jaclaz

Dude, HOW exactly are we supposed to know the EXACT model/make of the *whatever* you are talking about? Just in case Standard Litany (NEEDED): http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/problem-report-standard-litany.html More generally you will need some kind of "hacked" firmware (that may or may not be available) and possibly get a JTAG access to the actual circuits. Nothing I would recommend, if you are asking about it (CATCH 22 ) jaclaz

Yes, to take advantage of the USB 3.0 speed, most manufacturers use this new design (for the "high-end" sticks). Of course there is normally not any specifications about the innards, but as always the info exists:: http://www.thessdreview.com/our-reviews/kingston-datatraveler-workspace-32gb-windows-to-go-usb-3-flash-drive-review/ http://www.eteknix.com/mushkin-unveils-usb-thunder-flash-drives-with-sandforce-controller/ OT but not much, maybe we are near to these ideas becoming "common" : http://reboot.pro/topic/5634-creating-a-universal-pe/ http://reboot.pro/topic/5880-mini-pc-4x4/ I can imagine a new form of "outsourced" PC where the "core" is just a processor and a USB 3.0 controller/hub and you just connect to it *anything* from video card to mass storage, from network (cabled or wireless) to HID's.... jaclaz

Well, seemingly not much efforts needed, at the light of the Terabyte page, only to try the Windows 8 version of the BOOTMGR. Hard to believe , but after all Windows 8 does have *some* uses. jaclaz

I cannot believe that - IF the issue is in the booting only - it can be solved by modifying the \boot\BCD (which AFAIK contains NOT any particular info related to the filesystem and it's cluster size). If you don't want to add a partition, not even temprorarily for the sake of the test) , you can do with a boot floppy image: http://www.multibooters.co.uk/floppy.html an image like described can be mapped and chainloaded by grub4dos alright, and it will need not any re-partitioning, while removing the doubt that it is a BOOTMGR issue of some kind, which is a mere (though educated ) guess based on your "it doesn't boot." report (which is not an actual description of what actually happens ). About the "sense", what I was trying to highlight is that the theoretical "increased wear" may happen only on a limited number of cells, since the number of files less than 4 Kb that are often re-written on a "normal" Windows 7 system are very few, maybe the relevance of the issue is "amplified" by any file which is a multiple of 4 Kb but not of 8 Kb? And, call me reckless if you want , according to these: http://www.anandtech.com/show/7173/samsung-ssd-840-evo-review-120gb-250gb-500gb-750gb-1tb-models-tested http://www.anandtech.com/show/6328/samsung-ssd-840-pro-256gb-review http://www.anandtech.com/show/6459/samsung-ssd-840-testing-the-endurance-of-tlc-nand one of those thingies are guaranteed for 5 years and are estimated at around 11 years of duration. By that time we will likely be using Windows 13.4 SP2¼ and 256 Gb will be the space needed for just the bootmanager and configuration file. jaclaz P.S.: After all my guess was educated enough: http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/article.php?id=392 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2272294

Well, the point I was making was slightly different. I was pointing out how the use of *any* proxy, NO MATTER where it is located is in itself a "security risk", until you have some "serious" information on WHICH actual proxy is used, WHO manages it, and HOW the connection is established (if the route to the proxy, like some 2/3 of all world internet traffic "goes through" a US "hop" the use of the proxy is "pure moot"). Consider what I would personally do if I were the NSA : since I cannot close the can of worms that was opened, I develop a "secure" browser channeling all traffic to a single proxy OR manage to get full control of the cable/optic fibre/whatever connected to that proxy, no matter where it is physically located. You might appreciate how in doing this I am having the not-so trifling effect of pre-filtering the users, it is obvious that out of all the people that will start using the "safe" browser there will be some legitimately trying to protect their personal data, but also a large part of those actually trying to "hide something": Since the issue I am seemingly having (as NSA ) is the sheer amount of data I collect and analyze/store/whatever such a kind of pre-filtering may actually make the operations easier/simpler. The equation being (in my perverted mind ) that if someone uses an (anonymous) proxy, there must be some reason for doing that, let's target these people with a "higher priority" than the "rest of the world". Could the Epic browser be a "covert operation" of any of the "three letters" US agencies? Could - even if not such - be a "preferred target" by the above mentioned agencies? The answers, my friend, are blowing in the wind.... jaclaz

