jaclaz

As a matter of fact I personally find the NT "kernel" and the overall working of the NT based OS's exceptionally good and stable, since the good ol' NT 4.00 days (NT 3.51, never used NT 3.1, was a bit "quirky" but it was really "new"/"experimental" at the time), and I believe that the same (or at least at the same level) good guys made a lot of improvements in 8/8.1 at the "core" level, but that these (good efforts) are partially crippled by the "wrong" UI and new usage paradigm. What you managed to do (because you have the knowledge and the interest in it ) was a long and I believe troublesome path , by using third party tools, "tweaks" and "hacks", to (partially) "tame" the OS to behave as you would like it to, and it took you some time to go through it. Notwithstanding the above (good and hard work you did), there are still some (of course minor) inconsistencies/little queer things in your setup that - since you are very honest in your approach - you just admitted trying to "remove" by changing (even slightly) your workflow or habits to avoid them. I believe that most "common" users will not have the time (and the knowledge/capabilities) to tune the OS to the same level of near perfection that you managed to obtain, and you also have to admit how matters have become much more complex. Since a lot of years - just as an example (remember that de gustibus non est disputandum) - I normally run XP without Explorer as shell and without Explorer as "main" file manager, as I find (for my particular uses) blackbox and 7-zip good enough replacements for them, they simply work better for me than the "default" the good guys at MS provided us with, but changing the OS from "stock" to this alternate shell/filemanager has been easy or at least not as complex as it is now to "evade" from the Windows 8/8.1 UI. Still, when working on someone else's PC (running either XP or 7) I find that while my system personal tweaks are better (obviously), there are only a very few things that I miss (like a valid "Command Here" contextual menu option, as an example) for all the rest I can live with (and work on). Same goes for the Office ribbon, if I need to work on someone else's Excel 2007/2010, I can do it, it slows me a bit, I miss some of my personalized toolbars, and every single time I have issues in finding the "page setup", but keyboard shortcuts have remained the same and all in all I can work on them fine. I am not at all implying that 8/8.1 "sucks" as an OS, I actually believe it to be as good as or as stable as previous NT based systems, I declare publicly how it's UI and a number of changes that were made to the "usage paradigm" suck, and suck big, and what really upsets me is the way they made complex to change those to more "normal" settings/behaviours. Talking of the mentioned (little/minor) quirk with "auto sorting" how much would have cost the good MS guys to have a setting "disable auto-sorting in explore folder view" somewhere AND document it? What I have done over the years (and I believe you did as well, though possibly a bit differently) on: NT 4.00Windows 2000Windows XPWindows Vista <- No, I am joking, actually never touched it, not even with one of my custom made sticksWindows 7was attempting to better or made more productive/useful a UI/workflow (besides when needed/possible tweak some aspects of stability, etc.), what you have done to 8/8.1 is the same "bettering" progress, the difference is the starting point, till 7 you changed something already working into something working better, with 8/8.1 you had to change something from partially working to fully working. If you prefer, somehow you underestimate or forget the amount of work you have done. (still the "base" is solid/reliable, as it was before, possibly as you state, even better) jaclaz

Sure , but I was only providing a quick explanation (kidding of course) to what you ALREADY confessed : jaclaz

No, there is some confusion in this. The specifications for SATA connectors did mandate a minimum of 50 insertions/extractions, this does not in any way mean that they are designed in such a way that they will break on average on the 51st connection. It only means that the SATA committee had a brain fart when approving that ridiculous provision. As an example, some Molex are rated for 500 connection cycles: http://www.molex.com/webdocs/datasheets/pdf/en-us/0877030001_PCB_HEADERS.pdf but these are rated for only 50 http://www.molex.com/webdocs/datasheets/pdf/en-us/0678005005_PCB_HEADERS.pdf jaclaz

Cannot say specifically about Easeus, but there are no theoretical problems with the procedure. Remember (see the old thread on reboot.pro) that if you want to (senselessly continue to) use XP disk manager to change the active status of the primary partitions you NEED to keep the partitions Cylinder aligned. But, still you are playing with fire. NO "valuable" data should EVER exist without a backup of it (this independently from fiddling with partition managers), better if TWO backups. If you insist on working with data that exist on only one media before or later you will lose it (for *whatever* failure in software or hardware or PEBCAK ) . jaclaz

