jaclaz

I see. BUT the cdob's version needs not the mountvol.exe: MOUNTVOL is actually used ONLY to limit the number of loops, but since all in all 26-2=24 can be categorized if not as "a few", at least as "not that many" . Try this (let's call it "findTAG.cmd") : @ECHO OFF SETLOCAL ENABLEDELAYEDEXPANSION SET Tagfile=test.txt FOR %%D IN (C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z) DO ( SET mymessage=Looking for "%%D:\%Tagfile%" .... Not found. DIR "%%D:\%Tagfile%"> nul 2>&1 && SET mymessage=!mymessage:Not found.=FOUND.! ECHO !mymessage! ) or this (let's call it ListEdrives.cmd): @ECHO OFF SETLOCAL ENABLEDELAYEDEXPANSION FOR %%D IN (C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z) DO ( SET mymessage=Looking for drive %%D: .... Not Existing. DIR %%D:\> nul 2>&1 && SET mymessage=!mymessage:Not Existing.=EXISTING.! ECHO !mymessage! ) And yes, in Explorer I have: Output of ListEdrives.cmd: C:\batches>ListEdrives.cmd Looking for drive C: .... EXISTING. Looking for drive D: .... EXISTING. Looking for drive E: .... Not Existing. Looking for drive F: .... Not Existing. Looking for drive G: .... Not Existing. Looking for drive H: .... Not Existing. Looking for drive I: .... Not Existing. Looking for drive J: .... Not Existing. Looking for drive K: .... EXISTING. Looking for drive L: .... Not Existing. Looking for drive M: .... Not Existing. Looking for drive N: .... Not Existing. Looking for drive O: .... Not Existing. Looking for drive P: .... Not Existing. Looking for drive Q: .... Not Existing. Looking for drive R: .... Not Existing. Looking for drive S: .... Not Existing. Looking for drive T: .... Not Existing. Looking for drive U: .... Not Existing. Looking for drive V: .... Not Existing. Looking for drive W: .... Not Existing. Looking for drive X: .... Not Existing. Looking for drive Y: .... Not Existing. Looking for drive Z: .... Not Existing. jaclaz

Remembering that Analysts on average did NOT forecast (lately) the whole world crisis, and that IMHO what they say is often in no way more accurate than waht an average joe says, From: http://www.pcworld.com/article/260217/microsoft_calls_windows_8_complete_but_analysts_are_concerned.html Highlighted the IMHO interesting parts. Once removed the SERIOUS English and logical errors (you CANNOT use "very-high-quality", NOR "exciting" "in the same sentence with "Metro Apps", let alone attributing these adjectives to them), there is IMHO an issue of some kind . I consider myself (all in all) a rather knowledgeable PC user, and also think I have a rather good memory . I thought a little bit to the number of programs I actually use. There are no more than 20 that I use on a daily basis. And no more than 200 that I use once in a while (very often to do very specific and "advanced" things). I don't think to have ever run in my whole computing life 5,000 programs, or maybe I did, but forgot about 4,000 of them (as they were useless, didn't work or had a much better alternative). If the trend is towards hundreds or thousands of (nonsense) apps, each doing only a very specific thing, the new frontier should be an app that helps the user to find the app he needs to do something, a user friendly database kind of thingy. jaclaz