BAD news. The sectors you posted are just "hex gibberish". This can usually depend on two things: actual hardware failure (a Pro may be able to do a chip-off, re-calculate ECC's and hopefully recover something) a size wrap-around (which is typical of the "fake sticks" Kelsenellenelvian hinted about)It should be easy to understand which is which by running Photorec. If it finds at least some files, it means that it is #2, if it doesn't find anything (or anything readable) it means it is #1. There could also have been an issue in the making of the image, as DSFOK reported: 99,874,111,488 bytes whilst the device "presents itself" as being 61,918,150,656 but that could be caused BOTH by a hardware error and by the wrap-around. Try: D:\dsfok>dsfo \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE1 0 512000 f:\usb\first100_2.img If you get the same: the first100secs.img is an actual representation of the first 1000 sectors of the USB stick (thank you for the 900 more sectors you posted ). However next step is trying Photorec: http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec_Step_By_Step jaclaz

Let me doubt that Gigabyte (or any motherboard manufacturer providing a UUID for a motherboard) will EVER release to final customers a tool capable of removing it (or - if you prefer- capable of "anonymizing" the board). I will stand by my "likely not possible" (in practice). Of course - as said - in theory it is perfectly possible, the exact same way it is embedded in factory it can be changed. jaclaz

I understand that, I was not-so-sure about that particular SSD having 8 Kb pages (and operating on them as "full pages"). In any case - and with all due respect - it seems to me like the idea makes little sense. Let's take two extremes for the sake of reasoning. only 1 (one) file below 4 Kb is in the filesystem several thousands files below 4 Kb are in the filessystemIf #1 the impact of *whatever* is null. If #2 while the impact of the *whatever* may be relevant or noticeable, in order to reduce it you will further reduce the available capacity of the SSD considerably. My suggestion was however to try making a new (smallish partition) (Yes, a "boot" partition) not entirely unlike the one Windows 7 makes on a non-partitioned disk, with just the BOOTMGR and the \boot\BCD and see if you can boot from that one the "main" partition with the 8 Kb sized clusters . Since it is just a test you can use a part of the space you have free (it is not like having 100 Mb less than the current 23.85 Gb will change *anything*). jaclaz

Guess WHY exactly I underlined the use of the proxy in the quote I posted? jaclaz

There are some (big) differences with "common" sticks. The first one is not a USB stick (as you are used to think about it) it is a USB 3.0 to SATA bridge + a 256 Gb SSD, miniaturized. The second one is more or less (IMHO) the effect of a not-so-new idea summed up to some good marketing, noone - with the exception if the very few that are secret agents, terrorists, etc. (and the paranoids of course), actually *need* that kind of encryption/security (and as a matter of fact it was born from Goverment intitial financing : http://www.ironkey.com/en-US/why-ironkey/index.html JFYI, my personal take on the matter, of course there is nothing wrong with encryption in itself, only in the way it is (mis)used, as I see it, the real issue are people whining about having lost their precious data : http://reboot.pro/topic/9297-safeboot-42-plugin-for-bartpe/?p=80938 jaclaz

To continue on the "tiny, but not too tiny" designs, this one seems to me not that bad: http://www.emtec-international.com/en-eu/S200_usb_flash http://www.emtec-international.com/en-eu/S200_usb_flash?quicktabs_1=1#quicktabs-1 It seemingly does not protrude too much from the socket (hence it is difficult that it can be broken by accident) but still seems to provide some "grip" to extract it. jaclaz

The UUID you mentioned derives from *something* which is *somehow* embedded on the motherboard BIOS. If you can access the BIOS and change the *whatever* that produces the UUID, then you can change it. As a matter of fact a number of motherboard will return all FF's because their BIOS has not that kind of info. So, not only "not simple", likely "not possible" and in any case "very specific" to the specific motherboard/BIOS/firmware/UEFI/whatever. jaclaz

Duffy, please be aware that a number of laptops DO NOT have an "install partition", but rather a "recovery partition". The difference is not-so-slight, if the second, after you reun th erecovery procedure the disk will be restored to the exact way it was when delivered frm factory (i.e. you will lose each and every later installed program, configuration and data residing on the "system" partition Compare with: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/163601-will-a-recovery-clean-the-hard-drive/ jaclaz

Well, it would be queer, if there is enough RAM for 2K, that a 98 system could be so noticeably faster. It seems to me like either you have some issues with hardware or have some conflicting driver/whatever or anyway you are not having 2K runnning "correctly": With less than 256 Mb (without any antivirus) or less than 512 Mb if an antivirus is running a 2K will be very slow because it will swap to hard disk as mad , but you can easily verify this observing the behaviour of the system in Task Manager. jaclaz

