jaclaz

What you report is "typical" of the power supply progressively failing, usually due to over-stressed or not-good-enough quality capacitors. Mind you it is not necessarily that , there could be seral other causes, but to verify IF it is that is easy enough, usually failed/failing capacitors are easily identifiable without instruments by checking if their top is bulging and/or in the most severe cases if they leaked some liquid. See (example): http://thetechnickel.com/projects/samsung-syncmaster-204b-lcd-monitor-repair-bad-capacitor-replacement-guide#.UYZZnPnLLnE This kind of failure is so common that there are "specialized" re-sellers that provide speciifc kits of capacitors for a given LCD monitor model. jaclaz

To hopefully clarify, Rufus is a nice, newish tool that by design uses a (slightly) different method to install an XP from USB (different from the "more established" various methods listed in the forum section cdob pointed you to). This choice of the Rufus developer is very good (as it provides yet another way) but it is seemingly "less universal" than other available solutions, each of which may anyway fail at "queer" BIOSes or with particular sources. If you want to report the issue to the developer, the UNofficial support board for Rufus is reboot.pro, here: there is already a "known case" of an user having a similar issue with Rufus (on a Gigabyte motherboard), it is very possible that your Ebox suffers from the same or similar problem. jaclaz

The tool you found is one that makes the spreadsheet "behave" as a database, it doesn't seem too difficult to install/configure but most probably it is not the "ideal" solution, it would probably be easier to see if something more "vertical/dedicated" *like*: http://sourceforge.net/projects/bookingcalendar/ http://www.php.brickhost.com/ (just examples), more here: http://sourceforge.net/directory/business-enterprise/scheduling/resource-booking/freshness:recently-updated/ would do for your problem. jaclaz

Well ,actually it's my bad , I should have used, instead of the plain "whistling" emoticon (which I often use to underline a friendly mocking) , the more complex "ducking"one that Larryb123456 expressly made for me to underline the spirit of some of my posts, see around here: The result was so good that the emoticon has been added in reboot.pro as the "standard" "jaclaz" emoticon: Sorry for the misunderstanding , it was intended as a friendly joke. jaclaz

Try here: http://www.msfn.org/board/forum/174-windows-8/ jaclaz

NO. There is a situation at your workplace where the only solution devised for a problem has been that of having two users access the same spreadsheet simultaneously. You are slipping on a chocolate covered banana : http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/put-down-the-chocolate-covered-banana.html And now, for some recreational Zen, let me cite Master Foo (actually Sean Mc Grath): ... databases are Rocks spreadsheets are Water ... http://www.propylon.com/news/ctoarticles/051115_master_foo.html jaclaz

Sure you can ask questions , the point being if people looking in this area may be able to answer it.... AND there is the whole philosophical point about the utility of answers on a board. The general idea is that people trying to help you or answering your questions don' t do it ONLY to help you, but rather to provide something (hopefully) usefull to *all* people having the same questions. The more a thread is "on topic", the more it is likely that it will help other people having the same problem. One thread = One Topic = One Problem/Question = One (hopefully) solution/answer. You are not charged a fee for starting a new topic , if threads become of the type "help congnt92 on each and every possible question he may have" it may possibly be more convenient to you but hardly so for all the other peeps.... jaclaz

Rectius: If there were I were able to find a head-scratching emoticon .... jaclaz

The board has sections. You asked in a section called "Install Windows from USB" a question related to "Installing Windows from USB" and you got your reply. Then you posted in the same thread a question that is related to "Unattended Windwos install" and casually we do have a section called : MSFN Forum > Unattended Windows Discussion & Support > Unattended Windows 8/Server 2012 http://www.msfn.org/board/forum/176-unattended-windows-8server-2012/ Now it is more probable that people interested in USB install will look here, ad people interested/expert in "Unattended install" looks THERE: Start a new thread THERE with your question/issues related to "Unattended". Consider that you normally would allow a reasonable amount of time, like two or three days, before "bumping" a thread, and usually knowledgeable board members don't like helping people that start whining/begging for help if they don't get a reply within a few hours: jaclaz

