jaclaz

Really? Could this connected to this part of the referenced post?: It may have been the right choice, but unfortunately, BOTH the files you posted are just a (nice, rounded ) collection of digital 00's. This could mean EITHER: that something went wrong while extracting/copying the sectors/files that you got the right \\.\Physicaldrive AND the extracting/copying went allright BUT the sectors on the stick are actually all 00's My guess is that unfortunately it is #2 above, which can be caused by three things: partial accidental wiping (of some initial sectors) of the device (not good, but leaving some hopes) total accidental wiping of the device (bad) device controller or flash memory malfunctioning (bad) Can you describe with as much detail as you can remember how this thing happened, if there were previous symptoms of failure, if any particular program was run against the stick, if the stick was EVER attached to an unprotected by antivirus PC, etc.? Let's try again with a slightly different approach. Get dsfo (within the DSFOK toolkit): http://members.ozemail.com.au/~nulifetv/fr...ware/index.html Open a command prompt and run from the directory where you unzipped dsfo.exe: dsfo \\.\Physicaldrive2 0 102400 C:\first200.dat Compress C:\first200.dat to a .zip and attach to your next post the resulting archive. If you have access to a hosting site of some kind (even a free one like megaupload or rapidshare would do) AND the stick did not contain privete/personal data that I shouldn't see, create a "full" image of the stick (you will need as much available space on your hard disk as the size of the stick + say another half size for the compressed file) by running: dsfo \\.\Physicaldrive2 0 0 C:\fullima.dat Compress C:\fullima.dat to a .zip, upload the resulting archive to the filehosting site and send me via PM the download link... If it's not all 00's some partial recovery may be still possible. A link is a link, and generally stays linked "Relative" addresses, such as "look at top of the page" may change depending on which particular view you are seeing this thread with, and from a number of other reasons. jaclaz

Tulert, I cannot make head or tail of your reports. Don't take it the wrong way , but you should try one thing, and ONLY one thing and report EXCLUSIVELY about THAT thing you tried. This way you report everything you tried, mixing good with bad, booting with not booting and what not, it is already difficult enough to help in troubleshooting from a distance based on a single report, solving a single puzzle already takes time, let alone trying to put together pieces of several puzzles scattered on the same table. However BOTH your screenshots show that you are booting (up to grub4dos). First one is working (booting) exactly as it should, i.e. you get to grub4dos choices (i.e. menu.lst is loaded and the "splashscreen" included in fuwi's tool is shown). Second one appears as well to work properly (booting and loading grub4dos) but not being able to locate menu.lst. So, please STOP running "random" things in "random" ways, with "random" approaches. Simply replicate WHATEVER you did to produce the two posted screenshots, and let's start from there. Access the stick from an already booted system, say it gets assigned letter G:\. Open a Command Prompt and execute in it: DIR /S G:>C:\dirofstick.txt Attach resulting file C:\dirofstick.txt to your next post. Boot from the stick on the ASUS, (and get to the second screenshot you posted). Then press "c" to access grub4dos command prompt and type in it: find /menu.lst and press [ENTER] What you get? then try: ls ( and press [TAB] you should get something like: now try listing each of the "fd" and "hd" devices, always using [TAB] autocompletion features, like in: ls (hd [TAB] ls (hd0, [TAB] ls (hd0,0) ls (hd0,0)/ [ENTER] until you check which is the device that grub4dos detects the stick as. Post results. jaclaz

Rats are used in Labs because they are usually very fast in learning new things. Of course the experimenter needs to be very accurate, too. Some BIOS have an option, usually F12, to change boot order on-the-fly when booting, otherwise these should be more or less the steps involved: You switch the laptop off. Then you turn it on and press the appropriate key to access the BIOS. Look for anything like "Boot Device Priority" or "Boot from first" or something like that. Change it in such a way that an entry containing the word USB is chosen. Save BIOS settings and reboot. Then: Switch off. Insert bootable USB stick (previously made with "plain" HP utility running from the 2k or XP in the laptop, choosing FAT16 or NTFS, NOT FAT32 ). Switch on. Report what happens. Have you actually tried to simply unzip the fuwi's file as they are and run them? Of course answering NO when it asks for BartPE.... jaclaz

