jaclaz

And all this time I thought that editing menu.lst from the booted 7 (or XP, or any other OS for that matters) changing the default entry was possible .... jaclaz

I don't know. I mean, Asus has a known record (at least from my personal experience) of making excellent products , but the thingy (which has also seemingly a not-to-bad price tag) looks like using some kind of proprietary firmware/software. Since you are going HDMI anyway (being cheap I earlier suggested VGA based solutions, assuming that you would have used an oldish monitor) I would personally still have a look at the Android sticks, that could be more "flexible". I have tested one, a RikoMagic RKM mk802iv which is not bad at all, though it needs still IMHO some better Wi-Fi capabilities, but with added on cable network works fine (for the uses that it was bought for), but it costs a little more than that Asus thingy, some previous versions do however cost fairly less. For your needs, possibly the only thing that really matters is how well the thingy is cool/cooled, as it will be - I presume - ON a lot of time, possibly in a narrow space between the screen and the wall. jaclaz P.S.: Once set the cost aside the keywords you should use on google is "monitor pubblicitari" or "digital signage", here is an (italian) example: http://www.digimax.it/it/digital-signage/monitors-digital-signage

And all this time I thought that a default entry set with a timeout was avoiding it ... jaclaz

Yep, on the other hand, the post by Tihiy was made in October 2008, and the files in it are modified in various dates before that, among them a few do bear dates of September and October 2006 (i.e. compatible with the "vague" reference "dated by ~ autumn 2006" bearwindows made). As said I don't know. jaclaz

I don't know. Bearwindows said "it exists an unofficial build", it is very possible (knowing Tihiy's abilities in tweaking things) that Bearwindows was making reference (vaguely) to that specific unofficial build by Tihiy. jaclaz

Well, if that is the actual target of the reference that bearwindows made, I would guess that Tihiy would - if asked for it - re-upload it somewhere. jaclaz oops I see it was fixed in the meantime.

Also, a not-so-stupid idea for the future: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/122401-asus-eee-pc-and-windows-9x/?p=888655 Just for the record a sub-set of this idea (optimizing a PE build with drivers for USB headset) made available to visually impaired people a suitable tool, i.e. a PE with NVDA screen reader integrated and working on *almost any* machine. jaclaz

The good news are that NOONE is listening to those conversations (essentially those conversations are extremely boring and of no relevance for intelligence work ) The bad ones are that they may be recorded and may be used (against you, your wife or both) IF they contain anything in any way *compromising*. SCOOP! I have a transcript (translated from Serbian into English ) of one of such conversations that leaked online: jaclaz

That that build is existing is good, but the question is: If YES , Where from? If NO , this represents what we highly specialized technicians call "senseless teasing" jaclaz

Why? There are both 32 and 64 bit versions. At least the Portable version appears to be 32 bit alright. though the usual b*ll§hit about 64 bit is provided: or are you talking about the need for SSE2? http://www.palemoon.org/technical.shtml#CPUsupport And now, for NO apparent reason: jaclaz

What is surprising is IMHO the apparent surprise at these kind of "news" (actually not really "news"). It is obvious that any government will do everything in its powers (and even more) to keep under control dissidents and potential menaces to the status quo. From a purely technical standpoint this makes little or no sense: any *decent* spyware/remotecontrol/whatever will (should) NOT produce ANY visible effect, i.e. it should be as "stealth" as possible. This: also makes little sense, the whole idea of such a high-tech (and presumably high cost) spyware is that is not detected by "common" antivirus/antimalware. The HT guys have however a clear customer policy: http://www.hackingteam.it/index.php/customer-policy and undoubtedly they will proactively react at the news, besides the results of their process of monitoring news media, activist community blogs and other Internet communication, and other available sources for expressed concerns about human rights abuses by customers or potential customers, by activating their unique in the industry panel of technical experts and legal advisors, which will timely report to the board of directors suggesting appropriate actions. (I hope I managed to replicate properly the fluffiness of the mentioned page ) But even a simple setting under "Control Panel" (or similar) would do, I mean one can bear looking at the desktop or (once ) to the NCI, at least the strict time needed to navigate to where the custom setting can be changed.... jaclaz

And for NO apparent reason coat hangers : http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/154863-the-meta-sata-pataphysics-of-usb-transfer/#entry985935 jaclaz

Cannot really say. I followed (and helped a bit in the making) if the early versions, until BeatZero was able to "fly on it's own". http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/140391-windows-98-live-cd-project-update/ But seemingly later he made some extra-complex (and seemingly completely unlike *needed* ) modifications to the project that made it not working (and unfortunately "vanished" from the scene ). This should be the last version that I actually tested and built successfully: http://reboot.pro/topic/10373-winbuilder-running-on-windows-98/?p=130617 If you want to have a go at it, I can upload it somewhere and provide you a link to it. On the already mentioned thread: http://reboot.pro/topic/10373-winbuilder-running-on-windows-98/ a couple of user started troubleshooting the issues but left the game too early JFYI, very recently another user on reboot.pro is trying to find a way to have it working (with scarce results, I am afraid): http://reboot.pro/topic/19547-booting-win98livecds-iso-with-grub4dosfrom-usb/ Still, the issue with conflicts with an existing Windows 98 install is "before and outside" a successful build or not and - as said earlier - as I see it, it can only be resolved by somehow *forcing* a different drive letter to the hard disk partition hosting the "base" Windows 98: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/163666-win98-from-cd-loads-config-from-hd-installed-windows/?p=1047330 The alternate approach, that noone seemingly in all these years has had the interest (or time, or knowledge ) to finalize is to rebuild a 98 CD in either the Winimize way, see: http://reboot.pro/forum/53-winimize/ or re-creating - without using the original registry redirector - a build like the Qualystem one: http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=8607 http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=12326 http://reboot.pro/topic/2293-setting-registry-pointer-registry-redirector/ jaclaz

