jaclaz

First thing that comes to mind is that the command is Ctrl+Z, not Ctrl+z. Is it not - by any chance - and ES2 drive? You may want to try with all THREE different approaches: Head contacts insulated Motor contact insulated PCB completely detached You may also want to try with a a N1, see: http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=152456431478526 jaclaz

AND, the one you may learn (the hard way) the first time you open a power supply or an old monitor is: WAIT 15 minutes after having pulled the plug, as the biggish capacitors may hold a not-so-trifling charge for a few minutes . jaclaz

Yes, it is possible. A lot of circuits in a MB are protected by "electronic fuses" (they normally take 5 or 10 minutes to reset when completely UNpowered). jaclaz

I could, were I not a grumpy heartless bastard , compare with: JFYI, this thread has two hundred pages because tens of people, just like you, did not READ the READ-ME-FIRST, and asked AGAIN, and AGAIN and AGAIN, always the SAME questions, which are ALREADY (I hope clearly ) explained in the READ-ME-FIRST and/or in the FGA's and/or in n previous posts. You might understand how the Read-me-first, the FGA's and, more generally all the help, support, advice and answers given on this thread (BTW extensively contributed by yours truly) was provided in order to easen life of BOTH the "newbies" AND of the "experts", by giving useful info to the former and to let the latter need NOT to repeat, over, and over and over again the SAME things. It is frustrating how this effort not only is not appreciated, but from time to time a "newbie", just like you, comes here: hinting - not so subtly - that I am not as friendly as I should asking questions already asked again and again (and duly replied to over and over again) demanding personal assistance for issues already talked over and over n times jaclaz

If I may, simpler : But what was the actual question? jaclaz

Please , do review the READ ME FIRST: particularly point #6: you want a TTL adapter working at 3.3V TTL level (AND NOT one working at 5 V TTL level). Ask the seller if the device is selling is suitable to operate at 3.3 V TTL level <- you are going to give money to someone in exchange for a device, it's their responsability to guarantee that the device is suitable, if you don't get a clear, baked up by a return guarantee, answer, find someone else willing to sell the device AND guarantee it's specs.. There are tens of posts in this thread with reports of success and links to working adapters, as well as tens of people asking the SAME questions you just posted, come on . jaclaz

JFYI, the "standard" tool to recover from damaged USB sticks is something like this (example): http://www.flash-extractor.com The idea is to access the memory chip directly with "independent" hardware. Maybe you could drop a couple of enquiry lines to those guys (or the makers or similar hardware) and ask for some names of their customers. (or ask on their forum): http://flash-extractor.com/forum/index.php?c=2 jaclaz

But this is true also in the othe other half of the world. Really coincidentally yesterday I had to re-install an XP on a AMD motherboard with a ATi Radeon 9600 Pro video card. (second hand, low cost machine, to be used for office use only) Besided the fact that finding the drivers (now they are in the "legacy" part of the AMD site was a far-less-than-easy chore, I learned that to have the lousy ccc catalyst control panel you need .Net 2.0 . No big problem, but once the thingy and the driver was installed (and working allright) at a certain point the video switched off itself. No way to re-access it, needed to cut power off and re-boot. So I said to myself, I must have set the "normal" power saving profile and for *any*reason it switched video off after 20 minutes, and right I was, so I set it to "Always on", and after some other 20 minutes, the video switched off itself again. So uninstalled the stupid drivers, and tested the machine with the standard Vga one: no problems at all. Tried installing a slightly previous version of the drivers, same video switch off. BTW uninstalling a Radeon video card driver and reinstalling another one is not for the very faint of heart, as it involves some small trickery (I had to do quite a few searches to find the keys in Registry that remained "set" after uninstall). Continued searching the internet and found quite a number of reports of people with this exact issue, with "expert" replies such as "You have been playing a game that needs a lot of video processing power and the CPU is overheating" (the OP having reported he was playing a golf game), "Check the fan, it is not spinning" (the card has a passive cooler) and similar pearls of wisdom (sigh ). Finally I found (on an italian IBM dedicated board) that the issue could be a stupid service "ATi Hot Key Poller" that has issues on some motherboards (coincidentally AMD based). Disabled the service and everything works. Not being at all an expert on video cards, I instinctly always got (when not using the motherboard integrated one), Nvidia ones, evidently my instinct has helped keeping me out of troubles for several years . Anyway once upon a time you had a diskette (or directory on cd, or local directory created from a download) with a simple .inf file, you pointed the NT system to read the .inf file and the driver was installed, at the most a reboot was needed. Now the "legacy" set of drivers ran on me a program to register at ATi site, besides a temporary free acceess to play "lord of the rings" and even without the stupid ccc panel, forced on me a stupid service that switched off video after 20 minutes or so. There is no way you can convince me that this is "the right way" to do things, as opposed to the nonsensical complexity of Linux drivers, as I see it BOTH "models" suck big. jaclaz