The issue here is that if the issue is connected with geometry of the device, you need a tool capable of "fine tuning" the image size, it's boot sector and the BPB values in it. BUT in order to use such tools successfully you need to first learn a lot about the tunings/settings that they allow you to choose and/or make the floppy manually. The topic, in other words requires from you a previous knowledge that you are right now seeming to be missing. You can use (shameless plug) my spreadsheet and/or batch here: page__view__findpost__p__988732?do=embed' frameborder='0' data-embedContent> page__view__findpost__p__1001712?do=embed' frameborder='0' data-embedContent> or Winimage (easier): http://www.winimage.com/ Lots of info are available here: bit - as said - they tend to be "advanced". jaclaz

Not only. The issue here is also that if I make a "trend" using the data from 01/02/2013 or the data from 28/01/2013 I find a noticeable difference in the "trend". If there can be such big differences as 1.5% fluctuations over three days, what happens if I use the data from (say) the 25/04/2013 instead of those from 01/05/2013? AND there is another issue, let's get only the data from the 1st of February and compare them with the 1st of May. The OSX's over the three month period February/April has fluctuated between 6.40% and 6.42% (please read as "stable/unchanged"). Windows XP loses 1.2% (from 39.51% to 38.31%) Windows Vista loses 0.49%. Windows 7 "gains" around 0.24% (substantially "stable"). Others lose 0.11% (again substantially "stable"). Windows 8 gains 1.56% (from 2.26% to 3.82%) Percentage represent os Share, thus the 100% that you get something those percentages represent the total number of devices (let's call them conventionally "PC's") "in existence". Now we don't have real numbers from the good MS guys, but we have a statement on january 9 that they sold "over 60 million licenses" (presumably up to December 2012) http://www.pcworld.com/article/2024480/windows-8-license-sales-hit-60-million.html Let's hypotize that those sales need on average 15 to 20 days to "get online" and thus be "registered" by netmarketshare. So the 2.26% should correspond (roughly) to 60 millions of license sold, i..e. each 1% should correspond to 26,500,000 licenses. That means that the 100% on 01/02/2013 corresponds to a total amount of "PC's" (as "loosely" defined above) of 2,650,000,000. Let's see which "data" (please do notice the double quotes around the word "data") we can gather from other sources: http://www.c-i-a.com/pr02012012.htm at the end of 2011 we had in the world around 1,600,000,000 and forecasts were to reach 2,550,000,000 in 2016. Gartner (another source often cited for this kind of figures) tells us (rounded numbers for simplicity): http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/1981717 1 Q 2012 = 89,000,000 http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2079015 2 Q 2012 = 87,500,000 http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2194017 3 Q 2012 = 87,500,000 http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2301715 4 Q 2012 = 90,300,000 89,000,000+87,500,000+87,500,000+90,300,000=354,300,000 units shipped worldwide in 2012. Now, 1,600,000,000+354,300,000= 1,954,300,000. Consider that a number of the PC's supposedly shipped in 2012 are "replacement units", so the actual number of PC's in use will be less than the above, to round things up (and still largely "in favour" of the good MS guys) we can consider at the most 1,900,000,000 total PC's in use. Then let's get also the "Gartner data" for 1st quarter 2013: http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2420816 1 Q 2013 = 79,200,000 In the best case the total number of PC's in use on 01/05/2013 can be around 1,975,000,000. Windows 8 represents 3,82% of those, i.e. 3,82%*1,975,000,000 = 75,445,000 In the best case the total number of PC's in use on 01/02/2013 can be around 1,915,000,000. Windows 8 represents 2,26% of those, i.e. 2,26%*1,915,000,000 = 43,279,000 There is a problem here. Would it be possible that the good MS guys slightly "pumped up" (by a mere 50%) the amount of licenses sold in 2012? Or maybe they counted in the Windows RT licenses (please read as "Surface RT", which should not be included in the "Gartner data") and sold some 20,000,000 of those .... It is more likely that people buy a license for Windows 8 from Microsoft and wait roughly 3 months before installing/going online (and thus "reach" netmarketshare). Now let's use these newly found "total PC's" and let see how the others behaved: OSX's 6.40%*1,915,000,000 = 122,560,000 6.42%*1,975,000,000 = 126,795,000 The good Apple guys then sold around 126,795,000-122,560,000=4,235,000 of their nice thingies (excluding the iPad) This substantially matches Apples sales in Q1 2013 (excluding iOS devices): http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/23/apples-record-first-quarter-of-2013-in-charts/ http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/23/apples-mac-problem/ 4.1 millions are near enough to 4,235,000 to "validate" our calculations. And now the nice part . Windows 8 2.26%*1,915,000,000 = 43,279,000 3.82%*1,975,000,000 = 75,445,000 75,445,000-43,279,000= 32,166,000 more PC's were running Windows 8 on 01/05/2013 than on 01/02/2013 Windows 7: 44,48%*1,915,000,000 = 851,792,000 44,72%*1,975,000,000 = 883,220,000 883,220,000 - 851,792,000 = 31,428,000 more PC's were running Windows 7 on 01/05/2013 than on 01/02/2013 In the trimester examined the increase in the number of PC's using Windows 7 is almost equal to the increase of the number of PC's running Windows 8. jaclaz

