jaclaz

Good to know , it seems that even the good Kaspersky guys have gone the IMHO "downhill" path of making their tool grow up to the point where they don't even know anymore for sure what it does. JFYI , recent issues with Avast : http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/173051-kb3000850-big-update-windows-812/page-2 jaclaz

Oww, come on. What do you mean by "reputable"? Random idea: http://sourceforge.net/projects/flacsquisher/ jaclaz

Yep , unfortunately the .NET bloat is infiltrating everywhere corrupting every system around (besides the minds and souls of otherwise very good and nice developers) . jaclaz

At "first sight" I wouldn't think there is a connection with an antivirus kind of software, I was thinking more about Virtual Machine or virtual Cd/Virtual disk kind of software, as an example this is something that has been reported on some machines when using Alcohol 120% or Daemon Tools and a "failed" or "botched" install or however whn some other software related to accessing "foreign" filesystems/disk images/etc., one for all: http://forums.techguy.org/windows-xp/819552-phantom-drive-letters.html Still the "virtual device is usually found in the Registry or in device manager. This one is another "queer" one (card slot on wi-fi printer ): http://www.sevenforums.com/general-discussion/173677-bizarre-local-disk-showing-up.html Can you try (as Trip suggested before) to boot into safe mode and check if those "ghost drives" are in there too? You could try running WinObj: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896657.aspx but I have no idea if it can find anything related or how to interpret what it may find . jaclaz

Probably NOT what you asked for , but some related info/links are in this thread: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/171184-microsoft-ipd-intra-package-delta-compression-tool/ Maybe you are looking after this: https://github.com/taspeotis/DeltaCompressionDotNet Warning : .NET jaclaz

Try re-checking also under CD/DVD drives (i doubt that it can be a floppy). A drive letter can be (ghost or real) assigned to: a floppya cd/dvda hard disk volume (internal)a hard disk like or superfloppy external (USB connected)a media card socket (on many laptops these are internal but USB connected)a virtual drive software (i.e. a virtual device)a network shareonce the first five will be excluded, only the last two can be the issue, unless I miss something. But you should know if you have installed or run "strange" software when the issue began. On some desktops I have seen (curious as it may be) "ghost" devices (but never that I recall a mass storage device) appear from thin air due to failing/bad PSU's (hardware fault) but I don't think that it can happen on a laptop. I will think about some other possible cause but right now I'm stumped. jaclaz

Please read as "the stupid thing botched the OS" http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/173051-kb3000850-big-update-windows-812/ jaclaz

This may mean that they are *somehow* recreated at boot time. After having run both drive cleanup and devicecleanup, check in Regedit the mentioned hives there should be no traces of *anything* besides C:, D: E: (and related volume ID's). Then reboot and check if *anything* has been added to them. If not (and you are still having the "fake" devices), it means that we checked in the "wrong" place. Open a command prompt, follow this KB: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315539/en-us (you have to keep the command window open while accessing device manager) Select one by one the "greyed out" entries under "Disk Drives", right click and uninstall each one, do the same under "Storage Volumes", and under the "USB Controller". (cannot say the exact names in French, they should be Lecteurs de disque, Volumes de stockage, Controleurs de bus USB) See: http://www.generation-nt.com/affichage-des-peripheriques-caches-astuce-24581-1.html jaclaz

Maybe obvious, but that is a known issue when attempting slipstreaming a service pack running NOT under XP (i.e. running under Vista or later). http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/117515-slipstreamed-sp3-product-key-now-invalid/ jaclaz

I wonder which was the difficult part in: jaclaz

So, the actually assigned letters are actually C:, D:, E:: Open device manager and check that you don't have "strange" devices in it (possibly with a question mark or an exclamation mark)Open Regedit and check the contents of hive: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices delete all keys NOT corresponding to C:, D:, E: or to the corresponding volume ID's in the above. Do the same for the keys in hive: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\MountPoints2 see if anything changes (you might need to "kill" explorer and restart it or reboot). If you don't feel confident in doing the above manually you can use drivecleanup: http://www.uwe-sieber.de/drivetools_e.html#drivecleanup and the "companion" app devicecleanup: http://www.uwe-sieber.de/misc_tools.html#devicecleanup jaclaz

