jaclaz

Yep: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-recommendation-benchmark,3269-7.html though it is not at all clear (to me) how to choose one, they seem to have "crazy" pricing The good guys at tom's hardware managed to put in the mentioned article: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-recommendation-benchmark,3269.html everything AND the kitchen sink, thus creating a completely UNreadable/UNunderstantable mish-mash. The graphic on last page, if you draw a few lines to separate "comparable" capacities and interfaces is telling me that: In the 120/128 Gb class the two "best" (imho) ones are both Samsung BUT Samsung evo 120 Gb has a slower performance that the Samsung pro 128 Gb for a price of 0.75 $/Gb vs. 0.89 $/Gb (a 16% difference) with prices ranging from $90 to $114 in the 240/256 Gb performances are much "nearer" among all makes/models and prices vary between 150 and 160 $ (a 7% variation) but since the Samsuing one which is the one priced lower at 150 $ is also the slower and smaller one, it has a price for Gb of 0.6 $ while all the others are 160 $ with a $/Gb of 0.625 (i.e. a 4% only variation) at the 512 GB class the crazyness starts, prices from 240 to 360 dollars, i.e. from 0.47 to 0.70 $/Gb (i.e. a variation of 33%So: in the 120/128 Gb class you may make your choice depending on whether you can afford or not the additional $24 per drive for some increase in speed and 8 Gb more storage in the 240/256 Gb class you better throw your dices to choose as prices AND performances are (substantially) THE SAME for all devices (i.e. you have NO choices ) in the 512 Gb class the difference in $ is so high (you can roughly get THREE slightly slower devices for the price of TWO of the slighltly fastest one ) with seemingly trifling performance differences that there is (IMHO) no race at all jaclaz

Here you are [1] See: jaclaz

@JorgeA I found the Aussie news particularly funny, we have here a proverb/old saying "cencio parla male di straccio", which translates more or less to "rag is badmouthing cloth". And of course, my English may not be at it's best, but I would have found more reassuring this sentence: if "gross" had been replaced by "any". jaclaz

But it would be interesting to know the result of plugging a SCSI wire (in either the disk or motherboard socket) . jaclaz

Yes , very often a reboot is needed to re-detect hardware, particularly after a "fix" like this one. Another happy bunny ! http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/128727-cant-access-repair-my-pc-option-via-f8-startup/?p=828512 jaclaz

Sure . If you invoke notepad with the /p switch, it will 1) open the file (but NOT display it on screen) 2) send it as is to the printer 3) close the file and terminate the running notepad http://www.robvanderwoude.com/notepad.php Just remove the /p from : Or remove the whole line above from the batch if you don't want the file to be opened in notepad. Sorry for your paper (and for the trees). jaclaz

Maybe if you list ALL the tweaks you already know, one might be able to suggest one that you don't know . (just to avoiding proposing a tweak to be replied with a "thanks, but I already know about it"). jaclaz

Try connecting it "directly" to an internal SATA connector. Is it seen (in BIOS) as 0 size (LBA0) or is it NOT seen (BSY) or is it seen with it's (correct) name and capacity? jaclaz

Another huge BUMP , but related , extremely simple and possibly useful (even if not specifically in this situation) in other similar situations: http://www.pealefamily.net/tech/captrick/ EDIT: The above is no more, via Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20130429235558/http://www.pealefamily.net/tech/captrick/ jaclaz

@MagicAndre1981 JFYI , and OT (but not much ), while looking for other things I found this: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ntdebugging/archive/2010/06/30/i-want-a-debugger-robot.aspx which I believe may be of use for some "strange" cases of slow boots. jaclaz

Good. Fixed the typo in the original post. jaclaz

You mean this one? dir %1\*.* /ogn /-p > C:\Temp\Listing.txtnotepad.exe /p C:\Temp\Listing.txtclsTry with: @ECHO OFFDIR %1\*.* /ogn /-p > %1\Listing.txt notepad.exe /p %1\Listing.txt This should save the "Listing.txt" file to the same directory which was passed as a parameter to the batch, is this what you want? I would personally find more "correct" this version: @ECHO OFFSETLOCAL ENABLEEXTENSIONSDIR "%~1\*.*" /ogn /-p > "%~1\Listing.txt"notepad.exe /p "%~1\Listing.txt"but the result should be the same. jaclaz

Good , yet another happy bunny in the basket! http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/128727-cant-access-repair-my-pc-option-via-f8-startup/?p=828512 jaclaz

And if he uses Office 365, your reply will appear on his screen as : (but without border and caption ) jaclaz

