jaclaz

I have a word for you, psst, come nearer, previous. No, it can NOT be interpreted as a feature, unless we accept the concept of "stupid feature". Anything that prevents, obstacles or make overly cumbersome pursuing the scope of the board (which is exchanging information, reading each other advice, comments and ideas) is NOT a feature, it is a bug. BBCode provided (and provides) all the basic, useful text formatting options (bold/italic/font/etc) and nothing more, i.e. it does what is *needed*, adding (or converting to) HTML is one of the many senseless "enhancements" of the board software that noone (I mean noone with a working brain) has ever possibly asked for and that was "forced" to everyone. jaclaz

Good. Erunt has saved my XP installs more than once, it is something that MS should have provided built-in as recovery tool. Out of curiosity, what do you mean by "time bombed"? I never heard of issues with Anyburn. Maybe it is a specific issue with your install^ Imgburn remains IMHO the best option, but of course - as you say - it misses some of the more recent possibilities, and probably any newer tool won't work on good ol' XP. jaclaz

@DaveH Technically, the zip archive is a container. Some of its contents are encrypted/password protected, some (the mentioned .txt file) are just stored inside the container in plain text. If you open the System_Info-48-E.zip in 7-zip and check all the columns, you will see how it contains two items: 1) the System_Info-E.txt file with method "store" Encrypted "-" 2) the inner System_Info-48.zip file with method "AES-256 deflate" Encrypted "+" The outer (or External).zip can be opened normally (without password) and the .txt file can be read/extracted as well without password. 3/4 to 7/8 of the internet uses password protected archives with the password published on the forum or blog post where the link to the archive is posted. So the user downloads the archive and opens it with the provided password or - exceptionally - creates *somewhere* a *randomly named* .txt file. The some time later he/she wants to re-use the archive but cannot find anymore the post where the password is nor the .txt file on which the password was copied. You'll have to convene that Wimb's approach is better. To nitpick, the .txt file should be named System_Info-pw.txt (as opposed to System_Info-E-pw.txt) or - better - System_Info-48-pw.txtand contain as opposed to: jaclaz

d.exe might well have been a piece of malware. Anyway, it isn't part of any normal install, and since the .exe does not exist it cannot autostart/autorun, so you can well remove those entries safely. jaclaz

Like you had not inside your safe at home a scrap of paper with the combination of that same safe ...

Somehow, someone needs to state this, to avoid possible misunderstandings. Javascript in it self is not bad or evil. It is the (terrible) use of it by incompetent or - worse - malicious web designers (and executives over them) that created the mess. Besides (and this is a pet peeve of mine) it is some 15 years that I am told how "we have new technology X (or Y) that allows us to target advertisements, to show you relevant items". Still it is 15 years that all I get is: 1) completely unrelated ads to my search terms 2) completely unrelated items to my navigation history 3) ads related to something I have ALREADY just bought (often on the same platform that processed the order, now, while something like toilet paper or soap may be something one re-buys often or periodically, I doubt that many people - like it happened last week to name an occasion - every day a wheel cart for transporting and lift demijohns (5 days of ads for similar wheel carts, 10 out of 10 at almost double the price I had paid ) or home Wi-Fi Range Extender[1]) jaclaz [1] actually I needed a Access Point, but nowadays they are the same thingy that can be used for both AP and RE, then after I had bought a small piece pertaining to a (home) network, I (obviously) was in need of some related accessories (namely a couple Rj45 wall sockets and some spare RJ45 plugs) but waited before searching for them, just to see ifthe new smart technology was actually worth something, and obviously for 3 (three) days all I had were ads for access points and not a single one about Rj45 plugs and sockets, not for anything else network or Wi-Fi related that was not an access point (I mean this smart technology might have thought I needed a switch or a router or an external antenna).

I have to understand your current setup (and also what you want to achieve). 1. You now boot to a DOS, then either run (say) win.com and load 3.11 or (still say) win98.com and load Windows 98? 2. And you want to (once in one of the two windows) go back to the DOS prompt and from it load the one (or the other ) windows without rebooting? How (exactly) are these two windows setups made (which volume partitions they are on, which paths do they use, etc. The traditional (generic) hack is to rename one of the two files to (say) IFSHLR.SYS and hexedit all the calls to it in the corresponding system. (this might either work brilliantly or fail miserably, no way to know in advance). BUT if the requirement is to not go through the BIOS, you can use a DOS external program to switch between two separate installs, grub4dos contains grub.exe (which works as a pure DOS program) that allows to boot *whatever* and *any which way you can*. jaclaz

