jaclaz

Look, I don't want to seem grumpier than what I actually am. I perfectly agree that 1 K bucks is an inane amount of money for a disk, but calling for the rights of backing up purchased software is IMHO pure bull§hit. Complex systems and (particularly the market) are self-regulating. If in the last few years you payed 50 grands for 50 lousy Maxtor 40 Gb disks, it means that you could afford it. (straight and simple) If you prefer the related coin-op games made you gather much more than the 50 bucks, covering the actual buying of the original games, their maintenance and made a living for you and the other peeps in your firm. Is US $ 1,000.00 an unfair price? Very possibly. But don't whine about it, you are not Robin Hood, and they are not the Sheriff of Nottingham. They - like any other Commercial enterprise - do their business (which actually is trying to get the more money they can) exactly as you are doing yours (trying to make more money by saving on spare parts), that's the game and the way it is played. This said, I believe you when you affirm that you are doing it without any nefarious design (if not to save some US $ 950 apiece for any of those spares ), but you still have to understand how - setting aside the legal aspects that may or may not be relevant - this topic conflicts with Rule #1.a, and as such cannot and won't be further continued. jaclaz

Is this the same board or you have found a scrap yard full of Asus boards? What you report NOW sounds a lot like a "botched" IDE bus. jaclaz

Wild guess, mind you, but try running (double click ) artgalry.exe, it may re-register correctly. See also: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.ms-windows.apps.misc/browse_thread/thread/b36e86e6a5014e83 I seem to remember it was an issue in the good ol' days.... jaclaz

Yep, we miss some info on that part of the world, maybe blackwingcat may provide some insight. (he is the only very active member I recall being from Japan) For NO apparent reason (if not adding to the confusion) : jaclaz

My impression is that the good Japanese guys think very like us: http://yaokou.cocolog-nifty.com/yaotyan/2011/10/windows8windows.html http://www.sd-dream.com/pasocompass/neta/11111201Windows8.html?cat=Windows8+DP%E7%89%88%E3%83%AC%E3%83%93%E3%83%A5%E3%83%BC Usual (absolutely faked ) possible Japanese translations : 名も無きクラップインタフェース 名無しのインターフェースくだらないこと jaclaz

I am confused by this? According to tutorial #30 and unless I am mistaken the title states: There is no reference to using a F6 floppy with the drivers. No, but there is a way to use floppy images INSTEAD of a "physical" floppy for "F6" install of the drivers, which is actually the point. (hint: search on the page for string "F6" ) The F11 menu sometimes does not work, try changing boot order in the BIOS, also try "cold boot" physically removing the power plug and reinserting it. How big is the USB stick? Some motherboards won't like a "big" sized USB stick. Of course it is possible that something went wrong when using RMPREPUSB, do the following: Get hdhacker: http://dimio.altervista.org/eng/ use it to make a copy of both the MBR and the PBR of the active partition on the USB stick (respectively \\.\Physicaldrive and \\.\LogicalDrive) compress the two files together and attach the resulting archive, so that I can have a look at them. My head is spinning There is a limit to attachments, just delete the screenshots you previously attached and you will have the capacity restored. A good idea would be for future screenshots to upload them to a free fiel hosting service and post a link instead of attaching them. BUT, I am lost, please answer these: Can you now boot (in IDE mode) that XP install? Can you access a USB stick from it (I mean from the booted XP in IDE mode)? jaclaz

Thanks for coming back and detailing the solution (or workaround) to the issue . As a matter of fact, you might have documented something that could be turned to an advantage in a few "narrow" fields: http://winfe.wordpress.com/ jaclaz

Wait a minute. It seems to me like you have an issue copying the drivers to the CD. What program are you using? The drivers, which I verified you can get from here: ftp://134.100.120.22/pub/mirrors/3com_nic/3c3fe575c/fe575291.exe are inside a (self-extracting) Winzip archive. What you should do is (on the "other" computer) create a new directory , let's say C:\3comNic\ and extract to that directory the archive, you can dobleckick on the downloaded file and tell it to extract to that folder. Then, you burn the whole folder to the CD. A recommended app is IMGBURN: http://www.imgburn.com/ but you can use *any* burning tool you are familiar with, since you are going anyway to "waste" a CD, you could add to the new CD also a copy of the contents of the windows CD, the screenshots you posted seem to say that a missing file is inside the actual Win98 CD, but this could also be because you have (seemingly) NO files in the "driiver" CD you made. jaclaz