@Trip Yep but that is about Physical Sector size (that has nothing actually to do with cluster size). @Grofluigi There may be issues with the boot code (and just with it). Since you do have some 23 Gb free on that device, you can experiment, making a (temporary) partition using that space. Care to share the source of your opinion of using an 8 Kb cluster being *any* "better"? jaclaz

Since it is a non-partitioned image, i.e. what is commonly referred to as "superfloppy", most of TESTDISK capabilities may be ineffective (a large part of the TESTDISK scope is to re-build the MBR partition table). But still some of the features may be of use. Depending on how exactly (and under which OS) the original FAT32 formatting was performed, there may be a backup of the bootsector. I.e. this: http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/Data_Recovery_Examples#The_type_of_the_file_system_is_RAW_-_Recovery_of_a_damaged_FAT_boot_sector may work for your case, or this: http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/Data_Recovery_Examples#Two_FAT32_partitions_to_recover Basically there are four sets of meaningful info in a "normal" FAT32 volume: the bootsector CODE (which has NO relevance whatsoever if not for booting) the bootsector DATA (including the BPB or Bios Parameter Block, a set of info about the volume and it's layout, of VITAL importance to find the FAT32 tables the FAT table(s) - normally in two copies, containing the address of each and every file saved in the filesystem the actual DATA (i.e. the files saved in the filesystem)Of course you are interested in just #4, which IF the files were not fragmented can normally be recovered by "direct parsing" of the volume (please read as "using PHOTOREC"). Please understand that files recovered by PHOTOREC will "loose" their original filename. The real problem comes if the files were fragmented, in this case a plain parser/carver cannot but get partial and often invalid data. As said there is no interest in #1, but to get to #4 in the "normal" way, you need #3, and to get to #3 you need #2. The good news are that if you find where exactly #3 is you can rebuild (using dome other info) #2, this is what TESTDISK may be able to do automatically (or that can be still done manually). The idea is first thing to find out if there is enough useful information in the bootsector or if there is a backup copy of it, then to find out if the FAT tables are still valid (or at least one of the two copies is). If you wish to have some "manual" help, make a small image with the first few sectors of the image you just made, something like: dsfo C:\mynice.img 0 51200 C:\first100secs.img (provided that the image you made is "C:\mynice.img" the above will produce a file "C:\first100secs.img" with the first 100 sectors, change paths/filenames according to your setup). Then, compress the file in to a .zip and either attach it to your next post or upload it to any of the free file hosting site and post a link to it. jaclaz

The only device with around 64 Gb size, are seemingly \\.\PhysicalDrive1)=61918150656 and \\.\PhysicalDrive5)=62898831360. Idea : disconnect the stick. run TESTDISK again see which device is not anymore there in the log.Or read the log: Since: disk_get_size_win32 IOCTL_DISK_GET_LENGTH_INFO(\\.\PhysicalDrive1)=61918150656=disk_get_size_win32 IOCTL_DISK_GET_LENGTH_INFO(/dev/sdb)=61918150656=Disk /dev/sdb - 61 GB / 57 GiB - CHS 7527 255 63, sector size=512 - Verbatim STORE N GO, S/N:0C79077420C0, FW:PMAP jaclaz

Not really hidden info: http://www.epicbrowser.com/FAQ.html jaclaz

Well, it's all about "juice". If the hardware has a zillion Gb of RAM and a super-hyper processor, the clogging that any of those masses of bloat will cause will be not much noticeable. If the hardware is on the "low spec" side, it will slow down to a crawl with pretty much any antivirus. The whole point is "real time" antvirus vs. scan on demand. With real time antivirus more or less any single byte that - for any reason - goes through the machine is "intercepted" (or "filtered") and analyzed by the real time antivirus engine/service. Imagine that you are reading an "unknown" book to a child, to prevent that he/she gets to hear something inappropriate you have to read yourself the sentence or page before starting to read it aloud, there is obvioulsy a "performance drop" . Of the "scan only" ClamWim is as good as any for "basic" protection, but most of the other freebies mentioned can have the "real time" engine switched off. http://www.clamwin.com/ Bitdefender should be one of the "lower impact" ones (or it was last time I had a chance to install/use it). Among the "Commercial" ones, ESET should be also one with a relatively small impact. jaclaz

