jaclaz

The initial detection (if any is found ) of the PBR/bootsector should take a few seconds. If no bootsector is found where it normally is (sector 63 on XP - if I recall correctly it was just a single "huge" partiton) it may take much longer as it will have to scan the whole disk, on a perfectly functional SATA II 500 Gb disk I would say less than one hour, though, for the whole scan. jaclaz

No prob, no time constraints of any kind , nice bunnies. Sure , start a new thread here: http://www.msfn.org/board/forum/5-hardware-hangout/ jaclaz

Let's see. I simply cannot read something so fragmented with: every two or three lines. So here it is in a single chunk, with a blank line between posts and in red comments NOT by the Author *whatever* you can call that, it seems to me NOT a "guide" or "tutorial", but a Forum thread misused as a personal Blog. At least now it is readable . A version with the unrelated parts stripped out follows: How this can be useful to a complete newbie is of course - like beauty - in the eye of the beholder. Personally - presuming I am a bit further than the newbie stage and notwithstanding the fact that I am already largely familiar with all the tools and procedures mentioned (and a quite few more not mentioned ) - it looks to me like nothing more than a quick "checklist". jaclaz

From second page of the linked to article: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2411445,00.asp I fully subscribe, it couldn't have been put better in words. jaclaz

Well, in your particular case you simply "cannot" (in the sense of "easily") get the PBR. The MBR you just posted is partially corrupted, hence the disk manager cannot find any LogicalDrive (the PBR is first sector of the LogicalDrive) on the disk/image and HDhacker simply doesnt know which sector to get. For whatever reasons, the Partition Tables in the MBR you posted are completely 00ed out. At first sight the MBR CODE is seemingly that of 2K/XP. You can try running Testdisk (remember to use the /log) since the original disk seems like having being partitioned under XP, reply N (No) to the question if the disk was partitioned under Vista. Report BEFORE telling Testdisk to write anythng. jaclaz

Evidently I cannot have a conversation with you , there must be something lost in translation that we seem not to be able to overcome. The message is/was simple: You are using mostly unneededly a set of unstandard, partly wrong, overly complex procedures, commands and settings that can IMHO be greatly simplified. Some of these "unstandard" settings will most probably result in a number of applications having issues with the system. Just for the record, you never talked of Windows 3.0, but only of Windows 3.1 or 3.11 until your last post. As said, if you are happy with them, I am very happy too . jaclaz

You need a "tee" command/app. See: http://www.robvanderwoude.com/unixports.php http://www.robvanderwoude.com/files/tee_nt.txt http://www.commandline.co.uk/mtee/ jaclaz

Sure , the whole point being that a 129/16/63 or 120/16/63 is "right" (in the sense of standard) and a 936/4/35 is UNstandard. I still don't get from your reply if the laptop has one or two "real" hard disks and if two on which hard disk is the /msdos.img. Let's say that on a single hard disk with a single partition a "normal" DOS 6.22 in a "standard" roughly 64 Mb image CHS 130/16/63 works allright here with this menu.lst (that it seems to me simpler than the one you posted): title Microsoft MS-DOS 6.22 64 Mb map (hd0) (hd1) map --mem (hd0,0)/msdos.img (hd0) map --hook root (hd0,0) chainloader +1 (the need for A20 settings may depend from your BIOS, though it sounds "stange" to me that you actually need both the settings you have posted ) jaclaz

Oww, come on ... just having some fun, but actually jaclaz

But you didn't state the actual result you want (and BTW the one liners you posted with the /K swtch have NO way to be actually working, and once the /K is replaced with /L they become sintactically coorect but still make little sense), I had to guess and I am not even 100% sure to have guessed right. Good , you made it a perfect S.E.P. for me (exiting the loop nicely). You are consequently kindly invited to ignore this: http://groups.google.com/group/alt.msdos.batch/browse_thread/thread/382cde7864a7a9b2?pli=1 and this: jaclaz

Sure , I know, the IPad and the blackberry do the same and it is considered (by me and a few other people around) a form of "netiquette" to remove it as it: senselessly "promotes" the device/application (and you don't get any money for it) could (though this is specifically not the case for a Lumia 900 ) cause a sense of "envy" to the readers that would like (but cannot afford) a "desirable" item Think a bit about it, when you send a letter (a real, handwritten, paper letter), do you actually write on it below your signature: When you take your mom somewhere, do you put on her back a sign : jaclaz

Let's see how long we can loop like this. jaclaz

With all due respect , who does actually care from what device did you post that? Posted from a real PC running XP SP2, using Opera Browser 9.52. jaclaz

