jaclaz

I think I understood your point, my point was that the fact that Vista and 7 "have the same NT6x base" does NOT in any way imply that a given tool/method/anything will not fail on one and work on the other, or fail at both or succeed at both. If you prefer you are assuming that the "have the same NT6x base" implies something (it does not) when it comes to the way a tool - designed for UNmodded sources - behaves with modded ones, and the reason is simple, although they do "have the same NT6x base" they are DIFFERENT, so, as I see it, your apparent surprise at the fact that one works and the other one doesn't has no real reason to be, as a matter of fact I would expect or rate as "probable" that two DIFFERENT Operating Systems, although they "have the same NT6x base" would behave DIFFERENTly. @PsyDonia Yes , as you might have gathered if you had actualy read a bit on the thread : jaclaz

It's not *exactly* like it's stated on the resource you cited. The USB Mass Storage subsystem is something that XP has normally as well. What Vista may have could be an added VID/PID (or whatever) linking the device to the USB Mass Storage driver. Usually (cannot say specifically for your TomTom) the device can be put in a state in which it "behaves" (and presents itself to the OS) just as if it was a USB flash pendrive or a USB hard disk, i.e. it is found as Disk in Disk Management and - normally - the filesystem on it is mounted to a drive letter in Explorer. On the other hand if the device is not set in that particular "mode", XP (nor Vista) can make head or tail of what is it and asks for a driver. BUT a number of more recent devices are simply not anymore capable of being connected as mass storage devices, they use other connection methods and/or a proprietary drivers. You should post the EXACT model of your device so that it will be possible to make sure, see here as an example: http://discussions.tomtom.com/t5/ONE-START-40-50-Series-EASE-HOME/Problems-with-computer-not-recognising-my-new-TOMTOM-Start-25/td-p/108247 jaclaz

Let me see. A+B=C A+D=E B != D -> C !=E Have you checked the link you were given about the need of some updates for Vista, at least for the "normal" install? It's a looong shot, but worth a check. But still, if modded sources are not supported, that does not mean that any and all modded soureces will fail (nor that any and all modded sources will work), it simply means that modded sources are NOT supported (and you are right now asking help/support for modded sources, after having been told how they are not supported ) jaclaz

Possibly: will actually give a value to the cd variable. Or, alternatively: Please note how the expansion of a full path such as %~dpn will result in a "full path" (and full paths always end with a backslash) jaclaz

Can you post in "normal" font and font size like all other people do? See Rule #11: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?app=forums&module=extras&section=boardrules jaclaz

Good . Just for the record, there is also a small nirsoft GUI app, Serviwin: http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/serviwin.html tha will show (and can output as list) all services (and their "DisplayName"s, that may change on localized versions) . jaclaz

There is seemingly nothing wrong (there is a typo with dsi instead of dsfi, but this is most probably just in the post). You shouldn't however work on root. Make a directory, say C:\recwork Copy to it fsz, dsfo, dsfi and the files extendn.dd. Open a command prompt and run in it again those commands , then run: DIR C:\recwork\*.dd>C:\recwork\dir.txt DIR C:\recwork\*.pds>>C:\recwork\dir.txt post the dir.txt contents, maybe there is an issue with size of files? jaclaz

Did you manage to find someone actually capable of tuning it? I guess you aren't going to share the address of that shop, are you? My crystal ball is very sensible to changes in weather, and noone seems like being able to tune it properly.... But still it was clear enough to allow me to write : so that I could distiguish this specific disagreement with the more general "all round" one (that I suspect is the one your crystall ball - after all not perfectly tuned - showed you ) jaclaz

Idea. See if nirsoft nircmd command "service" would do: http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/nircmd.html http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/nircmd2.html#using jaclaz