@Trip, that must have been "Lightning Calendar (which is part of Thunderbird) @All A simple, self-standing thingy is this one here: UK's Kalender http://www.ukrebs-software.de/ jaclaz

I am not sure to understand. I mean, doesn't ERUNT do all you need for Registry backup and restore? (I thought that it was ubiquitous among the few surviving XP users) The site is long dead, here it is via Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20171215214009/http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/ The program remains the good ol'one "(v1.1j, 10/20/2005, Freeware, English and German)", it can be found on one of the original hosting sites: http://www.aumha.org/freeware/freeware.htm both the normal and install versions. jaclaz

The imapi and redbook should be "normal". It is *something else*, surely it is in the Registry or anyway in some configuration of your specific install, since booting other OS the issue disappears. And since you already tried uninstalling device and controller it must be "external" to those. I wonder what it could be , and if it is "system wide" or linked to your current account only, this could be another test you can make, create (add) a new user and see if logged in in this other account makes any difference. jaclaz

Typically these issues are connected to upper (or lower) filters in the Registry, but it does not necessarily applies in this case. See: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/your-cd-or-dvd-drive-is-not-recognized-by-windows-or-other-programs-64da3690-4c1d-ef04-63b8-cf9cc38ca53e point #5. jaclaz

Just in case: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29042791 https://fingerprintjs.com/blog/disabling-javascript-wont-stop-fingerprinting/ jaclaz

As a side note, OT but not much, here (Italy) "they" are pushing what "they" call fiber (it isn't, it is fiber up to the street box, then it is a sort of DSL, good if you are within 300-400 meters from the box, not so good if you are 900 meters or more) coupling the internet service with telephony (over the internet) in a single contract (actually I would say relatively cheap, if compared to the US $ numbers I see around). One of the good things of traditional land line was that it was powered by the telephone hub side, so, in case of emergency (local blackout or similar) the phone actually continued to work in most cases and you could call - say - the electricity company or the electrician (or generic help), the actual telephones are (were) practically indestructible and unless the actual cable was cut it was rather rare that the system does not work. With the new approach you should now have (and maintain efficient) an UPS to power your router to have the same kind of possibility though these routers are not probably as reliable as traditional phones (that you need anyway), once the *whatever may go wrong* was almost exclusively outside your house, now a large part of it is inside it. jaclaz

Yep. Bad, bad Pentium 4. jaclaz

You see , the coming out was less difficult than you expected , people that love you, love you nonetheless, even if you use XP. For me,. the difficult part is to explain the use of a "traditional" phone, particularly when I state - somehow firmly/aggressively - that I do not do WhatsApp (let alone Twitter or Facebook), a few people are somehow offended that I am depriving them of their freedom to harass me at every time, day or night, with pointless messages or funny videos. jaclaz

I had to downgrade to XP from Windows 2000 ( to which I upgraded from NT.4.00, to which I upgraded from NT 3.51) at the latest possible time, I think around 2008 or so, to compensate, I use XP daily since. Both of you don't sound like particularly old, considering that I was already working since quite a few years when Windows 3.0 came out, and soon after Win 3.1 and 3.11 for workgroups. All we had was a 286 or maybe a 386 Sx, 1, 2 or maybe 4 MB of RAM ... and we liked it! ... kids today ... https://tinyapps.org/blog/200702250700_why_in_my_day.html jaclaz

Well it was up to date when it was posted, in 2019, if you prefer, at the time the user Dclem had the issue, the info I posted were "state of the art". I am pretty sure that if your hobby is to go around the internet to tell people that they are wrong or that their info is outdated you must be rather busy. jaclaz

