jaclaz

How EXACTLY are/were your BIOS/EFI/UEFI settings? How EXACTLY was local disk partitioned/formatted? (I mean, AFAIK if you can boot on that machine a "full" Windows XP (BTW 32 or 64 bit?) the EFI/UEFI should be set to "BIOS emulation mode" and the disk should be MBR partitioned.) How EXACTLY did you install RC to local disk? How EXACTLY is the Recovery console invoked? (through standard NTLDR/BOOT.INI or other methods) How EXACTLY does your install fail? (would not run is NOT a desctriptions of what is happening, do you get an error - white on black- , a BSOD - white on blue, which EXACT error message, or it just hangs) Does Recovery Console booted from CD work? jaclaz

Since you have Extensions enabled you can also avoid to set the "original" variable. This should work : :start >>"bin_output\results.txt" fc /b %1 %2 shift /2 if [%2] equ [] goto :eof goto start jaclaz

Usually people learn from history (and past mistakes). It seems like this is not the case, anyone old enough to remember this? http://toastytech.com/guis/bob.html and yes, they should have ALSO been publicly whipped (40 lashes ) for the most gratuitious use of adjective "scrumptious" : http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/scrumptious since 1925 : http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks07/0700911.txt jaclaz

No, actually it was just semantics, the particular way I understood the sentence. I read this: as: to me the subject is the hard drive and not the model. It can be read as well as : (and I have rarely seen a laptop label containing info about the internal hard disk) jaclaz

WHY it is so difficult to READ the READ-ME-FIRST? And in this particular case, READing the message just above yours? VOLTAGE (POWER) is NOT connected to TTL level (if not on a few particular adapters, mentioned in the READ-ME-FIRST). Ask the seller of the item for PROPER specifications (or find another seller that provides them)! You CANNOT from a picture decide what an adapter does. For the record that adapter is powered at 5 V from the USB bus (and can power - selecting it with the jumper you saw - target devices at either 3.3 Volts or 5Volts) BUT THIS IS POWER, NOT, NOT, NOT TTL levels! The PL2303 chip USUALLY is used in adapters that will output 3.3V TTL Levels (good ) but you CANNOT SAY FOR SURE. Had you spent 5 (five minutes) searching on the board for PL2303 (AFTER having READ the READ-ME-FIRST) you would have found at least: So, yes, for all we know PL2303 based converters èrovide the "right" TTL level, but this has NOTHING to do with the way and POWER voltage level. jaclaz

That's good, can you post a copy if the spreadsheet with the corrections (manually typing the correction replacing the formula and making the cell, say, RED background? I'll check . (and see what I can do with the formula) Hmmm. jaclaz

It mostly depends on the condition if UNIQUENESS of the fields. I mean, if you have in Sheet #2 Client# listed ONLY ONCE (and/or Client Name listed ONLY ONCE) it would be easier, as you can do a VLOOKUP of sheet#2 on the right of the data you have on sheet #1. If there are multiple instances of Client# or Client Name on sheet#2 things may get more complex. jaclaz

Read the answers again. Either it's dead or it's been removed. Removed but leaving it's label on thin air? (I read OP as having read the actula HDD label and not the laptop one Only to avoid possible misunderstandings you DO NOT want to remove the HDD cover, you want to remove the HDD from the laptop (and to do this you will probably need to remove the HDD BAY cover or disassemble the laptop case) jaclaz

I am sure. 99% of adapters built around a MAX232 will give 5V TTL signal level (NO good). Usually converters based on Maxim are with chip MAX 3232 which operates at 3.3V TTL levels (good ). There is NORMALLY no connection between Power voltage and TTL level, it depends not only on the chip used but also on the circuitry, you can well build a converter powered at 5 V AND using a MAX232 BUT outputting 3.3V TTL level (good ): http://www.mbarron.net/mbus/ http://www.panuworld.net/nuukiaworld/hardware/cables/basics.htm A MAX 232 with no transistor or zener to pull down the level WILL NOT work, some adapters may (if powered at around 3 V) see more on points #6 and #10 of read-me-first: Since you are paying money to buy the adapter you should be able to ask the seller EXACT specs (and if not compatible get another adapter, by now several tens reported to be working were listed in this thread). jaclaz