...or more likely you need better glasses or a "Dragonfly Shield" device..... More seriously, you might have heard either hunters or fishers claiming to have catched one, once..... jaclaz

http://nooface.net/3dui.shtml http://sourceforge.net/projects/fileexplorer3d/ http://www.cubixproject.com/ jaclaz

The Bionicopter dragonfly is a really nice project/thingie, still even without the senseless "Drone Shield" I presume I can detect (even without my glasses on) a 44 cm long (63 cm wingspan) dragonfly hovering near my window.... jaclaz

In love and war (and business) .... But it was a bit subtler than that . Chrysler tried the same thing BEFORE and FAILED BIG at it. . jaclaz

Yeah, sure . Please, do wake me up when those things will have some decent fying time/range, a camera, remote image transmission (or recording capabilities) and become low-cost. Sincerely yours, Rip Van Winkle

BUT you got a completely wrong comparison. JFYI a traditional maker of small, economical cars (Volkswagen) ALREADY SUCCESSFULLY out-Lamborghined Lamborghini (they simply bought it ). And never two brands in the history of cars have been so distant in the customers imagination. Visual comparisons: In year 1966: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:VolkswagenBeetle-001.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:6274_-_Luzern_-_Verkehrshaus_-_Lamborghini_Miura.JPG In year 1974: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vw_golf_1_v_sst.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Countach_Autostadt.jpg jaclaz

Very good. Yes this - strangely enough - is "normal". Byte 40h is one of the "strange" things, remainder of old versions of DOS, it is "disk number", 00 means "floppy" and 80 means hard disk 128, i.e. first disk (and no matter if the disk is first or second or third, it will anyway remain 80). It looks a lot like superfluous, as the F8 at 15h should be enough to identify Media Type, and apart from 00 and 80 (with the exception seen below) values like 81 or 82 are never written by "modern" DOSes, so it is more a kind of "switch" floppy/hard disk than an actual "Physical Disk Drive ID" or Disk number" JFYI: http://thestarman.pcministry.com/asm/mbr/MSWIN41.htm And, in some FreeDos Version it may become FF or 255 as Auto-detect (but only on FAT12 and 16): http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=14388 jaclaz

No. Pin 9 is "KEY" i.e. it is not connected and used to identify the pins layout. http://pinouts.ru/Slots/USB_pinout.shtml A single USB port has 4 (four) pins (just as a USB cable has four wires): USB Power +5V USB Data - USB Data + USB Ground (0V) Those are 1/3/5/7 in the image you posted for first port (USB0) and Pins 2/4/6/8 for second port (USB1). See also (beware, the pin numbers are different, but the concept is the same): http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=1581820 jaclaz

