jaclaz

Not only the sales/marketing, also the Legal department may benefit from some plain-english. Just for the record: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/is-it-ok-to-use-oem-windows-on-your-own-pc-dont-ask-microsoft/1561 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/oem-licensing-confusion-starts-at-microsoftcom/535 http://www.edbott.com/weblog/2005/08/a-welcome-change-in-microsoft-licensing-terms/ That link to the TWO official MS documents, one still online: http://www.microsoft.com/oem/en/licensing/sblicensing/pages/licensing_for_hobbyists.aspx and one removed by now, (and being behind the login portal has not been archived by the Wayback Machine) but for which some excerpts are given in the above blog post. jaclaz

For the record contents of code boxes at reboot.pro are botched. This: http://reboot.pro/15275/ http://pastehtml.com/view/b4t99xk89.html May be of use . jaclaz

Yes and No, IMHO. There is a number of OEM licenses that require activation unless I am mistaken, i.e. there are "common OEM" and "big OEM" (pre-installed) the latter may not need activation, but the former do. http://aumha.org/win5/a/wpa.php And there is a (legitimate AFAIK) market for "used" copies of RETAIL XP. The doubts are about OEM licenses (that are sold anyway all over the net) of the "first" kind. This should be NOT a big problem since legally what you get is a licence to install that OS on a given hardware that probably won't last until after the servers will be shut down eventually, but still one might preserve an old machine (as an example for historical/collection purpose and need in the future to re-install the OS to it). But say that you buy legitimately a RETAIL version of XP (or you already own one). This might need to be activated when you re-install (for whatever reason, and since it is a RETAIL you have the right to install and use it on completely new hardware). The good news are that Vista users will have eventually even greater problems : jaclaz

Just for the record this piece of info is also present on the actual "recommended" guide: http://www.mapleleafmountain.com/seagatebrick.html It is not clear at all in which cases one set of contacts works and in which the "other" set is needed instead, but it does cost nothing trying one or the other, so the rule of thumb is: flip a coin if you got tail try with the motor contacts if you get head, try with the heads contact if whatever you tried doesn't work, try the other set @ominouswanderer But, can you "feel" the drive motor rotating or not? As in here: jaclaz

Still not immune from cleaning lady hack: http://reboot.pro/12367/ jaclaz

Yep, but the issue here is seemingly that the actual driver cannot be installed or cannot be installed "fully". jaclaz

Look, I don't want to be more picky and grumpy than usual, but what you normally advise your customers to do is (mainly) your business, it is obvious that if someone wants to have a zillion USB things attached he/she will need a USB powered hub OR an additional PCI card, choosing one or the other solution depends however from a number of factors. The whole point is that usually USB devices - with the very notable exception of not-self-powered external hard disks (typically 2.5", which often need an Y cable to get up to 1 A) - use very little power. Expecially, in my experience, USB sticks were always among the ones that drew the less current. You stated that you have a motherboard that, when you connect to it two 16 Gb sticks gives you a "Hub power exceeded" message (with NO other USB device connected to it), can you confirm this report? If yes, I would find this very strange, for the reasons mentioned, but I do trust your word for it. It is very possible, that those devices being USB 3.0 were designed to draw more power, though I find it "queer". The actual specs for this model (I presume it's this one): http://www.corsair.com/usb-drive/flash-voyager-usb-drives/flash-voyager-usb-3-16gb-usb-flashdrive-cmfvy3s-16gb.html are quite "scarce", and there is no meaningful technical documentation I can find on them. Seemingly the previous GTR models had a higher (NOT specified) than normal power consumption: http://forum.corsair.com/v3/showpost.php?p=508680&postcount=6 http://forum.corsair.com/v3/showpost.php?p=465473&postcount=39 jaclaz

Alleycode supports wildcard characters ! jaclaz

The: has been a problem for some time in a USB initiated setup, cannot really understand, my mind reading capabilities being temporarily blocked, if this is your case. Are you missing a hard disk OR a CD/DVD device? Or you are missing a hard disk BUT you get a message about a CD/DVD device? Maybe - just maybe - you can find in it some useful info: http://reboot.pro/9076/ jaclaz