Cheers and Regards My bad , (though not really my bad , it did take where it should have taken when I posted it) try: and thus: http://reboot.pro/index.php?showtopic=82 Just in case it disappears, eaten by a white whale or whatever, here it is verbatim the relevant part: Which one? Just from memory I recall 3 or 4 versions of Windows 3.x, 4 or 5 of Windows 95, 2 of Windows 98, then Millennium Edition, NT 3.51 and 4.00 Workstaion and Server, Windows 2000 various versions, XP Home and Professional and of course Windows Server 2003... When reporting an error, the exact number and text is useful to understand what the problem might be, quite obviously, knowing that it is a STOP: 0x0000007B INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE instead of "something like that" will really help ... Which one, there are thousands of tutorials or articles on the Internet, how are we supposed to know which one you are referring to.... No comment .... e. Please, if you succeed in whatever you asked help for, do report this and the exact steps you took, it is a form of thanking the member(s) which helped you and to help other people that have the same problem you had. Note: The above rules have been almost entirely copied from the ones on MSFN forums, as I find them simple and rightful, but most other technical boards use similar ones. Amendment #1 to Rules June 17, 2007 - adding of point f. Special, more explicit, "common sense" advice, SUPPLEMENTAL to that already present in points a-b-c-d-e above. Mind you that this advice is given to HELP you solving a problem, and though not compulsory, it will help you more than you might expect in troubleshooting and (hopefully) solve your problem faster. f. Always think why you are here asking for help: Always think why other members might be able to try and help you: The above implies that AFTER you have done your best to comply with points a-b-c-d of the rules, if any member trying to help you asks you supplemental informations and details, to run one or more programs or to do a determinate series of actions and to post results, it is because there are REASONS for this procedure. (you remember, you weren't able to solve this problem by yourself and they know more than you do.) So, it would be VERY APPRECIATED, and, as said, it will better the quality of the assistance you might receive if you would: f1.- Post JUST the problem you are having, with needed details, but WITHOUT suggesting what the solution is according to you. f2.- Temporarily "disconnect" your mind from your idea of WHAT has caused or is causing the problem you have, and of HOW the fix should be made, solving a problem means finding it's SOLUTION, the method through which the latter is found is not relevant and viewing it from just one side can even prevent from finding the solution. f3.- DO AS YOU ARE TOLD, do not introduce variations of ANY KIND in the given instructions, there are REASONS why they are suggested, and REASONS why they are suggested in the given order and yet more REASONS why other procedures are NOT suggested f4.- DO NOT think you are smarter than the member who is trying to help you, even if generally speaking this might happen, it DOES NOT apply on the specific topic, nothing can upset more a willing helping member that someone that asks for advice and later does not try the given suggestions and/or does another thing. On the contrary, once the suggested steps have been tried and gave no result, your ideas are welcome, in other words we try to troubleshoot in a "logical" way, as in the famous Sherlock Holmes saying "when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth", but we like beforehand to exclude the possible, the common, the probable, and this approach solves problems in a MUCH faster way in a large amount of cases. f5.- BE PREPARED to spend some time interactively searching and (hopefully) finding a solution, remember it is you that are having the problem, the only reason why another member tries to help you is to share and expand his knowledge, and to be gratified by an even small thank you when the solution is found. There are a number of members that, as soon as they see that there is no pre-made one-size-fits-all solution one or a few clicks away, simply disappear from the board, leaving behind an unresolved problem and, possibly, a disappointed member who tried vainly to help. jaclaz

It is not about "teacher" and "student" (that implies a different level of knowledge AND someone who is paid to teach while the other one pays and has - in theory - all the interest in listening). It is about exchanging knowledge on technical issues, or solve a problem, there is no teacher nor pupil, and this is not a class, there is a question, and (if there is a known answer about that question) someone that hopefully provides the answer. If the answer is not understood, further questions in order to clarify the obscure parts may well be asked, and actually common politeness requires to ask these questions (that will also hopefully be answered) before putting aside the answer as nonsense. EXAMPLE: I do perfectly understand the attitude of the OP, which is a very common one, so common that long before this thread was started it was "coded" in the linked to "common sense advice" (a remarkably UNcommon quality of people) in the already given link: http://reboot.pro/82/ and it exists since the dawn of internet, in the X/Y/Z issue: http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/put-down-the-chocolate-covered-banana.html particularly, but more generally in the "How to ask questions the smart way": http://catb.org./~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html jaclaz