Ilko, cannot say if it applies specifically, but do check these: jaclaz

Like: Seriously, a title like: would IMHO do nicely . @N30N To clarify. IDE/PATA drives work on *any* machine, even before installing specific motherboard/chipset and bus drivers because the hardware is supported by a basic "one-size-fits-all" set of drivers already included in the OS CD. SATA/AHCI drives need in most cases a set of specific drivers integrated to the OS CD (or loaded through the "F6 floppy" provision). Installing on another machine and "porting" the install is the MOST difficult thing you could have attempted (please read as "it won't work") due to the HAL, XP installs are deeply linked to the hardware and "moving" an install, while doable, is "advanced-advanced". You have five options (in order of difficulty according to my view): access the BIOS and set the hard disks as "IDE emulation mode" and install normaly (but you will lose some speed in disk operations) make a "F6 floppy disk" with the appropriate driver and use it at install integrate the whole set of BTS Driverspack for XP (i.e. burn a new CD with the added set of drivers) integrate the specific driver to the install CD (i.e. burn a new CD with the added driver) See option #1:access the BIOS and set the hard disks as "IDE emulation mode" and install normaly BUT later install the appropriate driver and change the setting in BIOS Choose one and ask for help on that one, if needed . jaclaz

Very, very, very difficult (speaking of NTFS). The whole point of using a "captive" solution is that you need not to know (much) about the actual target filesystem (but you need to know very well how the "native" drivers/structure parser/etc. work) and all you have to do is to "interface" to a given set of (other OS) tools files, but you give a rather heavy "bundle" on the user, the need to have a license for the "other OS" (to be "kosher"). But the situation has changed in these years and the Linux driver is now also "native" (and open source). Still, in a scale 0 to 10 of difficulty, writing a kernel driver should be between 8 and 9 . jaclaz

I normally use the dsfok toolkit and/or hexalter and/or gsar and/or echoo.com. Though not .iso related, you can have a look at Mbrbatch/mkimg and/or makebs to have an idea of the usage. http://reboot.pro/3191/ <- the version here: http://reboot.pro/5000/#entry45422 has been modified to use bpatcher instead so that it works on 64 bit OS also http://reboot.pro/2362/ You will need to be careful with maht, as in "plain batch" anything above 7FFFFFFF or 2147483647 may become "a suffusion of yellow". Some (hopefully) useful routines are here: http://reboot.pro/2986/ An .iso oriented batch is here: http://reboot.pro/12406/ (again only useful to get a general idea) jaclaz

Sure I did , but by "nice", I meant "nice" , not that I personally liked it I mean, no offence intended, but to do similar things in NT based systems I have always used a few lines in one of my half@§§ed batches, example: @ECHO OFF CLS SET to_ping=8.8.8.8 SET Today=%Date% SET Today=%Today:/=_% :loop FOR /F "tokens=5 delims==, " %%A IN ('ping -n 1 %to_ping% ^|FIND "Pacchetti"') DO ( ECHO. IF %%A.==0. ( ECHO %Date%-%time% NO_PING %to_ping% REM Optional log REM ECHO %Date%-%time% NO_PING %to_ping%>>%Today%.log ) ::Poorman's WAIT ::Very roughly 60 second intervals ::it would be much beeter to use AT, SCHTASKS or any of the n third party "WAIT" tools FOR /L %%B in (0,1,4100) DO PING -n 1 127.0.1.1>nul GOTO :loop JFYI, Win9x/Me have the PING command allright : http://www.computerhope.com/pinghlp.htm "real" DOS misses alltogether the TCP/IP stack , BUT : http://wisdomtree.info/dos/dostcpip.htm#Kernel http://web.archive.org/web/20050223103309/http://www.smashco.com/wattcp.asp http://www.bootablecd.de/fdhelp-dos/en/hhstndrd/network/msclient.htm http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/freedos/index.php?title=Networking_FreeDOS_-_MS_Client http://www.jacco2.dds.nl/samba/dos.html jaclaz

I would have sweared that we are in : on a thread titled: Dos does not mean "command line", nor CLI, it means DOS. XP and 7, last time I checked, were part of the NT family of OS and not of the 9x/Me one (DOS based). So, nice tool , but maybe posted in the "wrong" place jaclaz

You are welcome An interesting one. Possibly adapting the example snippet to what you want to do . I took the original request as: I want to write a new batch file, similar to the one I already wrote, but I don't know how to get the Last Modified date/time of file; how can I do this? And not as: I had someone write for me a batch file. I need someone to write a new one for me with these other features: ...... Had you actually READ the given thread, you might have read also this post : Since "your" batch already uses variable expansion: http://www.robvanderwoude.com/ntfor.php and the t element of an expanded variable represents date/time (last modified one). "Your" batch becomes nicely: The general idea was to give you some missing pieces (of various puzzles ) but let you find the way to re-compose the puzzle.... jaclaz

