jaclaz

Before modifying a BIOS, I would try a few tricks, once the (new/latest) BIOS has been flashed, around the USB-ZIP format. It is gonna take some time/experiments as it is a "slippery" matter, see: http://reboot.pro/topic/4830-help-can-boot-usb-hd-in-one-pc-not-in-another/ http://reboot.pro/topic/4863-change-from-usb-zip-to-usb-hdd-by-removing-partition-boot-flag/ and: http://cheesehead-techblog.blogspot.it/2011/11/booting-old-via-epia-5000l-motherboard.html I remember that on a similar to this latter motherboard (an EPIA 6000) the "original BIOS did have the USB-CDROM and USB-HDD "enabled" but they did not work (cannot really remember if they did not work "at all" or they were simply tricky/not reliable) whilst on a later (that became last released) BIOS upgrade the two mentioned items were "disabled" (and I was able to boot - after some tweaking - through the USB-ZIP choice). Nowadays I would try first thing the (smallest you have available) USB stick and FBINST to partition/format it before making an attempt with good ol' makebootFAT. jaclaz

Sure and to this you may add that the relevance of it is never taught to anyone (of the kids) while most of the experienced folks (but not geekish enough to "evolve") have been scolded (besides by some data loss because they didn't have a backup ) also by the (generically) lack of reliability of common backup tools and/or backup media or by the extreme complexity of the actual steps involved. Nowadays backing up (twice) on hard disks and doing periodical upgrades/replacement of the disk devices is easier, faster and less complicated, yet everyone is commonly convinced that it is "optional" and not really-really needed. jaclaz

Well, newish (latest-latest-latest) grub4dos of the 0.4.6 series does have a USB stack. Some motherboards, particularly those with a limited amount of settings in BIOS, may be able to directly boot from USB (even if not stated anywhere in the BIOS) when a "particular" set of conditions are met concurrently. As an example I have a motherboard that needs "Legacy USB enabled" AND USB 2.0 disabled AND a USB device connected at cold boot BUT NOT a grub4dos installed to the MBR+hidden sectors while Syslinux MBR is fine. Usually the "removable" vs. "fixed" bit is ignored at BIOS level ( it will make a difference for Windows NT's, DOS and Linux/BSD also ignore that). Post a link to the motherboard manual or to some screenshots of the BIOS that thingy has. jaclaz

@NoelC As said, performance differences may be trifling on today's fastish devices, but try recovering a corrupted database (or filesystem) in which entries/contents are not contiguous (or compacted, or defragged), then come back saying that it is unneeded (again with moderation). In a "perfect world" where you have TWO (daily) backups the above doesn't obviously make any sense, as you won't EVER be needing to recover anything from anywhere. If you can convince everyone to adopt such a backup strategy, then all is fine and dandy. BTW, by the same token, aligning filesystems (or databases) to device blocks makes little sense on fastish machines/devices, but still on slowish ones it is *needed*. @TELVM For whatever it matters, the same can be said about conventional hard disk manuifactured in - say - last 15 years (the fact that where the data actually is has nothing to do to where Windows "sees" it being), think a bit about the G-Lists, P-Lists and spare sectors. The advent of SSD's has only exacerbated the same "problem" or "feature" (Windows or any OS, with the exclusion of the proprietary on-board firmware of the disk have NO idea of where actually the data is). As a matter of fact *any* chip based device (such as, besides SSD's the common SDcards and USB sticks) stores data not only "wherevet it sees fit", but also in a particular form/pattern (including where appliable CRC and/or other forms of error correction) that makes "chip off" reading particularly "nasty". jaclaz

Why not?http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/171875-long-term-system-stability/#entry1078900 http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/171875-long-term-system-stability/#entry1078910 An interesting point would be the "practical effects" of compacting a database (or a filesystem), i.e. the difference in performance in a comparison between two identical machines, used the same number of hours, let's say 2,000 hours by two twin brothers/sisters doing exactly the same thing, on one of which routine compacting/defragging is carried regularly (without overdoing it) and on one of which nothing is done. Possibly on modern (fastish) hardware there wouldn't be a sensible difference, but - as an example - IF the database (or filesystem) becomes corrupted (for any reason) the difference result in an attempted recovery would be likely the same between success and failure. jaclaz

Try looking under the carpet, left corner, just in front of the TV. TXTSETUP.SIF (often found CAB compressed as TXTSETUP.SI_) is the main "configuration" file for NT/2K/XP/2003 installs and it can be found in the \I386\ directory of *any* original install CD. jaclaz

Just to clear the extent of my previous comment, the point was not about your guesses being senseless or hazarded (actually - as most of your ones - they were educated guesses ), only about of the inherent senselessness of guessing in itself (with such a short period left before having the "real thing"). There are IMHO more useful activities, like (example) : jaclaz

Yep, and it is far from (yet) perfect, but, as an example, it is useful when you simply *need* to run a quick command (let's say a "ping" or an "IPCONFIG /all") as it opens in a "predictable" place on the screen and has this transparency that is less "impacting" visually than other solutions, of course it's use somewhat *implies* that you keep your taskbar at the bottom. jaclaz

