jaclaz

HIstorically that was a hal mismatching : http://support.microsoft.com/kb/164448/en-us (just to give an idea on how "new" is Windows 8.1 codebase ) Which PC (exact model/make) are you using? Have you checked it to be compatible with Windows 8.1 requirements? jaclaz

Just in case (as an useful reference): http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/legacy-is-not-a-pejorative.html Specifically: http://www.langston.com/Fun_People/2000/2000AHG.html jaclaz

Possibly posting on deviantart to recruit beta-testers for the crack is not one of the smartest ideas around. jaclaz

Let me see if I can understand the theory of the good neowin guys Microsoft is hiring in June/July 2014 a developer to make radical changes to *something* that is planned to be released to the masses in Spring (maybe Summer) 2015? And this when their development cycle is usually counted in years? (normally 3 to 5) Whatever they smoked or drinked at neowin, it must be good stuff. jaclaz

Well, the Surface was not "new" as a brand, it was ALREADY a MS product (just for the record) and this senseless re-use of brand has already created at least one misunderstanding: http://www.forensicfocus.com/Forums/viewtopic/t=9981/postdays=0/postorder=asc/start=7/ BTW, the WHOLE "tree" of the product documentation is still on technet: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee692162(v=surface.10).aspx http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee692130(v=surface.10).aspx etc. I believe that this "Surface" was actually the kind of thingy that has been astroturfed/inserted (vainly) in a number of TV shows. The name of the technology is "pixelsense" as what it really is, i.e. "really huge touch screens at very steep prices" did not get the approval of the marketing guys : http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/pixelsense/default.aspx I guess that the number of Samsung SUR40 actually sold are not impressive (notwithstanding the fanfare with which each and every tech expert has been talking of it in 2011/2012). Maybe because the US$ 8,400 price was not exactly "cheap": http://www.theverge.com/products/sur40/3388 jaclaz

Not really. As long as you have a primary partition entry in 4th slot in the partition table you can have one (but the Extended will need to take any of the first three slots). If you prefere there isn't actually a "Law" saying that: 1) Partition entries in the parittion table should be in the SAME order as their physical placement on disk 2) That the Extended partition should be on the 4th slot 3) That the Extended partition should be the "last one" on disk The other time the issue was pinned down to XP disk management when you used it to change active partitions, and this only happened when you had the partitions "aligned to the Mb" (i.e. somthing that form an XP point of view is "crazy" or misaligned). You could use grub4dos (easier) at boot time or *any* (as plain as possible) partition editor, as the ones you named. I can confirm you that there won't be issues of any kind in normal operation on a large disk in a situation like yours, anything beyond the LBA28 will simply be ignored as you switch the active partition between the first three active ones that are all three entirely within the limit. As soon as a Linux or Windows driver (that do not rely on BIOS services) will "kick in" in the boot process everything will be available "normally" and will function "normally". DOS (or Windows 9x/Me) that do use BIOS will instead be limited. As well grub4dos will have the same limitations, what is strange is that the usb --init in grub4dos does not work for you. Or maybe I just assumed (wrongly) that it provided a LBA48 extension. And I confirm it now. jaclaz

@JorgeA Yep, the same happened in EU, but they started in 2009 and *everything* was phased out in 2012. Here already more than one and a half years since the complete "ban" and obviously any stock has been sold out (or whatever is left is still sold in in the underground market by pushers ). @NoelC Good, another thing on which we agree on. jaclaz

Good , then it's agreed. About the length of the books it is also possible that getting older you became a little more wordy I wouldn't take that as valid metrics. However, we've got a deal. And now, for NO apparent reason: jaclaz

Grub4dos numbers partitions as follows: 1st partition (meaning Primary partition in first "slot" in partition table) (hdn, 0) 2nd partition (meaning Primary partition in second "slot" in partition table) (hdn, 1) 3rd partition (meaning Primary partition in third "slot" in partition table) (hdn, 2) 4th partition (meaning Primary partition in fourth "slot" in partition table) (hdn, 3) Any Extended partition (NO matter in which slot in partition table is) is NOT numbered (as a matter of fact it is not a "real partition/volume", it is a container for volumes). The volumes inside extended partitions are numbered (hdn,4), (hdn,5) ... etc. following their order in the EMBR's chain. If you prefer, in a MBR you can have either max 4 primary partitions or max 3 primaries and one Extended, the Primaries (please read as "volumes" are numbered 0,1,2,3 according to the entry they occupy in the MBR, the Extended (which is not a "volume) will NOT be numbered and the first volume in Extended will always be #4 (no matter how many primary partitions are in th epartition table) When you run the geometry command grub4dos tries to read (and verify consistency) of all volumes, so (because of the LBA28/48 issue) it will analyze (without errors) *anything* below the limit and throw an error about *anything* (i.e. including logical volumes inside extended) beyond that limit. 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