It was intended just as a provocation. Of course there is nothing really "evil" , it is simply foolish the way some (read most if not all) programs are distributed (in the Linux world as well as in the MS one). You hit the nail right on the head. :thumbsup: If you check the thread I linked to you will see how I documented an adventure of mine looking for a specific tiny app (and it's source code and a way to re-compile it easily). In French a computer is called "ordinateur" something that could be translated into "organizer", and as a matter of fact a very big part of the computing activities are about using one form or another of database (be it a filesystem, a search engine, an Excel spreadsheet or your collection of MP3's). So it would be expected that the two major players in the field (the "private" MS guys and the "public" Linux guys) would compete in having their things "organized" and easily accessible this is not the case for either, of course for very different reasons, but if someone for another planet would peek on the Earth Internet and check the way things are organized he/she would postpone "first contact" to at least year 2500 as our information technology (actually the way it is filled with redundant data all messed up) shows how retarded we are. As I see it the great advantage (theoretical) of Linux over MS thingies is freedom to have a system exactly the way you want it, so the key would be (IMHO) to be "highly" modular (think of a form of LEGO with very tiny bricks) easily assemblable together, what we have in reality is a number of huge pieces of bloat (the so called "main" distros) very difficult to "componentize", often using an outdated (or custom updated) version of a given app, that you cannnot easily replace with another one. Then you have the "direct derivatives" basically you take a "main" distribution, you remove something, you add something else, you change it's name and voilà, here is a brand new (senseless) distro, which has more or less the same functionalities of the "main" one but soon will become (or already is) partially or totally incompatible with the "original". Now, it is good to have choices, but so many of them? IMHO they only "make noise", and everytime I think of the hours of work the good guys put into doing something substantially unuseful and the amount of "duplicate bytes" that are senselessly moved over the internet Look at the (partial) list of derivatives from Ubuntu: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DerivativeTeam/Derivatives How many can you count on that page? Are we really sure that each one of them makes sense/has any advantage over the "main" one/will be there tomorrow? Then you have a number of "minor" distributions, mainly of two kinds: the highly specialized ones (i.e. targeted at a given scope and with no provisions for *anything* else but the intended scope) the "fluff" ones (that some kid ripped from a "main" distro, only changing some details of the interface/looks, ususally very poorly mantained, outdated, sometimes "vanishing" abruptly from the internet, normally not updatable from the corresponding "main" distro as some senseless forks were introduced) Whilst the first ones may have some merits, I really cannot see why they cannot be organized as "add" or "subtract" packs from a same "main" distro. The result is that anyone approaching Linux will download a few tens of distro's, will get confused among them and will in the end choose to have more than 5 or 6 distro's, with - say - 90% of files duplicated (because each distro has a single or a few thingies he likes or has learned to use well) and will never learn to put together a single customized system that suits his/her needs or - on the opposite side - he/she will choose a single distro (and often become a fanboy/fangirl for it) and never change it (thus losing the advancements a "competing" distro might in the meantime offer). As I see both the above are exactly the opposite of "freedom". A few peeps with more time and dedication then the average will learn the innards of the OS, with lots of blood and sweat, and will finally manage to know the OS and be able to run a "decent" system, and then - possibly - this wil result in yet another distro . jaclaz ...and, for no apparent reason , check the way to fix computers: http://theoatmeal.com/blog/fix_computer (thanks to breaker http://reboot.pro/16794/ )