Well, I don't want to start an indirect quarrel, but there is something that *somehow* escaped from the cited analysis. My current (and limited) knowledge on NT based systems dates back to NT 3.51. Believe me when I tell you that till today and up to Windows 7, that knowledge has remained (essentially) the same, with the obvious integrations/updates (this is something that if posted on - say - neowin would start a BIG flame war ) essentially the OS (and mechanisms) are still the same, very simplified: NT 3.51 is a NT system with the Win 3.1 graphical interface NT 4.00 is a NT 3.51 with the Win 9x graphical interface 2K is a NT 4.00 with plug 'n play for devices XP is 2K with some bells and whistles (mostly unneeded) added to it Vista is a bettered XP, only worse 7 is a (IMHO nice) Vista Service pack, made more stable and with worse GUI 8 is (IMHO foolish) additional Vista service pack, with a senselessly forced upon users "touch interface/simplified GUI" But underneath what you see, the NT system is more or less the same since NT 3.51. Sure we have VSS/Shadow copies (since XP), cannot think of anything really "new" in Vista if not Aero and the Imagex/.wim format (which has some validity), nothing at all (again excluded graphical appearance) in 7 possibly Powershell, which is not what an "average" user would die for, nothing particularly relevant (again excluded the awful GUI) in Windows 8. Everything has been (when "right") an evolution of what was there before. So, what the good MS guys managed to do (BTW successfully) is to re-sell to me the SAME OS for almost 20 (twenty) years. During all these years they introduced (obviously) quite a few improvements (and as well obviously) solved issues deriving from evolution of hardware (BTW most of which were caused by one or another form of shortsightedness they have been suffering from).- if you prefer I do not consider CHS/LBA addressing, 48/128 bit LBA, exFAT and not even the availability of 64 bit versions of OS as "improvements" over the previous version, they are simply adapting the existing OS to the evolution of hardware. Same goes for another long time flagship of the good MS guys, there is no "real" in the sense of "new", "cannot live without", etc, improvement in Office since Office 4.3 (yes, that's the 16 bit version). Mind you very advanced users may find this or this other *needed* feature in a later version , but most people, that I rate as being more than 80% of users could do the same work/documents they currently do with the "full", "latest" Office Suite using what? Microsoft Works! Still, they managed to re-sell (this time not to me - I still stick to Office 2000 - but to many, many people): Office 97 Office 2000 Office XP (sometimes called Office 2002) Office 2003 Office 2007 Office 2010 Office 2013 and are now desperately trying to sell to everyone the SAAS Office 365. Suddenly, they realized that the PC market was (largely) saturated, that we are in a world-wide recession, that NO firm that already has a working PC will even think of updating their machines (and OS) if not in dire need (hardware failure) that every household that can afford a PC already has two or three of them (that substantially do the tasks the users are capable of doing/are wanting to do) and is not going to fork from even a few bucks for new hardware (and conversely OS). Thus the only way to sell new OS's/Programs is slap a new interface on the latest Vista servicepack (and call it "Windows 8") start pushing the new "one tablet fits all" propaganda trick people in the SAAS folly (folly for the users, not for the good MS guys) I.e. undermine their business model (that has worked for years) in the hope of conquering new markets (the Apple and Samsung ones) with smartphones and tablets. Paradoxically they are paying now the fee for not having introduced *anything* new for years, i.e. the ability with which they managed to essentially re-sell over and over the same stuff to people and the overall good quality of their original 1994 and 1995 designs is backfiring and they are grasping at straws to keep up the sales. jaclaz

Oww, come off it. Snopes,com is a place where URBAN LEGENDS are collected (and usually debunked): http://www.snopes.com/ http://www.snopes.com/photos/technology/insectdrone.asp'>http://www.snopes.com/photos/technology/insectdrone.asp In any case from the page of the project: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/droneshield/ By definition *anything* used by the US Government is NOT low cost (except maybe a number of their employees) . One of the best urban myths around is about the awful amount of money that NASA supposedly spent for developing the "space pen": http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.asp Like most Urban Myths it has however some grounds, the 34 pencils costed $128.84 apiece http://www.thespacereview.com/article/613/1 jaclaz

Good. While you are at it, you should also solve this (very minor) inconsistency: Just swap second and third partition entries in the MBR. jaclaz

For a change, instead of a comment, I will post some data. Please find attached a small Excel spreadsheet with the data that Charlotte kindly posted, rendered in a basic XY graph. I used as reference the 28th of January. The data shows how in the three days 29, 30 and 31st of January evidently a noticeable amount of people downgraded from 7 to XP . This is only to show how the accuracy of such "OS shares" data should be considered. jaclaz OSshares.zip

Well, now that we cleared the language issue, just for the record "you are requested to input the Product key", it all makes sense . Any "normal" install will "normally" ask for a product key (no matter from what device you start the install). You may want/need to use an "unattended" or "partially unattended" setup, basically you write the Product Key (and possibly other "standard settiings") into a configuration file that is automatically processed by the setup. Start here: http://www.msfn.org/board/forum/176-unattended-windows-8server-2012/ jaclaz

Maybe there is a language issue. A "key" is a piece of plastic (normally square) that you find on a keyboard and that when pressed sends a hex code to the PC (normally a single character). I have no keys on my keyboard marked as "CD". Maybe you mean a command, but then "CD" by itself is not a command (and actually is not a grub4dos command anyway). Try re-describing in different words BUT EXACTLY what happens and what actions you need to perform to continue the installation, right now your report sounds like: I.e. non-english, non-sense. jaclaz