I am sorry , unfortunately I don't keep in stock 27" Viewsonic displays anymore. I am working on hacking a few screens salvaged from devices like these: http://www.ebay.it/itm/Lotto-stock-di-10-lettori-MP4-Mediacom-Video-AVI-Slim-Player-8GB-ME-XS808GN-TG-/220955785162?pt=Lettori_audio_portatili_digitali_MP3_e_video_MP4_&hash=item3371fdb7ca I can assure you that one of these 1.8" inch screens will provide a much better experience with the brand new Windows®8 as compared to a 27" inch screen. I conducted a research, and though everyone with a numbers of neurons n>=2 insisted pointlessly that they had to actually work and that they wanted large screens and lots of open windows/programs in them, the vast majority with n=1 ( or less ) were very convincing is stating that all you need is as many open windows/apps as neurons you possess and working is something they simply want to be payed for, not what they actually do or want to do or are capable to do, so, on average, for the vast majority of users, a 1.8" display with one big window (big is to be intended as relative to the screen size) is enough. Large displays are intended (possibly at least 100 Hz and HD) exclusively as means to look at lousy low-resolution supposedly funny videos downloaded from YouTube. Which of course calls for a spoiler : jaclaz

I know that, as often happens , this is off topic , but not too much . I happened to land here: http://www.fybertech.com/forums/index.php?topic=1020.0 and this is the "better" place to put it I can think of . Useless? Maybe yes, maybe no. jaclaz

Yes. http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/questions-with-yes-or-no-answers.html Easier to get the "last modified date" is to actually DIR the file. Say that you have a file c:\test.txt Dir C:\test.txt will show you something like (this is my Italian interface): C:\>dir test.txt Il volume nell'unità C non ha etichetta. Numero di serie del volume: C08C-CFD9 Directory di C:\ 19/12/2011 12:05 62 Test.txt 1 File 62 byte 0 Directory 147.178.754.048 byte disponibili Then try: to get the Creation date) This is the (last) Access date. Same goes for /TW for (last) Write date Parsing any of these three commands results amounts more or less to: @ECHO OFF FOR /F "tokens=1,2,3 delims=/ " %%A IN ('DIR /TA C:\test.txt ^| FIND /I "test.txt"') DO ( SET A_Day=%%A SET A_Month=%%B SET A_Year=%%C ) SET A_ But see this thread also : jaclaz

Off topic , but not much , you can have view/print support for the stoopid docx and xlsx through a couple of nice proggies, each one only around 4 Mb: http://www.officeviewers.com/ The good guys at Softmaker also provide for FREE BOTH a Linux and a Windows version of their (old) 2008 office-like suite /current is "2012"): http://www.softmakeroffice.com/ jaclaz

Think Octopus : jaclaz

Misunderstanding . The Sysynternals/Winternals utility/tool is called "NTFSDOS" or "NTFSDOS Professional", as in: The Sysinternal/WInternal other one is/was called "NTFS for Windows 98" and came into a Free Read Only version that is still around and into a "Professional" version (Commercial). As well as NTFSDOS, it uses the "captive" approach, i.e. uses "regular" NT/2K (cannot say if XP) files. The Datapol/Avira Tool is called "NTFS4DOS" or "NTFS4DOS Personal": The Paragon app/tool is called "NTFS for Win98": http://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-win98/download.html There is also a NTFS reader by Diskinternals called "NTFS Reader for Windows 95, 98, Me" http://www.diskinternals.com/ntfs-reader/ And a NTFS reader from NTFS.COM called "NTFS Reader for DOS": http://www.ntfs.com/products.htm Fantasy in naming apps is usually not the most relevant capability programmers have.... jaclaz

