jaclaz

Q: Is it acceptable to express an opinion (exception made for one expressing total and unconditional approval, awe and worship) or tentatively suggest an alternate option on anything PROBLEMCHYLD makes in the Service Pack or writes in this (or any other one for that matters) thread? A: No. jaclaz

It's almost perfect . I would "shorten it a little bit, in such a way that L's "eyes" come up from the bottom as soon as R turns towards the right side preparing to exit. Also (though it is nice) there is no real reason why L should "enter" the scene whistling and the end exit it, i.e the scene could open with L already there and at the end "cycle" from directly back to: jaclaz

Well, as often happens OT, but not much: http://www.digitaltrends.com/opinion/microsofts-anti-google-scroogle-campaign/ jaclaz

I would call that INconvenience , but that doesn't matter. Basically, as I see it, in order to help people that have no idea on how to store documents (and later find them) the good MS guys invented this approach: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/dd861346.aspx but failed to find a way to easily distinguish such "virtual containers" from real ones, so that anyone actually familiar with "real containers" get utterly confused by this "new" feature. jaclaz

Why don't you just try doing it and observe the results? jaclaz

Yes, OK, but were BSY or LBA0 symptoms? Which EXACT commands did you send to it in the Hyperterminal (or whatever you used)? Yes, the issue here is that your drive behaves "strangely". The MBR CODE is there, exactly where it should be, but the data in it have been "00ed". <- this is "queer", usually either the "whole" MBR is there or it has been completely (not just 16 bytes of it) 00ed. Also, it seems like all the sectors you accessed are all 00's (wiped). I am suspecting that - for *any* reason - the disk has gone in some kind of "loop" and - besides the MBR - only "provides" the same bunch of 00ed sectors , no matter which sector you try to access. Yep, that is the idea, that has a big caveat, though. Provided that the disk is not all 00's, any file that was contiguous should normally be retrieved without issues, whilst any file that was fragmented will most probably result as either corrupted or "partial". The "reference" tool is PHOTOREC (the companion of TESTDISK): http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec (it is not just for photos) No prob. Let's try again to see if some data can actually be read on that disk. Open the disk in Tiny Hexer and search, starting from sector 0 the hex 4D5A90 (which equates to "MZ<nop>", i.e. the header for executable files, one of the most common filetypes on a "system" disk). If you don't find a hit within (say) first 50000 sectors it is likely that there is the "all 00's issues. Are you trying to access the "original, unbricked" disk or the clone of it? (can it be, if the latter, that the cloning failed?) jaclaz

I brought the XP in this thread mainly because I wanted to highlight the "opposite direction" taken with Windows 8. With XP MS "killed young" the Me (and all DOS based OS) in favour of NT based ones and established that the XP OS was "good for all". Now it is saying that: you will have Windows 8 on your "Office PC" you wil have Window 8 on your "Home PC" you will have Windows 8 on your laptop/notebook you will have Windows 8 on the Surface Pro (and possibly on a number of similar tablets) you will have a largely incompatible OS, Windows RT, on the "standard" surface (and possibly on a number of similar tablets) Item #5 won't be fully "integrable" in an "enterprise environment" and it is a completely different product on which most "production tools" won't run (or more exactly, noone, not even them, have provided ports for them, exception made for Office 2013 and it's silly license, that seemingly keeps out of the "deal" anyone in business that has not a volume license or that doesn't want to subscribe to the stupid Office 365). As such, the "current" Surface with Windows RT seems a lot like a "separate branch", not very different from the old DOS vs. NT ones. I have not clear in my mind (actually I am completely not interested to it) whether Windows Phone belong to the "real" Windows 8 branch or to the Windows RT one or it is yet another "branch" with some points in common, not unlike the old CE. jaclaz

Hmmm. I guess you are stuck, then Without partition data, nor bootsector data, nor $MFT the only thing that may work is file-based recovery, but as said I start to suspect that your drive is either "really" "all 00's or *somehow* it went in some kind of "failure" mode and simply outputs 00ed sectors. Try again from the start, describe what happened BEFORE you posted here: What symptoms did the drive have, which exact steps you performed, etc., etc. jaclaz

Yep, I am getting old but am still d@mn faast ! (though this time you were reaaally close after me) For NO apparent reason : jaclaz

Steve, you already posted this, and you already had answers to it here: (just trying to keep things as together as possible) jaclaz

You can normally expect *anything* between 30 and 40 Mbytes/second of data transfer on a USB 2.0. The 85 Gb should take, more or less, between 45 minutes and 1 hour. As a "generic" comparison, a direct SATA I or II connection would probably take about 2/3 of that time, say 30-40 minutes, a SATA III possibly 1/3 only, say 15-20 minutes. Of course actual speed depends on such a number of factors that it is impossible to have accurate estimation, if you check some benchmarks: http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/hard-drives-and-ssds,3.html you will see how a SATA disk can deliver *anything* between 50 and 150 Mb/s when writing. jaclaz

