jaclaz

I would check also the StartType and LoadOrderGroup of USB Mass Storage related services. usbstor usbehci usbohci usbuhci usbhub with command sc qc <driver> LOAD_ORDER_GROUP should be "empty" (not the word "empty", actually empty value) or "Base" START_TYPE should be 3 DEMAND_START jaclaz

Good. See if any of these work in that environment: http://www.technize.com/2008/07/11/four-wa...ray-in-windows/ http://www.alexnolan.net/software/commandline.htm http://www.softpedia.com/progDownload/Ejec...load-41030.html http://www.techtalkz.com/tips-n-tricks/397...-tool-here.html Rerun it and change the message to : "The system Recovery has finished successfully, please remove the DVD from the OPENED drive TRAY, and press any key to reboot..." We try to please end users, and we do it harder. jaclaz

You missed point #1 . When experimenting with grub4dos DO NOT use pre-made menu.lst entries (until you are sure the one you are working on gives no errors). Go to Command Mode (press "c") and enter lines MANUALLY. http://diddy.boot-land.net/grub4dos/files/cli.htm http://diddy.boot-land.net/grub4dos/files/cli.htm This way you will know WHAT (WHICH) command returns the Error, and will take a lot of guessing out of the process. jaclaz

and, believe me , STILL GOING STRONG! rdummy.sys "should" work on 2K too. jaclaz

No, it won't "fail": it may prompt with an error message and you'll have to click on it to continue. This: set tagfile=OEM for /f "tokens=1 delims=: " %%? in ('mountvol.exe ^|find ":\"') do ( dir %%?:\%tagfile% >nul 2>&1 && set CDDRIVE=%%?: ) if not defined CDDRIVE ( goto EOF ) Sets variable "tagfile" to value "OEM", runs, search for the value of the variable i.e. for the tagfile "OEM" and sets variable "CDDRIVE" to the found drive letter. If no drive is found with the tagfile, it ends the batch. The example previously posted: assumes "DVD.TXT" to be the tagfile, searches for it and sets variable "DVD" to the found drive letter. runs imagex using as source the found drive letter, applying the wim to drive C: you should be able to join the dots.... jaclaz

So, a longer text would cause the production out of nowhere of the pre-existing text "Windows is loading files"? At first sight seems to me more like a conjuring trick than a "programming error". jaclaz

@Yzöwl Probably you "fell" in the "device disabled" hole: http://www.msfn.org/board/hardware-changes...on-t128378.html http://www.msfn.org/board/hardware-changes...378-page-7.html BIOS update in itself shouldn't be the direct cause. jaclaz

Sure, to them you are a liar as your drive is NOT affected by the problem (What problem? ) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072431/quotes jaclaz

You are right , meaning that you are WRONG. You can use a FOR /F allright, check a few posts starting from this one: http://www.msfn.org/board/install-xp-ram-l...4-page-112.html Actually the method depicted there is suggested since it avoids the problem of mapped drives without media (please read as "card readers"). jaclaz

