jaclaz

That is good , as also advanced and highly advanced USB sticks completely lack batteries, no bases for making a classist distinction among them. BUT extremely highly advanced may actually have them, example: http://www.istorage-uk.com/datashur.php As a OT and very side note, the actual security of this kind of "secure" device is - generally speaking - to be verified, see: http://spritesmods.com/?art=security Now, if Arminuis was making reference to a USB MP3 player, even if it is normally seen as a "Mass Storage Device", just like an USB flash stick is (and has a battery) is not properly (or not only) a "USB stick". jaclaz

Still you, Benny (like any aardvark), and all tatoos' are behind the green glass door. The kind of aardvarks we have in Italy are anyway pretty fastish , as a matter of fact so d@mn fast that noone ever saw one of them , they are no problem . Where I live that kind of risk is more related to wild boars and porcupines. Just in case: jaclaz

Well, the essence of the reference is this: http://www.forensicfocus.com/Forums/viewtopic/p=6564426/#6564426 or: http://www.forensicfocus.com/Forums/viewtopic/p=6564423/#6564423 no need to scratch anything (unless you scratch the appropriate area(s) scratching may lead ot only partially unrecoverable data), cutting (or breaking) the CD/DVD in two pieces (no more than two is needed) is simple, fast and effective. And don't forget the disclaimer here : http://www.forensicfocus.com/Forums/viewtopic/p=6564418/#6564418 Or, get a CD shredder, examples: http://www.aleratec.com/shredders.html http://www.shreddingmachines.co.uk/cd_shredders.asp?cat=CD%2FDVD-shredders ( a number of "beefy" generic paper shredders may also do). jaclaz

The booting process has not changed from Vista onwards. The bootsector for a CD/DVD/.iso is etfsboot.com. <- this is an El-Torito no-emulation bootsector You find it in the install .iso under the /boot directory. The bootsector for FAT/FAT32/NTFS partiton is "embedded" and can be installed with bootsect.exe. The bootsectors behaviour is the same, load BOOTMGR, then access the BCD and finally load the WIndows throuigh WINLOAD.EXE. But if you post about the actual problem you are having (as opposed ot a "fraction" of it) , you may receive more complete answers, including info about the use of the (needed) OSCDimg or mkisofs to actually create the .iso, and/or - possibly - about already existing tools/scripts whatever capable of doing that. jaclaz

Well, this is - personally - one of the things that makes me sleep rather well , see: http://www.forensicfocus.com/Forums/viewtopic/t=9811/ http://www.forensicfocus.com/Forums/viewtopic/t=10154/ Though of course NO certainties : http://www.forensicfocus.com/Forums/viewtopic/p=6564426/#6564426 particularly if you have lousy B&W 11 Kb bmp's of Alfred Einstein written all over the CD, n times : http://www.thic.org/pdf/Jun04/UniversityOfArizona.Milster-2-%20Data%20Recovery%20from%20CD-R%20Fragments%20rev%20a.pdf jaclaz

The commonly accepted technique for hammered HD's is to send them via mail to China : http://www.forensicfocus.com/Forums/viewtopic/t=9682/ jaclaz

Wait a minute. If the disk is to be initialized, it means that - as is - it contains NO accessible data (and as such it makes very little sense to scan it for viruses). On "normal" MBR type of disks the "initialize this disk" is triggered by the absence of the "Magic Bytes" 55AA at offset 510 in first sector (the MBR). What the Disk Manager does when you go on is simply to write to the MBR the (specific OS) MBR code (including the Magic Bytes). There is no "difference" (in the sense of "substantial" difference) between the 7 and 8 MBR code, for "normal" booting, BUT there may be incompatibilities if bitlocker and/or hybrid boot is used, AND since you mention a laptop, remember that a number of OEM's use a "special" MBR to give the user the possibility of using the "recovery" partition. I think that thee are no particular issues in using (running on 7) the windows 8 version of bootsect.exe (which has a switch to operate on the MBR too), but the basic issue remains that if the disk was not "wiped" (or damaged) it should NOT need to be initialized. Additionally (and specifically to GPT disks) the status of possible incompatibilities between 7 and 8 (possibly only when AF or 4k sectored disks are involved) is not entirely clear, see: http://www.forensicfocus.com/Forums/viewtopic/t=11431/start=14/ jaclaz

