jaclaz

What do you think the posted FOR loop example does, if not recursion? Or are you meaning the recursion (already) given by the /S parameter to DIR? jaclaz

Yes. Yes. http://homepages.tesco.net/J.deBoynePollard/FGA/questions-with-yes-or-no-answers.html A Moderator may want to move this post to: http://www.msfn.org/board/forum/66-programming-c-delphi-vbvbs-cmdbatch-etc/ Open a command prompt. In it type: DIR /B /S /AD D:\DATA [ENTER] What do you see? Now type in it: FOR /F %A IN ('DIR /B /S /AD D:\DATA') DO @ECHO I'm in a FOR LOOP - %A [ENTER] What do you see? Now go here and read these: http://www.robvanderwoude.com/ntfor.php http://www.robvanderwoude.com/ntfortokens.php You should now have all the basics needed. Try writing a batch with the info you just learned and with the robocopy command you would use manually, and we'll see what kind of enhancements (if any) we can suggest. jaclaz

And again, no crystall ball available at the moment. Standard litany: http://homepages.tesco.net/J.deBoynePollard/FGA/problem-report-standard-litany.html Additionally post the actual file that gives you problems (before and after the whatever steps you took into changing it). jaclaz

Do you mean that you trust them BOTH or that you trust NEITHER of them? Just for the record: http://www.techsupportforum.com/forums/f15/a-required-cd-dvd-drive-device-driver-is-missing-595862.html jaclaz

Yep. We have here the result of a test, that, though made on NT based system, may give an idea both of the procedure and of the advantages: jaclaz

That seems more like "friendly advice" than "crime punishment". jaclaz

Should be this one: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/973923/en-us http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=14431 jaclaz

Naah, it would be unconnected. The image was made with an arbitrary HS of 64/32, but was mounted on VSS (which should default to 255/63). I will try with VDK and with a .pln descriptor, to see if it makes any difference, but I don't think so, the relevant parts should remain unchnaged: 6 Reserved sectors instead of 1 01->0E ( and as said the 06->0E was already confirmed on a completely different occasion and using an "orhtodox" disk image and HS geometry) jaclaz

It doesn't sound "good", but definitely PLoP when used like this is looking for a bootable device, so you should have one connected to the USB port in order to make sure that the failure is actually a failure. You do have another PC, haven't you? Run on it RMPREPUSB: http://sites.google.com/site/rmprepusb/ and make the USB stick bootable (it doesn't actually matter what it boots, all we need to know is that PLoP can detect it and go anywhere beyond "NO BOOT DEVICE FOUND, PLEASE RETRY IT", even if it stops with another error it would mean that it detects the thingy. In RMPREPUSB, you want to tick the "Boot as HDD (C: 2PTNS)" jaclaz

Well, NO. You may use them allright (space permitting) with another "passive" adapter, like this type: http://www.ebay.com/itm/2-5-3-5-IDE-HDD-40-Pin-Male-44-Pin-Female-Adapter-/330450302006?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4cf05f7436 or this: http://www.ebay.com/itm/2-5-3-5-IDE-HARD-DRIVE-CONVERTER-CABLE-ADAPTER-/150475889431?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item23090fdb17 or this: http://www.ebay.com/itm/40-Pin-44-Pin-3-5-2-5-Laptop-IDE-Hard-Drive-Cable-/180482687586?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2a059b4262 jaclaz

Well, NO. 2.5" PATA/IDE HDs ALL use the 44 pin connector and all the adapters above use that. (as well as ALL the laptops that have a 2.5" IDE disk from factory) The 40 Pin connector is ONLY on 3.5 Drives AFAIK. jaclaz

But unless you invent a way to compress matter into a smaller volume, space might be : http://www.cooldrives.com/2sahadrtoide.html even if the SSD is smaller than the drive, the actual piggyback board is taller than the height of the drive and conversely of the drive bay. Maybe on some models, with a "dremel" and a lot of time/patience a case mod can be done. I would rather go for something "flat" like this one: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2-5-Serial-SATA-HDD-44Pin-Male-IDE-Adapter-Converter-/150614852456?_trksid=p4340.m263&_trkparms=algo%3DSIC%26its%3DI%252BC%26itu%3DUCI%252BIA%252BUA%252BFICS%252BUFI%26otn%3D15%26pmod%3D220597189265%26ps%3D63%26clkid%3D2222327709334534724 (seemingly even more "rare") Wait, here there is one: http://www.ebay.com/itm/2-5-SATA-SSD-HDD-driver-mini-44pin-IDE-adapter-5014-/220752756189?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3365e3bddd (but this one is larger ) Maybe this is the only "type" that would fit for your pourpose: http://www.ebay.com/itm/2-5-SATA-SSD-HDD-driver-mini-44pin-IDE-adapter-5005-/220774274840?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item33672c1718 Or this (micro SSD) http://www.ebay.com/itm/1-8-16pin-Micro-SATA-SSD-2-5-44pin-IDE-adapter-card-/220775113085?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item336738e17d Naah, never had an occasion, as said they are rare . jaclaz

