jaclaz

If I could add to the news Tripredacus just posted, it seems like everyone like the Windows 8 Phone guys and the Google/Not only Google Android guys (in their senseless desire to break things that work) are removing the possibility to have phones working as "Mass Storage Devices" when USB connected, using MTP (Media Transfer Protocol) instead. The Android guys (and I presume as well the Windows Phone ones) have their reasons (basically avoiding altering objects on a filesystem already mounted by the device OS and "live", but instead of providing one of the possible solutions (file-based or sector-based protection, temporary RAM based storage, read only access to system partition, etc.) they downright removed the possibility, making the device working only with MTP (which has a long history of failures, semi-failures) or however forcing the user to use specific tools instead of the "normal" file manager (be it "plain" explorer or another preferred one). Basically you have a device which is a Mass Storage Device, which you want to store files to or retrieve files from, and more generally treat exactly like you would treat any USB stick or SD card, etc, BUT that you are forced to treat and use like a "web storage" or "Nas", but only thorugh a given (limited) specific tool or interface. And this of course creates issues with "not-latest" OS's, like: Some reference: http://www.androidpolice.com/2011/11/18/impromptu-qa-session-with-android-engineer-dan-morrill-brings-to-light-reasons-behind-galaxy-nexus-lack-of-usb-mass-storage/ Of course each and every user of Android phones is GREATLY pi§§ed off by this, examples: http://www.androidannoyances.com/post/152 http://ficksworkshop.com/blog/21-life/113-htc-one-x-mass-storage-on-jellybean https://forums.motorola.com/posts/1c41c22485 Please understand how you have a device, you use it along your own (right or wrong, doesn't matter) way, that way works (and it is one of the "main" function or "desired features" for a "smart" phone device) and suddenly they pull it from under you through a (I belive not-so-vital) OS upgrade... jaclaz

Maybe there is a misunderstanding. We earlier talked about the Festo BionicOpter dragonfly, which you mentioned on post #6 of this thread as 1st item, and that I referenced in post #7 as "Bionicopter dragonfly". If you prefer in post #6 you gave links to two different "dragonfly" projects, one by Festo and one by Techjet, and later I posted about the (relatively big) size of the Festo one. In post #15 you posted about the second (Techjet) much smaller device and it's price. jaclaz

If the USB device is a hard disk, then it is partitioned. If it is a USB sttck it may be partitioned (even if only one partition) or be "directly" a violume (i.e. a super-floppy). If you prefer, if the first sector of the device is a MBR (and thus contains a partition table) then it is "hard disk like", if first sector of device is a bootsector, then it is a "super-floppy". The BCD is a Registry Hive, it is normally auto-mounted in the Registry as HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\BCD00000\ (I am tlaking here of a "plain" installed Vista or later), but only the one used for booting (i.e. the \boot\BCD relative to the BOOTMGR actually chainloaded by the bootsector or boot manager) should, and this should happen after the first part of booting has happened, i.e. (unless I am mistaken) BOOTMGR itself should not be able (or wasn't up to 7) to write to the \boot\BCD. This is why it is important to understand WHAT modifies it and WHEN exactly this happens. And (OT ; but for the benefit of Tripredacus ) it is not something to be actually scared of, besides being stupidly assembled in a senselessly (and mindboggingly) complex way, it a "normal", plain Registry Hive, which is BTW a filesystem (some say a half-@§§ed one): http://rwmj.wordpress.com/2010/02/18/why-the-windows-registry-sucks-technically/ jaclaz

Good question. Without patches/modifications you are "safe" until you get to the LBA28 limit (and need LBA48), i.e. around 128 Gib (137Gb), in practice a 120 Gb hd: http://www.48bitlba.com/ Patches (there are a couple different ones) here: BTW, you are supposed to have ALREADY checked this: and ALL threads mentioned there, before asking for help.... Particularly, in this case, this one: and ALL links given there. And yes the rabbit hole goes deeper than you might think... jaclaz

Thanks , did not know that, of course it sounds like a perfect recipe for disaster, if (as often happens) you have USB devices connected, and you are distracted by something, etc. So, the \boot\BCD on the active partition on the disk (which is not first in boot sequence) is accessed anyway by a WinPE 4 (and this is not an issue by itself, but it can be if the PC was in hibernate state and "boot from other device" via F12 is allowed). Are you talking of a WinPE 4.0 made: from AIK/WAIK from "recovery.exe" other (please specify) some reference/background for the above question: Additionally, is the USB drive booting as "hard disk" or as "super floppy"? And is it a USB stick or a USB hard disk drive? Can you try setting in your WinPE the keys to prevent automount (as WinFE uses): http://www.forensicswiki.org/wiki/WinFE and try again? Explanation: It is possible that the access is done by the BOOTMGR of the WinPE because the internal disk is the only "fixed disk" (if the WinPE is on a USB stick, which is normally "removable") or it is possible that it is done by the mount manager when the volume is mounted. This way we could maybe understand what actually accesses the \boot\BCD on the intenal disk. jaclaz