I am not sure to understand. A USB disk drive (or flash stick) *needs* not any particular, specific driver. It is the USB interface (on the PC) that needs those drivers. If you prefer, once a USB port on the PC is functional you can connect to it *any* USB drive. There used to be (and possibly they still exist) "special" drivers for some particular sticks, I remember Buffalo ones that used a special transfer mode to make the data transfer quicker, usually having something like "turbo" in the name, but those sticks worked as well (though slower than when used in conjunction with the specialized drivers) on *any* PC. jaclaz

The {A68CA8B7-004F-D7B6-A698-07E2DE0F1F5D} is Windows Time Service. Cannot say if connected, but here: http://superuser.com/questions/359180/windows-7-clock-jumps-back-about-every-hour-internet-disconnects a similar error was solved replacing the motherboard battery. I would check anyway the Windows Time Service, like stopping it, unregister it, re-registering and re-starting it, and/or keeping it temporarily logged, see: http://blogs.technet.com/b/industry_insiders/archive/2006/08/29/w32-tm-service.aspx jaclaz

Very good The listed procedure looks fine, the only thing that may need to be carefully checked is the "alternate" use of CurrentControlSet vs. ControlSet001. Though most, say 99% of cases, will actually use Controlset001 as CurrentControlSet when booted, checking the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Select key is always advised. The "exact" name for the controller you "replaced" should be "Microsoft Standard Dual channel PCI IDE Controller". jaclaz

OT , but not much , another good recent example is Intel. They bragged a lot at CES2014 about their Edison and how good the Quark was and how tiny (SD card size) the whole thingy was, and in less than three months later: http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2014/03/31/intel-edison-atom/1 they announced that everything is OK, but an Atom will be used instead, and the thingy will be bigger in size. jaclaz

CD.>4 (four) bytes saved http://www.robvanderwoude.com/useless.php But you need to create the folder structure too. What about using XCOPY source destination /T/E ? I.e. @ECHO OFFSETLOCAL ENABLEEXTENSIONSSET Source=M:SET Target=C:\testXCOPY %Source% %Target%\ /T/EFOR /F %%A "tokens=*" IN ('DIR %Source% /S /B /A-D') DO CD.>"%Target%%%~pnxA"jaclaz

Good to know. Still as a note, the "OS independent" tool/library by synchronicity http://reboot.pro/topic/18345-wimlib-with-imagex-implementation/ has been updated - in an experimental version - to support WOF: http://reboot.pro/topic/18345-wimlib-with-imagex-implementation/?p=183521 Hopefully, before or later, we will be able to not need the WAIK tools at all . jaclaz

http://shishtpal.blogspot.com/2013/10/a-small-tutorial-for-bootice-users.html http://www.rmprepusb.com/tutorials/multipartufd jaclaz

Oh, yes , it is perfectly possible to fight the progress alright, winning the war is another thing. jaclaz

You mean something *like* detours? http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/detours/ jaclaz

Yep , point #4 is what I meant, to be sure that it is bootable, you have to test it *somehow*. Instead of using Virtualbox, use Qemu, for two reasons: it has a "strict" kind of BIOS when it comes to CHS (if involved at all)it has "simpler" virtual hardware (when compared to Virtualbox or similar)If you are running Windows, I suggest you to use Qemu Manager: https://web.archive.org/web/20110829020746/http://www.davereyn.co.uk/qem/setupqemuk70.exe Usually what can be booted in Qemu can be booted on real machine (sometimes the reverse is not true), but you never know. Also you should inspect with appropriate tools the MBR to see what actually the "automagic" Pen Driver Linux's USB Installer wrote to it. You have to understand how SDcard bootability (as feature in the BIOS) is very rare, and, I believe, usually "primitive", i.e. not "mature" or "documented" or experimented as USB one. You may find of interest this oldish thread (unfinalized ) where some attempts were made, evidencing some of the difficulties that may apply to your case also: http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=20314 jaclaz