Well, just for the record you can manage to have exFAT on XP too, see: Unofficial: http://www.merawindows.com/Forums/tabid/324/forumid/15/postid/35485/scope/posts/Default.aspx Official: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/955704/en-us And in DOS too: A 9ft cable is a particularly "longish" one (while largely within specs): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Serial_Bus#Cabling but no wonder (should it be proved that the issue is the cable) that it can get some "interferences/noise" or simply that is a little bit "retarded" in acknowledge/return signals. jaclaz

Tiny hexer is GUI, not command line. It works more or less like *any* editor, the main difference is that when you operate on a disk or on disk image to avoid using too much memory it loads by default a sector at a time. File->Disk->Open Drive Choose "right" \\.\PhysicalDriven Press OK File->Disk->Goto Sector Replace by typing or pasting the highlighted text "+0x100" with "6291519" (without quotes) Press OK Use Shift+F8 to go forward and Shift+F7 to go back (one sector at the time) What do you see? All 00's and "dots" or you can read at very beginning of sectors "FILE0" and some text here and there? (like "$.M.F.T.", "$.M.F.T.m.i.r.r.o.r.", etc.)? Post a screenshot (if it is not all 00's) of sector 6291519 the windows should have a title like >\\.\PhysicalDriven , sector 6291519/xxxxxxxxxxx Once you are there: Edit-> Find/Replace write (or copy from here) in the "Enter text or hex data to search for" box this: "46494C4530" (without quotes) that is the hex of FILE0, and every two sectors in the $MFT there is an occurrence of "FILE0" Click on Find button A new popup will appear asking you to "Search following sector(s)", click on Yes (a few times, for the first few sectors), then press "yes to all", if no hit is found within a few minutes, click on "Cancel" jaclaz

Sure , even on 20 Mb on a 8 MHz processor, JFYI: http://www.winhistory.de/more/386/xpmini.htm.en and of course nliting or however tweaking the install doesn't count, do a "normal" install, from the original "gold" MS CD, install an anti-virus, open a couple mid sized worksheets and go browsing the web with 256 Mb and the pagefile will be hit in no time (and I don't call a system that continuously pages on hard disk as "running pretty nicely"). jaclaz

The "idea" behind removing "ALL" (which is NOT "some") detachable hardware is three-fold. The hardware detection "probes" the hardware in a given sequence, if it finds "an issue" it is possible that it fails and stops, you know like : For all we know either the PSU or *any* of the hardware add-ons may have "aged" and the former may provide less current than needed or the latter may require more current then before. The more hardware is connected to the mainboard, the more likely a IRQ or however resource conflict may arise. JFYI the Iomega docs: http://www.iomega.com/support/manuals/ioback/iomegabackup_c.pdf talk about a two floppy set for "emergency restore" jaclaz

Possibly unrelated (or maybe not completely) Those kind of errors are typical (NOT on USB) of a "bad cable", as a matter of fact of a "disturbed" or "not shielded" cable. They were common in 2K (yes, many, many years ago) on IDE devices when 40 wire cables were used (instead of the 80 wires one). Typically an user would update his/her PC with a new disk (unknowingly getting an ATA 4 drive) without also upgrading the cable, and one could soon have the event log full of similar entries. If it's a desktop I would try (as a test) to connect that USB thingy to a port "on the back" of the PC (i.e. one of the ports that are directly soldered to the motherboard) and see if you still have those errors. If they "disappear" it is very likely that it is either the cable connecting the front USB port to the motherboard or the USB socket itself. JFYI, even more years ago, when SCSI drives were more common, the saying was "when you have an issue with a SCSI disk drive, it can be anything, but the culprit is the cable, change it". jaclaz

I see no points of contention , actually you seem to say (just like I do) that Windows 2000 was an excellent Operating System, the "rightful" evolution of NT 4.00. I see 2000 as a technical, or if you prefer "natural, logical" evolution of NT and XP as a (mostly) commercial evolution of 2K., in the sense that a large part (but of course not all) the "added" features of XP are "eye candy" or "bells and whistles". Personally I rate *any* NT based system far more "stable" than any comparable DOS based one, but the argument that most people raise when this kind of discussion starts is "but NT has the far better NTFS filesystem that you cannot have in 9x/Me and thus you are limited to files 4 Gb in size" (no I don't want to start the usual flamewar about FAT32 vs. NTFS), with the not-so-hidden understatement that a Dos based OS cannot have NTFS because of technical reasons (while it has been a simple, plain, commercial one). The great idea was evidently something like let's consolidate our two largely different Operating System branches, one dedicated to the "Professional" use and one to "Home" and let's make a one-size-fits-all OS. It is rather obvious how in order to do that you need to impose on "home" customers that have not any need for them a number of "features" only useful in a "professional" environment, on the other hand, in order to let the "home" users be actually able to run, install, and "like" it etc. you need to add some "bells and whistles" that the "profesionals" have no or very little use for. If you think about it, the following iteration of the "higher level" Server edition offers - strangely enough - a "Core" edition, from the mouth of the wolf: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd184075.aspx I will however re-state how pre-made machines (OEM) on sale during the very first period of XP, and expecially laptop/notebooks were largely underpowered, as well as later this happened AGAIN when Vista was launched. My personal rule of thumb has alway been that of taking the MS minimal requirements and at very least double them, whenever possible use a factor of 4x, example, XP minimal requirements: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314865/en-us Pentium 233-megahertz (MHz) processor or faster (300 MHz is recommended) <- please read this as 1 Ghz processor At least 64 megabytes (MB) of RAM (128 MB is recommended) <- please read this as "512 Mbytes" if you want to actually run software on this OS jaclaz