JFYI, amont the 2K Resource Kit tools, NETSVC and SVCLIST are IMHO a bit simpler: http://ss64.com/nt/netsvc.html http://ss64.com/nt/sclist.html Just in case: http://www.petri.co.il/download_free_reskit_tools.htm jaclaz

Well, we have no more any charleston, nor Josephine Baker, and much less need for moonshine, though. jaclaz

There must be a communication problem. I will try to re-word my previous post. The site you linked to uses a language called PHP to transform dynamic links into static links. The link on this page, click on the below string, it will bring you there: http://www.bwgen.com/presets/desc953.htm Shows the text (blue and underlined) "Download preset: ultimate_relaxing.bwg". If you right click on it and open the link in a new browser tab, you will see how it will open on an error page and the address of it is: http://www.bwgen.com/action/dl.php?f=ultimate_relaxing.bwg This happens because *somehow* the PHP engine does not translate the above "dynamic" link into a proper "static" one. The correct static link for that file is: http://www.bwgen.com/presets/ultimate_relaxing.bwg (if you click on the above you will actually download the file ultimate_relaxing.bwg ) So, if you type in your browser address bar (or use copy and paste to obtain the same result: <site address> + <directory where files are stored> + <name of the actual file> you get to download the file. Other example: site address = http://www.bwgen.com directory where files are stored = /presets/ From the page titled "Raven's_Primal_Overtones" http://www.bwgen.com/presets/desc949.htm name of the actual file = s_Primal_Overtones.bwg Link to download: http://www.bwgen.com/presets/s_Primal_Overtones.bwg I hope now it is clear. jaclaz

For once in my life, I will support MagicAndre1981 (and his good opinion on Vista ), possibly only to undermine some of Kelsenellenelvian certainties. Let's use some logic. Windows NT 4.00 is NT 4.0 ---------------------------------------- Windows 2000 is NT 5.0 Windows XP is NT 5.1 Server 2003 (or XP 64 bit) is 5.2 ----------------------------------------- Windows Vista is NT 6.0 Windows 7 is NT 6.1 Windows 8 is NT 6.2 ------------------------------------------ (I inserted a few separating lines to highlight the points I'll try to make ) Windows 7 is nothing but a "service pack" to Windows Vista, or if you prefer an evolution, with very little (if any at all) "dramatic" changes over Vista. Vista when it came out was the worse OS I have ever seen, but as MagicAndre1981 often points out, once it got it's SP1 and a few updates it became as good as it could be. If you strip Windows 7 of the added bells and whistles, and of a very few added little features, you find underneath it a Vista alright. The real mistakes IMHO MS made were two: to publish Vista at a time when it was NOT mature enough to have it deployed by the various OEM's on underpowered hardware (and inducing people to install it on existing underpowered hardware)On proper hardware, and properly updated/configured, VIsta is not at all that bad, and it is not like 7 "shines" in comparison. @Kel In other words, if you start to think at Windows 7 as Vista SP3 you will have IMHO a more correct point of view on the matter. jaclaz

Yes and no (actually no). The actual point is not-so-slightly different. Noone and surely not the NSA actually cares about your fingerprints, BUT the real issue in traditional computer forensics has been that of "placing the suspect behind the keyboard". The use of fingerprint as authentication method (already used since years on high-end laptops and advertised as "enhanced security") nicely solves this problem. jaclaz

If I may, what you might be suffering (actually what your PSU might suffering - or both ) is aging. Seriously all PC PSU's are "switching" power supplies, they are not like good ol'power supplies with huge converters and a bunch of diodes/rectifiers and capacitors to convert to DC and smooth the output, they are - to all effects - a complex electronic circuit that is - generally speaking - subject to some "heavy duty cycles". It is not at all uncommon that a power supply with a few years of service appears to be working but when some additional load is needed "gets on it's knees". Though it is usually trivial to find which component is defective, it is normally not a good idea to repair them because new ones are relatively cheap and if you change a component on an old one you have no guarantee that another component is not already aged and going to fail soon. Also, besides the overall power, different PSU's have different power on each "rail" (a "server" PSU will have as an example, more power on the 12 V rail to power more disks) , so it is possible that - just as an example - your 400 W PSU was OK for everything but - say - the 12 V rail (and that one only) had not enough power for the CD/DVD and hard disk motors. jaclaz