That is very queer. The 0x0000007b is "inaccessible boot device" and it is normally caused by a missing driver for the hard disk, but in IDE mode it should not happen, at least, not even on pesky BIOSes, when the modified NTDETECT.COM is used. Try again integrating the SATA drivers, after having read this: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/107504-integration-of-intels-sata-ahci-and-raid-drivers/ http://www.win-raid.com/t22f23-Integration-of-Intels-AHCI-RAID-drivers-into-a-Windows-XP-W-k-W-k-CD.html Would it be possible that for any reason you are providing a set of "wrong" drivers? (or that they were modified in a incompatible way by Acer or something like that) Alternatively, you can try one of the "alternate" ways: http://www.msfn.org/board/forum/157-install-windows-from-usb/ if you can make a 7 PE of some kind, or even tty the good ol' USB_MultiBoot.cmd: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/111406-how-to-install-xp-from-usb/ Or try with RMPREPUSB in a more "manual" way: http://www.rmprepusb.com/tutorials/install-xp-from-an-iso jaclaz

That seems the effect of using some kind of virtual disk driver that *somehow* let the drive letters "hooked" to non existing devices, BUT it could be also a completely different issue. Open a command prompt. In it run: mountvol>c:\mountvol.txtPost the contents of files C:\mountvol.txt. Before that (if you haven't already done so, do try rebooting, more often then not this kind of drive letter mis-attribution is "volatile" and does not survive a reboot. jaclaz

And don't forget good ol' powerprompt: http://www.grubletrang.com/SoftwareList.aspx As a side note, about directly logging in as system, if anyone has the guts (and time ) to experiment, this might be of interest http://reboot.pro/topic/18792-if-anyone-is-up-for-a-challenge/ jaclaz

1. Not really. There is no need for XOSL, the trick is to rather to install on a primary partition and later convert the primary to a logical volume inside extended. This can be done in a number of ways, nowadays I would use grub4dos for this, it is not particularly complex, once you get the hang of it and if you plan your partitioning accurately. There are of course no problems in having it installed to a primary while the NT's are on other logical volumes, the only "drawback" is that you will have 1 less partition slot available in the MBR (which is not a real issue if you do not plan to use other OS's needing primary partitions. 2. Essentially double boot and triple or n-boot are the same, you only have more items to choose from. You may want to consider separate steps: dual boot between 9x and NT fake that you forgot about the 9x install and dual boot between NT and 2K fake that you forgot about both 9x and NT and dual boot between 2K and ...if this makes it easier. You will find here a number of informations for simpler dual or n-boot setups: http://thpc.info/dualboot.html As hinted before, many of the "rules of the game" have been changed since the release of grub4dos with direct disk access, nowadays you can do *anything* or almost anything with this single utility. jaclaz

Sure , roughly at the same time I thought supercalifragilisticexpialidocious was a really cool word. And this shows, besides how old I am, how there are still chances for old words to surface back (since the marketing already used ALL more common adjectives/synonyms of exceptional or smart) . jaclaz

Naah, of course I was kidding, only to highlight how we are very far from AI (Artificial Intelligence) but we are well into PAI (Pretended Artificial Intelligence), which is what I call *any* program that pretends to be smarter than the user is, depriving him/her of some degree of freedom. I mean, what I have noted lately is that Anti Viruses (not necesarily Avast, but I would say *all* "mainstream" AV's) are getting increasingly more "pervasive" and often deleting, preventing access or "quarantine" perfectly harmless things (false positives) but, much more than that doing it in a "silent" (I would rather call it "sneaky") way, creating havoc without any warning. I mean there are two ways to recognize a virus: known signaturesupercalifragilistic heuristicsIn my perverted mind, the "known signature" should be divided in two "classes": really known and unique signature match possible signature matchgiving them "different dignity", whilst the first one may be allowed to delete/quarantine/etc. silently, the latter should ask the user about what to do, and as well the heuristic engine detections which have an even higher probability to get a false positive should be subject to manual user confirmation, or anyway allow the user to set the thingy "automagic" or "requiring manual review". jaclaz

Sure , guess WHY exactly the IBM M keyboard has so many fans? JFYI: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/155361-good-mechanical-pc-keyboard-amigaatari-xl-feeling/ http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/138238-keyboards/ ...clickity, clickity click... jaclaz