Well, in EU traditional lighting bulbs are actually "illegal" since 2012: http://ec.europa.eu/energy/lumen/editorial/index_en.htm Detailed document: http://ec.europa.eu/energy/lumen/doc/full_faq-en.pdf All you can actually find on the market are now C-class, B-class (rare), fluorescent lamps and LED's: http://ec.europa.eu/energy/lumen/overview/avariedchoice/index_en.htm From a practical standpoint (set aside the political and pseudo-ecological) reasons, there are still IMHO a large number of issues with both fluorescent lamps and halogens, I might have been "unlucky" : but in several years of using them fluorescent lamps or the halogen replacements for incandescence lamps (C-Class in the above docs) I never had a lamp life going even near what was declared, they all (all makes, all types) wear out or however fail to light on much faster then what advertised/stated,and they have an impact as electronic waste that has been clearly underestimated. It is a bit earlier to say something about led's, but at least the early models/makes weren't that much good. I had a led strip for a sign changed (thank goodness I bought a "primary" brand and had them under warranty, but of course payed a stiff price for them) two times within six months, seemingly because of a "wrong" batch (twice) with a resin - or whatever - affected by UV's. I have recently set up a number of GE led lamps, as an experiment, will see how they will behave, if they will actually perform anything like they are "labeled" (25,000 hours/25,000 switches), notwithstanding the very high price per unit, the might represent a valid solution. I believe that starting 2014 the same will happen in the US : http://www.alternet.org/environment/truth-about-light-bulb-ban-and-lighting-alternatives jaclaz

And this is a sound and perfect approach , this is how humanity managed to survive and evolve (avoiding dangers or learning to deal with them) . Still, Nature and wildness are "tough" and "suck", while you are trying to write a new "Walden" transposed to computing. The issue here is that *somehow* you are seemingly affected by a new syndrome , which I will name "Redmond Syndrome" which is not entirely unlike "Stockholm Syndrome" : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome Anyway, "Redmond Syndrome" is not such a serious illness and can be cured easily (though it might take some time): jaclaz

It is possible that if you applied a .wim and then run the bcdboot command (or equivalent), the BOOTMGR is (combined with *something* else) "out of reach", cannot say, however the issue is definitely the LBA48 one. Still something doesn't sound right, Steve6375 just posted about latest grub4dos being wotrking on a eeePC 904 (is it not similar to your hardware?): http://reboot.pro/topic/19883-improve-grub4dos-boot-speeds-by-using-the-046-usb-driver/ Anyway, surely the main issue was the LBA48 addresses, and if you rebuild everything should work fine, jaclaz

@5eraph Sorry, I thought it was visible to everyone, I am attaching it here, just in case. jaclaz

Isn't it a bit ironical that our resident Darth Vader in the year 2014 and with most-latest-mega-tweaked-hyper OS around, uses good ol' Notepad (BTW in two windows, overlayed to a Control Panel view - something that is clearly against the "one - or at the most two opened windows at the same time" Modern usage paradigm states) to convey this message MSFN, just for the record, was BORG well before that, and you cannot assimilate Borgs: (image courtesy of puntoMx) jaclaz

Possibly, more generally it is an issue with grub4dos (that version as said is experimental) and your chipset/whatever. You could try adding plop to the equation. Plop is chainladable form grub4dos, so you can still use it without "installing" anything. see here (read th einfo DO NOT use the installer): http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/140412-release-siginets-plop-usb-boot-manager-installer/ jaclaz

Yep , i.e. you are not running Windows 8.1 , but rather the Windows 8.1 how it should have been made by MS (and was not). Xpclient might find of interest this previous thread : http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/171607-why-does-ms-marketing-still-try-to-mislead-everyone/#entry1076024 jaclaz

You can raise a bit the fan, see: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-2114565/coolermaster-hyper-212-evo-corsair-vengeance-heat-spreaders.html or you can see if you can remove some (unneeded) plastic from the fan: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-2144369/hyper-212-evo-high-profile-ram.html Of course it depends on how much it is needed to raise the fan or cut it to make it not interfere with the RAM. Also there are both "high" and "low" profile RAM sticks, you should check (if you still have to buy the RAM) what the situation is with a "low profile one. jaclaz

