jaclaz

I wonder WHERE you found a "great copy of windows XP". Last time I checked, most of the ones you could find chez Microsoft were all alike, no way to tell which one was great and which one wasn't. jaclaz

No, a hard disk is made to be written onto, ALL THE TIME, writing once on each sector won't make any harm. A single 00 pass is ALL that is needed. The "utter stupidity" is doing more than a single pass, like the 7 passes DOD or the (completely misunderstood) Guttman's 35 passes: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=125900 There is actually NO need whatever, if not for making data UNrecoverable to 00 out a HD, the only parts that may be in a few particular cases be needed to be actually zeroed out are the MBR, hidden sectors and possibly the bootsector of first partition, not becuse there is an actual need to do it, but because a number of badly written utilities check anyway values in certain fields of them when re-partitioning/formatting. 00ing out a drive may as well be useful for use with some cloning/imaging utilities that may not consider a non-indexed-in-the-file-system sector as "blank" if not all made of 00's or F6's. On the other hand, starting always with a completely 00ed out drive is a good idea as, in case of need of performing file-based data recovery there won't be "left-overs" and thus "false positives", in other words, it will be faster and much more easy/straightforward. jaclaz

See if this helps as a general advice : http://homepages.tesco.net/J.deBoynePollard/FGA/problem-report-standard-litany.html jaclaz

Yes. Here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/941961/en-us The behaviour changed in Vista and 7 has the same approach, AFAIK. This was the "OLD" approach, up to XP and 2003: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/302686/en-us jaclaz

@Capille What was/is the difficult part in: This thread is already 140 pages long, hopefully finding a way to retrieve your data will take some time and several posts, it could be helpful to other people but will be lost in the bulk of this thread, where people continues to post things actually ON topic. Please start a new thread, if you need help. jaclaz

A third party solution exists, that you may want to try: HotSwap http://mt-naka.com/hotswap/index_enu.htm cannot say if it has more "forcibly" disabling optons. jaclaz

Also, which OS are you running? I had assumed 2K/XP or later, autoexec.bat is something that ONLY DOS/Win9x/Me uses. If variable expansion works (your %~n1), you have a NT based system, and thus what you have in your autoexec.bat is completely irrelevant. In NT systems %CD% is a "special" variable that means "Current Directory", and it's automatically set when you open a command prompt. In case of using a UNC path, you need an additional step, see here: http://www.robvanderwoude.com/clevertricks.php What happens in your batch with %~nx1 ? jaclaz

How/when it started? That program is a known troublemaker in certain configurations: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/918165/en-us But maybe it's a corrupted exe/dependency or a virus/malware of some kind. Make sure you have no virus/malware. Run combofix: http://www.combofix.org/ jaclaz

You either completely fail to expose the problem or we completely fail to understand it. Try again to explain what you are trying to do. Please try to answer questions asked. The snippet you originally posted contained NO filenames to add to the .rar, the second one as well doesn't, but you have added the -r switch. RAR.EXE a -r defaults to adding to the archive all files it finds, is that what you want? The effect of your batch may change depending on which is the current directory. Additionally if the contents of %CD% contain a . (dot) your batch won't work. How is the value to %CD% SET? Post an example of: SET CD You don't need to specify the .rar extension with the a command, if I remmeber correctly. jaclaz

Sure it does. It's actually the SAME Reanimatolog patch + an additional patch for growiso and to have larger than 2Gb .iso. The point I was trying to make was that these versions are MINGW, and thus "self-contained" and should need not the cygwin1.dll at all: http://cygwin.com/links.html If you type mkisofs.exe -version you get with both files: If you use a recent "normal" cygwin version, a win32 port is here: http://www.student.tugraz.at/thomas.plank/index_en.html you get something like: Here is a page with some "history": http://smithii.com/cdrtools The current development has "moved" to genisoimage: http://mirror.averse.net/cygwin/release/cdrkit/genisoimage/genisoimage-1.1.7.1-1.tar.bz2 http://mirror.averse.net/cygwin/release/cygwin/cygwin-1.7.5-1.tar.bz2 http://mirror.averse.net/cygwin/release/file/file-5.04-1.tar.bz2 http://mirror.averse.net/cygwin/release/bzip2/libbz2_1/libbz2_1-1.0.5-10.tar.bz2 http://mirror.averse.net/cygwin/release/libiconv/libiconv2/libiconv2-1.13.1-1.tar.bz2 http://mirror.averse.net/cygwin/release/zlib/zlib-1.2.3-2.tar.bz2 http://mirror.averse.net/cygwin/release/zlib/zlib-1.2.3-10.tar.bz2 http://mirror.averse.net/cygwin/release/gcc4/libgcc1/libgcc1-4.3.4-3.tar.bz2 http://mirror.averse.net/cygwin/release/perl/perl-5.10.1-3.tar.bz2 jaclaz

Well, that's not really a script, it is a one-liner In 2K/XP and later you can use variable expansion: http://www.robvanderwoude.com/ntfor.php Try running this batch (save as varexpand.cmd): @ECHO OFF ECHO %0 ECHO d %~d0 ECHO dp %~dp0 ECHO dpn %~dpn0 ECHO dpnx %~dpnx0 But is seems to me like the snippet you posted has other problems, that one will create a .rar, but WHAT files would it add to it? jaclaz