Now you tell me ? (I recently bought a 1.2 turbocharged, nominal 145 HP ) As I see it the issue is the poor engineering (not in itself, the poor engineering aimed to maintenance and replacements). There is not one reason in the world why taking out the whole engine (possibly including the gearbox and/or in case of front traction whole front sub-assembly) should take anything more than 2 (two) hours of labour of two people, which (it depends on the country of course) could be valued nowadays more or less 4 hours x 50 Euro= 200 Euro and the same time to re-install a refurbished unit, total 400 Euro per intervention. Refurbishing a (still working) unit cannot take more[2] than 1500-2000 Euro in spares and 10 hours labour (one person) say 500 Euro. So, if you routinely change the main unit every 100,000 km, including some (well deserved) 20% margin for the operators and the (stolen[1] by the state) VAT of 20-25% you get: 400+2000+500+100(various)=3000*1.2=3600*1.25=4500 Euro This amounts to 4500/100,000=0.045 Euro/km, let's round it to 0.05 Compare with other costs (data just invented with common sense, 20000 km/year don't start nitpicking on sources and their reliability): fuel: 1.50/20=0.075 -> 0.08 insurance: 1000/20000=0.05 taxes: 500/20000=0.025 ordinary maintenance: 2500/100000=0.025 It would make a lot of sense[3]. BTW overall it is not much different from the 12,000 Euro one would probably be asked nowadays to replace a 300,000 km engine (0.04). jaclaz [1] Yes, I mean exactly stolen [2] by specialized workshops with all the needed tools and spares handy [3] BTW this is the approach I have used for years (though for other prevailing reasons - production and availability of machines) in my tunnel construction site workshop for trucks, concrete mixers, wheel loaders, excavators and similar, basically if the repair could keep potentially the machine in the workshop for more than 12 hours[4], we just switched the engine (or gearbox or both) with a spare complete unit and then repair the replaced one, it was a lot of money (initial investment for the spare units) but it largely repaid itself in non-lost production [4] the site was working 24/5 or 24/6, so 12 hours represented 8-10% of weekly production

You mean that you have so many of them that you need to compress 'em? .... ducks .... https://reboot.pro/public/style_emoticons/default/jaclaz.gif jaclaz

Don't. Of course it depends on needs, but personally I re-use for those el-cheapo thin clients, they are - usually - much better quality than "common" hardware, of course they are on the low power side, but the whole stuff has been designed and manufactured to last. A whole site dedicated to these: https://www.parkytowers.me.uk/thin/ usually you can find them for a little amount on e-bay or similar, like 20-30-40 bucks, and power consumption like 10/20/30 W. jaclaz

You want (in theory): 1) an external connection, like a USB-SATA (or USB-IDE) adapter 2) to take the hard disk out of the PC case and connect it through the USB interface (a long normal SATA - or IDE - cable might do, the point is about having the disk accessible in order to be able to put a hand on it and feel if it is warming too much) 3) DO NOT use it as boot device 4) connect it to an already running system and use a program capable of doing (partial/in parts) dd-like copy[1] to an image 5) make sure that the disk is cool, either stop/suspend the copy if it heats up or have a fan capable of cooling it pointed to it (or both) Now, in practice, you can forget the first four point and do whatever else instead, but the point #5 is important, do not over-stress the disk or let it warm up too much without proper cooling. Generally speaking a backup is something that only works - maybe - for documents, a dd-like disk image contains the whole disk "as is", it takes much more space but it contains *everything*. jaclaz [1] under windows, datarescuedd: https://www.datarescue.com/photorescue/v3/drdd.htm or dmde: https://dmde.com/

Imagine (today) that you have a normal motherboard and you want to power it from your car (boat/roulotte/camper/etc.) battery. Meet the pico-PSU: https://www.onlogic.com/eu-en/technology/glossary/picopsu/ https://www.onlogic.com/eu-en/computers/components/power-supplies/picopsu/ These were born for "car computing" and of course they are "low power" as they used to be in common use with low - power mini-itx boards and similar, but there is nothing preventing (when the need will arise) for making similar ones with more power. jaclaz

Not really. 7b is inaccessible boot device, Luweitest posted 7e. Basically: 1) an issue with the SATA driver (or any other boot disk related driver) will cause 7b 2) nearly *anything* can cause 7e, usually it is also a driver but not necessarily one related/connected to boot disk. jaclaz

Yep, but imagine that you buy a new car. Then you replace: wheels and tires seats and interiors dashboard shock absorbers intake air filter exhaust gearbox and the result is actually nicer, runs smoother and better handling than the original car. It is hard to say that the car was good, at the most you can say that body and engine were a good base to work on. jaclaz

Sure, around here we have a clear definition of that class of vehicles: Panda Agricola, (translates to "Agricultural FIAT Panda) since noone is going to the Camel Trophy or Paris-Dakkar, an old Panda (or any other small front wheel-drive car, but here Panda's are very common) is the perfect car to go around in woods and dirt roads. However any car that is not at least 16 years old is frowned upon, while Panda 4x4 and Suzuky Jimny's (of which there are a few) are considered toys for the rich people (unneeded luxury). jaclaz