I will attempt qualifying for the "anyone" . What you are asking is a "piggyback" board that fits in the back of a SATA 2.5" HD and makes it IDE/ATA compatible to a laptop (44 pin) connection AND that fits inside your notebook? Such adapters are (AFAIK) VERY rare, and it is doubtful whether there is enough space inside the notebook, here is one: http://www.cooldrives.com/2sahadrtoide.html ADDITIONALLY, do not overlook that the adapter will consume a (very little) amount of power, so, since - generally speaking - notebooks specs tend to be "tight" if you old HD was (say) rated for 5V 700 mA, and your new one is (say) 750 mA + the little the converter may consume (still say) another 100 mA, you could simply draw too much power from the 5V rail. and HEAT may be a problem inside a notebook, since they are normally already well beyond reasonable temperature... jaclaz

In the course of an only seemingly unrelated test I made, I found a few "quirks" that need to be taken into account. In the attachment there are 4 image files. All of them are exactly 1,475,072 bytes in size, i.e. the "standard" 1.44 Mb floppy + 1 sector (for the MBR). They represent (or should represent) a very small hard disk image. They were created as follows: fsz hdfloppy.img 1475072 (this created an empty files filled with 00's of the exact size). After having filled partition table first entry manually and the "Magic bytes" (and adding a dummy disk signature of 12345678 - you never know) I saved the image as: hdfloppyUF.img i.e. UnFormatted I mounted a copy of hdfloppyUF.img in VSS services and formatted the volume with the Windows XP Format. this is hdfloppyFVSS.img i.e. Formatted under VSS I mounted a copy of hdfloppyUF.img IMDISK as "Auto" - it resulted as "Floppy" - formatted it with the IMDISK Format option (that however calls Windows Format) this is hdfloppyFIMF.img i.e. Formatted under IMdisk as Floppy I mounted a copy of hdfloppyUF.img IMDISK as "Hard Disk Volume", formatted it with the IMDISK Format option (that however calls Windows Format) this is hdfloppyFIMHV.img i.e. Formatted under IMdisk as HardDisk Volume. Preliminary notes: Under IMDISK (obviously since the MBR is "skipped alltogether") the MBR partition table is left "as it was" (partition type 01) Under VSS the Windows Format does a strange thing, which I already noticed in other occasions with partition type 06, see here: http://reboot.pro/3191/page__st__26 the partition type is changed to 0E which confirms something between the lines of this: http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/determining-filesystem-type.html it seems like WIndows XP attempts to "protect" the very common FAT12 01 type from being accessed by older filesystems, since it sets a 0E type, it "cuts off" MS-DOS <=6.22 I thought that this was only 06->0E but evidently the new paradigm is something like "anything FAT1x is 0E" The number of "Reserved sectors" IN BOTH hdfloppyFVSS.img and hdfloppyFIMHV.img are 6 instead of the usual 1 (but it of course remains 1 in hdfloppyFIMF.img. This can affect the spreadsheet/batch/Drugwash's app behaviour when selecting the F0 (240) or F8 (248) media. The hdfloppyFIMHV.img sets correctly "Sectors Before" (1) and (maybe) "Sectors per track" (63) - this could be a "defaulT" needs to ask Olof - but gives a (wrong) Number of Heads (1). The hdfloppyFVSS.img sets correctly "Sectors Before" (1) but NOT "Sectors per track" (1) and gives a (wrong) Number of Heads (1). this is hdfloppyFIMF.img does not set (comprehensibly) "Sectors Before", that remain 0, and sets "Sectors per track" (18) and "Number of Heads" (2) correctly, but his probably is because of some hardcoded in FORMAT, this test must be repeated with a non-standard floppy size. As always ideas, comments, suggestions, further tests and reports are welcome. jaclaz hdfloppy.7z

