jaclaz

You know, that article begins with "Under Polish law, a licence ..." So all you have to do is to prove in a Court (where?) that Polish Law applies to a user (say) from Honk Kong about a software developed by a programmer in the Czech Republic. Good luck with that. Only for your interest, legalese is written legalese: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/legalese legalease could hypothetically be a legal agreement for a long term form of rent. , but it is actually a sort of insurance for legal assistance: https://www.legaleaseplan.com/ And now, for NO apparent reason, a reliable source for the expression "the rest of this stuff it's English to me" , https://www.texasbar.com/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Say_What_&Template=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=35605 i.e. the symmetrical for "That's Greek to me" or "It's Double Dutch": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_to_me jaclaz

Anyway (for someone that likes tea) it is literally tantalizing. though - most probably - that teapot is not any better than the Nutri-matic machine Douglas Adams described: jaclaz

Sure, the issue is that once a whole cup is poured, the level of the tea in the cup diminishes until it is empty (the cup must have a hole of a crack) jaclaz

Not so easy, you need to program the whole HTCPCP protocol and stack, if you want to do it properly ;) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyper_Text_Coffee_Pot_Control_Protocol The google implementation is still online, however: https://www.google.com/teapot jaclaz

Yep . If we draw a line in or around 2002-2005, I would say that *any* machine around that time is: 1) still compatible with win9x/me and DOS (including drivers and what not) 2) runs waaay faster than *any* machine that actually used to run DOS/9x/Me Now, how much does it cost such a machine? I would say with anything between 0 and 50 bucks you can find one, let's double the higher estimate to 100 so that you can possibly replace some parts.(let's say the PSU and the disk). Is this money worth it? IMHO (and as many MSFN members know, I am, besides old and grumpy also cheap ) yes, it is fully worth it[1]. I can understand (and actually extensively use) VM's and similar for the convenience of running another (oldish) OS in a window in the "main" machine for quick tests, experiments and what not, but unless you have a very powerful machine, and an OS and virtualization/emulation software capable of managing it, the experience - particularly with sound and games - won't be the same as the "native" one. Running on DOS (or Win9x/Me) a VM or emulator to run a DOS (or Win9x/Me) game makes very little sense. I am not at all familiar with Dosbox or Dosbox-X but as a rough estimate I would say that a VM/emulator will be some 30% slower than the corresponding "native", possibly with the exception of disk throughput, as you can use a ramdisk in the VM (depending on the "outer" OS, i.e. if it can manage large amount of memory - which is not hte case for Dos/9x/Me). jaclaz [1] for *some reasons* I am particularly fond of old VIA mini-itx motheboard that with a C3@600 Mhz can also be fanless and - last time I checked - worked just fine with Dos/9x/Me with a decent enough speed, surely not gaming machines, but powerful enough for classic games, as well, there are a number of suitable "thin clients" around that can be made into nice Dos/9x/Me retro game machines, example: https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=49092

May I ask why? Are you surprised that virtualizing an OS is slower than native? jaclaz

Making a separate post to not further add to P.S. above. I just tried the compress.exe (version 2.00) from here: http://www.manmrk.net/tutorials/DOS/msdos.htm to compress a file, and it creates a SZDD header archive file that 7-zip opens just fine and identifies as MsLZ. Now, which (among the various versions of compress.exe, should the mscompress not work) tool might recreate the same type of compression as the file(s) you have is to be found out. Some more related info: https://www.betaarchive.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=386809#p386809 jaclaz