Well, the partnew command is rather straightforward. The 4 (four) entries on (hdn) in grub4dos are: (hdn,0) (hdn,1) (hdn,2) (hdn,3) The syntax to just clear a partition entry would then be, presuming that n = 0 (boot disk/first disk) and that you want to clear 3rd partition entry: partnew (hd0,2) 0x00 0 0 BUT since Windows NT ignores partition entries with partition type 00 (partition ID 0x00), maybe it is easier to do: parttype (hd0,2) 0x00 This corresponds to opening the MBR with a disk editor and changing byte at offset 0x1E2 from 07 to 00. About grub4dos USB sypport, you have to explicitly initiate it, see: http://www.easy2boot.com/news/v1-31-released/ i.e. in command line try issuing the: usb --initcommand. jaclaz

There is another non-destructive test that you can make, you can still resize the second partition in such a way that it entirely resides within the 128 Gb. (if it is, as I believe a "fresh install", it should fit) But before that you can simply backup the MBR (which you have already done) and hexedit it to remove 3rd and 4th partition entries (you can even use gruib4dos to zero them using the partnew command. So, tests I would do: backup the MBR as is (already done) clear the 3rd and 4th partition entries try again the grub4dos commands on (hd0,1) if it still fails, try shrinking the second partition so that it is entirely below make a backup of this modified MBR try again the grub4dos commands on (hd0,1)If the diagnosis of the USB stack of the BIOS being limited to 128 Gb is correct, you would have not any issues whatever as long as what you boot (or actually initiate to boot through the BIOS services) is within the limit and the space beyond won't give you a problem since it is accessed only through the booted OS (that surely has LBA48 compatibility). Another thing you may try is using the latest-latest grub4dos (0.4.6a-2014-01-17) experimental version which has an "own" USB stack (which I believe being LBA48 compatible ) or try using Plop (that surely is LBA48 compatible). JFYI: the message is the actual text (that is displayed in case of error in executing the boot code) in the bootsector, so the bootsector is seemingly OK, only it errors out (and this would confirm the hypothesis that *something* beyond the LBA48 limit is *needed* but *somehow* it is not made accessible). jaclaz

Yep , though actually that original sketch you found was scribbled on a piece of tracing paper, and this explains nicely how, by mistakingly looking at it from the wrong side and labeling it wrongly during the early design process, they managed to remove the BIG button from the left bottom (which is clearly represented on sketch #2, but on the "wrong" right side)... jaclaz

The "An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk\DRx" are usually typical of an issue with communicating to a hard disk (as an example they were very common when you used with ATA drives a 40 wires IDE cable instead of the required 80 wires one), i.e. an interface issue of some kind. But all the rest of the details sound more like a hard disk corruption problem, hopefully only at the filesystem level. IF this latter is the case, usually contents can be recovered, at least partially. It is also possible that there are TWO issues, one at a lower hardware level (issues in communication/interface) and one at a higher level (filesystem) and that the one caused the other, i.e. it ispossible that the first is an intermittent error that caused and still causes the second. Since the files on it are (presumably) very large video files, it is possible that even what we can manage to recover will not be entirely "intact" (i.e. it is possible that you will have as a result one or more videos that won't play "normally" or that will need to be manualy corrected, very possibly losing some frames). The disk being 2Tb in size does not help much (because it is HUGE and surely it has been partitioned in a single HUGE volume). The "standard" procedure is the following: procure yourself TWO larger disks (let's say 2.5 or 3 Tb each) AND a similar sized 2Tb diskattempt ddrescueing the whole disk to an image on one of the two 2.5/3 Tb disks <- if this fails next step is a professional recovery firmmake a copy of the image on the other 2.5/3 Tb diskattempt recovery of the filesystem on the second imageif this fails attempt recovery of the contents (files) out of the second image saving them to the new 2Tb diskStep #1 can be "simplified" (with only a slight increase in risks) into procuring only one larger disk and using if needed other storage space you may have available for (eventually) step #5. It all depends on how much you value the data on the disk, how much you can afford for a proper (still DIY) recovery procedure or you can afford a professional recovery attempt and/or how much you like gambling . jaclaz