If the 500 GB SATA seagate is a 7200.11 is not that peculiar as a problem, as at least several thousands of people experienced the same. It may be the error that in jargon is called BSY or "BUSY" state. The OS you are running is not relevant, the BIOS comes into play to detect hardware long before the OS is booted/loaded. Check the exact model of your drive and if it is a 7200.11 go back to the forum: http://www.msfn.org/board/forum/169-hard-drive-and-removable-media-issues/ and read the stickies. jaclaz

Well, I've just downloaded both versions again from MajorGeek to be sure we're talking about the same executables Now when I do a binary file compare, there's NO DIFFERENCE at all in the code (not a single byte) - the only differences are in the (UniCode) text sections, and these differences are: 1) changing every occurence of "1.0" to "2.0" (6 times) 2) changing "Rain for Windows 95/98" to "Ony for Windows 98" So do you really believe these text changes could have any influence on how the program runs/works??? I always thought this would be a experts forum, but it seems to be rather a newbie forum ... ;-) Let's see if we can disambiguate. A link from Majorgeeks for Rain 2.0 is this: ftp://majorgeeks.mirror.internode.on.net/processor/rain20.zip 123907 bytes The one for rain 1.0 is: ftp://majorgeeks.mirror.internode.on.net/processor/rain10.zip 123288 bytes each of the two archives contain a "rain.exe" sized exactly 183,296 bytes, the 1.0 version is dated 1998-05-15 the 2.0 version is dated 1998-08-24 Differences between the two are. All the above reference are related to TEXT STRINGS, there is NO change whatsoever between the two executables in CODE.. Unless there is "another" Rain 2.0, fhub is perfectly correct (though he could keep his thoughts on this forum being populated by newbies for himself, everyone has been a newbie once and most still are at something that it is not their specific field of experience/knowledge) The site (long dead) was: http://cpu.simplenet.com/leading_wintech/ Here is a cache: http://web.archive.org/web/19990508184504/http://cpu.simplenet.com/leading_wintech/ This is the oldest I could find: http://web.archive.org/web/19981206223009/http://cpu.simplenet.com/leading_wintech/ and FAQ's: http://web.archive.org/web/19990128002524/http://cpu.simplenet.com/leading_wintech/faq.htm It seems like Rain is/was a simplified version of a far more sophisticated product, Waterfall. With just a little of digging around, you can get here: http://benchtest.com/cooler.html where the "coolers" options are tested (this may be useful to duffy98. This is the Rain page: http://benchtest.com/rain.html All in all: if someone has a "different" Rain 2.0 please post a link to it unless the above happens any claim that Rain 2.0 works "better" (or "worse" or "different") than Rain 1.0 pertain to Urban Legends or Myths . The ONLY exception to hypothesis #2 above would be that the programmer hardcoded in his 1.0 version a check for the 2.0 string , which would trigger disabling or changing some of the internal functions of the executable. Quite frankly, I think I could feed the numbers of this latter possibility in the Star of Gold Infinite improbability drive and use it as fuel for several zillion years : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_in_The_Hitchhiker's_Guide_to_the_Galaxy#Infinite_Improbability_Drive jaclaz P.S.: I also checked the install .exe, and even in that the ONLY differences are related to version number, in "old" one there were version 1.0 and 1.2 both occurrences became 1.5 in "newer"

To be picky, the variable is %0 and %~dp0 is a possible expansion of it. http://www.robvanderwoude.com/ntfor.php try also %~f0 @gunsmokingman this may interest you: http://www.robvanderwoude.com/ntset.php also a few new (to me at least dynamic variables): The %=D:% may answer the question "Has drive D:\ ever been accessed during this CMD session?". I have no idea right now where and why this can be useful, but it is "good to know". jaclaz

Maybe it is not an XP setupldr.bin but rather a Server 2003 one? jaclaz P.s.: ooops, sorry cross-posting with cdob