Actually there is nothing particularly complex in the above batch. It is a rather basic use of FOR . See these pages: http://www.robvanderwoude.com/ntfor.php http://www.robvanderwoude.com/ntfortokens.php The first FOR loop simply runs through all the items of the list, which I created by simply replacing "=" with = in the list you posted on #23: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/173033-administrative-user-doesn’t-write-registry-settings-in-hkey-current-user/#entry1089363 giving to the %%A variable the value of items in the list. The second FOR loop uses the /F switch and tokens and delims to separate the first part (name) from the second part (value), assigning them to the variable %%B and %%C. This is a slightly more complex (or simplified ) version of the same batch, this time using a single FOR /F loop and some piping: @ECHO OFFSETLOCAL ENABLEEXTENSIONSSET My_Reg_hive=HKCU\Software\OmicronLab\Avro KeyboardFOR /F "tokens=1,2 delims=:=" %%A IN ('TYPE %~dpnx0 ^|FIND "::" ^|FIND /v "FIND"') DO ECHO REG ADD %My_Reg_hive% /V %%A /D %%B /F::ChangeInputLocale=YES::PrefferedLocale=BANGLADESH::AvroUpdateCheck=NO::DontShowComplexLNotification=NO::DontShowStartupWizard=NO::StartWithWindows=YES::ShowSplash=NO::DefaultUIMode=ICON::LastUIMode=ICON::ModeSwitchKey=F11::EnableJoNukta=NO::OldStyleReph=YES::VowelFormating=YES::NumPadBangla=YES::AutomaticallyFixChandra=YES::FullOldStyleTyping=YES::DefaultLayout=Bijoy2003::OutputIsBijoy=NO jaclaz

I don't want to put you down at all , really, but the FIRST part of the: http://www.glass8.eu/guide.html reads: . it is simply "incompatible" with your declaration: It is not anything particularly difficult/complex, but you have first to get familiar with the procedures. Additionally (and unfortunately) there are at the moment several reports of "generic" issues with MS servers (or with Windows Updates or both), so that a lot of people, also those that know how to do it, are having issues in downloading symbols, see the "main" thread: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/170850-aero-glass-for-win81-125/?p=1089433 You may want to wait a few days, until the current situation is clear (or clearer), and use this time to learn a bit about Registry editing. Downloading manually the symbols can be tricky, but the queation is common enough: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/170850-aero-glass-for-win81-125/page-108#entry1089424 and has been already explained in detail: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/163570-aero-glass-for-win81-rtm-rc3/page-16#entry1058721 If you have issues in following the above, no offence intended, rest assured , but you are simply not ready (yet) for using this tool (which is anyway "experimental" and likely to be subject to issues at each change the good MS guys make with their updates). jaclaz

Or maybe you started developing in Visual Studio a few moths ago something that Avast (in good faith) considered viruses and it is automagically keeping an eye open on all your activities ... jaclaz

Only good? It was is still the best one! jaclaz

I tested it but the settings is not being applied. Sure they are not: the batch as I posted it only prints on screen the commands. jaclaz

That could be hard links : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_link#Limitations_of_hard_links exceeding 1023 on NTFS. Try checking the filesystem with ln --enum: http://schinagl.priv.at/nt/ln/ln.html or similar. jaclaz

It is also possible (though not very likely) that the CIA or other three-or-more-letters Government Agency , aliens or little green men enter overnight your system and replace your TCPIP.SYS with a weapon of mass file transfer I mean, and with all due respect , I understand the need for making a detailed plan in advance and whenever possible foresee possible future issues , but maybe you are a little overdoing it. Just replace the TCPIP.SYS, set a (say) weekly scheduled task to check (say) it's MD5, and alert you if it has been changed so that you can reset it to your version. The small batch file by mukke essentially revolves around a single gsar command. Gsar usage: Get gsar, and extract gsar.exe in a directory, say C:\testgsar\. This is the command in the batch in a "better" formatted way: The notation used is :X followed by a hex code for each byte, since the strings are UNICODE the above "translates" to: Only the first two bytes of the full path are changed (the second you said or what ElTorqiro recommends ) jaclaz