jaclaz

Not necessarily in the FAT table. It could well be simply a disk error on the actual sectors that contain the DATA. Having such a large, monolithic, not-plain file is of course a factor of risk. First thing, NOT negotiable, is to make the disk "OFFLINE" and access it (connecting it as "slave" to another PC) from ANOTHER OS, not the one is installed on it. You have two "paths" that BOTH are worth a try: you should run a recovery tool on the file, I am not familiar with Mozilla, cannot say if there is a specific tool, how is the "inbox" file named? you should attempt to use tools like Unstoppable copier: http://www.roadkil.net/program.php?ProgramID=29 to create a "better" copy. Then, I would try some filesystem repairing tool, like TESTDISK: http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/Advanced_FA...pair_FAT_tables Then, I would try something like good ol' Norton Utilities and try re-constructing the FAT chain (if broken) manually. (you need to learn how, NOT easy) Before the latter two above, I would make a 1:1 (dd like copy) of the WHOLE disk/partition, possibly using a tool like ddrescue: http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=7783 (2K/XP only) and work on the image, NEVER on the original. From DOS, you may want to try Partition Saving: http://www.partition-saving.com/ Depending on the value you attribute to the data you have lost you may also want to: try some Commercial software try a Professional Recovery Data Service/Consultant If you want to go the good ol' DOS way, an excellent program, that you may be able to find around was (several years ago, but still very, very good) TiramiSU: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=84345 jaclaz

EASEUS TODO backup (thanks to Jotnar): http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=8601 http://www.todo-backup.com/ jaclaz

Sorry I didn't read/remember you were from Belgium and thus know French very well. Thanks anyway for the kind offer. jaclaz

That's OLD technology: WORM. You need to evolve to Re-Writable media: the pencil (+eraser) . @JustinStacey.x Actually the thread was started as "Why do you still use 9X", there is no reason why someone NOT using it should post here, on the other hand, and just for the sake of debating, if NT superiority is a "self-evident truth", there is no need whatsoever to trying to affirm it. I guess that the whole problem about the two "factions" is that both think that a single OS should do everything perfectly and have ALL the features in the world, but what I don't understand is the need to actually convince the other part of the superiority of one over the other. And BTW I don't see much new things that haven't been already said in one of the similar threads: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=37402 JFYI: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showto...7402&st=411 jaclaz

With all due respect to the Author of the mentioned guide: http://www.commentcamarche.net/faq/sujet-5...c-grande-marque checking that the files are OK ONLY basing on their side is a bit "optimistic", (I have in mind another word, but I am afraid of the word filters). Anyway, the guide was made in the assumption that you had a SP0, SP1 or SP2 installed, it is possible that the "sheer" SP3 files are more than 400 Mb, and the Author did not think about this. Are you positive that there isn't "anything else" looking "like" \I386" anywhere on HD? Did the computer come with a Recovery CD? Or has it a (hidden) restore partition? @ponch Actually (besides the way the check is made) the Author clearly expresses that: i.e.: Pre-requisite: presence of operating system files on Hard disk. jaclaz

If I may, it doesn't surprise me you don't have them, unless I read this wrongly: jaclaz

First things that come to my mind: Which is the original source of the \i386? I mean a "standard" XP CD or some branded OEM version? Did you also copy the "tag files" that are in root of a Windows CD? And the other directories? How did you copy it to C:\InstallXP? I mean did you se simply Explorer or something else? Any chance that some "aggressive" Antivirus has botched the copy process? I would suspect #2 , see step 1. in this other guide that should clear the iteam at hand: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=193872 This one is also clear: http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/tutorial154.html jaclaz P.S.: Sorry Ponch, cross-posting

UNIVBE: http://www.bearwindows.boot-land.net/vbe9x.htm SCITECHSOFT: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showto...22401&st=20 http://web.archive.org/web/20080120054601/...ft.com/ftp/sdd/ jaclaz