But still, you will not need a tiny device to detect these : http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2281403/U-S-Air-Force-developing-terrifying-swarms-tiny-unmanned-drones-hover-crawl-kill-targets.html BTW the idea of recharging batteries from power lines is IMHO great! And they can be lethal, not completely unlike ninja cats : @duffy98 JFYI, that dragonfly is not the same dragonfly as the one you talked about previously. jaclaz

May I ask some clarifications? You have a normal install of (say) Windows 7 or 8 on a machine. You hibernate that machine. Then how can you boot to the PE (WinPE4 in your case)? What do you do exactly to be able to boot to the (I presume added) USB thingy from a hibernated state? jaclaz

Besides the validity in the specific case , that is not a valid argument . If we start counting the things that along to "official" documentation were not possible, but that one way or the other someone managed to make happen.... jaclaz

Well, the good guys at MS should also check a bit of the background of the Author of an article, even if the article is favourable, before citing it. The MS blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/archive/2013/05/10/staying-centered.aspx The Gizmodo article: http://gizmodo.com/dear-microsoft-dont-bail-on-windows-8-499085690 another thingy by the Gizmodo article Author : http://gizmodo.com/5875345/the-one-about-the-las-vegas-per-diem an opinion on the same Author: http://www.lonnypaul.com/gawkers-kyle-wagner-is-an-immature-as*****/2012/01/11/ Would you buy a used new car OS from this man? jaclaz

Well, the issue is that on this the good guys at MS cannot really copy anything from the guys @Apple. I mean, Apple has: Apple Store <- physical store, (retail outlet) Apple Store <- place on the 'net from which you can download -mainly - apps So, on the "other side", there could be: Windows Store <- physical store, (retail outlet) Windows Store <- place on the 'net from which you can download - mainly - hot air AND that would cause a trademark issue not completely unlike the Metro one : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WIND_(Italy) jaclaz

To be picky Tamy Reller seemingly said that it will "come from the Windows Store", and already at least two people on that thread protested about the fact that there is NO windows Store in the neighbourhood and that they have to drive to the Windwos Store to get the update: Now, questions are:: In which place a driving license is issued to 6 years old? Cannot they ask their mom or dad to have the 8.1 update for Christmas? (assuming that they are already grown up enough to not believing in SantaClaus anymore ) jaclaz

Only don't get a Seagate frame (they tend to have the glass become opaque suddenly after some time ). jaclaz

"Not all" means that at least one (they are actually more than one, let's call them conventionally "a few") *somehow* managed to get a stable or "stable enough" system even without using your RAM limitation patch. This latter may be the second best thing after ice cream , but not - AFAIK - the ONLY way, very possibly a more "universal" solution , or if you prefere "best", but by no means "ONLY". Nothing more, nothing less. jaclaz

Just for the record, theoretically it would be possible, to have an "all in one" thingy, if you think at those 3G USB sticks they have a "modem" (please read as NIC) part and a CD part. The CD part could be bootable and contain a PXE boot stack, but it would hardl ywork on *all* PC's let alone DELL's which have a consolidated tradition for having BIOS behave "strangely". Let's wait until RenCheill comes back to try and understand if he can provide more details. jaclaz

Check Blackviper's pages and "sets" of services: http://www.blackviper.com/WIN2K/servicecfg.htm jaclaz

Sure. B) About the senseless thread on neowin, it contains at least an interesting reference to this: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/may/10/windows-8-actual-installed-base-58m which confirms substantially the calculations I made here: which - BTW as expected - were largely in favour of MS. The article additionally adds an aspect I completely missed originally, the number of people "forced" to buy a Windows 8 License but that downgrade "instantly" to 7, which would nicely contribute to explain the increase in Windows 7 usage. jaclaz

Can you boot two machines, one working and one not working and create two WMIC Path Win32_ComputerSystem get * /Format:list>good.txt WMIC Path Win32_ComputerSystem get * /Format:list>bad.txt and post them? But what is the actual problem? I mean you can put a check in the Autoit code and if the field comes empty you write *something* to it. Or am I missing something? jaclaz

Oww, come on, people. Get Windows XP. Set the taskbar to autohide. Move it to the right side of the monitor. Enlarge it so that you can read the name of the apps. SCOOP! We always had a charms bar. Seriously, this is a commonly attempted (completely wrong) interface, just as an example the stupid tool for some of Buffalo's storage devices behave like that, you get by mistake on the side of the screen and it pops out, but there are tens of similar "smart" (in the perverted mind of the respective Authors) popping out from nowhere apps/tools. jaclaz

It seems to me like a "plain" file/partition undeleter. I doubt that it can recover any file that PHOTOREC and/or DMDE cannot recover. Of course in the case of: Deleted by partitioning drive Deleted by fdisk no file is deleted, and you want to recover partition or volumes (please read as TESTDISK and/or DMDE) and the Deleted by formatting drive does NOT apply to Vista and later UNLESS the formatting was performed with the /q or "quick" switch. jaclaz