Get the UBCD and use the appropriate Manufacturer testing tools for your hard disk: http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ briefly, scandisk, disk doctor and the like are at a "higher" logical level. The "click (if any) comes from a "lower" physical level that only the Manufacturer tools (and some third party that you should NOT attempt using for the moment, such as mhdd, Victoria, hdat2 and the like ) can access/inspect/verify/diagnose. Before ANYHTING else, procure yourself another disk and image the one that is presumably clicking. jaclaz

@dencorso In this specific case I disagree . The setting for a pagefile (not system managed) has to be chosen between: fixed size (like 1024-1024) <-Smart IMHO "dynamic" (like 1024-2048)<-Senselsss IMHO The third option "dynamic with no slack" (like 1023-1024) is one that makes even less sense. The idea with "fixed size" is that when the pagefile is hit AND it's fixed size is filled, the system will nicely crash. The idea with "dynamic" is that once pagefile.sys is "hit", AND it is filled for it's minimum size, it starts expanding until it reaches the maximim size, THEN the system will crash nicely of course IF there is enough available space for the pagefile to "grow". The foolishness of the "dynamic" is that it takes time (and system resources) to resize the pagefile, so, in a situation where the system is on the verge of crashing you add some stress to it. That, in determinate conditions (and with the big caveat of available space) may make some (little) sense if the "expansion range" is "big". With 1 Mb difference it makes not any. BTW, on low memory systems, it makes sense to make a dynamic pagefile, say, something like 100-2048 in order to test the system (intentionally loading it to the max/overloading it) to find a more accurate value for the max range used, lets'say 1536, and then set it fixed to 1536-1536. Additionally a "dynamic" pagefile, if "hit", will contrubute to fragmentation, and for any "diagnostic" use of the pagefile.sys as "dump" it is much more convenient to have it in "one piece" as only the "fixed" setting may guarantee. With today's hard disk sizes, it makes no sense however to "spare" a few Mbytes of hard disk space anyway. @bhplt someone else - in perfect good faith - provided 5 partial or unrelated answers to the original question. OP - remarked this in a somewhat "I know more than you do" approach, and reiterating the question as "So again, we are right back to the question, is there a way to get XP x64 to be able to use a USB as VM?" I initially answered to that question (and nothing else), and I did it VERY accurately, it was NOT my intention to make a course on vityual memory or pagefile.sys and from the approach of the OP, my intention was to post EXACTLY what I posted, and I also explained the reasons why I did post EXACTLY that and not nothing else in post #30 and also some "what if" I want to re-affirm the fact that I am NOT binded by any contract or agreement to spoon feed anyone, particularly when I feel like not doing it, nor that I need to "make friends" with anyone, hence I feel free to post whatever I like to, in the EXACT way I like to, within the limits of Board Rules, of course. Of course you are perfectly free to tell me what I should have posted and how I should have worded it, but I find it a perfect example of exercise in futility. Let's use a carpenter's comparison : a fictional_customer goes to the hardware store and: (fictional_customer' walks away, coming back the day after with some photographs of a steel plate with a hook welded to it nailed to a wall) (fictional_customer' walks away, coming back the day after) And, still just for the record: jaclaz

It's a bit complex for a newcomer. There are so many "important" Win9x/Me topics that they cannot be made all "sticky". You should first thing check this: And from that you should get here easily: And then you will have a lot of reading to do..... jaclaz