Better: PROBLEMCHYLD: You write in a rather good English for a Frenchmen How comes your nick is ALL CAPITALS? jaclaz

I would rephrase the above in a slightly more aggressive couple of questions: How many demented developers are there? And are they really all SO §@ç#ing demented? Getting "sideways" from the strict "OS" field, I would presume that among the reasons why SilverLight is/has been/will be a totally dead language (or *whatever* it is/was/will be) it is exactly because it found very few followers among the deverlopers community, thanks heaven. That is why the contents of my few previous posts are preoccupying , there is no reason for the mentioned: and if not that of luring the inexperienced kids into getting on the bandwagon..... You, know dealers outside the school, LSD and stuff: http://www.snopes.com/horrors/drugs/bluestar.asp I chose this example on purpose, being of course absolutely false, BECAUSE: ... a typical case of fail at failing... Try summing inexperienced developers to a senseless environment, I doubt that the result can be anywhere similar to a good app. jaclaz

Hadn't you noticed , the issue is about a foreigner that reads and writes English through Google Translate. I can assure you that if you feed Rule 11 to Google Translate and get it in pseudo-Italian, between 3/4 and 4/5 of Italians reading it will not be able to understand it, I strongly suspect that the same would happen from English to French Heck , do you think that the Allmighty was kidding with the Tower of Babel thingy? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Babel For no apparent reason , another Rule 11 : jaclaz

The common netiquette used on Forums prescribes the use of small letters, like in any normally written text. IF YOU WRITE IN CAPITAL LETTERS it seems like you are SHOUTING!. Please edit your post, and write in small letters. [Pseudo-french] L'éducation commune utilisée sur les forums prescrit l'utilisation de petites lettres, comme dans n'importe quel texte écrit normalement. Si vous écrivez EN LETTRES MAJUSCULES, il semble que vous êtes en criant! S'il vous plaît éditer votre message, et d'écrire en lettres minuscules. [/Pseudo-french] @Kel&@Walrus Comeon, guys , he is French, and he is obviously having some difficulties with English. jaclaz

Technically, and to be a little picky , what you attached is NOT a MBR. It is first sector of a \\PhysicalDrive, depending on it's contents, it may be: a MBR a bootsector/PBR/VBR all 0's <-equates to "a suffusion of yellow" something else Once the contents of such sector has been analyzed and found to be conforming to a MBR (either DATA or CODE or both) structure or to a PBR (again either DATA or CODE or both) structure, then you will know what it is. MBRwizard parses *whatever* you give it as if it was conforming to a MBR structure, imagine that you want to use an Italian-English dictionary to translate from Spanish to English even if you find some words that are similar or actually the same, the result will be mostly gibberish.... It is still a FAT16 bootsector, the difference with the one on the Caleb, besides the differnces in DATA is the CODE, this one is the "real MS-DOS" code, "MSDOS5.0", whilst the Caleb is "MSWIN4.0", i.e. Win 9x. Another thing to note is that this one is media 240 (Floppy) whilst the Caleb is media 248 (hard disk). Bootsector or PBR structure:Start position: 0x00000000 Position 0 of open file: 0x00000000 GENERAL DATA: Offset Description Value Notes 0 0000 JMP instruction: EB3C90 54 0036 Filesytem: FAT16 510 01FE Magic Bytes: 0xAA55 3 0003 OEM String: MSDOS5.0 11 000B Bytes per sector: 0200 512 13 000D Sectors per cluster: 04 4 14 000E Reserved sectors: 0001 1 16 0010 Number of FAT(s): 02 2 17 0011 Max ROOT entries: 0200 512 19 0013 Small type sectors: 0000 0 21 0015 Media type: F0 240 22 0016 Sectors per FAT: 00F1 241 24 0018 Sectors per Head: 0020 32 26 001A Number of Heads: 0008 8 28 001C Sectors Before: 00000000 0 32 0020 Large Sectors: 0003C300 246528 36 0024 Disk number: 00 0 37 0025 Current Head: 00 0 38 0026 NT signature: 29 41 77 004D Volume Serial: 16561E37 374742583 43 002B Volume label: NO NAME 54 0036 System ID: FAT16 You may find of interest these: and the spreadsheets posted. jaclaz