Got it. But I also need the MBR and bootsector, see second part of this post: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showto...133933&st=7 jaclaz

Sure . Then (if FBINST didn't work) run from the laptop on the chosen stick fuwi's tool: http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=21702 and see if it boots on the laptop. If it does, try the stick on the Asus, if it does not work we get more evidence that the problem is in the ASUS BIOS. If it does not boot on the laptop, use HDhacker (on the laptop): http://dimio.altervista.org/eng/ and save: MBR of the stick (first sector of physicaldrive) bootsector of the stick (first sector of logicaldrive for FAT 16/32 or first 16 sectors for NTFS) Compress the two resulting files in a .zip and attach it to your next post. jaclaz

Only too happy to hear a story of success. jaclaz

Oh, Oh, BAD news. My ideas now come at a price. Of course not in money, but Tulert seems to have (besides trying to do too many different attempts together on different hardware/software ) the "right" attitude and the "right (read "wrong" ) hardware. Maybe, if he agrees to play "lab rat" for us a little bit , we can see if all together we can finalize this thing about BIOSes that recognize sticks improperly as FD. @Tulert, please choose one, and one only of your devices, say the MemoRive 2GB. Have you handy (or can borrow, procure or steal ) another PC (another motherboard) running 2K or XP? Not that Vista is bad (actually it's worse than that IMHO) but I am not familiar with it and it may add a layer of problems in the steps I will suggest you. (and using anither motherboard would rule the (possibly faulty) specific BIOS out of the equation. Or can you run XP or a PE of some kind in a Virtual Machine? Or are you familiar with DOS/Command Line? About the "second partition" that RMPREPUSB adds, it is because in a few BIOSes it is reported that this helps in letting the BIOS see the stick as HDD. (which evidently is not working in your case). First thing I would try if I were you would be FBINST: http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=7932 jaclaz

Sure, that's what actually Disk Management does. And the little app by Uwe Sieber: http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbdlm_e.html didn't work? About entries starting with # I'm not sure to have ever seen them (or to have ever actually seen them and "coupled" them to something specific). I'll see what I can find on the topic. jaclaz

Topic splitted. jaclaz

Open a command prompt and type in it MOUNTVOL [ENTER] Result may look familiar to you : http://www.ss64.com/nt/mountvol.html (type 3) As well, I wouldn't touch the ones starting with #. I would rather look for problems in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Enum\USBSTOR, but of course I may be completely off-track. Here is a good place to start when dealing with this kind of problems: http://www.uwe-sieber.de/english.html http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbdlm_e.html jaclaz

The workaround is copying them back. The solution has not been found (yet ) jaclaz

The one that normally works is the HDD one. If it does not work for you, it is possible that something is simply wrong in the stick (fixable) or in the BIOS (NOT-fixable). The "plain" HP Format utility is known, in some cases, to produce unbootable sticks. Do try the apps listed here: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showto...87993&st=17 (after having zeroed out first 100 or 200 sectors, just to make sure you start from scratch) jaclaz

See if these help: http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?...ic=8285&hl= http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=23092 jaclaz

The link given by GrofLuigi: http://smallvoid.com/article/winnt-lba-48-bit.html actually concludes: meaning that if you take a SP3+ (slipstreamed) and you modify it's SETUPREG.HIV adding to it a key: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \SYSTEM \CurrentControlSet \Services \atapi \Parameters] EnableBigLba = 1 the "bigger-than-137-Gb" drive should be recognized in TXT setup mode also. I personally doubt that a CurrentControlSet is available on an offline hive, but you may want to try with ControlSet001. jaclaz

Would you put some gasoline in a diesel engine because that's what other people do with their (gasoline) engine? or would you put some diesel fuel in a gasoline engine because that's what other people do with their (diesel) engine? What happens using the Manufacturer's (WD in your case) diagnostic utilities? http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?lang=en http://support.wdc.com/product/download.as...mp;x=14&y=3 Or is that where the screenshot you posted comes from? Have you tried accessing it with Victoria or mhdd: http://hddguru.com/content/en/software/2005.10.03-Victoria/ http://hddguru.com/content/en/software/2005.10.02-MHDD/ Or maybe some other tool here: http://hddguru.com/ Even this: http://blog.atola.com/restoring-factory-hard-drive-capacity/ (WITHOUT actually pressing the "Restore Capacity" button) may give some hint about what is happening. At a more "high" level, have you tried running TESTDISK: http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk on it? jaclaz