Hmmm. Contradictory statement, if the experience with DBAN indicates that it is sub-standard when compared to better tools. In any case: http://reboot.pro/13601/ http://www.rmprepusb.com/tutorials/erase-your-hard-disk And NO, you cannot start another OS from a booted PE, while you can start DBAN (or a better/faster tool) from grub4dos or Syslinux (grub4dos in your case may be easier since you can add an option for grldr.mbr to your \boot\BCD, leaving the PE booting sequence substantially unaltered, i.e. introducing an option to the bootmanager you are already using). If you really-really want to (and of course it depends on the actual media you have your PE on) you may have an entry in your .cmd setting "next boot" to DBAN (or better/faster tool) and force a shutdown/reboot, but it seems to me unneededly complex, though possible. Some hints are given here: http://reboot.pro/16283/ jaclaz EDIT: This statement: needs a clarification, there is a way, though it is experimental, troublesome and I personally doubt it will work from a PE 3.x, but you never know: http://reboot.pro/7391/

Well NO , that is not what I said. I have NO idea of HOW the circuit is made, so I have NO idea whether you can simply replace the IC. The IC of course sets the TTL level, I pointed you to a (possibly working) workaround, MUCH SIMPLER (IMHO) than: tracing your adapter PCB find and analyze a compatible schematics, comparing it to the schematics you traced compare the datasheets of the MAX3232 and MAX232 verify which EXACT version of the x232 you have in your hands and which EXACT version of the replacement you can get your hands on (there are different versions which require different capacitors) risk burning the new chip or the adapter if a mistake happens in any of the above Putting a pull down resistor will not do any "damage" to anything, in the worst case it won't simply work. Sure, life is tough , BTW I am pretty sure many people share the feeling of not having hard drives failing on them and/or attempt DIY repairs on them . jaclaz

IMHO "repositories" are the "evil" part of the Linux world. An only seemingly unrelated report (for the fun of it): http://reboot.pro/15207/ jaclaz

I guess it would be easier to "dumb down" the Tx line, see here: If you check the links in READ-ME-FIRST, point #6, you will see: http://www.interfacebus.com/voltage_threshold.html how signals emitted from a 3.3V devices (the hard disk) are theoretically compatible with those emitted by a 5V device, so the Rx line of the adapter should have no problems. The issue is on the Tx line of the adapter that will probably "shout" at 5 V to the receiver of the 3.3 V device (the hard disk) that won't be able to "understand", by limiting the peaks of the Tx you may get it working. Are you sure you are an engineer? WHAT the heck makes you think that each and every phone USB cable uses the same standard? Anything that trasmits at 3.3V TTL will do, anything that does so at 5V TTL level WILL NOT. Does the CA-101 trasmits at 3.3V TTL? If yes, it mucht do, if not, it may not. As a rule of thumb experimenting on experimental procedures is not the smartest choice in the world, actually even the CA-42 (which is known to be a valid adapter) is NOT among the "suggested" choices because of the "fakes" and the general difficulty by a lot of people to find the right pins/cables. I have NO idea if the CA-101 is a TTL adapter or not, all references I have ever seen are about the DKU-5 or CA-42 cable, so I find it improbable that the CA-101 is a pure TTL converter like the other two mentioned ones. @BOTH, please DO READ the READ-ME-FIRST: PARTICULARLY, but not only, point #6. jaclaz

That's not in the least accurate. BTW that also takes into account the drive cache, you can have something similar using one of theose "turboUSB" enabled sticks. What is seemingly "way too much" is the slowness of the stick (which I find "exceptional") 700/240=~3 Mb/s. The speed of the disk 700/45=~16 Mb/s is anyway at the very low end of "common" speeds. Why don't you benchmark with Atto ir Crystal Mark (cannot say if either can run on W98, but probably Atto, which is around since the dawn of time, can) jaclaz