Sorry , that is where the misunderstanding was , that was a conditional sentence, what "anyone with more than two working neurons would think", I gave for acquired that : no more than one neuron (only partially working ) was involved in the above. Surely it doesn't represent the actual contents of the letter , that would represent the contents of an hypothetical letter IF they were "normal". The problem with MS decisions is that you can never say if they are motivated by excessive stupidity or by such a high level of (legal) smartness that is far beyond our level of understanding. jaclaz

The "choose one" was not one among 1)/2)/3) but rather: jaclaz

It seems to me like you are all reading the news the other way round. The "new" Law in Canada http://www.kattstearns.com/casl_sending_messages_clients/ (which does not seem to me particularly innovative, at least from EU point of view, only assigning rather steep fines) prohibits sending e-mail notifications without explicit consent (which is good). So, anyone with more than two working neurons would think: 1) OK, I have the e-mail addresses of a zillion Canadian users to which I am now sending notifications wothout an explicit consent. 2) OK, I have one week time before the Law is operative 3) Let me use this occasion to send all of them an e-mail asking for explicit consent, this way I will have the required by Law explicit consent and do for free and in a way that would not raise any of the usual conspiracy theories suspects a perfect way to update and verify my database of Canadian e-mails and possibly see if I can sneak into the communication some explicit consent for something else and/or add a poll of some kind that may come useful later. Now, MS claims that because of this new Law wants to change the delivery of the news and make it through a stupid RSS feed. Unless they are completely demented (possible) or they have suddenly become the flagpole of privacy on the Internet (also possible, though somewhat less probable), this flatly means that *somehow* the new delivery method either allows to work around the Law or provides more or better data for their databases. Choose one. jaclaz

Yes, but you should (could) try to pinpoint the actual issue. When you return to the prompt here: have you tried entering: boot[ENTER] Explanation: IF the issue is connected with LBA48: First partition is entirely within 128 Gb and works Second partition begins before the 128 Gb limit and may work nonetheless Third partition is entirely after the 128 Gb limit and will not work Before anything else, apart trying to boot from second partition with grub4dos as above, would be to simply delete the third partition (AND the following Extended) and try again. The grub4dos geometry command output is more or less saying that the first and second partition are fine, but anything beyond them is an issue and this may affect the normal booting. Your next test should be to re-do from scratch, making the first two partitions BOTH within the 128 Gb and the third outside it. And, this time, try to install one instance of the 8.1 to the first partition, the 8.0 to the second and the other instance of 8.1 on the third. This might help to establish if there is a specific 8.1 incompatibility (which cannot possibly yet be ruled out) or if the issue is *something* else. What we are trying to establish is whether there was an incompatibility of some kind in the mix of tools you used, so this time, please jolt down the exact steps (and tools) you use, the alternative being the mentioned issues with LBA48. Over the years it has been observed that some motherboards, while having a BIOS that supports LBA48 sized internal disks alright, have a USB stack in the BIOS that tops at LBA28 addresses, and as well it has been observed that some external USB hard disk cases had a controller that was compatible only with LBA28 addresses. Regarding your listed points number: 1. Yes, but still the MBR CODE may somehow be incompatible with 48 buit LBA addressing (extremely rare, but possible) or, just as an example (which does not apply in your case) you need a particular MBR code to boot a BitLocker volume, I believe. 2. Yes, any program changing the bootsector will change just the code but not the data. 3. The point of the thread I pointed you too http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/171749-bootsectexe-various-versions-compared/ was EXACTLY that of establishing WHICH version of bootsect.exe did WHAT, as you can see they are categorized and the latest (Win 8.1 one has NOTHING different from a few previous version if not the fact that it won't run under XP), i.e. using the "C" type or the "D" type has the SAME results. 4. Not really-really. The PBR code is simply an hardcoded way to load BOOTMGR, grub4dos can chainload it bypassing the PBR, even if there are some differences in the PBR code, usually any PBR code invoking BOOTMGR will do. 5. NO, this is exactly what was found several years ago http://reboot.pro/topic/9897-vistawin7-versus-xp-partitioning-issue/#entry85947 what is needed to set a Primary partition active consists of writing a 0x80 to a byte in the corresponding entry in the partition table in the MBR and make sure that all other entries have the corresponding bytes set to 0x00 but for whatever reasons, the XP disk manager re-checks and "corrects" entries in the Extended Partition (and/or in its EMBR's), in that occasion Primary partitions were NOT affected AND that hapened only if the disk was "Mb aligned", this one is seemingly "Cylinder aligned" (unless this was the result of your "mixing" partitioning tools). So *any* MBR/partitioning tool may do something else besides changing the 0x80's and 0x00's and this is the reason why at the time it was all in all suggested that you do NOT use the XP manager to change the active status of a parititon. 6.Re-read point #3 and given link attentively 7. N/A You will need some patience, and jaclaz