That's not really a typo, it's a neologism, something cross-breed between an alarm and an alert is an alart jaclaz

READ FGA's: expecially #6 AND the link given jaclaz

Who is the "voi" (you)? If you have something to say, we are all ears, but you may want to post in English on the board. jaclaz

Should you want my opinion (completely UNasked for ) there is nothing as UNuseful as a video tutorial for such complex things WITHOUT a proper, clear, textual tutorial (and the possibility to copy/paste, etc.). A video may be a nice addition, not a replacement, IMNSHO. jaclaz

READ the READ-ME-FIRST (which is supposed to be READ FIRST): ALL OF IT. AND PARTICULARLY point #10. THEN, BEFORE asking a question that has been asked ALREADY n times, please review the FGA's (Frequently Given Answers): ALL OF THEM. AND PARTICULARLY FGA #6. ONLY IF the matter is not already covered in the above, THEN please ask a question (a NEW question, I mean, not a "same one" already asked over, and over ). jaclaz P.S.: If you have problems with English, this may be of use to you (a Spanish version of the Gradius approach):

Well, it does look BETTER to me. I have NO idea whether it will help you , or will ever do what you are trying to do , or of if the contents are "right" or if anything else is needed, it is simply (now) compliant with existing examples, compare with: http://diddy.boot-land.net/firadisk/files/disk4.htm http://reboot.pro/8804/page__st__401 BTW, please notice what karyonix himself says in the above: jaclaz

Yes, the question was because the snippet you posted seems like a "badly" formed one (bad copy/paste, typo, random attempt?). If you run that you get in Registry: a key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FiraDisk with in it a REG_SZ named "StartOptions" CONTAINING "StartOptions=cdrom,vmem=find:/images/winsetup.iso" What you want INSTEAD is more probably: a key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FiraDisk with in it a REG_SZ named "StartOptions" CONTAINING ONLY "cdrom,vmem=find:/images/winsetup.iso" jaclaz

What do you mean? What is the problem with that? jaclaz

I was saying something slightly different, the Volume serial is a form of hash of actual date/time, i.e. the same serial can be generated on different date/times. If we use some fantasy it is not difficult to increase dramatically probabilties of a collision. Let's say that an employee in a Swiss watchmakers company was told to format a floppy and save to it his morning work just before lunch (or let's assume that a batch including a format command was scheduled to run every day at EXACTLY 12:30 ). Notwithstanding the high level of precision of the guy (or of the scheduler) while the actual job is started exactly at 12:30,00, the actual format command is executed with a delay variable between 0 and 99 hundreths of second. Another employee of the same company is tasked every month to store the images of the floppies, and, in order to identify them uniquely, uses the volume serial. What will happen on August 1st, 1992? (with data of July 1992) The probabilities field is a highly slippery one , but my guess is that probabilities of a collision in this scenario are very, very high, actually you have a very high probability of having at least one collision. See the attached spreadsheet..... Happy F9ing .... jaclaz Volchances.zip

Yes , that is expected (collisions when cloning in some situations), I was talking of actual "by chance" collisions, more curiosity than anything else, the ID is 4 bytes, thus min 00000000 and max FFFFFFFF, i.e. 4,294,967,296 available values, but 4,294,967,296 to 1 against though pretty rare is not "nearly impossible", and since the ID/Volume serial is not "random" but is calculated, as seen on the little "reversing" spreadsheet I made: chances are much bigger that that. jaclaz

An E90000 is not? Yep, for the moment I am still in the FAT12/16 only realm. Yes, hopefully you have only one of these mounted at a time, but generating a "random" ID is not a problem and "safer". BTW and OT, ever heard of a "collision"? Let's make it 0x29 then, though I still wonder WHAT used 0x28.... Yep, I was trying to avoid the need to dig up a Win9x to test, but I will do it like this, I wll make the non-bootable floppy sector based on the data we have till now, and then people may be able to test an image with it on a few systems . thanks for the insights. jaclaz