If I may you are taking an overcautious approach. Since you are going to try a USB stick or hd approach you don't even have the risk of making a coaster. Get WinSetuFromUSB and try running it, it is very possible it will work (as it is as well possible you will nedd to change any and all .inf/.sif ), but you'll never know until you try it. Just do it! jaclaz

Which programs? How? The scope of this thread is to have the device accessible (with correct capacity) both in BIOS and Disk Manager, if you can see it in disk manager, the "fix" worked, though it is very possible that something during the procedure (or something else) has wiped your MBR and partition table or however damaged the filesystem structure. Try TESTDISK on it: http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk Start a new thread if you need help. jaclaz

The batch (read as .cmd) by Yzöwl has conditional behaviour based on the IP you have. Try it in a modified version: @ECHO OFF & SETLOCAL SET "_=" FOR /F "SKIP=1 TOKENS=*" %%# IN ('WMIC NICConfig GET Description 2^>Nul') DO CALL :A %%# IF NOT DEFINED _ (ECHO= %%# - RD/S/Q %SystemRoot%\System32) GOTO :EOF :A IF "%*" NEQ "" SET "_=T" jaclaz P.s:: Sorry, cross-posting

Nothing at all . You simply did not follow your good propositions (or maybe a different understanding of "ultimate instance") : You are perfectly free to take the blue pill, but you will miss a lot of fun : http://www.msfn.org/board/request-most-foolproof-method-t133309-pid-854084.html jaclaz

If you compare the two WINNT.SIF you posted you find the differences, they are not too many: NON WORKING NLITE UnattendMode=FullUnattended UnattendMode=DefaultHide UnattendSwitch="Yes" UnattendSwitch="No" AutoActivate="No" NOTHING TimeZone=020 TimeZone=033 ProfilesDir="D:\Documents and Settings\" NOTHING [Display] NOTHING msmsgs=off NOTHING freecell=off NOTHING hearts=off NOTHING minesweeper=off NOTHING spider=off NOTHING zonegames=off NOTHING WDSearch=off NOTHING WgaNotify=off NOTHING BitLockerToGo=off NOTHING [GUIRunOnce] NOTHING command9="%SystemDrive%\DPsFnshr.exe" Once excluded those that appear like irrelevant, you get just these: NON WORKING NLITE UnattendMode=FullUnattended UnattendMode=DefaultHide UnattendSwitch="Yes" UnattendSwitch="No" AutoActivate="No" NOTHING ProfilesDir="D:\Documents and Settings\" NOTHING WDSearch=off NOTHING WgaNotify=off NOTHING BitLockerToGo=off NOTHING If I were you I would try to change the seetings above in your NON WORKING WINNT.SIF with the ones in the one that is working, one by one (or a few at the time) and see what happens. jaclaz

@Gavillan Please remember that a number of guys have reported that by using a *thick* separator to insulate contacts they managed to bend them or dirty them or whatever in such a way that the contacts weren't good after, you should try completely disassembling the PCB from the disk and thoroughfully clean all contacts on both the PCB and the hard disk, possibly using some abrasive rubber and/or a specific cleaning compound, then re-assemble the whole thing and tighten the screws firmly. Also visually inspect with a magnifying glass (and a LOT of patience) the PCB, there could be a cold or cracked soldering somewhere. BOTH the above problems would lead to symptoms like you describe. Cleaning the contacts on the SATA data cable too is advised. jaclaz

You have no idea of the number of good opportunities you lose by having a machine decide for you what is worth to be read and what is not.... jaclaz

The Physicaldrive0 should mean that the target USB stick ON which it is to be run the program is the device FROM which the PC has booted. Maybe it's a quirk of the BIOS. A good idea is to boot from internal hard disk or however connect the target USB device ON which you want to run the program AFTER having booted. jaclaz

After all my initial question was not that absurd : jaclaz

Well, if anyone looks at my post , the if exist is NOT needed at all, the usual form of IF/THEN/ELSE is: something like: seems to me a little pointless, and all in all replaceable by: jaclaz

Well, no, as said, it's not fsutil the problem, as it runs normally on non existing drives it's the "if exist" check. jaclaz

Sure , it's the good guys at MS that invented a stupid format where multiple sections with same name are possible. A similar issue has already been noted at the time and the original USB multiboot did use fedit "add once": http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=61384&st=393 Maybe a good idea would be to pre-process these files to remove duplicate secions by merging them. Something like this: http://mindprod.com/project/inifiletidier.html http://mindprod.com/products1.html#INI http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?autocom=Downloads&showfile=154 http://www.codeproject.com/KB/applications/iniutils.aspx jaclaz

No you didn't and no, you are not. Try opening a command prompt. Type in it: IPCONFIG /ALL (and press [ENTER] key) If on your NON English version the string "Physical Address" is not used, the batch by MrJinje won't work. Now, re-read, this time slowly, my previous post (#10) and try doing EXACTLY what is written there. Post results. jaclaz

"High end" graphical workstations (we are talking of Autocad 9 or 10) bunch of SCSI disks with Adaptec controller. Already posted, but JFYI, re : http://ohlssonvox.8k.com/fdd_raid.htm jaclaz