Yes, really sorry if my link to that site has offended anyone, it was not my intention, we were just having some "generic" fun, and we mocked a little bit everyone, including the good Polish , but absolutely no particular meaning was given to any of the post. Just not to be accused to be partial, a (completely off-topic ) representation of a dangerous e-mail Irish virus: and the usual approach to work in Italy : jaclaz

Yes, but you see, this has always been. We (the western) are taught that a number of symbols in a given order is associated to a meaning, they (the eastern) use single pictograms/ideograms to express basic "concepts" and when these are assembled they associate the concepts to the meaning. It is an entirely different way of the brain to react to written text, it provides a definite advantage where icons (or tiles) are used, and they tend to develop a superior capability to identify shapes, and identify "patterns" and connect them to meanings. See, as an "extreme" example: http://advanced-japanese-for-beginners.blogspot.it/2012/04/longest-word.html We (at least myself) find this way extremely difficult, and to understand (a very few) kanji I need every kind of trick/mnemonics. There are interesting approaches in this particular field: http://www.vizcabulary.com/ http://www.tofugu.com/2012/05/29/the-kanji-that-look-like-their-meanings/ http://www.logobird.com/japanese-kanji-food-pictograms/ jaclaz

Let me doubt that a "custom firmware" is used. It is much more likely that some space in either the hard disk board eprom/flash chip (if any) or in the reserved sectors is used to store a challenge code or serial. Even more likely it is that an HPA is created on the disk. You do understand that what you have described is EXACTLY a copy-protection scheme? The *whatever* is clearly put there in order to avoid UNauthorized duplication, and suggesting ways to work around it would perfectly fit the mentioned Rule #1.a. The issue won't be discussed further what I can tell you is that this is the kind of problem that you either solve yourself, and everything is up to your conscience or it should be taken to the Commercial level. In my experience companies using similar approaches tend, if asked nicely but firmly, to make a provision for the replacement of burned hardware for a more reasonable fee (you physically deliver back to them the failed hard disk and they send you a new one for the cost of the hardware + moderate technical/handling fees). Of course it all depends on the numbers your company makes with that supplier. There are tens of tools, some "software only" and freeware, most hardware/software and Commercial, a few ones selling for several thousands of bucks , able to dig much deeper then you might ever want inside a hard disk, usually they are oriented to data recovery, if you want to go ahead, search for them, no more hints/ideas from me, 'nuff said. jaclaz

No need to further comment, just look at his "page": http://www.neowin.net/profile/brad_sams Besides the actual photo, which represents clearly a typical Fortune 500 consultant/Wall Street Journal reader Or the linkedIn profile: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/brad-sams/10/849/8b9 It sounds a lot like the guy is an "aggressive" kind of consultant, strongly interested in the financial part of everything. , most probably he is a very nice guy , but the image he projects is definitely a bit yuppish and (let's say ) "non-unbiased". jaclaz

That is: NOT a version of grub4dos (grub4dos version after 0.4.3 have a date 0.4.4 2009-10-16 being the ONLY recommended version of the 0.4.4 series it is SEVERELY outdated Get LATEST "Featured" from here (NOT any among the TestOnly version): http://code.google.com/p/grub4dos-chenall/downloads/list Then follow this gude: http://diddy.boot-land.net/pxe/ If you want to better understand how grub4dos works, besides the readme.txt, do check the guide: http://diddy.boot-land.net/grub4dos/Grub4dos.htm Though many new features were added to grub4dos the "base" is still valid. Check also on reboot.pro, example: http://reboot.pro/15821/ On UNrelated news , fresh of today, iPXE+http boot: http://reboot.pro/17520/ jaclaz

I cant do this without having access to an ODD. Please re-read: If you use USB install (of course if it works) you need NOT ANY ODD (nor IDE/PATA nor SATA) as everything you need to install is on the USB stick. BUT if your system is already working in IDE mode, as well, the instructions you got from Asrock are not really-really limited to an ODD, you can access the drivers from the USB stick (in IDE mode) and copy them to a folder on the same SATA hard disk, then after having switched ports, follow the instructions but getting the files from the SATA hard disk folder INSTEAD of the SATA ODD (step B.8) jaclaz