Yes, but No. Meaning that the Universal Extractor is not a decompression tool and the Author(s) never actually wrote even a single line of decompressing code/algorithms in it. The tool is a "repository" of existing decompressing/decoding tools nicely integrated and with a nice "detection" engine that attempts to recognize the compression format used in the file and "pipes" the file to the most suitable decompressing tool in the repository (passing to it besides the file also the right parameters and what not). If you prefer it is a meta-decompression tool. To find which (if any) compressing tool can create that specific format there are mainly three ways to get more data for searching it: 1) identify the exact compression format by using the suggested TrID or similar software 2) analyze the behaviour of Universal Extractor and find out which specific decompression tool is used (and possibly with which parameters), from the post by Nitro322 you referenced the used tool is 7-zip, so any post-2010 version of it[1] should be able to decompress the files directly, as it does for a huge number of other formats 3) check the file signature (usually - but not always - the first or last few bytes, i.e. unique header or footer), if you have two of these compressed files a hex compare between the two may be enough to find out which is the "fixed" part, possibly even FC would do Or, if the file(s) are not huge (and can be shared), upload it(them) on a free file hosting site and post a link, and I'll have a look if I can find some more info. jaclaz [1] https://www.7-zip.org/history.txt P.S.: Have you tried the mscompress? http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/mscompress.htm AND check these: https://www.cabextract.org.uk/libmspack/doc/szdd_kwaj_format.html https://mark0.net/forum/index.php?topic=672.0 It seems that what 7-zip calls MSLZ is compress.exe made files, probably the SZDD kind, or - possibly - KWAJ option 2 or option 3.

Well, jaclaz knows a lot about very few things and a little about lots of things. Compression is not one of the fields I know a lot about, but from the little I know the mslz format does not actually exist . It probably is one of the many LZ (Lempel Ziv) based compression formats used by MS, as such likely it can be made using compress, makecab, diamond or a similar oldish MS compressor. Try analyzing it with TriD: https://mark0.net/soft-trid-e.html maybe it finds a "better" name for the format. jaclaz .

You can try here: https://driverpack.io/en/hwids/USB\VID_0930%26PID_021D?os=windows-7-x86 but it seems like the Vista version is missing, you may want to try however the "Toshiba Bluetooth Stack" https://www.softpedia.com/get/Internet/Remote-Utils/Toshiba-Bluetooth-Stack.shtml jaclaz

Only as anecdata, this thingy here worked for me in the past (but not necessarily will in your setup/with Explorer 360): https://sourceforge.net/projects/stayawake/ jaclaz

Poor little thing, I feel for your pain and sufferings. But still you are not talking of the software (which is what is explicitly allowed) nor of the effects (or lack thereof) of the software (which may be allowed), you are talking about decisions by this (or that) government and the effects they had on your holidays plans. jaclaz

Here you are. https://gir.st/blog/greenpass.html It contains a number of (partly personal/sensible) data. I would not be preoccupied by the privacy aspect, there is nothing seemingly more than the barely needed info, but name, surname and date of birth are exposed (like on *any* other piece of ID), I would not share an image of a real one like I wouldn't post an image of my driving licence. jaclaz

Good. This green pass is actually EU, the site is: https://ec.europa.eu/info/live-work-travel-eu/coronavirus-response/safe-covid-19-vaccines-europeans/eu-digital-covid-certificate_en in theory the situation should be the same in all EU (all countries are green), the pass is similar, it is always national language + English. By clicking on the countries on the map you can get to each country official national site. In Italy those that need to verify the pass (airport security, police, etc.) do have to use an app , called VerificaC19: https://www.dgc.gov.it/web/app.html each one of the states has - I believe - their own app with various degrees of amount of data showed to the operator (due to privacy laws or better their interpretation in the various countries). jaclaz

Well, partitions/volumes/file systems (and the way Windows mounts and accesses them) are complex. The fact that (when mounted externally) you cannot access those two partitions may mean both "the disk drive is beyond any possible recovery" or "a minor issue happened and a one or a few bytes were corrupted". The "standard" procedure remains the same: 1) make an image or a clone (personally I prefer if possible the image) 2) attempt to repair the original 3) if things go worse image back the disk from the image or clone (on the original or on a new disk) and try something else You can try in Windows 10 to access the disk (externally) and open Disk Manager. A screenshot of the situation in Disk Manager may be already telling what kind of issue it could be. The next thing I usually suggest is to get DMDE: https://dmde.com/ and use it to open the physicaldrive and let it scan/find volumes, as well a screenshot of DMDE "Partitions" view is needed to understand what could it be. BTW DMDE has also the possibility to make an image of the disk. Besides and beyond the recovery (if possible) of the filesystem, you can also attempt recovery of the files (if any) that DMDE still "sees". Though the tool can also be used to recover "RAW" data (i.e. carve the file system for recognizable files, similar to what Photorec can do) for the moment it is IMHO better to see what can be recovered, hopefully the full filesystem, if not, the files on it (or as many as you can find), because when you need to switch to RAW, even if you might recover the actual file contents most metadata (filename, dates/times, position in the file system) will be lost. jaclaz