In some cases we have seen issues with the partitioning or filesystem. There are two "levels" of recovery needed sometimes: the disk is accessible (hardware) the disk contents are readable (software) the hardware procedure only fulfills (hopefully) "level 1", you will need a partition recovery (or file recovery) approach to get your data back if something in the procedure made one or more "key" sectors unreadable or modified it's contents. Here is an example of such a recovery: jaclaz

The difference you report sounds a bit too much , but of course if you use a hard disk the bottle neck is the USB bus, while if you use a USB stick, the actual stick itself is likely to be the bottleneck. "Normally" you would probably have on a "fast" USB stick anything between 12 and 24, and on a hard disk anything between 25 and 40 MB/s. Compare: http://reboot.pro/9347/ jaclaz

Yep , but it is "abby something" : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072431/quotes?qt=qt0504329 that you have two such issues in such a short time. If I were you I would check (and double check and triple check) the internal hard disk and ALL software you installed for any kind of Virus/malware. jaclaz

The good (but also sad) thing is that - completely missing any kind of fantasy - I did not invent anything, I simply faked the game basing myself on my actual experience in managing - all these years - to stay clear from crappy MS OS versions (yes, it means that I have been wise , but it also means that I am around since toooo much time ) jaclaz

Speaking of games, I just coded a new one , inspired by MS OS releases . (See attached Excel worksheet) jaclaz MS-Chess.zip

I am not sure to get the actual question. You should have TWO .reg files, one with the *whatever* switched ON, and one with the *whatever* switched OFF. As uid0 pointed out you can use both regedit or reg.exe to merge one or the other to the registry, but if you have .reg filetype registered correctly you can also double click on the .reg files, just in case: http://ask-leo.com/how_do_i_get_a_reg_file_to_install.html But do you need a batch to right the value "on the fly " or to merge an existing .reg? REG ADD will write a key or value REG IMPORT will import a .reg file jaclaz

OK, I won't suggest it then. Cannot help for: Windows have firefox 11 acrobat reader my custom login screen. my custom boot screen . custom theme. almost 10 themes installed. minimum 20 new wall paper installed. previous boring windows wallpaper must be removed I may with: or some other software. or something more. once you have solved the previous list. If you would take a suggestion (exception made for nlite) you should downgrade the expectations of your project and do things one at the time (and only later assemble the bits and pieces together), i.e. learn ONLY how to add (unattended) Acrobat Reader (and the same method - when you will have learned it will be good for many more apps), then do a build with just your customized login screen, etc., etc. jaclaz

The world is so nice because everyone can have his/her opinions , OT , but not much , and JFYI: http://sourceforge.net/projects/winlockpro/ jaclaz

Memdisk is part of Syslinux. @spacemonkey I do not understand what your GOAL is. If PXE booting a .iso file ir if mounting a .iso file AFTER booting. In my experience "vague GOAL"+"declared stubborness"="Issues". If you want help for pxeboot/memdisk, you may possibly get it here: http://reboot.pro/forum/92/ http://reboot.pro/forum/12/ or here: http://www.syslinux.org/wiki/index.php/The_Syslinux_Project If you want help for your GOAL (and NOT for the way you think you should reach it), maybe I can help jaclaz

It must be something connected to Codepage (or NLS, or *whatever*) . You can try using instead of the "§" an "unlikely to be used character within the first 127 ASCII: http://www.asciitable.com/ A good candidate (actually two of them could be "{" and "}" (with the side effect of looking more nice) jaclaz

And the easiest way to check if something can be done is simply to check whether you are using: OHCI = USB 1.1 UHCI = USB 1.0 EHCI = USB 2.0 drivers (i.e which kind of chipset you have). If you have EHCI chipset BUT your BIOS does not use them with USB 2.0 speed, THEN PLoP (or other solutions) my be useful, if the chipset is OHCI or UHCI, there is no way you can speed it up. jaclaz