Well, the devil is in the details and .... jaclaz

Yep, unfortunately NO dice . An IMHO lesser known possible resource is this newish Forum: http://malthus.zapto.org/index.php basicaly a handful of (advanced) "amateurs" , already members of the reknown hddguru forum (in practice ALL the good guys over there ) took the plunge and (after having been told for countless years, over and over - and over again - how a professional is needed always and anyway) started this new Forum. Seemingly only one or two of the "professionals" joined there (still posting again and again the same thing), so the place is - unlike hddguru - very friendly. Of course there is not (yet) much info (and unfortunately even the info available is still largely cryptical/unexplained/unexplicable ) , but that would be probably the best place to ask for help or to keep an eye on for future developments. jaclaz

Very good. If and when you will have time it would be nice if you could post a more detailed list of the steps involved, which I am sure would be very useful to those wishing to install to "non-C:\Windows" jaclaz

Naah, no need to apologize at all. A link to Rudolph Loew's profile is however allowed (and from it you can PM him and or go to his page where his e-mail is): http://www.msfn.org/board/user/58258-rloew/ jaclaz

No. (meaning that I do not think that this could work, nothing more, nothing less). I have no idea how much (or what) is stored in the actual ROM chip and how much (or what) is stored on the actual HDD platters, but common sense tells me that it is not a good idea to do that ROM swapping, as there is no evidence of any kind of a failure of some electronic component on the PCB (which would be the normal reason for a PCB and ROM swap). Specifically the cited reference: http://www.hardmaster.info/news13/13-13-2013.html links to an older post from the same Author: http://www.hardmaster.info/news11/15-06-2011.html where I seem to read that (via Google translate): jaclaz

Yes and No. It greatly depends on the specific printer. Windows NT's (so as Charlotte stated applying to 2K but not necessarily to 9x/Me) provide two basic resources, UNIDRV.DLL (which stands for UNIversal) and PSCRIPT5.DLL (which stnds for PostSCRIPT) and a feww more, start exploring from here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/ff560843(v=vs.85).aspx that are not entirely unlike a script processor/compiler that can parse respectively .GPD and .PPD files (which are in themselves scripts) and output (compiles) a specific binary file that constitutes the printer minidriver. Not all printers are compatible with these "generic" resources (but rather use their own "proper" driver) so YMMV. The good news are that most laserjets are HP Laserjet compatible and thus in the absence of a specific driver they tend to work fine with the standard PCL5 or PCL6 driver, example: http://welcome.solutions.brother.com/BSC/public/us/us_ot/en/faq/faq/000000/000300/000024/faq000324_000.html?reg=us&c=us_ot〈=en∏=dcp7020_us jaclaz

Maybe this helps , since the dawn of time I setup Windows NT's with the swap file as "Manual" (aka non Windows managed), FIXED size and on it's own partition (wherever possible also on a different disk drive). jaclaz

^ But but but that would mean ... ... (drums beating) ... ... the application of plain logical common sense! Taboo! No. Common sense would be a simple MANUAL switch/preference that the user can use to choose between NCI and "normal" Windows, INCLUDING Start Menu on ANY device, whenever he/she wants, and NOT something "automatic" (that - like any other unneededly complex setup - WILL fail before or later on some hardware). Practical example. HOW exactly will the senseless automatic determination of workspace behave on this specific (possibly also senseless) newish device? http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/review/2233469/asus-taichi-review http://www.asus.com/taichi/ jaclaz

Worded the other way round, the condition (pseudocode) is something *like*: IF "F:\EDIout\" IS EMPTY THEN GOTO COMMS ELSE GOTO ARCHIVESee here : http://ss64.com/nt/empty.html Of course the "RandomString64" must be choisen wisely to avoid that by pure chance a file named "RandomString64" is created in the directory. jaclaz

Good. I am not familiar with the 7 printing subsystem, but then you need to take off the XP only the .GPD and .PPD files. (and use the 7 .DLL's) The issue being that you will need to create a specific .INF file, which may be not trivial, in any case it is strongly suggested that you try things one at the time, separately (the "generic" vs. "postscript") as if they were two completely different printers. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/ff551683(v=vs.85).aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/ff560918(v=vs.85).aspx I would suggest you to look for (and hopefully find) an already made .inf for a single printer that uses the "generic" UNIDRV.DLL and one using the PSCRIPT5.DLL to use as base. Cannot say if you will need also a .cat catalog file.: jaclaz

Sure there are point is rather "how much do they cost"? Examples: http://www.bigeframe.com/ http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/937164742/42_Inch_LCD_Digital_Photo_Frame.html An alternative could be to get *any* monitor and get a USB hard disk video player, example (el-cheapo): http://www.ebay.it/itm/Box-Multimediale-Player-IDE-Lettore-Memory-Card-RCA-VGA-OTG-DATA-BANK-dvix-/131026089799?pt=Box_per_Hard_Disk_per_PC_e_Server&hash=item1e81c37747 Being - as reknown - very cheap I once solved the same problem you are having now with an old PC LCD monitor and an el-cheaper multimedia hard disk enclosure (with a salvaged from an upgraded laptop 10 Gb 2.5" disk in it). I got the 2.5" case at a "wholesale" bargain (sale of items with either small defects or only cosmetical scratches and the like) for peanuts, cannot remember the exact model, but it was a MEDIACOM, if you want the model I can have a look if I can find it. Nowadays, the same problem can be most probably solved (still using a "normal" monitor) by using one of those Android based sticks, though they are not very cheap (as they have a lot more functions than what you actually *need*). jaclaz

Why not a photoframe? (or digital frame or picture frame or LCD frame) jaclaz