jaclaz

Still on the OT/Tablet/Surface theme, the good MS guys seemingly lost a very good occasion to have a rather influential testimonial/endorsement: http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/12/3754574/pope-benedict-xvi-first-tweet http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/12/12/the-pope-on-twitter-and-6-other-holy-milestones/ jaclaz

Possibly already checked/suggested, but is the SSD in GPT or in MBR "mode"? Compare with: http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus/672616-guide-ux32vd-how-install-windows-7-integrated-32gb-ssd.html jaclaz

May I remind everyone the OP request? jaclaz

Well, Norton Ghost was a Commercial program and it is not anymore available since years from Symantec. At the time there weren't many Freeware programs capable to do the same things Norton Ghost did, right now there are several ones, one has been already mentioned, several more are listed here: http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=16534 It may be possible to buy a license for Norton Ghost 8.3 on e-bay or similar, though. The "reference" for all things "Norton Ghost related" is this site/board. http://ghost.radified.com/ jaclaz

What you may want to try on the "problematic" hard disk is inserting a F712 sequence. WARNING I have NO idea if it is "appropriate" for the situation that hard disk is and never like in this case "no guarantee of any kind" WARNING See: http://forum.hddguru.com/tutorial-resolve-lba-seagate-7200-bios-don-recognize-t11040.html This post: http://forum.hddguru.com/tutorial-resolve-lba-seagate-7200-bios-don-recognize-t11040-180.html#p131011 TO ALL: this is NOT "recommended" it is NOT part of the "standard" unbricking procedure, it is normally NOT needed and should NOT be attempted if not as a "last resort", when the "normal" commands in the tutorials fail! jaclaz

Well, the power down and then resume with ctrl+Z has worked for at least a few thousands of people, so it is confirmed to work "in most cases". As a matter of fact this powering down may not be needed as other guides/tutorials/reports do not specify it. If I gave you the false impression to believe that you had only read through one source of information is because we have two "tutorials" right here, cited in the read me first and you cited the instrctions form a third one, NOT mentoned there. It was not a false impression, I actually had it and you did everything in your powers to convey it. It makes no sense (unless *something* else occurred to that disk - i.e. it is not in a "pure" BSY state - or during your previous attempts *something* changed) that you have different behaviour while using a different "controller card" (what do you mean exactly with "controller card"? and with "changing it"? ) jaclaz

I don't get it. You do some of the steps, then it comes the (optional) powering down. You unplug the power SATA connector. Wait 60 seconds (roughly). You re-plug the power. Then you do ctrl+Z and you do not re-access the interface? <- maybe this is the step you are missing? A communication session is initiated by the ctrl+Z, of course since you powered down the disk the previous session is lost. If you read the recommended guide, here: http://www.mapleleafmountain.com/seagatebrick.html this is made clear, the snippet you posted is coming from where? (I know , it comes from here: https://sites.google.com/site/seagatefix/ ) As well first post of the present thread specifies how you need to issue the ctrl+Z: Guess why there is a Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 READ_ME_FIRST sticky here: with a point #3 citing two tutorials (and NOT the one you seemingly are using)? jaclaz

I don't want to put anyone down, but from the little I can understand on the matter it seems like there are around THREE types of systems: BIOS <- classic "half" UEFI <- particular UEFI with BIOS emulation, let's call these "transition" systems "full" UEFI <- "pure" UEFI, with NO BIOS call support whatsoever I suspect that wimb's successful experiments only apply to #2 above.... jaclaz

Why so defensive? Provided that is not considered off-topic, I would like to highlight how it makes little sense to be "tight" in the size of this dummy file in the sense that in the best case it will occupy 512 bytes (when not 4 Kbytes) so you can use the space to put in some comments, possibly useful, like info about the specific oemXX.inf "original" file it is going to replace ("meaningful placeholder" as opposed to "standard placeholder") . jaclaz

As I see it there are great possibiltiies that the millions of people that bought the Surface at the time of the "share" data collection had either: spent all their money buying the thingy and cannot afford to pay an ISP for connection used it to play Simon had yet to understand how to go online only and exclusively connected to the Microsoft Apps store and to networks not connected with the Chitika one in other words it is a bit too early for those web traffic results to represent *anything*: http://insights.chitika.com/2012/november-tablet-market-update/ and it is very possible that the Chitika network (WHO? ) and it's customers offer contents that appeal the iPad and Android users but not the Surface ones, we have a "study" conducted by a non-independent firm, citing senselessly and vaguely "a sample of millions of tablet impressions", limited to 6 (six) days just two weeks after the Surface launch. Those reports, without the exact methodology used are m00t by themselves, additionally they were made at a time there was possibly NO meaningful number of surfaces sold. So they are absolutely meaningless. jaclaz