Sure they are! jaclaz

I was trying to point togermano to a thread where the reasons why it is more likely to have Win98 updates than Me ones are hopefully explained. Sorry to have touched your sensibility, but my post is not (IMHO) pointless, nor useless. It has some reasons behind, now you may like or not like them reasons but accusing me of "littering every Windows ME thread" is quite a bit overboard. jaclaz

For the record, I doubt that running IE 8 or 9 can be called an ability. Or, you know , ability as in "I have the ability to shoot my own foot" jaclaz

Let's say that the "intended audience" would be particularly small.... JFYO, something about the scarcity of Me users has been recently discussed here: jaclaz

Nothing actually obscure, it is obvious: you are simply NOT using Alleycode! jaclaz

Still it is very strange, AFAICR, all sticks I had an occasion to "peek" into with their Manufacturer Tool were in the "Low Power" category at 200 mA. Again, which exact make /model of the stick they are? No need to, the standard says clearly that EACH port can draw up to 500 mA, and though some makers do not respect it fully: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_hub I have never seen ANY motherboard or hub uncapable of delivering at least the 500mA. If you have two of those sticks connected to two ports of the same hub (and nothing else connected to that hub) AND you get a "Hub power exceeded" message there are ONLY two cases possible: the summed load of the two specific sticks exceed at least 5 power units or 500mA (which woud be VERY strange) there are some problems with your specific motherboard or - more probably - PSU jaclaz

The problem is WHICH reason. Does that mouse middle button work on another PC with another (more recent) OS? Or is it DOA? Did you install the software correctrly? Refer to this doc: http://sysdoc.doors.ch/MITSUMI/1/ScrollUK.pdf Did you have previously anothe mouse driver installed? Do you see any device with a question mark in device manager? jaclaz

I like the videocamera/virtualdub trick! But I am at a loss attempting to understand the issue at hand. Maybe I can give you some "general" info from which you can possibly "pick" your case. A "normal" XP setup CD is booted through it's no-emulation boot sector. This CD bootsector invokes TWO files in sequence: BOOTFIX.BIN SETUPLDR.BIN (both residing in the \I386 directory of the CD) Snippet of contents of the no-emulation bootsector: What BOOTFIX.BIN does is to check the MBR of the first hard disk on the machine. If it is "initialized" (i.e. at least it's two last bytes are 55AA) it shows the message "Press any key to boot form CD" and gives a timeout of a few seconds before booting the internal hard disk. If it is NOT "initialized" it goes on and boots SETUPLDR.BIN without showing any message and no timeout. (this has been made to avoid that on a typical "bare metal" machine install when you need to re-boot for second stage of XP setup you will boot again from the CD if you forget to remove it from the drive at the end of first stage). The message: “SETUPLDR: Couldn’t open drive multi(0)disk(0)rddisk(0)partition(1) means that *somehow* SETUPLDR.BIN cannot access first partition on first hard disk (typically the one where you want to install or have just installed the XP). This happens long before anything actually "windows related" comes into play, it is symply the SETUPLDR.BIN that cannot access the drive with it's internal drivers. This is typically caused by the disk not being properly connected to the motherboard (cable or disk drive jumpers) or by an incorrect setting in BIOS. So, you should really re-check, re-re-check and re-re-re-check the cables and connections and the BIOS settings first thing. As a general rule of the thumb testing something in a Virtual Machine will give you only part of the story, so, while it is an important (and very convenient) step in testing it can in some cases bring you to the false conclusion that something is working whuile it is not (on real hardware). Another possibility is that you had a "bad burn". In VMware did you test the actual burned CD or the .iso of it? Yet another possibility is that the CD/RW drive have some issues (again chack cables/jumpers) but it seems less likely to me. Ideally you should try using an original (masterized NOT "burned") XP install CD and see if it makes any difference. Or you could get a DOS based CD such as the excellent UBCD: http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ and use it to run a few tests on your hardware. jaclaz

@lamaii As said, no problem whatsoever , and happy you found the culprit. What you cannot possibly know (but that Trip very well does) is my obsession with having whenever possible a thread that goes along a storyboard like this: OP asks help about a problem/issue he has, including ALL needed info along the Standard Litany: http://homepages.tesco.net/J.deBoynePollard/FGA/problem-report-standard-litany.html some good guys suggest steps to find out what causes the problem and/or what the solution could be these suggested steps are actually executed by the OP AND the exact results of these tests are posted after one or more iterations of steps #2 and #3, a solution is found and the thread may become useful to some other peeps having the same issue as OP had You managed yourself to get the solution (i.e. to step #4) and now you also posted what the actual cause happened to be, so everything is fine and dandy. jaclaz