Let's put it this other way (anecdotal ), I have never seen in my whole life an actual vulnerability actually being taken advantage of by a "hacker" on a non-business installment. Anything I ever came across was introduced in the affected machine(s): by senselessly clicking on a link on a received e-mail (or with Outlook/Outlook Express just opening a received e-mail) by getting a virus/malware as "strings attached" to a downloaded file, usually "border line" with legality or beyond it (warez, pirated movies, etc.) by browsing on a malicious site (often connected with the above) by physical insertion in the machine of a USB stick (previously and separately affected because of one of the reasons above)The whole point is that someone that writes a malware/virus etc. would do this mainly for one of these three reasons: sheer fun/show off/brag about how clever he/she is <- no profit create havoc on large scale <- no profit get money (lots of it) <- profitNow: the first one is just a "kid" and has no interest in targeting specifically you, as it wouldn't produce the kind of publicity wished for. the second one is someone that is against all humanity (or technology or MS or all of them) and also has no interest in targeting you. the third one is someone that wants money and since you have not enough of it and it would cost him/her much more time and effort to target individuals (to get only a little money) than trying to collect money by infecting the largest possible number of machines, also has no particular interest on you.What remains are just two possibilities: you have (personally) offended the "hacker" or however made the "hacker" willing to take a personal revenge against you you have (personally) offended someone and this someone has enough money (and the capabilities) to find and hire a "hacker" to have him/her take the revengeAll in all, if you behave nicely enough with all people , you should be safe from these. You are however a target, but just one target in the mass of other targets, there is nothing particularly "safe" to do, but you will have to adopt a strategy similar to the one in the old bear joke: http://www.forensicfocus.com/Forums/viewtopic/p=6567580/#6567580 you don't have to be "better than the hacker is", you need to be "better than a large enough number of possible victims". jaclaz

How EXACTLY you made sure that the SD Card is bootable? How EXACTLY did you partition and format it and make it bootable? Has it been partitioned or has it been formatted as super-floppy? Which bootmanager/bootloader you installed to it? (Ubuntu should be using GRUB2) BTW "last UBUNTU iso" means "nothing", there are at least 4 versions of Ubuntu currently, I presume you mean Ubuntu Desktop 14.04 LTS. jaclaz

The queer thing is that what are actually "real" improvements are too intelligent to be marketed. Example, the newish WOF: http://reboot.pro/topic/18345-wimlib-with-imagex-implementation/?p=183343 which might be (or become) a feature of incredible utility, was never AFAIK ever (or scarcely) mentioned. I believe (and this is consistent with MS history) there are two sides of the company, the developers (that very often are quite good at writing software, but, understandably know very little about communication) and the designers/marketers (that know nothing about anything and just give people what they think people may want to hear). The link between the two, which is - or should be - the management, is what lately has failed, and failed big (IMHO). Now we have reached "pure folly" with the stupid decision that update 1 is compulsory to have future updates. Even if, on the outcry of all the serious IT people they managed to enlarge the "window" from 1 month to almost 4: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/04/why-the-windows-8-1-update-probably-means-no-more-service-packs-for-windows/ this timeline still does not meet the expectations (and actual needs) of companies where security and uptime is crucial (please read as all those that are in a field where "big money" is). Given the issues that (historically) each and every "major" critical update has introduced in MS OS's the idea of the "new" model of "continuous updates" must be for IT professional a terrible nightmare. The "one size fits for all", that I criticized also in the good ol' times when the user OS (Windows ME) was merged with the professional OS (Windows 2000) to create the Windows XP, had some sense (though forcing upon "home" users features and complexities of the "professional" world), but now forcing upon "professional" users features (and vulnerabilities) to have a "same" OS that can be appealing to the home user is suicidal. jaclaz

Please do READ the read-me first, (that you should have read BEFORE): http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/143880-seagate-barracuda-720011-read-me-first/ Particularly points #1 and #5. You posted on the wrong thread (as this is for 7200.11 ONLY as per point #1) and asked a question that has been answered in the read-me-first point #5 (and in reply to countless other posts by people that also did not manage to read the read-me-first FIRST). jaclaz

Sure, but if you report EXACTLY what you did successfully, this thread may help someone else in your same trouble, otherwise it is of little use. jaclaz

Possibly the one that fits the bill may be Privacyfirewall: http://www.privacyware.com/personal_firewall.html It has a good rating here: http://www.matousec.com/projects/proactive-security-challenge/results.php And it seems not that much bloated/resource intensive, but surely it is larger than that Kerio one, at least it is IMHO worth a try. jaclaz

You can try using either among Mass Storage driver Injector or MSSTMAKE: http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showforum=43 or go through the "full" Offline Sysprep route. Cannot say - speciifcally - if any of the mentioned tools will work with your specific drivers/motherboard, of course. jaclaz

WHICH HP format tool? Be aware of the differences between version 2.00.006 A (6 Feb 04) and version version 2.1.8 A (17 May 04): http://jaclaz.altervista.org/Projects/USB/USBstick.html if I recall correctly the second did not properly set the partition as active, and, JFYI : http://reboot.pro/topic/4902-multiboot-cd-rom-via-grub4dos/?p=38097 http://reboot.pro/topic/6492-virtual-storage-driver/?p=107741 WHY using it at all? I mean , to prepare the USB stick you can use a more recent tool like RMPREPUSB, which offers some added features. jaclaz