Well, yes and no. Up to windows 9x/Me the "core" was (like Linux) command line (the DOS) and a (default) "shell" (and/or "windowing system") was completely separated (to be accurate Me "integrated" it), for the "final" user (though the differences between Linux and DOS based windows are deeper than this). The "NT family" has been (somewhat "falsely", see below) traditionally represented as being "an integrated with GUI OS" and the "windowing system" consequently "liberally confused" with the default shell (which is Explorer.exe). There are alternatives to explorer.exe (as seen before) and after all the MS' own PE's have traditionally been "command line only" (and - as a further example - Server core has command line interface only). Again there are several differences between Linux and any NT based system, but to the "final" user there isn't that much difference between a "shell" and a "windowing system", as a matter of fact the "windowing system" is integrated in Windows NT : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windowing_system but to the "common user" this is not so evident. Anyone that ever used good ol' DOS and Windows 3.1 or 3.11 can think, for all practical purposes, that startX in Linux is correspondent to running win.com. I hope to have contributed to clear the matter. jaclaz

Well, with all due respect , alternate shells have existed in the windows world since WIndows 3.1, so not really a "brand new concept", though they are not necessarily a "completely different Windowing system", still they manage to convey the same idea. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_alternative_shells_for_Windows and - not so casually - a KDE for Windows is also available: http://windows.kde.org/ Of course the fact that on a site dedicated to a graphical environment there is not even a single screenshot of the actual graphical environment only means that the good guys behind the scene have no idea (or no actual intention) to promote their (IMHO nice) software. More "mature" shells like bblean/bb4win (which I personally like for it's minimalism - Free/Freeware) or Aston Shell (Commercial): http://www.astonshell.com/ may give a "better taste" of what is achievable. jaclaz

It might be even better if noone re-distributes non-redistributable files through the board. Noone ever heard of hashing a file (let's say MD5) to check if it's the same as another one? jaclaz

Sure , my newspaper man is also very polite, but he hardly can help with bricked 7200.11's, it is not by choice that he sells newspapers at the corner of the road, instead of working at Seagate (or other "big" firm) technical service. He needs to wake up much earlier than what the people at Seagate do, gets a lot more cold in winter and hot in summer than they do , yet he is very polite and as useless as the Seagate guys when it comes to bricked drives, BUT at least he is good at selling newspapers . JFYI, at the time an easy, almost costless "way out" was proposed, too bad that the Seagate Top Management did not think about it : jaclaz

It may depend on the browser and/or some plugins in it, I am getting the same with my Opera. The two links to the actual .exe's: http://www.technical-assistance.co.uk/drivers/nusb320-Eng-98FE.exe http://www.technical-assistance.co.uk/drivers/nusb33e.exe Resolve in the browser address to: http://www.technical-assistance.co.uk/kb/usbmsd98.php Srware Iron works. Anyway find attached the nusb33.exe file (this is for the Windows 98 SE) nusb33e.exe jaclaz

Not really (you don't *need* one directory back, you *want* one directory back, it's not the same thing). And then you want two directories down. And you didn't take more than 1 second to try and understand the syntax of the example. The idea is: CD /D %~dp0 <- this changes current directory to the one in which Win7.bat is, no matter on which drive, in your case ROOT\OneClickInstaller\tools\ CD .. <- this changes to one directory up, in your case ROOT\OneClickInstaller\ CD .\apps\chrome <- this changes to two directory down, in your case ROOT\OneClickInstaller\apps\chrome\ chrome.exe /silent /install <- this executes the file from the current directory Or: CD /D %~dp0..\apps\chrome <- this changes to one directoty up to the one in which Win7.bat is, no matter on which drive , two directory down, in your case ROOT\OneClickInstaller\apps\chrome\ chrome.exe /silent /install <- this executes the file from the current directory Or: CD /D %~dp0 <- this changes current directory to the one in which Win7.bat is, no matter on which drive, in your case ROOT\OneClickInstaller\tools\ CD ..\apps\chrome <- this changes to two directory down, in your case ROOT\OneClickInstaller\apps\chrome\ chrome.exe /silent /install <- this executes the file from the current directory Or: CD /D %~dp0 <- this changes current directory to the one in which Win7.bat is, no matter on which drive, in your case ROOT\OneClickInstaller\tools\ ..\apps\chrome\chrome.exe /silent /install <- this executes the file from the directory Or: CD /D %~d0 <- this changes current directory to the ROOT of the drive in which Win7.bat is, no matter on which drive, in your case ROOT\ .\OneClickInstaller\apps\chrome\chrome.exe /silent /install <- this executes the file from the directory Or: %~d0\OneClickInstaller\apps\chrome\chrome.exe /silent /install <- this executes the file from the directory Or: %~dp0..\apps\chrome\chrome.exe /silent /install <- this executes the file from the directory It makes (to me) very little sense to have a \tools directory containing just three (lousy ) batches and a separate \apps directory, where, additionally you have a \winrar directory containing a wirar.exe file, a \chrome directory containing a chrome.exe file, etc., i.e. it seems to me like you are making it more complex than needed. jaclaz