Yes , the snippet I posted should be copied and pasted in a .cmd file. If you want to run it in a command line (from a command prompt in the same directory where testmodels.csv is) you need to use single percentage signs, as in the following: Command line: @ECHO OFF&FOR /F "tokens=2 delims=^>" %A IN (testmodel.csv) do echo %A>>mymodels.csv Inside a .cmd file: @ECHO OFF&FOR /F "tokens=2 delims=^>" %%A IN (testmodel.csv) do echo %%A>>mymodels.csv I don't get it , noone said you were lying, I said that you mistakenly attributed the success of an enterprise to the tool (specifically Alleycode) it was supposedly used to build the site. In any case what you posted is an UNreadable screenshot of heavens only know WHAT (beacuse it is unreadable). IF I had doubted your word about your boss making around 2.5 Millions bucks a year, you would hae needed to send me an authenticated copy of his IRS tax form to prove your statement. jaclaz

I don't get it. The site WAS: http://www.winimize.com/ See yourself what you can get through the Wayback Machine: http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/http://www.winimize.com/ (everything should be there) jaclaz

Actually this has nothing to do with Windows 9x/Me and very little with bootice. It is simply a WEE/grub4dos set of commands. In any case providing a link to the corresponding utilities might be nice. WEE is somewhat talked about here: http://reboot.pro/11751/ and can be found here: http://code.google.com/p/grubutils/ Bootice: http://bootice.narod.ru/ jaclaz

I thought that the USB 2.0 standard allowed for 500mA (or five 100mA "units") not that it had an 8 Gb limit. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB#Power Actually I was convinced that the power consumption needed for a USB stick was not dependant on the amount of memory inside it (if not for a trifling part) and that all sticks fell in the "low-power" category, or however well below the 500 mA limit. Which make/model are the two 16 Gb sticks that are enough to get the "Hub power exceeded" message? On which machine/motherboard does this happen? jaclaz

Well, I make SUBSTANTIAL rebates on my list prices for old-time friends like you and BTW, the mentioned rate was the one reserved to RICH programmers/web developers only. I calculate through a complex algorithm (which I won't fully disclose) that basically takes into account the inverse of the sum of the squares of the Alexa Ranking of the sites owned by the client. jaclaz

It took all of 37 seconds to devise this mindboggingly complex batch script (actually a one-liner ): @ECHO OFF&FOR /F "tokens=2 delims=^>" %%A IN (testmodel.csv) do echo %%A>>mymodels.csv If you have "testmodel.csv" containing: You will get as result a mymodels.csv file containing: Consequently, since I normally invoice a mere 3,600 US$/hour, you owe me 37 US$. jaclaz

Well, correlating the current "standard" for beauty (movie stars) with actual density of psychiatrists/psichoanalysts in the Los Angeles/Hollywood area, one could come to the conclusion that real life is different from comic books. There is here a small list of famous peple (admittedly not all beautiful/handsome) that are said to have suffered from various forms of mental ilnesses: http://www.mentalhealthministries.net/links_resources/other_resources/famouspeople.pdf I would say that in real life - set apart those traits that are a consequence of an illness (such as drooling, or trembling as an example) - there is no correlation between uglyness and mental illness. Lombroso's theories were an early attempt to show that some particular physical traits, not necessarily "uglyness" were common among criminals and un-common among "good people". Besides some bias in the actual researches he conducted, one has to take into account WHERE they were taken and WHEN. We are talking of the second half of the 19th century in a country where communications, food, education and more generally welfare of the average people were very scarce or non-existing at all. In those years, in some rural zones of the country, the average tallness of population was likely to be below 1.50 mt (around 5' ), there was not a common language, analphabetism was around 80%, the people inside jails (which must have not been such a pleasant place in themselves) were likely to be belonging to the poorest of the poor, not really a big surprise that the scientist found that those subjects belonged to a subhuman race. More generally Lombroso's theories fall in the "trend" of physiognomy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physiognomy and phrenology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrenology that both had quite a bit of diffusion in the 19th and early 20th century. Curiously enough Lombroso's theories had much more success overseas in the US than in Italy , this probably influenced the comic books which were mostly originated there . jaclaz