked in advance of weeks, say in universities) you had: more time to think how to write the program, and at least wrote it in a way that was readable you made d@mn sure that the whatever you wrote did work/had not stupid bugs and only a few years before you made ALSO d@mn sure to punch the stupid cards correctlyAnd yes, before someone comments, this is intentionally a WHY, in MY day ... https://tinyapps.org/blog/misc/200702250700_why_in_my_day.html type of post. jaclaz

Sure Here is a good start: http://bit.ly/1w0PUSU jaclaz

A .inf file in the c:\windows\inf\ folder is compressed to it's correspondent .pnf file when installed, but usually there is not very much to gain from removing the "original" .inf files, and you have the nuisance (if you disable/uninstall a device for - say - troubleshooting an issue) that you will miss the driver and have to supply it from CD/DVD or however install media". The "modem" files are of course OK to delete (but they amount to bunch of used bytes). Most probably the "right" approach is once the system has been in use for some time, so that all devices have been used/installed to delete ONLY the .inf files that DO NOT HAVE a corresponding .pnf, as those will be, just like the mdm*.inf "unused" INF files. All in all a SAFER way would be to compress in a - say - .7z file ALL the .inf files (no matter if they HAVE OR DO NOT HAVE a corresponding .pnf), since .inf files are very compressible being basically "plain text" files this won't be much different from deleting them, and this way you can always extract the .inf from the .7z archive when needed. jaclaz

Hmmm. jaclaz

Good. Try the attached, Switcher009, renamed to SwitcherDA (stands for Direct Access). If it works as intended, on PCn814096 it should have an output similar to: "DUAL" disk found as \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE6Disk is connected as 4096 bytes/sectorThe NTFS volume has not been found.This may seemingly happen on 8.x, and we can then try with direct access.The current NTFS bootsector is NOT the 4kb bytes oneswitching it ...dsfi \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE6 33554432 4096 as4kbNTFS.bssOK, written 4096 bytes at offset 33554432attempting to run a rescanDal computer CINQUEAttendere. Rilevamento della configurazione corrente in corso.............DiskPart ha completato l'analisi della configurazione.This is the most we can do, if after next iterationthe NTFS volume is still not found but the bootsectoris detected as the "right" one, you will need todisconnect the disk through "Safely Remove Hardware" andreconnect it ...Premere un tasto per continuare . . .whether the Diskpart rescan will be enough to "create" the volume or if a physical disconnection and re-connection will be needed is to be seen ... jaclaz Switcher009.zip

Which is actually a good thing , as you won't be able to measure TTL levels with a multimeter (you would need an oscilloscope or similar). The 7200.11 should communicate normally. If you have already tried exchanging the Tx and Rx wires, then likely the adapter is a dod or however is not properly working, as from the link you provided it does seem like the "right" one . jaclaz

... which is what I call - maybe improperly - freedom. jaclaz

Well, some oddities are as said expected , particularly in Disk Manager. The BSOD is queer, however it may well be a "glitch in the matrix". I need the "full" set of reports for the PC181512, just like the ones you posted on #172 for the PC1814096. In those the "anomaly" was that: I expect that on the PC181512, like on all the XP based tests, a volume is actually associated to the partition (which is what allows the SwitcherNG to work to switch from 4kb to 512). However the good news about: I:\>switcherngVista , or later, ...OK, I am a local admin ..."DUAL" disk found as \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE5Disk is connected as 4096 bytes/sectorTHe NTFS volume has not been found.are that the batch works correctly, i.e. it cannot found a volume because the volume is not actually there, but the detection of both the Physicaldrive and of the sector size is correct. :thumbsup: I can now add to the batch (in the case the volume has not been found) a "more direct access" routine. jaclaz

Yep .Though I am sorry to create thus the need for frequent reboots . At next occasion, however do post please the PC181512bs4kb, I need it to understand (hopefully) if the 8.1 on 512 interface behaves like XP or in a "third way" different from both XP and 8.1 4096. jaclaz

And now, for NO apparent reason: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/140891-paging-file-set-at-installation-and-contiguous/ http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/154667-the-most-stupidawkward-things-you-sawheard-in-the-it-environment/ (and no, let's not start the usual discussion on pagefile size and *need*) jaclaz

Good . (which means bad ) The issue is definitely here: On PC1XP4096 you should have (please check, but I have no doubts): Can you please try the same (and post results) on PC181512bs4096? Would it be possible that the good MS guys have removed altogether the concept of "Logical Volume" BUT only for 4096 byte/sector devices? BTW this will probably not prevent us from "switching", I think I can deploy the bootsector correctly by using the \\.\Physicaldrive (with the right offset), what has to be seen if the "blank" MBR trick (or the "offline disk" one) is needed or not, i.e. if the bootsector is write protected or not. jaclaz

What exactly provides voltage in a PC (AND BTW contains capacitors as well)? Let me think what I would try next .... jaclaz

Add - just like it is rumoured about car names - some research should be done on what happens in other languages... ... and no, I will not post what Cortana rhymes with in Italian , but let's say that it has some common points with a Mazda model name: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazda_Laputa jaclaz

I am curious to see how the dual mode disk is seen in 8.1. It seems like the volume is not detected at all. , it is possible that it belongs to one of the "safety measures" (or whatever) in Vista or later. Forget about Disk Manager. When you are in that situation (possibly Windows 8.1, connected as 4kb, BUT actual bootsector 512 i.e. PC1814096bs512) run in diskpart: and post output. (of course disk 5 is the output you posted, and partition 2 is the actual partition number as it should be, if you don't have the partition 2 in the output of list partition, go directly to the list volume command). Please also run the "usual": MOUNTVOL>mountvol.log REG QUERY HKLM\SYSTEM\MountedDevices>regexe.log and attach them. Now, I may seem grumpy - mainly because I am grumpy, but can you ALWAYS from now on, use the "code" that we have seemingly agreed to : as reports like this: are (to me) confusing and I spend some time to try understanding them and I am not even sure if I get them fully right jaclaz