You are welcome. As said in the referenced post, both ways work, second only seems more "logic". jaclaz

What the heck? I did suggest you TWO utilities, then a post where the same TWO+another TWO=FOUR are suggested. WHEN you will have tried ALL FOUR of them, without success, do what ALREADY posted: If needed, specific instructions: TRY, one at the time, the apps listed in this post: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showto...87993&st=17 in the same order they were given AND keeping in mind the "general advice" given in FAQ #10: http://home.graffiti.net/jaclaz:graffiti.n...SB/USBfaqs.html STOP the first time one of them works. TRY variations using the SAME app that worked. jaclaz

... You talking to me ? I do believe you. Actually I've asked that ages ago (in an other life) but never got a relevant answer but this (MS) one. I must admit it still lets me wondering... where is all that "formatting" time going ? Is this one of your "picky on grammar" days? Let me reword this: as: No reference whatsoever to Ponch or any other member if not to leon, to whom the post was addressed. And let me rephrase this: as: jaclaz

Out of the blue, for no apparent reason, and possibly slightly (but not much ) OFF-TOPIC , a couple of possibly interesting links : AHCI vs. IDE mode benchmarks: http://expertester.wordpress.com/2008/07/2...mark-advantage/ How to enable AHCI on Vista: http://expertester.wordpress.com/2008/07/1...ut-reformating/ jaclaz

Rest assured, a "Full Format" does NOT touch most sectors. Let's put it this way. Try formatting a partition, selecting "Full". How long does it take? Now use a pretty much low level app, like dsfo/dsfi, or any disk WIPING utility to write 00's to ALL sectors of the same partition once (single pass). How long does it take? Or, if you BOTH do not trust my word for it AND you don't want to test it yourself, let's use some math. Get any HD test app, like HDtune or HDtach, and measure your specific hard disk average write speed. The calculate how much time with that speed would take to write all the sectors in a given partition. When you have the need to format that partition, time how much it takes, and compare with the above calculated time. Is the time similar? Read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_formatting Please take note of the fundamental differences between a floppy formatting (which is at the same time a low-level and a HIGH-LEVEL type of formatting) and a HD formatting (which is EXCLUSIVELY a HIGH-LEVEL type of formatting, since several years). jaclaz

Lot of things may have gone wrong, but possibly it's a problem in the ID of the device somewhere in the Registry/.inf files. What class/subclass has the stick? And what class/subclass has the device that is "recognized"? What do you have in the Registry/.inf files? Check with DEVCON or programs like SIW: http://www.gtopala.com/ or http://rh-software.com/index.html Or you can go into device properties and try changing the driver, "forcing" it to the right USB Mass Storage Device one. jaclaz

Just to clear hopefully a possible misunderstanding. ANY HD needs to be partitioned (i.e. have a MBR and a partition table in it's first sector) it is possible however to create just one single partition extending over the entire hard disk capacity So I guess that the question was. "is it partitioned in several partitions/volumes? And the answer was: "No it is just a big partition spanning over the entire drive." For the record, and though noone posed the question, IMHO having a single huge partition spanning over the entire drive is the LEAST advised way to have a disk partitioned as ANY activity on it (like defragging, cloning, recovering from possible failures, etc., etc.) is likely to either take more time or make things more difficult when compared to having a number of "decently sized" volumes/partitions. jaclaz

Start reading this (AND given links): http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=120423 jaclaz

Who knows? What already suggested here on post #4: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showto...133086&st=3 Additionally you may want to try the other apps listed here: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showto...87993&st=17 jaclaz

Just to avoid any possible misunderstanding. A FORMAT (either "quick" or "full") won't even touch, say, 99% of sectors. A FORMAT ONLY writes to a very small number of sectors: the MBR and the very few sectors holding filesystem data, such as bootsectors, FAT's and NTFS MFT and similar ones. jaclaz