No. XP is a good OS, not as good as 2K for several aspects and far less suitable to "simple" home users EXACTLY because of the features that only professionals (and only in some given "corporate" environments) actually needed. All the rest (being cheap and having Server or Client capabilities) is ONLY related to Commercial decisions (anyone remember the differences between NT 4.0 Workstation and Server edition? so "deep" that one could be made into the second with a few tweaks). Now, if a bunch of "single guys" (among which rloew stands out ) have managed to have 98 run in a more than stable manner with lots of RAM and on fastish processors: with a few patches, are you telling me that the good MS guys would not have been able to do the same? And the NTFS filesystem being somehow "linked" to the NT series of OS is of course pure b**ls**it. Personally I would not even consider a DOS/9x based system at work (and I actually did not since NT 3.51 times) , but the "forced transplant" of XP on "home" users, as said initially on dramatically underpowered hardware, was not in any way "inevitable" and not even a "good idea". Well, this doesn't necessarily mean that you are as blinfdfolded as your leaders . jaclaz

Not really, there are excellent programmers in the East as well. What you may learn from the West (though I presume that there are similar approaches in the East) is : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_razor And: Here : @echo off SETLOCAL ENABLEDELAYEDEXPANSION set Htm_title=Network Diagnostic Report - NT Shop Sdn Bhd set Htm_href="http://www.ntshop.com.my" set Htm_txt=www.ntshop.com.my set fnm=HOSTNAME.txt set lnm=RESULT.HTM del %lnm% ( ECHO ^<^!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN"^> ECHO ^<html^>^<head^>^<title^>%Htm_title%^</title^>^</head^> ECHO ^<body^>^<h3^>%Htm_title%^</h3^> ECHO ^<br^>^<h4^> ^<a href=%Htm_href% target="newwin"^>%Htm_txt%^</a^>^</h4^>^<p^>^<table border="1" cellpadding="5"^>^<tr bgcolor="E0E0E0"^> ECHO ^<th^>No.^<th^>Store^<th^>Sales^<th^>VNC^<th^>DVR )>>%lnm% if exist HOSTNAME.txt set fnm=HOSTNAME.txt if exist C:\NT\HOSTNAME.txt set fnm=C:\NT\HOSTNAME.txt ::if not exist %fnm% goto :error set SALES=3050 set DVR=9696 set VNC=5900 set Counter=0 for /f "tokens=1,2 delims=," %%A in (%fnm%) do ( Set /A Counter+=1 set Line=^<tr^>^<td bgcolor=#FFFFFF^>!Counter!^<td^>%%B FOR %%C IN ( SALES DVR VNC ) DO ( call :do_paping %%A %%B %%C ) ECHO !Line!>>%lnm% ) ( ECHO ^</table^> ECHO ^</body^>^</html^> )>>%lnm% GOTO :EOF :do_paping set state=ONLINE echo Testing %1 for %3 paping.exe %1 -p !%3! -c 1 || set state=**OFFLINE** SET Line=!Line!^<td^>%state% goto :EOF :error echo. echo Cannot find %fnm% echo. Pause goto :EOF The expected result is a simple .htm table, let's simply build it.... jaclaz

and Really I cannot understand: what exactly you did what exact result did you expect in what exactly what you got differs from what was expected If on the left panel of Explorer you select "Documents" on the right side you only see files that are registered as "Documents". (as in "Welcome to the senseless navigation panel of Windows 7" ): http://www.pcworld.com/article/206803/win7_file_nav.html http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/products/features/libraries http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/dd861346.aspx or, if you prefer, this is "by design" jaclaz

Well, it cannot mathematically be FAT12 or 16 and logically it cannot be FAT32 either, since XP has dumbed down it to 32 Gb max size. Which leaves us with NTFS. So, if there was a single NTFS partition (or at least the first partition was NTFS and not very, very small) the $MFT must exist (and exist at a specific address). This address is in these cases: 786432*8+63=6291456+63=6291519 Try getting Tiny Hexer and open the disk, then go to absolute sector 6291519. (and check a few sectors after it), but if DMDE didn't find anytihing it is really improbable that *something* exists. http://www.softpedia.com/get/Others/Miscellaneous/tiny-hexer.shtml I am starting to think that *somehow* the original disk has issues that were not solved by the "unbricking". jaclaz

and jaclaz

Well, not really. nlite does remove things at installation, not after it. And then if you want a true IE-less XP you could use FdV's (Fred De Vorck) approach/inf's, etc. To clarify, these methods "prevent install", do not "uninstall". Possibly the Commercial XPlite would do "after install". jaclaz

If you are prepared to a lot of words, you may get the XP from the already installed hard disk, reading here: http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=24161&hl= jaclaz

I will try again. Can you maximize the VM window and post a screenshot of it? jaclaz