jaclaz

Be careful I have seen lots of sledgehammer soundtracks go: BAM BAM BAM OUCH!! No more right foot!!! AHIAAHIAHIAHIAHIA jaclaz

Yes, if the problem is the volume serial, you can get the old one from the image. Even less people, including yours truly , have the habit of saving the MBR and ALL PBR's. A strategy, that at the cost of a handful of wasted space in backups (a MBR+ 5 PBR - one for each partition on my "standard machines") compress to a whopping 1,800÷2,400 bytes .zip archive, has proved on the long run to be pretty much useful: "Better safe than sorry" B) jaclaz

By now OP should already be blind , since he reported this episode to have happened several months before he posted in AUGUST 2009.... jaclaz

http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=22313 http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?sho...=22313&st=3 http://forum.oszone.net/post-851576.html jaclaz

Also: http://activexperts.com/admin/wmi/ http://www.activexperts.com/activmonitor/w...t/adminscripts/ http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee156560.aspx http://www.robvanderwoude.com/wmistart.php http://www.robvanderwoude.com/wmigen.php http://www.robvanderwoude.com/wmiexamples.php jaclaz

Sure, you are perfectly correct in calculating chances, but I have a slightly different point of view , first price in the lottery being "a good, working, stable OS with a bugfree integrated browser". Over the years I bought quite a lot of tickets for that MS lottery, but never won. jaclaz

Apart the fact that you have a "queer" idea of what "super-deluxe" means , happy you are once again in the happy bunnies basket : http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showto...28727&st=10 To have an idea, THESE: http://www.datamancer.net/projects/optitran/optitran.htm http://www.datamancer.net/keyboards/ergo1/ergo1.htm http://www.datamancer.net/keyboards/keyboards.htm are actual "super-deluxe" About i365, it seems to me like they plainly LIED : I don't think they can have done a "mirror" or analyzed bad sectors WITHOUT "unbricking" the drive, which would consequently mean that they "re-bricked" it on purpose before sending it back to you. Unless they exchanged the drives, are you positive it is the "right" drive and it does contains your data? 532 errors (presuming that 1 error=1 unreadable sector) means 532x512=272,384 bytes unreadable or missing from your whole set of data, which I guess can be recovered/rebuild through software/differential backups or also re-written form scratch for far less than 900€+VAT. jaclaz

Please define the "any" : any OS any MS OS and MS NT based OS Since #1 is unlikely to have happened, and probably also #2, I guess that the defintion is #3, in which case I would quickly try a Linux based LiveCD, just to make sure is somethng really "hardware dependant". jaclaz

@Ponch No, it used to work for re-install also. I seem to remember one of the SP made it invalid, SP2 I think. but I am not sure at all. @IrnBruKid Did you follow this one to the letter? http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/12/14/b...activate-again/ More info on WPA: http://aumha.org/win5/a/wpa.htm it is possible that the use of a different Volume number (please read as "format") "triggered" the reactivation. jaclaz

Just as a general reference, the PCB and it's components should be able to "resist" a few minutes at 170°, which is a "normal" pre-heating cycle for reballing/reflowing BGA components: http://www.zeph.com/pap1.html http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?...=6102&st=22 and several seconds to temperatures up to 240°. If you strip the PCB off, first thing that you cosmetically will see melting will probably be the actual head and motor connectors plastics, and these will probably stand up to 250÷280°. jaclaz

Yes, they "look" similar, but a CardBUS Card WON'T FIT in PCMCIA Slot, there is a notch (actually two of them, one for the 3.3V and one for the 32 bit) AND the 32-bit CardBUS ones have (or should have) the additional grounding strip: http://www.pcmcia.org/faq.htm#cardbuscard There is a lot of confusion about these stoopid PCMCIA thingy. Old PCMCIA PC Card were 16-bit and 5V. <-please read as ISA BUS Later PCMCIA PC Card were 16-bit and 3.3v <-please read as ISA BUS (I guess they were used for a short period only) Latest PCMCIA CardBUS are 32-bit and 3.3V <-please read as PCI BUS Card 1) above will fit in PCMCIA 5V Slot 1). Card 2) above will fit in PCMCIA 3.3v Slot 2) BUT NOT in PCMCIA 5V Slot 1) Card 3) above will fit in CardBUS 3.3v Slot 3) AND in PCMCIA 3.3v Slot 2) - where it WON'T work - AND NOT in PCMCIA 5V Slot 1) This link: http://www.pcmcia.org/faq.htm#cardbusslot should be useful to help OP identify the slot that laptop has. PCMCIA connector: http://www.interfacebus.com/Design_Connector_PCMCIA.html CardBUS connector: http://www.interfacebus.com/Design_Connector_Cardbus.html Slot 1) above will accept ONLY Card 1) above. Slot 2) above will accept ONLY Card 2) above AND Card 1) above, but these latter ones WON'T WORK. Slot 3) above will accept BOTH Card 2) and 3) above AND also Card 1) above, but these latter ones WON'T WORK. Notch and grounding strip: PCMCIA PC card (the 3.3v ones) are (or should) be working as 16 bit devices in a Card BUS slot: http://www.expresscard.org/web/site/qa.jsp#12 I hope the above to be, if not clear, at least correct, Corrrections fixes are welcome. jaclaz