Just for the record, there is also a dual-stage approach making use of PLoP. Main "kicker" is just grub4dos and the PLoP loader, which loads the "XP Kansas City Shuffle" kicker image from the USB device, and this latter "fake signature" image loads the real XP, as well residing on the USB device. Please note that that is a very irregular verb, conjugation is : I backup I backup I backup I backup I backup Ooops, I have no more media Very good . IMHO a very valid reason , and a breath of fresh air after this thread, like ANY other thread on similar subjects, has degenerated to the usual Godzilla vs. King Kong or Dracula vs. Mickey Mouse kind of debate. And in case you are asking yourself , there is no story: Godzilla can easilly reduce King Kong to a bunch of minced meat and Mickey Mouse can get rid of Dracula in no more than 15 pages (thanks to Eega Beeva that has available any number of crosses, garlics crucifixes and what not). jaclaz

Too bad. I was about to propose you a complex workaround, perfectly unneeded as per above reply by wimb, but nice: http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?...ic=7138&hl= jaclaz

It's not "strange": http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/strange , in the sense of Looky here : http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showto...24539&st=11 I actually "introduced" it at the time in order to have a "particular" situation..... jaclaz

Absolutely OFF TOPIC , but it's the first "racist" seller on e-bay I have ever seen: jaclaz

Someone may know the answer, but you are giving NOT details enough. Do all systems see each other^? Do they keep same drive lettering scheme? what the heck do you mean by: First Primary partition? Second Primary partition? Third Primary partiton? Or you have a single primary partition and an extended one with two logical volumes? This is not a poker game: or should it be one, counter offer is: For some reason I am not going to say , I will only help you if you tell us WHY you want to swap partitions.... More loosely, since all the OS you are talking about use BOOTMGR as main loader, there should be any need for BOOTSECT, though it is probable that BOOTREC /RebuildBcd may be necessary. jaclaz

Rest assured that there is NOTHING "strange" in my Registry , and particularly NOT in HKLM\\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Disk\Enum. However, find attached the relevant exported key. jaclaz jaclaz_services_disk_enum.zip

Wrong assumptions. Dietmar is on Boot-land also , though he is very hectic in his "appearances". Typically he "breaks" in, "throws on the table" something (usually VERY interesting) and then disappears for months. The last things he contributed were something around "XP Kansas City shuffle" on 911CD: http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?sho...c=21242&hl= and of course XPCLI on boot-land, the single most interesting thing since the invention of ice-cream IMNSHO, for which I completely fail to find ANYONE interested in to participate and help : http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=3717 If by any chance you are in collaborative mood, you would be very welcome in there. jaclaz

Yep. What I was trying indirectly to confirm is that the above hash calculation is NOT a CRC32 one: jaclaz

Just for the record and to finalize the present thread. After some more research, I went for #6 (almost ): Switched Server ON. Pressed Ctrl+M to enter SCSI RAID BIOS utility. Scanned bus. Failed drive was A0-01, working drives were A0-00 and A0-02 Added "new" disk drive. Re-scanned bus. Formatted newly added drive. (it does take some time) Newly added drive gets "READY" status. Set it as "HOTSPARE". Let the thingy do it's magic. (it does take LOTS of time) WAIT... WAIT... WAIT some more time... During the process the drive is shown as "RE-BLD". When the process is finished the new drive is shown as A0-01 and the old one is set as "READY" (though the latter is a lie ) Check consistency (still some more time) Status of Array changes from "DEGRADED" to "OPTIMAL". Boot OS. Everything works allright. All in all, a piece of cake, , but, as always better be safe than sorry. jaclaz

Not really-really. ngine.de method is derived form Dietmar's Tutorial 4: http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?sho...mp;#entry101631 which allows installing directly to USB devices. Emanuel simply integrated the "F6" step in the Source CD. As well, normally Tutorial 8 does NOT require pre-installing Vista to a IDE/SATA drive: http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?sho...mp;#entry118931 So I guess that the scope would be to automate the otherwise complex "fixing steps" that at the moment need another bootable system to be carried on. The USBbootwatcher service: http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=22473 should already be the missing step, or is it not enough in itsef? jaclaz