I assume I can "put" you in the happy bunnies basket! http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=128727&st=10 Sure, you learned a whole bunch of new things, a lot like a crash-course in multi-booting, you need some time to digest the info. It has been a pleasure to try and assist you in your search for the solution , and is not the usual complimentary sentence, I sincerely hope that I will have in 30 or so years the same drive, curiosity and will to learn you just demonstrated. I actually need to bow before your UNcommon spirit of adventure. jaclaz

As expected, it is a "normal" MS-DOS FAT16 bootsector or PBR. Bootsector or PBR structure:Start position: 0x00000000 Position 0 of open file: 0x00000000 GENERAL DATA: Offset Description Value Notes Dec Hex Hex Dec 0 0000 JMP instruction: EB3E90 54 0036 Filesytem: FAT16 510 01FE Magic Bytes: 0xAA55 3 0003 OEM String: MSWIN4.0 11 000B Bytes per sector: 0200 512 13 000D Sectors per cluster: 08 8 14 000E Reserved sectors: 0001 1 16 0010 Number of FAT(s): 02 2 17 0011 Max ROOT entries: 0200 512 19 0013 Small type sectors: 0000 0 21 0015 Media type: F8 248 22 0016 Sectors per FAT: 008A 138 24 0018 Sectors per Head: 0020 32 26 001A Number of Heads: 0040 64 28 001C Sectors Before: 00000000 0 32 0020 Large Sectors: 00044D00 281856 36 0024 Disk number: 00 0 37 0025 Current Head: 00 0 38 0026 NT signature: 29 41 77 004D Volume Serial: 1E0076C5 503346885 43 002B Volume label: NO NAME 54 0036 System ID: FAT16 472 01D8 System File 1: IO SYS 483 01E3 System File 2: MSDOS SYS jaclaz

NO, it is NOT. Make a copy of first absolute sector of the diskette. Put it into a .zip file. Attach the .zip file. Just like you did on the mentioned Caleb thread. MBRWizard tries to interpret or parse *whatever* it finds, assuming it represents a MBR, you need to check the *whatever* AND NOT the "interpreted" *whatever*. jaclaz

Well, you asked for it, so yes, you are wrong! The two utiities are at least THREE. The Winternals/Sysinternals one uses later OS system files: not entirely unlike the Linux "captive" drivers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captive_NTFS AFAIK the Paragon and the Datapol/Avira NTFS4DOS use their own drivers. IMHO, writing from scratch filesystems drivers may be a non-trifling chore. I presume that having something like FUSE or DOKAN: http://code.google.com/p/dokan/ http://dokan-dev.net/en/ working on 9x/Me would be a "better" approach, in the sense that (I am told that) writing a filesystem driver on top of it is realtively simple. jaclaz

NO actual need for defense at all, as you evidently very well know : Good if the second or third entries work allright for you, you can delete the BOOTMGR and \boot\BCD from the Windows XP disk, those files are only used by the first entry. Sure, that will be in the BOOT.INI on first disk: or: the default for 2K is "WINNT", but you nay have changed the name of the install directory BUT, it could also be in grub4dos menu.lst EITHER of : title Windows 2000 on third disk first partiton map (hd0) (hd2) map (hd2) (hd0) map --hook root (hd0,0) chainloader +1 title Windows 2000 on third disk first partiton map (hd0) (hd2) map (hd2) (hd0) map --hook root (hd0,0) chainloader /ntldr In practice what this kind of grub4dos commands do is what you used to do manually by accessing the BIOS, i.e. change the BIOS hard disk order by re-mapping disks. jaclaz