At first sight (and without having even tried to disassemble anything) it is clear that in the "NT52" bootsector the EB12 is a "unconditional jump" over some (reserved) bytes, not entirely unlike (please read as "exactly like" the "leading" EB5290 of the whole bootsector. In the NT52 bootsector these bytes are all 00's, but in the NT60 the (larger number of) bytes do contain "05 00 4E 00 54 00 4C 00 44 00 52", i.e. again the NTLDR string with the 05 "length" of the string. It is entirely possible that it represents a "failsafe" kind of provision to attempt booting the "old" NTLDR instead of the BOOTMGR, and knowing from experience how the good MS guys like to keep old code, I wouldn't be surprised if it was a provision to have, some form of dual booting with the "previous" NT version, or if it is still *somehow* used by the current BOOTMGR when booting NT 5.x's. Just for the record (and OT) for some time the BOOTMGR was capable of booting NT 5.x's fine: http://reboot.pro/topic/9613-bootmgr-winloadexe-nt5x/ http://www.betaarchive.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9602 And we have to remember how BOOTMGR still parses BOOT.INI "directly" for all "non NT 4.x and NT 5.x entries" anyway: http://reboot.pro/topic/17877-uefi-windows-8-bios-grub4dos-multiboot-usb-harddisk/?p=170654 and this is pretty much undocumented/was found out by "pure chance" (and relatively recently), so I wouldn't as well be surprised that there are still some cards hidden in BOOTMGR's (or the bootsector's) sleeves. jaclaz

Isn't it ironical to have new high tech displays capable of showing us "millions of colours" and can only choose between 3 (three) shades of gray (actually white, very light gray - but called "dark gray" - and a lighter gray in between)? For no apparent reason : http://reboot.pro/topic/15878-world-is-not-black-and-white/ jaclaz

Since this thread has been kept OT (On Topic) since quite a few posts, I can try fixing it by posting a link to an article about our down-under friends : http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/21/asio-spy-chief-defends-surveillence-network (bolding is mine ) jaclaz

Beauty is often in the eye of the beholder , but obviously drawings don't count. This one is not too bad, IMHO: jaclaz

Also, free bananas are a good resource for a business website. Suddenly: jaclaz

Now I see, thanks. I am used to have (default for Italy International Settings) 24h time (which is not "military time" as it misses the Alpha ... Zulu suffix ). jaclaz

No. Meaning that only a firmware update (of the disk firmware or of the BIOS) may cause a disk drive to be not recognized anymore by the BIOS at boot time. Yep, waiting is a good strategy for some things and not a good one for some other. As an example, waiting when we are talking of whisky or wine might get a better result, with milk, not much so. Maybe (provided that you want some assistance) you need to post the informations that were asked to you and the results of the tests that were suggested earlier. Then, based on the result of these tests, maybe you will need some diagnostic software (at the scope - if possible - to diagnose the disk or the PC or both), and, if the PC is OK, you might need an install disk to reinstall the OS to a new disk drive (which you will also need). jaclaz

Nice guess. According to the Starman: http://thestarman.pcministry.com/asm/mbr/NTLDR.htm the other "qualifying" part should be the EB 12 90 90 (in the NT 5.x bootsector) and - logically - the EB 22 90 90 in the NT 6.x bootsector, that should remain "unmoved" @ offset 0x0256. jaclaz

@dencorso My bad (wrong placement of brackets) I will re-word it as: This way the message is more clear: 1) NOT "news", NOT "surprising", it is a flawed, basically "wrong" mechanism 2) the good MS guys are committing suicide, slowly but in a steady manner, managing to make things worse at each and every "enhancement". (on the other hand GOOD things, like the WOF driver, are untold or unpublicized/undocumented). @shae I am (proudly) on NT 4.00, Windows 2000 and XP (and bragging a bit about it ). Which does not mean that I don't have to deal with Windows 7 machines or the dreaded 8/8.1 ones from time to time. Usually I have no particular issues with 7 (set apart the mentioned updates mechanism and the unmentioned reknown stupidity of UAC), but still I use the same custom made sticks I used to NOT touch Vista : http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/125258-nlite-and-microxp/#entry807225 to try avoiding touching Windows 8/8.1, whenever I can. And yes, I had at least three friends that came to me with "half botched" machines after having attempted the update from Windows 8 to 8.1, so I understand how you feel. jaclaz

Don't the "standard" Realtek drivers work? http://www.realtek.com.tw/Downloads/downloadsView.aspx?Langid=1&PNid=13&PFid=5&Level=5&Conn=4&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false jaclaz

May I ask what is the need/use of this? echo/|set /p =%date% @ & time/t I mean, either of these: echo %date% @ %time%echo %date% @ %time:~0,5%seem to me like doing fine. jaclaz