YES . (meaning that it DOES sound noobish). Hmm, not exactly: it's blue it's NOT nice it's NOT "a" blue screen it's a blue screen with STOP ERROR 0x0000007b (there are several tens if not hundreds of "blue screens") NO. (meaning it is NOT possible now, unless you use a RAMDISK and the source .iso is relatively small, 512 Mb for the 2003 SP1 or R2 files or 640 Mb for the free/trial version of Diskless Angel wdsys.sys driver, and you have at least 1 Gb of memory ) Your initial newbie error is the "any" you put near "iso" , and, unfortunately, it's not even a "new" question: http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=6896 http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=2936 http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=8026 http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=7761 This is a very complex topic, definitely not for a newbie, however if you want to learn about what is possible and what it is not, start from here (hopefully an understandable explanation): http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?...=2692&st=26 http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?...=3287&st=52 Something is in the works: http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=8168 http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=8415 but DO NOT expect anything soon. No prob. jaclaz

About Unicode: Since the original text is "plain" it should be simply that "normal" text, with 00's as separators, see here: http://rishida.net/tools/conversion/ Input in "Mixed Input" Check output as "Hexadecimal code points" But there are endless types of encding that can be called "UNICODE".... There are several CRC32 conventions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclic_redund...putation_of_CRC Now which CRC-32 is used? And is it to be applied on a file containing the hex values? Or to what? And WHICH "Unicode" are we talking about? Using: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/recipes/reha...x?display=Print on a .txt file containing "plain" "USBSTOR\DISK&VEN_LEXAR&PROD_JD_LIGHTNING_II&REV_1100\AA04015900000158&0": 0001 0203 0405 0607 0809 0A0B 0C0D 0E0F - 0123456789ABCDEF ---------------------------------------------------------------- 0x00: 5553 4253 544F 525C 4449 534B 2656 454E - USBSTOR\DISK&VEN 0x10: 5F4C 4558 4152 2650 524F 445F 4A44 5F4C - _LEXAR&PROD_JD_L 0x20: 4947 4854 4E49 4E47 5F49 4926 5245 565F - IGHTNING_II&REV_ 0x30: 3131 3030 5C41 4130 3430 3135 3930 3030 - 1100\AA040159000 0x40: 3030 3135 3826 30 - 00158&0 , I get: (rehash -none -crc32 originalascii.txt ) CRC-32 : BAA13B1F if I use this: http://www.autohotkey.com/forum/topic10796.html http://ringtail.its.monash.edu.au/pub/nihongo/uniconv.zip As follows: uniconv ASCII originalascii.txt Unicode11:big-endian test.txt getting a file in UNICODE as described before: 0001 0203 0405 0607 0809 0A0B 0C0D 0E0F - 0123456789ABCDEF ---------------------------------------------------------------- 0x00: 0055 0053 0042 0053 0054 004F 0052 005C - .U.S.B.S.T.O.R.\ 0x10: 0044 0049 0053 004B 0026 0056 0045 004E - .D.I.S.K.&.V.E.N 0x20: 005F 004C 0045 0058 0041 0052 0026 0050 - ._.L.E.X.A.R.&.P 0x30: 0052 004F 0044 005F 004A 0044 005F 004C - .R.O.D._.J.D._.L 0x40: 0049 0047 0048 0054 004E 0049 004E 0047 - .I.G.H.T.N.I.N.G 0x50: 005F 0049 0049 0026 0052 0045 0056 005F - ._.I.I.&.R.E.V._ 0x60: 0031 0031 0030 0030 005C 0041 0041 0030 - .1.1.0.0.\.A.A.0 0x70: 0034 0030 0031 0035 0039 0030 0030 0030 - .4.0.1.5.9.0.0.0 0x80: 0030 0030 0031 0035 0038 0026 0030 - .0.0.1.5.8.&.0 I get: CRC-32 : 28FD18C3 If I do it via batch: @ECHO OFF ECHO.>result.txt FOR %%A IN ( Arabic ASCII big-endian Big5 BMP ChineseAutoDetect CNS-11643 CNS-11643-1986 cp1251 cp1252 cp437 cp850 cp932 EBCDIC EBCDIK EUC-J EUC-KR GB2312 Greek Hebrew HZ ISO-2022-JP ISO-2022-KR ISOLatinCyrillic JapaneseAutoDetect Java JIS_X0201 JIS_X_0208 KoreanAutoDetect Latin1 Latin2 Latin3 Latin4 Latin5 Latin6 little-endian Shift-JIS Thai UCS2 Unicode11:big-endian Unicode11:BOM:big-endian Unicode11:BOM:Java Unicode11:BOM:little-endian Unicode11:BOM:UCS2 Unicode11:BOM:UTF7 Unicode11:BOM:UTF8 Unicode11:Java Unicode11:little-endian Unicode11:UCS2 Unicode11:UTF7 Unicode11:UTF8 Unicode20:BOM:Java Unicode20:BOM:UTF7 Unicode20:BOM:UTF8 Unicode20:little-endian Unicode20:UCS2 UTF7 UTF8 ) DO ( ECHO %%A>>result.txt uniconv ASCII originalascii.txt %%A test.txt rehash -none -crc32 test.txt>>result.txt ) with ALL available formats in UNICONV, I cannot find ANYTHING similar to "16f722a4" NOT even changing: rehash -none -crc32 test.txt>>result.txt into: rehash test.txt>>result.txt (i.e. using ALL hashing algorithms in rehash) jaclaz