Yes. The problem is seemingly in the actual firmware. Some details are in the main thread, starting here: http://www.msfn.org/board/seagate-barracud...-page-1007.html for roughly three pages. The issue in itself is stoopid enough: when you power on the drive and internal LOG was left to entry 320 or any value satisfying the expression 320+n*256 the drive bricks itself. IF you have a working drive AND you upgrade it's firmware AND the firmware is NOT bugged, the drive will last on average like any other one. The fix is made in two steps: unbrick a bricked drive making it working loop to 1. above Point is that due to the TOTAL and UTTERLESS lack of any form of brightness, courtesy, politeness and open-mindedness from the Seagate people, BOTH in the Technical and Support services AND on their Forum, there is NO way to know for sure: IF any given new firmware is appropriate to the specific drive IF any given new firmware release solves the problem (without introduceing OTHER bugs) What they tell people with a bricked drive is more or less: you are NOT affected by the problem (which means in plain English: you are a liar, your drive is not bricked) if you send the drive in we will replace it, should we find it to be defective under the Warranty Terms, recovery of your data is not provided, you should have backed it up if the drive gets lost on the way to us or on the way back it's your problem we may send you back at our exclusive discretion (and we won't tell you in advance whether you will get back): your drive revived with all data intact (not because we will recover the data, but only if the data happens to be there, and we won't even tell you if this is likely to happen or not) a refurbished drive a new drive [*]Since we won't admit that there is a problem, it is obvious that we cannot tell you that firmware xxxx will fix that problem (that only exists in your mind) As I see it the product is not worse or better than that of the competitors, every firm has had (or will have) a "badly born" model or series, but definitely the Support sucks. Reality (and as proven by the number of reported successes) is: an average technician can fix the issue in no more than 15 minutes and NO data will be lost a complete n00b can fix it in a few attempts/several hours and NO data will be lost it is utterly stoopid to send drives back and forth if not actually needed (have you ever seen the delicacy with which UPS or FedEx - or any other courier for that matter - manage parcels?) as you have the concrete risk of damage or loss during this stage In my opinion if they had printed DON'T PANIC in large, friendly letters on their Web Site told people not to worry, that their data and drive could be recovered allright admitted the hiccup apologized for the inconveniences provided documental evidence of the reason of the problem and of the way they fixed it in later releases outsourced the recovery to local (say) TV repairers or Computer Shops for (say) US $10 apiece, asking Customers to bring personally the drive in the shop, and collect it after a couple of days, they would have : saved lots of money saved lots of fuel and packing/shipping costs (a small contribution to the fight against entropy) had a plethora of admired Customers that would have LOVED them for the rest of their life (no matter if their drive is good or not) The way they chose they have had ALL their sentient customers really, really mad at them (again no matter if their drive is good or not). jaclaz

@martha Some reference it's NOT so hidden: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent_(protocol) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent_(p...l)#Legal_issues http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_issues_with_BitTorrent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_sharing_and_the_law http://www.mininova.org/faq#legal http://www.what-is-torrent.com/legality http://www.azureuswiki.com/index.php/Legal_torrent_sites In other words: you seem more like: I am more like: jaclaz

As long as you won't ask me to marry you, I guess it's allright , my wife won't like it, though. jaclaz

This might be the right occasion for an old dinosaur to become useful, so, how much are you gonna pay for this? Seriously, I am perplexed about the actual "fairness" of this. I mean wouldn't it be a way to "workaround" the only limit they put into the app for personal use? Since, besides peing picky, grumpy and cheap , I am also paricularly catty , I will tell you that it is possible (with a little limitation that I won't specify) jaclaz

Yep , but sometimes you simply need to do some experiments yourself. You simply cannot beat the experience you get in trying things (and failing, and correcting the error and finally succeeding): Since there are no problems with multiple partitions on USB devices seen as fixed (please read as USB HDD), you can do whatever you prefer. B) I still advice everyone to have a small FAT16 (or FAT32, it's the same nowadays) first Active Primary (boot) partition and put all the rest in Logical Volumes inside extended, but this is my (and Gilles Vollant's ) proven working way for the most failsafe settings, not necessarily the "right" one. jaclaz

I would try assigning "Launchy" (whatever it is) to that key combination from INSIDE autohotkey.... jaclaz

Autohotkey overriding: http://www.autohotkey.com/docs/Hotkeys.htm http://www.autohotkey.com/docs/misc/Override.htm Should work. jaclaz

We (and grub4dos ) are NOT racists against FAT32 or NTFS. It's binary: If grub4dos can access a filasystem=1 If grub4dos cannot=0 Right now grub4dos supports: FAT12 FAT16 FAT32 NTFS EXT2FS/EXT3FS + of course CDFS jaclaz