Well, the good thing is that you need not any particularly specific Windows 7 "additional" knowledge, and since as said, in the given thread the OP finally succeeded and believe me we had almost *all* possible problems, including a stoopid BIOS with a 240 head translation and what not, and the OP was (when she started, not after we finished ) a complete newbie, it means that it can be done allright, even starting from 0. Xp is in itself a "plug n' play" OS, removing it's automatical loading of drivers when new hardware is found would be (even if possible) much more work than simply "forcing" it to load the correct "vital" ones (basically Mass Storage and Video) and later, with the booted system, tackle eventual problems with "accessories" (I presume that for gaming Audio drivers are also "vital" though not as vital as those that would prevent either booting or actually be able to see if it has booted). The steps are not exceptionally difficult or complex "per se" but each needs some attention and possibly a few attempts: set video "as standard as possible"=VGA clone the disk on the new disk (or clone the partition and adjust Disk Signature and DosDevices entry in the Registry) add provisions for USB booting see if it boots The thing that would have worried me the most is the actual disk and the USB controller in it's enclosure, we have found (in the mentioned threaad and elsewhere) that some disks (so called "green" ones) don't play well with some BIOSes, but if you get to a BSOD it means that this is not a problem and the initial part of booting works. Making an XP that can boot TWO different machines is a further (and greater IMHO) issue, if possible at all I would stay (hopefully) with it woking with just one of the two notebooks, at least initially. jaclaz

The scope should be clear: http://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager.html#intro'>http://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager.html#intro You try booting from it (rest assured that it is very unlike that your PC will explode or catch fire by doing this). If you are lucky, you will see something very similar to: http://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager.html#screenshots'>http://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager.html#screenshots If you see the "USB" line and you can select it by using the arrow keys and pressing Enter, compare with keys available: http://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager.html#bootmanager'>http://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager.html#bootmanager Whether this will produce the desired effect (booting from the USB connected hard disk) or not is the scope of the test. You may notice how both the above links (as well as the one I previously posted) all bring you to the same page: http://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager.html The whole page (as I see it) represents "the instructions" but you are right there isn't actually a line saying: Probably since it is a boot-manager and most keybard driven bootmanagers use this same paradigm (highlight choice by selecting it with arrows keys then press ENTER) this part was omitted. BTW, you are perfectly free to ignore my posts, should you not appreciate my words. Whatever you choose to do, have fun while doing it . jaclaz P.S.: At my local chess club, at least when I was a kid, there was not an instruction sheet with this piece of info: How to move a chess piece: grasp piece with your fingers (you can use either of your left or right hand), NOT your feet. hold it, firmly. FIrmly. [1] move it across the checkboard hovering a few millimeters above it's surface in a gliding like movement until you reach the destination only some movements are allowed, depending on the piece that you chose to move, thus you need to verify the destination with Rules before you iintiate the move when moving the knight, since it is possible that another piece is in the way, you need to LIFT the knight enough to avoid knocking over such other piece(s) when you finished moving the piece to the destination, let it go and remove your hand and arm from over the checkboard maybe that is the reason why I never learned to play that game decently and took on reading sci-fi instead. [1] but not too firmly. Compare with Susan Calvin in Risk! - Isaac Asimov's "Rest of the robots" 1955: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_(Asimov)

Sure , I am pretty familiar with the "fair use" provisions , it was just the "anything" that cracked me up . And I intentionally quoted a sentence that cannot really be considered "creative work" but rather "factual data" (exempted from Copyright protection) . BTW, one thing is Copyright (which gives you some rights on the copy) and another is - within your Copy Rights - to prohibit reproduction of "anything". IMHO the Creative Commons is more "near" the philosophy of both GNU and BSD than applying your copy rights this way. The article/tips are very nice, as said very good work! jaclaz

This must have been one of the best replies in years! jaclaz

What you want to do (though doable ) is NOT "easy-peasy" as you seem to expect . Bascially having an install of XP work: on different hardware from a USB connected disk is something that needs a lot of knowledge or a lot of time to learn how to do it. Depending on your current familiarity with this kind of things (and a little bit of luck, that is always a factor) the length of the "path" can be very variable. Casually, recently on 911cd we managed to get an almost completely newbie to succeed in this, so if you review this thread, it is the longest possible path: http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=24161&hl= and contains ALL the needed info/steps (and even many more than those strictly needed) jaclaz

With all due respect , you are making a fuss out of nothing, WHAT is so difficult: http://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager.html#noinstall I have RARELY seen in my life such simple, direct, easy and comprehensive set of instructions. Of course, if you need a map , I can draw one for you . jaclaz

Yep, but IMHO that says that the feature/specific use/scenarios of the program are not supported (which does not necessarily mean that it is "illegal" or "a breach of license" or "an actual crime"). AFAICU what the MS keyb says is layman's terms : jaclaz