Sorry Victor, I completely forgot. Find attached: the output of ddlistw on my system "as is now" (which is different from last report) the exported MountedDevices the output of the MBRFIX version the output of the DISKPART version Apart from the problem reported, you SHOULD NOT allow the batch to actually attempt reordering drive letters WITHOUT and explicit confirmation by the user. Using the batch as is may botch the setup of an unexperienced user. It happened to my system, though of course I know how to fix it. In this: the ¡¡ are A1A1 hex the ¡ú are A1FA hex jaclaz report.zip

Try getting grub4dos running, instead. http://diddy.boot-land.net/grub4dos/Grub4dos.htm http://download.gna.org/grub4dos/ Easier to chainload from XP: http://diddy.boot-land.net/grub4dos/files/...all_windows.htm Happy it was easier than expected, after all this is the best of all possible worlds. jaclaz

This is an entire new question. If you RUN the batch from the SAME USB drive where the files to be copied are, you DO NOT need to hardcode the USB drive letter anywhere. Please post/attach your batch. And/or search about variable expansion of the 0 (zero) parameter of batches (the name of the batch itself). I.e. make a batch with : ECHO %~d0 ECHO %~dp0 ECHO %~dpn0 ECHO %~dpnx0 and run it from the USB stick. jaclaz

Yes and NO. What do you mean by "any pc", "any pc running any OS" or "any pc running same OS, say XP"? In any case on first connection of the USB HDD each system will assign a letter automatically, see here also: http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbdlm_e.html What you can do, once windows has assigned it's "automatic" drive letter, is to detect which one is it and change it to "your" default one (provided it is not already occupied). A batch should be able to do this, by using MOUNTVOL and some small third part utility, like dd for windows, or internal diskpart/WMIC. A "drive detecting" batch is given here: http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?...;showtopic=8219 another couple ones by victor888 is here: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=123929&hl= http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=124539&hl= Just to give you some ideas. jaclaz

Not necessarily. I have seen Recovery DVD's that have anyway, INSIDE the HDD image, a \I386 structure. Accessing the image to extract it (IF it's there) might be tricky. Often a special tool or same Commercial software manufacturer used is needed. Some references of past cases: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=127624 http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=120423 http://www.msfn.org/board/Cannot-access-CD...P-i-t91907.html jaclaz