You can close it. The Italian green pass is basically a piece of paper with a QR code that you can either print or have stored on your smartphone (if any), you can get it via a couple different apps or by accessing (with particular electronic credentials) a couple of sites, for the electronically/technically handicapped, you can get a paper print (maybe) from your doctor or from some "services to the citizens" spots, including - possibly some pharmacy/chemists and associations of voluntary assistance. This is a facsimile: jaclaz

Well, if you can see the contents of the hard disk when connected as external drive, the hard disk has not "crashed", very likely you only have some corruption on the "main" volume/file system, it could also be only a trifling thing, like a boot file deleted/overwritten by mistake. In these cases it is usually worth the time to troubleshoot the issue and repair the booting. If you believe that the hard disk has issues the "normal" procedure is to clone the disk to a new one "as is" and then repair (if possible) the contents or use the recovery partition to re-install the Vista to "factoiry state" (it is usually possible to use a USB stick with programs to initiate the booting of the recovery partition even if the standard boot doesn't work or to repair just the initial booting sequence) . It has to be seen, but Toshiba laptops (at least some of them) have a recovery procedure (using the recovery partition) that is initiated from BIOS (by holding the 0 key pressed when switching on), see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=003hzPvuKtY otherwise, it is generally possible to boot from USB and start the recovery manually. In these cases you don't even need the OEM key to install/activate, what is restored is an image, it depends on specific manufacturers but often the actual OS uses (used) a different key (the same for all the laptops of that model/batch) and the OS is pre-activated, the key on the sticker (though usually working with *any* OEM version of the same OS) is actually only there for licensing proof. jaclaz

Let's try to disambiguate. Some BIOSes when you press F12 and choose to boot from USB do not correctly switch disk order and this can cause to not actually boot from USB (the reasons may be multiple, depending on how the USB stick has been partitoned/formatted, which bootloader is on it, etc.), in some cases - and yours seems like one of those - the USB is simply and plainly ignored. Usually the same BIOS do work when you switch the order of booting devices in BIOS setup, putting USB as first. Have you tried this? Is that an Insyde2 BIOS? (these are re-known to be buggy/make queer things when USB booting depending on the bootloader/bootmanager on the stick) Anywyay, since the BOOTMGR you are currently booting from is the Windows 7 version, it parses - besides /boot/BCD - also /boot.ini, so you can temporarily add to the root of your internal disk (where BOOTMGR is) a couple files and add to the boot choices a grub4dos. From this latter, it will be possible to understand which disk is which and - if needed for *whatever* reason - (of course as long as the disk is seen) boot it from the grub4dos on the internal disk. Here is how to, the procedure is simple, and - once hopefully the issue is solved - files can be simply deleted: 1) add a grldr file in the root (you don't need a latest-latest) get a grub4dos release here, I suggest latest 0.4.5c http://grub4dos.chenall.net/downloads/grub4dos-0.4.5c-2016-01-18/ but any later 0.4.6a version should do as well 2) add a boot.ini file (simple text file, you can copy/paste in Notepad) with these contents: [boot loader] Timeout=30 default=C:\grldr [operating systems] C:\grldr="grub4dos" When you reboot (still with the USB inserted and "skipped over") you should have an added choice to boot to grub4dos, choose it, at the grub> prompt (if needed press "c" to get to command line) issue the command: geometry (hd [TAB] it should propose you the hd drives it sees, typoically (hd0) and (hd1) complete the line to: geometry (hd0) and press [ENTER] then repeat with geometry (hd1) [ENTER] post output. jaclaz