...and thus most probably made a non-bootable CD.... Well, it must have booted before to allow you the now botched install Try again, after having READ what to do and how to do it: http://driverpacks.net/docs/beginners-guide-windows-xp nlite (as in the above) is possibly the easiest tool to create the CD image, which can also be created manually, in any case IMGBURN is advised to actually burn to CD: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2325399,00.asp NO prob . jaclaz

Well, due to the success of the thingy (and the huge bandwidth used) the good guys turned to use bittorrent which is an alternate approach, technically "peer-to-peer", depending on the browser you are using it may have a bittirrent client (Opera comes to mind) or you might need a specific bittorrent tool. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_BitTorrent_clients jaclaz

Hmmm. WHICH EXACT "copy the drive efforts" have been tested? WHICH EXACT Maxtor model are they? Please be aware that you (actually we, now ) may be walking on a very fine line , as this could result in the provisions of Rule #1.a: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?app=forums&module=extras&section=boardrules jaclaz

Which brings us back to square #1 on a few other thread Use NIRCMD: http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/nircmd.html though NOT the answer to all questions (as an example the Answer to the ultimate question about life, the universe and everything is instead 42 ) it does represent an answer to most common day problems where bathc is involved. exec hide, exec2 hide or execmd might be what you need: http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/nircmd2.html#using Or use any of the various alternative approaches: http://blogs.technet.com/b/heyscriptingguy/archive/2007/12/05/hey-scripting-guy-how-can-i-start-a-script-in-a-hidden-window.aspx http://superuser.com/questions/62525/run-a-completly-hidden-batch-file Apart for the "pure .vbs" ones, the Iexpress one could be handy. No prob . jaclaz

The idea is to use your current CD as "source", copy it (on a working machine) to a hard disk directory, "integrate" to it the drivers and burn a new install CD. Since you are "new" to the specific chore, I would suggest you to leave alone (for the moment) the manufacturer's drivers (that may be more complex to be "integrated" and use instead the "drivers" pack: http://driverpacks.net/ the 0x0000007E error is not necessarily connected with Mass Storage drivers missing (0x0000007B is). What you actually *need* to have the PC booting is normally: Chipset drivers Mass Storage Drivers no need for graphics drivers (at the most you will have a low resolution), maybe you might want to have also the LAN drivers (but if the XP boots, you can still add them later via another CD or USB stick should the Lan card not be supported by the built-in XP drivers). Once you have the laptop boot, then you can update the drivers from the manufacturer's site. jaclaz

Try with a "fully qualified" path and try adding a debug4 directive: http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=9435 jaclaz

Can you boot in safe mode? How exactly are you installing the XP? From CD? Is it an original (hologram) CD or a "burned" one (possibly with Service Packs integrated? (it could be simlpy a "bad burn" of the CD) Have you integrated the specific drivers for that machine? jaclaz

Hmmm I got 18 hits, isues gets 21, hence more isues than probloms.... jaclaz

It's from French http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusionnisme#Techniques_de_prestidigitation http://www.thefreedictionary.com/prestidigitator Actually is from Latin presti digiti (though the neologism was originated in France ): http://www.devoir-de-philosophie.com/dissertation-prestidigitation-88682.html http://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1831&context=ocj&sei-redir=1 I find fun when I can spot in a "foreign" language a single word that is clearly an "import": prestidigitator <- English (ok not really common) http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definitions/prestidigitator prestidigitateur <-French prestidigitatore (o prestigiatore) <-Italian prestidigitador <- Spanish prestidigitador <- Portuguese prestidigitator <- Romanian jaclaz

Using ASSOC ! back to square #1, actually post #2 (and given links). assoc .java=java.Document This should do Option Explicit Dim objShell Set objShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell") objShell.Run("%comspec% /K assoc.java=java.Document "), 1, True objShell.Run("%comspec% /K ftype java.Document =""C:\Program Files (x86)\Ready to Program\Ready.exe"" ""%1"""), 1, True jaclaz

Being no roads, nor chickens behind the green glass door (but countless eggs and riddles ) , Why does the rooster cross the expressway? jaclaz