Well, I can assure you that jaclaz did know about that (for XP 32 bit) AND posted a number of external sources in #18 to that effect, the actual behaviour might be slightly different depending on a number of factors, but the simple description in post #24 should be accurate enough. But if you think a bit about it, set aside the foolish (and deceiving ) way that MS used to implement the Virtual Memory Control Panel and the mechanism, the "decision" to NOT put the pagefile.sys on an "external" device makes a lot of sense. The pagefile.sys is "hooked" at boot time (and thus changes to it require a re-boot), what will happen if you have a pagefile.sys on a USB stick or HD and you decide "mid-session" to disconnect it? You have to consider that while nowadays a pagefile, and much more than that a pagefile 1.5 to 2 times the size of RAM is rarely (please read as "almost never") used if not if there is an issue with the system, like an app going beserk and eating all the RAM, or if there is a crash and a dumpcheck is created, in times of machines with 256 or 512 Mb and possibly 1 Gb of memory it was very frequent that it got "hit". As a matter of fact - and I don't want to start yet another "is pagefile needed/no it is not" or "it must be 1.5 or 2 tiimes the RAM/No, that makes no sense" usual flamewars - I have machines with "enough" memory that run OK since years without a pagefile set. There are few things as "personal" as the choice on how exactly to set a pagefile : And it is often used by IT admins as one of those stories you tell kids around the fire or fireplace in a rainy winter evening : Back to the topic of having a pagefile on something that you can remove "live", more or less on a low memory machine you would be telling to a booted system that it has available 256+512 Mb of memory and after it is "convinced" of this you can (by accident) hot-unplug 2/3 of memory..... as one of the given liks states kernels tend to like not this kind of tricks. The actuall DiskMod filter driver was developed for a specific use, when you actually boot from USB and you may have two different kind of problems: no pagefile.sys at all because the machine has no suitable "internal" disk "polluting" an internal disk filesystem with a pagefile.sys automatically generated jaclaz

Still off topic . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_to_me BUT : http://legalminds.lp.findlaw.com/list/oklahomaattorneys-l/msg00203.html jaclaz

Hey guys, are you hinting that Mr. Sinosky actually lied here?: http://winsupersite.com/windows-8/windows-leadership-changes-part-2 jaclaz

That's why modded sources are not supported. ...and particularly those integrating IE9, I presume .... http://www.zdnet.com/blog/networking/five-reasons-not-to-upgrade-to-windows-internet-explorer-9/817 However, running a silent install at first boot shouldnt' be an issue: jaclaz

BOTH your oven and dishwasher, of course. (releases 3.11c and 3.24b of some Whirlpool dishwashers are known to be buggy ) Then maybe the specs/data of the "some models that this happens" and of some of the laptop models that do work. There aren't "universal" USB 3 drivers, WHICH specific ones have you added to your WinPE and HOW exactly you "added" them? jaclaz

If I may, in this screenshot: the ONLY productivity tool I can identiify is the calculator. I am - admittedly - an old timer but I do: wear a watch that I can have a look at (with a swift movement of my wrist ) when I want to know what time is have always with me a (several years old) handy which I use to synchronize with my agenda on the PC and that emits nice alarm sounds when told to do so do work in a place that has things called windows (wthout ™) that I use to sometimes look outside (this time with a quick and swift movement of my head/eyes) to see what the weather is have on the desk an (old but nowadays) incredibly valuable HP RPN pocket calculator with which I can do 56-6*9+(22/6) in half the time you could to say Jack Robinson What remains as "productivity tool"? Bing and Facebook Owww, comeon guys let's be serious. Let's say that they could have used better examples for that visualization of "productivity tools" ... jaclaz