Well, IMHO, no, but again, if you are happy with them, that's good. If you could provide some documentation/examples about using map with THREE driives it would be nice. In your menu.lst (hd1) is never defined, does your PC have two "real" hard disks? If no floppy mapping is changed, there is no need to explicitly set the number of floppies, the number will remain as it was before. A 64 Mb image could normally be 129/16/63 or (a little larger) 130/16/63. And this is a good occasion to inaugurate latest work by larryb123456: jaclaz

With all due respect you are using a "crazy" CHS and went into all kinds of complex ways to make that image (and to map it in grub4dos). I really cannot make head or tail of your menu.lst entry : but if you are happy with it, that's OK. The bolded commands are undocumented. You map FROM_DRIVE to TO_DRIVE, to the best of my knowledge. The red one seems "random" (or a leftover), as you didn't modify any floppy mapping. The settings for a20 doesn't "look" right, but really cannot say. For the record, you DO NOT need a "boot" command in a menu.lst entry (it is implied and automatically executed when either a "title" or EOF is found) while you need it on command line. jaclaz

The issue right now is that the FOR /K is NOT a documented batch command in XP either. The syntax seems like it is a FOR /L loop: http://www.robvanderwoude.com/ntfor.php What those one-liners (a batch script tends to be a little more complex) - provided that a /L switch is used - seem aimed to perform is an apparently senseless task, i.e. going through a number of files named n.jpg (respectively with n from 3000000 to 3030799 and from 3030800 to 3030999) and replace all find occurences of the file with a copy of the same source image 0001o.jpg (and of course just one of the two spanning from 3000000 to 3030999 would do instead). Maybe if you explain the actual goal it would be easier to provide you with some suggestions. jaclaz

Two mistakes: you are panicking (you should not ) you are failing to report how EXACTLY you "put the folder "Factoryreset" in the root of a Windoes 7 repair", etc. Most probably you used an incorrect method or tool to modify the Windows 7 "repair" .iso, thus making it not bootable. jaclaz

The good thing about history is that if you study it, you can re-use some of the inventions of the past , something similar to this may become an everyday accessory, though the issue is re-engineering it to make it foldable/portable : You may not believe me, but I actually had a young guy, that once in the good ol' days when I told him to press alt + ctrl + del pressed with his left index the Alt, with his right index the right Ctrl and - short of fingers but not of ideas - pressed the Del with a pencil held in his mouth. Just for fun : jaclaz

....and you owe us TWO happy bunny images + one for the initial consultancy fee.... jaclaz

Naah, that two keys keyboard is the OLD idea , the future is a J38 : you will appreciate how it needs very little space. More seriously, I guess that in order to simplify the OSK is not there anymore or it has anyway a simplified look (and it would be anyway unavailable before complete boot), which also makes any and all bootmanagers (that normally use F-keys in a pre-boot environment) become unusable. (the good news being that grub4dos uses normally not F-keys, but I presume that next ones to be removed will be cursor keys) jaclaz

That's strange , probably because most people (and instructions/tutorials about it) use it as a SSH terminal, but using it as a "pure" Serial Terminal is quite straightforward, or at least as straightforward as using Hyperterminal, just in case: http://www.ciscoconsole.com/networking/how-to-use-putty-as-hyperterminal-in-windows-vista-windows-7.html/ jaclaz

Good . Just in case : You were a bit over-cautious, but I am happy to know that everything went well . Three notable differences between the "canonical way" and the setup you have are: Windows 7 instead of XP or 2K Using XP hyperterminal on Windows 7 USB to TTL instead of RS232 to TTL (hence the use of a driver to create a "virtual" COM port) it is likely that the "disconnection issue" is related to the last one . jaclaz

Don't worry , even if it was impossible Murphy's Law would apply . (actually it is possible, rare, unprobable, but perfectly possible) Yep , the one you were advised explicitly to (temporarily) forget about in order to ONLY follow the CarterinCanada guide (in order to simplify and avoid doubts). Having them clean is always better, see here: jaclaz

Once said that there are different families of Seagate drives and that they can use different set of commands, the *only* resource we have available (apart the two sets of commnds used for the BSY and LBA0 fix + a few more that you can find by browsing this forum and searching for "7200.11" or "7200.12") are these: http://files.hddguru.com/download/Datasheets/Seagate/Seagate%20Diagnostic%20RS-232%20Port/ jaclaz

Version 5A is perfect to me. Thanks a lot for the excellent work . Of course I will tell you .... jaclaz