BUT, unlike on the Surface, you had local storage available to keep that huge compilation locally.... A good idea could be to have several (cheaper) Surfaces, each one with 16 Gb of storage total, somehow (like by writing good, lean code) reduce the space occupied by Office to have the Howstuffworks stored locally, another one for the writings by William Shakespeare, another one with pictures of all the paintings by Picasso .... no , wait, these latter already exist, they are called books .... jaclaz

Isn't it fun how everyone sees the relevant parts differently? From the same link: It's years I have been waiting for such an app , a dedicated app for booking travels or read simple explanations on how thing works, a sensationally new paradigm shift...... In the old times we called those "bookmarks" . jaclaz

... it is the hardest part ... jaclaz

OT (but not much). A quick question: How much would you expect to have available for storage, additional apps, etc. on a 32 GB Surface? Seemingly the new, lean, RT OS (and the MS Office that you cannot use for work unless you buy a separate license for it) is not as lean as I was imaging: http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/windows-rt-hogs-16gb-of-32gb-microsoft-surface/ http://www.microsoft.com/Surface/en-US/support/surface-with-windows-RT/files-folders-and-online-storage/surface-disk-space-faq But the Note: surely helps a lot. Being one of those days where my understanding of English is somewhat lacking, this sentence: http://www.microsoft.com/Surface/en-AU/storage sounds to me as being condescending and/or presumptuous. The declared size of 8 Gb for an Office suite with limited functionalities (besides limited licensed use) is anyway an offence to the art of programming . I would like you to take note how: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/home-and-student/office-home-student-rt-preview-FX103210361.aspx Having Excel without Macros/Add-ins , what would be next, power drills with no chuck but a fixed 6 mm steel drill bit, adjustable wrenches fixed to 13 mm? jaclaz

That is what I was told by Dennis Ritchie's ghost http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Ritchie that appeared last night in my dreams and suggested me the solution to your problem. (so I cannot guarantee it's correct, I am only the messenger ) I wasn't able to see anything in my crystal ball , nor to get anything of use from both Tarots and I-Ching , unfortunately . jaclaz

I would say that Windows Update is "innocent" and it is EXACTLY as stupid as the stupid people that wrote/programmed it, but this would be nit-picking @delerious JFYI: jaclaz

It's the fifth function, third argument from the left, that is invalid and that conflicts with MS09-012 (956572) . http://support.microsoft.com/kb/978835/en-us jaclaz

I guess you should tell those guys that they won't be admitted to the "2013 time keeping championship", you apparently became a member there when you were -11 jaclaz

With all due respect (and trying to bring back the discussion on "productive tools" and "content creation" as opposed to "content consumption") what do you do to make a living? listen to music ? watch movies ? MS had till now an almost complete monopoly on "business users", the news are still the same, instead of bettering the experience of their "real" user base, they try to pursue the "leisure" one (which is a perfectly fair attempt) the issue at hand is that in order to do so they are managing to alienate what they already have (besides failing in "stealing" users from "the other part"). jaclaz

@Coffefiend, JFYI the guy has replaced the whatever was cited by Business Insider with this: http://www.rubicondev.com/blog/windows-rt-born-to-fail/ Personally - and being notoriously expert on grumpy businesses - I call this "behaving as a brainless mercenary and selfish clown" instead of "fair play", though. What the heck does he think, that by deleting that text he will make everything as before? Some excerpts are all over the net, example: http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/378562/hit-game-makes-52-in-first-week-on-windows-rt jaclaz

I guess this should be posted under "News" You see how useful is your smiley? jaclaz

Let's see if I get this right You wrote yourself a MSGINA replacement or add-on, compiled it and you don't know how to troubleshoot the issues coming from the use of the .dll you wrote? jaclaz

Sure, it also surprises me, but nonetheless lots of people spend time in doing these kind of things and in making their boot menu "pretty". Personally I use "plain text", the only exception being (on some sticks) the use of a splash image (that a friend made for me some time ago for a project that was never actually released) that you can see here (first image green text on black background): jaclaz

Done. Well, still you have a computer, when you boot it you have (I presume) no choice about which Operating System you are going to load. A lot of people like to use more than one operating system on their PC and they use a "bootmanager" i.e. a small program that allows at boot time to choose which OS to boot. Even "plain" Windows NT based systems have it, either NTLDR + BOOT.INI or BOOTMGR + \boot\BCD, but their look is pretty much "dull": grub, grub2 and grub4dos are bootmanagers that besides a "plain" text can also add static images (spash images) or even animated ones (GFXboot) making the "booting phase choice" a "graphical experience", like the "Christmas theme" I posted earlier). jaclaz

BTW this is not only connected to "free" and not only to "cloud", another "horror story": http://www.edrants.com/3am-magazine-how-twelve-years-of-literary-content-disappeared-in-an-instant/ jaclaz