Good, you have googled the problem , but what of the results you found and solutions you tried/attempted? It seems like that kind of error is due to four possible causes: malware/virus hard disk filesystem corruption Windows Update malfunctioning (which I personally believe is caused by one of the two above) defective hardware (like RAM or motherboard or hard disk) See: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-system/corrupt-file-at-startup-can-not-start-up-win-7/b7129bd4-abf5-44e8-b136-9d9bb9a22c60 http://forums.techguy.org/windows-7/1000897-windows-7-problem-signature.html http://forums.techguy.org/windows-7/1055175-windows-running-very-slow-please-2.html http://www.sevenforums.com/general-discussion/209884-stuck-startup-repair-loop-norootcause.html http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-system/startup-repair-cannot-repair-this-computer/718e1c0c-a907-404e-b48e-700e4e65c248 The "general" and "basic" procedure is always the same: boot from alternate means/OS (Windows PE or Linux CD/DVD/USB) backup any important data scan the system for viruses/malware verify (from a suitable Windows 7 install DVD/USB)filesystem integrity (CHKDISK) do (from a suitable Windows 7 install DVD/USB) a "startup repair" if it boots repeat checks on filesystem and files integrity (CHKDISK, SFC) and for viruses/malware if the above don't work re-install Windows 7 in a "parallel" install and see if it boots/works normally if it still doesn't work it is likely that there is a (more or less serious) hardware problem that you must solve before attempting again If the "parallel" install works and you cannot repair the "original" one, then you can only (your choice) either re-install Windows 7 (and all apps) from scratch and restore the backed up data or install the apps to this "parallel" install. jaclaz

Now, now, don't be silly OBVIOUSLY you cannot patent "rectangles with rounded corners" , what you may attempt doing, if you are so clever as to call it "A rectangular, biaxially symmetrical slab with four evenly, slightly rounded corners" is this latter.... According to the UK judge , if you attempt to do so, you fail anyway . jaclaz

Yes and no. The issue is not so slightly different from the ones that the suggested remedies may "fix" because of the two disks. The normal boot sequence is this one: First disk (in BIOS) MBR on first disk PBR of active partition on first disk BOOTMGR on active partition on first disk /boot/BCD on active partition on first disk WINLOAD.EXE (that can be on *any* disk/partition set in /boot/BCD) rest of Windows (Vista or 7) on same *any* disk/partition as above So, a number of requisites on the "2 Tb disk" need to be fulfilled to have it work "independently", i.e., on the "2Tb disk" the MBR code must be present and suitable to chainload active partition there must be at least one active primary partition on it the PBR CODE on that partition should invoke BOOTMGR BOOTMGR must be present in the root of the active primary partition a /boot/BCD (or more generally a whole copy of the /boot/ folder must be present in the root of the active primary partition on the "2Tb disk" the /boot/BCD must have a suitable entry to boot the Winload.exe and "rest of windows" The easiest (IMHO) way to recreate this situation is to disconnect the "320gb" disk, boot from a Windows 7 install disc and "startup repair" the install: http://pcsupport.about.com/od/toolsofthetrade/ss/windows-7-startup-repair.htm To do so, only the pre-requisite of a primary partition existing should be needed, and the "startup repair" should take care of all the other points. jaclaz

... possibly because jaclaz hinted the procedure to do this kind of tests.... To hopefully close this issue, once and for all, my post was not meant to be an "everything you ever wanted to know about pagefile and Virtual Memory and you never dared to ask" kind of post/tutorial/guide, it was a simple, plain answer to the question you asked, meant as a three step procedure: hinting the possibility that your initial beliefs were not entirely correct: stating the actual facts: providing a possible solution or anyway iinformation corroborating the previously exposed facts: Now, re-reading the post for the nth time, following your critics on it, I am actually patting myself on the shoulder for having been able to sum up so well in a few lines all the essential points. Now let's play "what if" .... Could I have been more verbose and explicit? Yes . Am I actually obliged by signed agreement to be more verbose and explicit when attempting to help people for free on the forum? No. Could you have been more "open" to suggestions (since you came here asking for them)? Yes . Could you have been more convinced (as said I believe in perfect good faith) of your experience with Virtual Memory? No. Was such experience with Virtual Memory on 32 bit XP representing actual facts? No. Now, that is anyway the past, the actual issue has been cleared, let's get over it, OK? jaclaz

Just for the record, from http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-how-steve-ballmer-explained-that-steve-sinofsky-is-leaving-2012-11 compare with http://reboot.pro/2398/#entry15859 jaclaz