I would like to remember to the younger folks that were not around at the time that Windows 2000 was targeted at the same audience that used till then NT 4.00, professionals/businesses, at the time of the shift from NT 4.00 to 2000 hardware was either already adequate or bought new and adequate. The "other" audience (home/personal) had a "dedicated" line, 95/98 and later ME, hardware requirements were much lower than those for 2000 (but anyway ME ones were more than 95/98 ones). Single point anecdata, in early year 2000 my desktop at work had 512 MB memory, a few workstations had 1 GB/2GB whilst my newly bought "top of the range" personal laptop coming with ME pre-installed was 64 MB and I upgraded it to 128 MB in order to install 2000 on it and have it run decently. What XP did, only one-two years later, was to attempt to unify the two lines, bringing to the businesses the (senseless) bells and whistles and forcing down the throat of home/personal (senseless) security/access rights/and what not, but since - all in all - the hardware needed to run XP was not that much more powerful than the one used to run 2000, the shift was somehow less dramatic, only a few people still running on "suitable for 9x/ME" hardware noticed the bloat/slowness of XP (when compared to 2000). Vista, when it came out, was essentially a crippled, bloated, slower XP, that everyone installed on existing underpowered machines AND that was also installed by OEM's on new, underpowered laptops and desktops, besides all the flaws in the OS, the real performance issues were about the poor hardware it ran on. By the time Windows 7 came out, currently in use hardware (that was upgraded to be able to run Vista) was already fast/smooth enough, and the requisites for the OS were essentially the same (I personally like to call 7 "Vista SP3", though it is not entirely accurate). Also in 9x/ME/2000 and even early XP times the internet was much less bloated, and browsers didn't eat memory like they do today (on *any* OS) by 2007 web pages were already much larger, and out of the 4 GB that today - in Tripredacus' words - are a no-brainer, around 1 is the OS, and the other 3 (or more) are needed for browsing the web. jaclaz

WHICH bootloader? The windows 6+ one (BOOTMGR+ /boot/BCD choices)? If yes, which exact version of the BOOTMGR is it? (I mean the one from 7, or Vista or what?) Maybe the issue is with the bootable (actually non-bootable) USB stick On some BIOSes you need to change the disk boot order (as opposed to choosing with F12 or similar to boot from USB) or viceversa. Using Easy2boot for that is a good piece of advice, otherewise you can still use grub4dos manually, if the easier Easy2boot works, there is no need to make it more difficult than needed. jaclaz

Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future. It seems to me like you somehow forgot to state how excited the good MS guys are about this crap. jaclaz

I don't understand. Cheap router must have a known IP address. Then it may (or may not) have DHCP server on. Let us assume that the DHCP server on the router is ON and cannot be turned off (nor any other settings changed because you have no access to the router configuration). IF DHCP server is on AND the Win9x machine is set to receive its IP from the DHCP server, THEN it will have the delay/lag. IF DHCP server is on BUT the Win9x machine is set to a fixed IP, THEN there won't be any delay. The only problem may be if the DHCP server has assigned already the same fixed IP of the Win9x machine to another device in the network (IP address conflict). Generally (but not always) the cheap router will have an IP of 192.168.1.1 and a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0, but the DHCP server is not set to assign all IP's in the range, and - again usually - it will assign them in order, starting from 192.168.1.2, setting the fixed IP to a high number, like 192.168.1.254 will normally prevent any conflict to happen. jaclaz

Yep , sdelete: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/sdelete should also do nicely. It has to be double-checked however, as I remember that in a past version the -c and -z switches were "inverted" or however did not work exactly as stated in the docs, it depèends on specific versions, latest versions should be fine: https://www.forensicfocus.com/forums/general/wiping-free-space-in-encrypted-containers/#post-6568809 jaclaz

Define "real life". To me "real life" (for a Win9x system) is not carrying it around and connect to *any* network, the machine(s) stay put in one place and connect only to the home network. Of course having a "better" vdhcp would be a better solution (BUT *tomorrow* ), *today*, in "real life" , static IP is the only available one, more a workaround than a solution, still .... jaclaz

Yep, and again that could be connected to the Media Type. In these or similar cases you can still use a workaround. Format "quick". The new filesystem will have the minimal structures (FATs or $MFT, etc.) and will be (at filesystem level) "empty". Now create a new file (or a few of them if hitting the 4GB FAT32 limit) occupying all the free space, then 00 the file(s) and delete them. I think you cannot use fsutil as it will create a sort of sparse file, if I recall correctly fsz (part of the DSFOK toolkit) creates 00 filled files, the 2003 toolkit contains creatfil.exe but cannot remember if the generated files are 00 filled, otherwise you can use the dd for windows by John Newbigin. jaclaz