That's why I said it was NOT an answer to your question. (actually it is, but not the answer you wanted) No other kid wants to play with me with the XPCLI stuff . That is the traditional way, but why adding it in the first time, if you later remove it? Sure it is. You should be able to get a largely functional XP below 300 Mb But of course as always it depends what you *need* and how you rate "largely functional". Here is a step-by-step for one at around 400 Mb: http://www.i64x.com/eeexp.php Ever heard of the Wayback Machine? http://www.archive.org/ Well, LiveXP is NOT an XP, it is a PE 1 .x. And if you are gong the PE way, there are much smaller builds than that. (and again it depends on the functionalities you want/need), a couple oldish examples: http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=12067 http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=16543 http://www.brian-hoover.com/Navigation/Code%20Repository/Other/BartPE%20AIO.php but also the various Winbuilder "barebone" projects are much smaller than that. jaclaz

You didn't sound like it. As you were just told, "El-Torito" does nothing, one of the THREE available modes do, instead AND you do not have to know/choose anything about it, as it is "hard coded" in the builder. But you are an expert at it and at El-Torito settings? Sure it is possible, only with different, misterious ways. I have seen better advice in my experience, carpenter's comparison: You use nail to join planks because screws have that unesthetical slot or cross. Your problem is (finally): I have a .iso (or a CD/DVD) created with Bart's PEbuilder. How can I recreate it EXACTLY as it is, only changing three files? And there are two answers to it, one, ( the wrong one IMHO) is "use a .iso editor", and the (right IMHO) one is "rebuild the .iso", since what Bart's PEbuilder uses to make the iso is mkisofs.exe that has the nice feature of writing on the .iso HOW exactly it was used at build time. See here: http://reboot.pro/12406/ bextract 0.04 should do: http://reboot.pro/12406/page__st__31 Please note the highly specialized technical term I used : Running it on a "random" BartPE I have it gave me the mkisofs command used allright, but I have seen parsing errors on some builds, so until I find what is the parsing error issue and update the batch you can open the .iso file in *any* hex editor and search for text "mkisofs" to get the command line used, then open the .iso in 7-zip to get the no-emulation bootsector. jaclaz

I guess we are not targeting DOS 1.x, though, so I would say that we do need a BPB anyway. Naaah, I don't think there is any conspiracy , just "normal" stupidity/crazyness of non-standards or undisclosed/undocumented properly ones....... Back to business, A non-bootable bootsector needs to: start with E9 (or EB0090) <- to comply with the MS DOS 7.x (and hopefully earlier) and XP (and hopefully later) OS have anyway the Magic Bytes 55AA <- to comply with FreeDOS "quirk" since the OEM name is only checked during booting there is no need for it valid BPB data (from 0xB to 0x24) let's go on with the eBPB: Field Offset Length ----- ------ ------ Physical Drive Number 36 1 Current Head 37 1 Signature 38 1 ID 39 4 Volume Label 43 11 System ID 54 8 Physical Drive Number is seemingly only meaningful for bootable devices (so it can stay 00 for the non-bootable one) Current Head is OK left as 00 in any case, though we may add to the description it's use as "dirty flag" Signature (NT Signature) any reason to prefer 0x28 over 0x29 or viceversa? (I remember seeing only 0x29 in "real life" bootsectors) <- needed for compatibility with NT (and hopefully later) ID is this "needed" or a 00000000 would do as well? Volume Label, even if it is not used anymore it could be set to something more meaningful than the "NO NAME"? System ID: Definitely "FAT12 " or "FAT16 " Comments, ideas? @rloew Can you detail any findings you may have handy about IOS.VXD and/or VFAT.VXD behaviour? jaclaz

Just for the record (and to keep things as together as possible): jaclaz

Maybe because there is no need whatsoever to completely wipe the disk (and this will take some time). Wiping the first 100 sectors is more than enough (and much faster) should something prevent a normal install, but I personally also doubt that even this smaller set of sectors actually *need* to be wiped at all, in this case just wiping the MBR (1 sector) would do. JFYI, if you need to completely wipe a disk, CMRR Secure Erase is faster, as it uses the internal ATA commands: http://cmrr.ucsd.edu/people/Hughes/SecureErase.shtml @submix8c Grub does whatever is told to do in menu.lst. @cdoublejj If you could make a post actually describing the issue you are having, which is NOT clear to me at all, it may help. IF you boot from floppy *some* DOS and FDISK (NO switches) does work? jaclaz