OT , In Qemu a "hack" was needed to install Windows 2000: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WindowsXPUnderQemuHowTo The guys at Insyde say that the H20 Bios is compatible with Windows 2000: http://insyde.com/press/2006/Insyde_H2O_FAQ.pdf but if I ever found a buggy BIOS, it was made by Insyde, so everything is possible. jaclaz

To be picky , we know what "lower floor windows" means, but we suspect that it is not what uğur actually meant while being what I consider "good English". http://www.gutenberg.org/files/7964/7964-h/7964-h.htm jaclaz

Maybe larger but sloping would be more suited . jaclaz

Actually that is exactly the way it should work (what you type is lost forever if there is no loopback), compare with: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/128807-the-solution-for-seagate-720011-hdds/page-48#entry851176 You have no way (without an oscilloscope or a TTL probe) to know if the issue is in the TX part (receiving characters from terminal but transmitting a single 0x00 instead) or if the issue is in the Rx part (receiving the characters fine by forwarding to terminal a single 0x00), it's a loop! If you have (in the drawer where you have things that might come into use) a Nokia CA-42 you could try with it. Still, you have not fully excluded a "queer" issue with the actual driver install / OS install, if you could do just the loopback test on another PC (you won't do any damage to it obviously, and even a very old one will do nicely) it could help pinpointing the issue to a DOA adapter. From the photos in the link you posted the stupid thingy has at least one led, how it behaves (when you send data through the terminal)? Or has it more than one led? jaclaz

DISCLAIMER: I am in no way connected with any of the mentioned firms/associations, I do not own any device, never seen or touched one "life", I ma not a developer nor I have one of the development kits. Phoneblocks is mainly an "idea" or "philosophy". Fairphone is a smal (Dutch) firm that akready produces "repairable" phones. Ara is a project, Google originated/supported, that will start proiduction in (maybe 2015). The "philosophy" is great : https://phonebloks.com/en The Fairphone is reality : https://www.fairphone.com/ The Ara project is in development: http://www.projectara.com/ I find interesting this document (relative to the first lot of the Fairphones) that is a good insight of the costs involved in making a device of this kind: https://www.fairphone.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Fairphone_Cost_Breakdown_and_Key_Sept2013.pdf For my personal tastes, the good Fairphones guys/gals put a bit too much the accent on "ethics" of mining: https://www.fairphone.com/2014/04/16/conflict-free-mineral-legislation-in-the-us-and-eu/ than on the actual core issues, like the OS and firmware being completely free or not and/or about the availability of spares (from other sources), and, as always I may be wrong, but the whole stuff *seems* a bit too buggy for something that has been already produced in 25,000 specimens with a next batch of anoither 35,000 son to be manufactured: https://fairphone.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/201311206-Software-update-v1-3-log-May-2014 if it is "stable", then it is "stable", if it is "experimental", then it is "experimental" I would expect if not nightly builds, weekly ones: https://fairphone.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/201311206-Software-update-v1-3-log-May-2014 and the explanation given (coming from a hi-tech company, in the communications field) sounds so much wrong : http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=52338067 but I love (as an example) the concept of unless you ask for it you won't have a charger, as *any* USB charger will do https://fairphone.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/201065667-Why-don-t-you-automatically-include-a-charger-with-the-Fairphone-Which-charger-can-I-use- The general idea is however IMHO very nice, and I hope (like it has been seen for the "home built laptop") : http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/170962-this-might-be-the-future-open-hardware-laptop/ that it will start to be adopted by (and extended to) other devices. jaclaz