Barry Manilow? I thought that only "Shpongle - Nothing Lasts... But Nothing is Lost" was so <please place here a word that Board wordfilters won't like> pretentious to actually be able to damage a DVD drive.... jaclaz

You joking right? NT4 has NO IE "forced upon". That was most of the work FDV did, removing it ALSO from 2K. jaclaz

Wouldn't, more simply ERUNT do? You make a copy of the Registry on the stick, you do whatever you want to do and you restore the Registry copy when leaving. ERUNT: http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/ If you want to remove some common changes (and the traces of your USB stick too), you can use this: Clean after me http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/clean_after_me.html jaclaz

I am failing to see the problem. You boot a PE of some kind or from a second OS instance and defragment all you want on the offline system volumes. Without the above: Registry can be defragmented (meaning the internal Registry filesystem) normally: http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/ Pagefile and system files can be defragged with pagedefrag: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinte...s/bb897426.aspx using boot-time defragmenting. Particular cases can be solved using Contig: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinte...s/bb897428.aspx or Wincontig: http://wincontig.mdtzone.it/en/ Most defrag utilities will have boot-time defragmentation too. Ultradefrag comes to mind: http://ultradefrag.sourceforge.net/ jaclaz

That is the actual half of your question I initially replied to. http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=9820 In a nutshell, and presuming that by "Microsoft doubleboot screen" you are actually meaning BOOTMGR and it's BCD: BOOTMGR can only load WINLOAD.EXE and NTLDR+BOOT.INI (or grldr+menu.lst) NOT a bootsector AFAIK. (please read "bootsector" as "Windows 98") NTLDR+BOOT.INI can load a Windows NT pre-Vista OS AND a bootsector. grldr+menu.lst can: load a bootsector directly chainload IO.SYS or NTLDR or BOOTMGR bypassing the bootsector PBR code So you can go: MBR->PBR->BOOTMGR->BCD->Windows Vista or 7 MBR->PBR->BOOTMGR->BCD->NTLDR->BOOT.INI->NT OS pre-Vista MBR->PBR->BOOTMGR->BCD->NTLDR->BOOT.INI->bootsector->Windows 98's IO.SYS or: grldr.mbr->grldr->menu.lst->BOOTMGR->BCD->Windows Vista or 7 grldr.mbr->grldr->menu.lst->NTLDR->BOOT.INI->NT OS pre-Vista grldr.mbr->grldr->menu.lst->IO.SYS Or ANY "intermediate", like, just as an example: MBR->PBR->grldr->menu.lst->BOOTMGR->BCD->Windows Vista or 7 MBR->PBR->grldr->menu.lst->NTLDR->BOOT.INI->NT OS pre-Vista MBR->PBR->grldr->menu.lst->IO.SYS MBR->PBR->grldr->menu.lst->BOOTMGR->BCD->NTLDR->BOOT.INI->NT OS pre-Vista MBR->PBR->grldr->menu.lst->BOOTMGR->BCD->NTLDR->BOOT.INI->->bootsector->Windows 98's IO.SYS There is a visual demonstration of multibooting here: http://www.multibooters.co.uk/multiboot.html jaclaz

Well, if you like to play the game with semi-random hints, then here is another one: http://www.sysint.no/nedlasting/mbrfix.htm And yet another one: http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?...ic=9897&hl= jaclaz

You are right, that won't normally happen, but I am failing to understand the overall description of the setup and of the problem, thus really cannot say waht's going on. A Recovery partition, and expecially a DELL one is not normally visible as it carries an ID of "DE" or "DB" or "D7" for oldish versions: http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/ http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/dellmbr.htm http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/mediadirect.htm or a "DE" for "Vista" versions: http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/vista.htm but it is well possible that newish machines are different. jaclaz

@allanf Right idea , wrong link . This one is for DOS and 9x/Me: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/51978 2K (and presumably later) work slightly differently: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/234048/en-us At least XP and Vista work like the latter, so I presume that PE 3.0, will as well. jaclaz