No Ponch, you cant put a 32-bit CardBus Type II in that machine, physically it fits but electronically it won't work. Are you sure? Anything after 1997 or 1998 should be CardBUS. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_Card And actually CardBUS is NOT physically compatible with PCMCIA slots: http://www.pcmcia.org/faq.htm#slot http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_Card#CardBus jaclaz

AND the Microwave oven! We could propose this as a technologically updated version of: jaclaz

No ideas right now. Have the drivers beein copied to BOTH targets (\I386 AND \Drivers\SATA\)? Can you try with a F6 floppy or CD? Just to make sure that the problem is only in the RIS setup and not in "wrong" drivers- jaclaz

Sorry, cross posting. 0x0000007b means "inaccessible boot device", which translates nicely into "wrong or wrongly integrated SATA drivers" in your case. Has the BIOS the option to set the SATA hard disk in IDE compatibility mode? jaclaz

Sure , most BSOD end with a fading "Technical Inform". Maybe it's the LCD What happens if you connect an external display? jaclaz

Clearing MountPoints2 is a good idea , since at the worst it won't produce any adverse effect (and one can anyway back it up before clearing). jaclaz

Use a camera. Film the booting. Get a standstill of the BSOD. Post it. jaclaz

Sure, I know , but I would more happily "risk" udating a BIOS by installing temporarily the "original" motherboard manufacturer one (and then re-apply the OEM crippled one) then to apply a Seagate firmware to an OEM drive. That is another possibility. jaclaz

Yep , it is an indirect confirmation we are dealing with the "right" numbers. So partition data should be: 80-07-0-1-1-1023-254-63-63-234436482 Let's see if Testdisk finds anything, first. Post the 200 sectors, it is very possible that we can get some confirmation from them. jaclaz

Well, this: Automount : True http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa394515(VS.85).aspx explains why it gets a drive letter. As a reference, this is how a similar command behaves on a "real" volume: http://blogs.technet.com/heyscriptingguy/a...mi-methods.aspx You can try doing a dismount: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa390368(VS.85).aspx it seems like it resets Automount to False. It is not clear the actual usage, it seems you need first to unmount the volume through Mountvol, and then run something *like*: http://www.vistax64.com/powershell/156842-...ount-drive.html which cannot work as the device has not anymore a drive letter it seems like there is no reference around for a tested working method. There is this one, but it ONLY works on Server 2003, seemingly: http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Scrip...2e-4104f12c6e72 jaclaz

ozzyboy be careful. YES, if there is just one hard disk on the second PC (and no card readers, attached USB Mass Storage devices, or virtual drives loaded) it will be PhysicalDrive1. Please take into account that the resulting C:\dsfok\hddfull.img will be around 120 Gb in size! You'd better make sure that you C:\ drive on the second machine: has enough space is formatted as NTFS About size, you will have it as output of the dsfo command, when you do the dd-like image: (jolt down these data) The CHS geometry results from the picture you posted: 16383/16/63, which gives us a: 16383x16x63=16,514,064 sectors x 512 bytes=8,455,200,768 bytes but it isn't useful, as it is the "fake" geometry for the "last CHS limit", which is: 8,455,716,864 http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/bios/sizeGB8-c.html From here: http://www.pubbs.net/openbsd/200904/43615/ 234,441,648x512=120,034,123,776 If you are sure that you did NOT partition it under Vista or Windows 7, AND that you created just one big partition, the partition data is predictable. Geometry should be: 14593x255x63=234,436,545 sectors 234,441,648-234,436,545=5,103 unallocated sectors 234,436,545-63=234,436,482x512=120,031,478,784 sized partition, which windows should have "seen" as 111 or 112 Gb (do you remember this number in Explorer)? jaclaz

Are you joking right? 50° C is a "normal" working temperature inside a hard disk, in a number of not-so-well cooled cases. Read about Curie temperature point: http://van.physics.illinois.edu/qa/listing.php?id=2744 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferromagnetism And about actual "hot is beautiful" (within limits): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_disk_dri...d_their_metrics jaclaz

Actually, in order to slipstream SP3 you need an already slipstreamed to SP1a or SP2 iso, so you have the "right" thing. I would personally slipstream the SP3 "normally" without using nlite, and then use nlite or whatever on the resulting .iso. (this way you have a "kosher" SP3 .iso without modifications, that may come useful in the future). jaclaz

Come on, anyone knows that Nokia cables coming from California are too ripe to work properly (you know, too much sun, little water, etc.) however if squeezed provide an excellent cable wine. I wouldn't risk flashing the "original" Seagate Firmware, it is possible that there are some settings that conflict. I am not so sure about the changing in the BIOS to "legacy IDE". It is very strange that such a setting is missing on a desktop (there are several laptops/notebooks I have seen missing this option, but never a desktop) are you really sure that such a setting isn't there - possibly renamed to something seemingly completed unrelated like "Data Bus translation" or "Foolproof setting" or "Install mode". If such an option is actually missing it should mean that you are completely unable to install to that machine anything that has not Mass Storage drivers integrated. . Maybe it is possible to have the .iso recognize the HD. Which exact .iso are you talking about (link please)? jaclaz