Good. 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

Try using CFF explorer: http://www.ntcore.com/exsuite.php on them. jaclaz

Well, the idea of "no comments" is "try and see" .... Seriously, it is (on my desktop) an increase in its usefulness, as it provides a quick way (and a nice one IMHO since i am among the "lovers") to run a couple command line utilities. Anyone that has ever played, even for a few minutes Quake would know what it does, and the rest can just try it. For the lazy ones , there is a quick video here: jaclaz

Post a link to the file(s). jaclaz

Just to make things worse : http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/142911-ibm-3390-the-worlds-largest-and-most-expensive-hard-drive-teardown of course that is not at all "the most expensive", hard disks date back to the '50's. The oldest I could find a price reference for is however the IBM 1301: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_IBM_magnetic_disk_drives#IBM_1301 A hard disk model 2 + it's controller for around US$ 250,000 in 1961! According to: http://www.measuringworth.com/uscompare/ this means : : jaclaz

It's good AND you are responsible. jaclaz

Can you try *not* installing it? I mean it could be some strange quirk of DISM "injection" process. What happens if you make a "plain" PE without the driver and then try to install it in the booted PE? Also (still on the same line of thought), does the Windows 7 driver actually install and work fine on a "normal" Windows 7? jaclaz

I'll throw this on the table without comments (and without having *any* idea if it works (or can work) on Windows 8/8.1 ). It is something for which there is NO "middle way" people can only choose between "hating it" or "loving it": http://sourceforge.net/projects/winqconsole/ One needs to try it for a few days, I became "addicted" to it in no more than three days, but of course a lot of people may find it useless . As a matter of fact, since it is going (alas) to become unsupported, if anyone among the programmers would contact the Authors and take the matters in his/her hands it would be a great thing. jaclaz

Not really-really (you can copy it and paste it in a hex editor - I use Tiny Hexer for this - and then export as "hex text") but it is simpler to export a .reg file and copy from it the correspondent snippet like (example): by doing a few of these exports after having set the delay to (say) 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 minutes should make clear which actual bytes do what. Also SC:EXE does use milliseconds (but cannot say if this applies also to the version/OS of the OP): http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb490995.aspx http://ss64.com/nt/sc.html jaclaz

Good , then I won't provide any other one. jaclaz

On Windows XP the time is in milliseconds, I thought that it would be the same on Windows 8 (now I notice that it isn't). But maybe the "limit" is in the way the data is visualized/edited. What are the actual contents of the Registry key? jaclaz

Try a SFC /scannow and a reset as per: http://www.sevenforums.com/browsers-mail/313056-unable-uninstall-ie11-install-did-not-complete-3.html#post2684448 then try this: http://www.sevenforums.com/browsers-mail/313056-unable-uninstall-ie11-install-did-not-complete.html#post2606775 jaclaz

New post (just to let CorruptHuman know I have changed something). I have checked, the drive letter is hardcoded in Settings.ini. The good news is that "relative" paths are seemingly accepted. I.e. I quickly added it's own License.rtf and had this in Settings.ini: Simply converting it to: Seems like working fine (but you will have anyway to test in your setup). jaclaz

Hmmm. There is a known issue with PC's that have one of those "readers" (SD/CF cards, etc.). See a few posts starting from here: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/137714-install-xp-from-a-ram-loaded-iso-image/?p=895119 But, as first instance, I would test something that actually outputs the found path, this way you can see if that is right (or if there is *something* else - like in the Registry or in a .ini/settings file that is "hardcoded" to E:\ ) If I remember correctly it saves it settings in a file "Settings.ini" in the tool folder for %%p in (a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z) do if exist %%p:\RocketDock\RocketDock.exe DO (set w=%%pECHO Hi, I found drive letter %%p:ECHO I'm going to start %%p:\RocketDock\RocketDock.exePAUSE%%p:\RocketDock\RocketDock.exe)jaclaz

It depends. In 1997 I could blame the stupid camera for the poor quality of the pictures, now they suck as well (at a higher resolution, though ) and I have no excuses ... jaclaz

Sure , but the VM's do not contain (say) DOS 6.22 or FreeDOS or even Win2k/XP's, they are likely to be more instances of the same "biggish" recent OS's. jaclaz

No (meaning BOTH that I do not code and certainly do not using Visual Studio ). But you raised another very good point. That feature is exactly the same (which I turn off ) as the auto-correction/grammar correction/spelling/whatever in Word (or similar word processing software), it is very appropriate and useful when writing code[1] and for *anything* that has a definite, defined and "not negotiable" syntax or for a limited number of characters substitutions (like - as an example ( R ) to ® ) but it soon becomes a nightmare when it tries to changes Capital initials, quotes to double quotes, rounded quotes, etc. and attempts (at least in Italian, but I believe that American vs. British English is even worse) changing what you type into what it thinks to be the right form/spelling. I find the feature similar to the good ol' T9 madness (that however did have it's use). You can count me among the [who?] 's here : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spell_checker#Criticism Particularly: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammar_checker http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/005061.html Very appropriate and useful in some contexts (like writing code) and one of the causes of the progressive decaying of civilization in other contexts. jaclaz [1] As an example I find it very useful for formulas in Excel, or even some VBA scripts.