jaclaz

Yep , that is the other urban myth, or, if you prefer, total and utter lack of understanding of how a Hard disk partitioning/formatting works. MOST people think that a good ol' FORMAT will delete anything on the HD for good. I guess that for years most people have gone from one excess (FORMAT) to the other (35 "voodo" passes or DoD standards), and I am afraid this wioll continue for many years to come. jaclaz

Wait a minute, before giving up. (usually IT IS NOT AN OPTION! , but I do understand your frustration ) Can you access the Recovery partition (say it's D:\) and open a command prompt and run in it: DIR /S D:\ >C:\Recdir.txt (change D: driveletter accordingly to your setup. And attach the resulting Recdir.txt file? I am curious to see what files are in it. jaclaz

As said: jaclaz

Really? http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showto...25900&st=11 (same thread posted before, this time pointing directly to post #12 ) jaclaz

You are welcome. You might find clearer these graphical examples: http://www.multibooters.co.uk/multiboot.html jaclaz

I have found this italian site: http://guide.pctrio.com/index.php/xp-vista...ot-con-filmati/ Where Basically, in the HP version, some settings are inside the mbr.ini and the command must be invoked with the /ini and with the /r /q command line parameters. "Full" translation: These probably produce different results than the "quickplay" thingie mentioned before: http://www.notebookforums.com/post2727416-848.html Also the screenshot here: http://regardingit.blogspot.com/ is different from the one posted by ahmad2080, so there must be several versions of the MBRINST.EXE, of which at least one is the "HP customized version". The instructions on the Italian site are consistent with these: http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=653972 though it seems like the used MBRINST.EXE is the one in the Recovery Partition. @ahmad2080 I hope the above helps , but do remember that your mileage may vary... jaclaz

You mean like this? BIOS->MBR->Active Partition bootsector->NTLDR->BOOT.INI->NTDETECT.COM->Kernel files and drivers What files and in which order are loaded after NTDETECT.COM starts you can see by adding the /BOOTLOG switch to BOOT.INI entry: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinte...s/bb963892.aspx jaclaz

I would like that it monitors the source too to detect when the HTPC is on. Source monitoring can be done by hundreds of apps. I think it doesn't exist then, right? Well I am going back to the good old copy&paste. Sure, it would also be possible to have one that monitors if you're getting sleepy while watching the movies and makes you a nice cup of coffee (for me: black, two spoonful of sugar, please ). @iamtheky Seems like a nice one. Here is another one, just for the record: OZSYNC http://nebula1979.fortunecity.it/ though it is NOT reported as working under Vista Dsynchronize (from the same Author of HDhacker): http://dimio.altervista.org/eng/ is Vista compatible, and it is nicely small. jaclaz

Maybe I see. In the four-letter named folder you put, like in the flyakite guide : http://flyakite.msfn.org/xpprosp1.htm contents of the created $WIN_NT$.~BT and then TXTSETUP.SIF is edited to point to another directory structure. I was thinking the topic was about a different method, sorry for the confusion. Just in case, this may be useful (automated creation of folders): http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=58446 jaclaz

Unfortunately it WON'T work. You have 4 (four) characters available, like \I386, you cannot have \SETUP\XPR3, only \XPR3. As said, you can have a hex edited SETUPLDR.BIN and TXTSETUP.SIF in each of the four-letter folder, and chainload it through grub4dos (or Aerostudio that can use grub4dos) or BCDW, or whatever, cannot say about Easyboot. jaclaz

No need WHATSOEVER to shout. Samedir has this feature, what do you think the "real time monitoring of source folder" is for? Just in case, you can use any app scheduling it: http://www.ss64.com/nt/schtasks.html jaclaz

Yep, . JFYI: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=125900 jaclaz

It's also surprising the 500.000 figure! As a side note, it's an interesting "psychological" and absolutely empirical observation how this proves that people are: 1) mostly (beside harmless ) ungrateful 2) completely failing to read or comply with what they read Check the data of views of the main stickies: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showforum=157 right now: So, out of 183,897+25,417+292,504=501,818 views, only 18,166 had even a quick glance at FAQ's (less than 4%), besides the several ones that didn't read the FAQ'S and posted a new thread asking what was already covered in them, and only 3,806 (less than 0.7%) were curious enough to check what could be in the "thankyou's" thread, and of these, we had 3 (read three) thankyou's, ALL of them by longtime members of the board (to which we may add the few, maybe tens from people, like nashi989 , that posted a thank you on another thread.... 501,818 to 3 against would be some nice figures to feed into the Improbability Drive..... jaclaz

I remember using a program from Vladimir Salnikov, Samedir. Site is no more, but can still be found through the Wayback Machine : http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://samedir.sbn.bz/ http://web.archive.org/web/20071219121541/...samedir.sbn.bz/ Cannot say if it will work with Vista. jaclaz

Yep , but from the given links it seems like a "sp" can be downloaded from HP that contains the "mbrinst.exe" that should be able to re-create the "special" MBR. jaclaz

Besides the Forum posted before by expert01: http://www.bttr-software.de/forum/forum.php I'll throw in the home page too: http://www.bttr-software.de/ Several interesting utilities for the good ol' DOS user, I will point out this one: http://www.bttr-software.de/products/drvexch/ And several DOS ports: http://www.bttr-software.de/ports/ jaclaz

@ahmad2080 To put it plainly, Tripredacus is not in a condition to help you without infringing some NDA of some kind, which is perfectly understandable. Some reference: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=126181 http://www.msfn.org/board/Create-Recovery-...ti-t108515.html What is less understandable , at least IMHO, is the need to affirm somehow that he is the only one able to create or re-create such a recovery partition, because he has this advantage of using "Softhinks software on a daily basis", and that "You will not have the ability to recreate the partition". As I see it, one thing is refraining from publishing/devolving confidential infos, another one is "teasing" or putting down people.... I mean, they are, in any case, just a bunch of bytes, so, surely there is a way to re-create them, only it is most probably not worth the hassle. I wonder what would be the "unspeakable name"? PC Angel? PC Angel LE? Have you got a "quickplay" partition (whatever it is) ? If yes, this may be of interest: http://regardingit.blogspot.com/ http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=132849 http://www.notebookforums.com/post2727416-848.html jaclaz

As always, interesting questions. I have an intelligent reply for most of them, but I am afraid it would involve speaking of some chaps at MS in such terms that may get me banned, so, sorry, but no answers. To help our googlers friends, I all add a few keywords: eiger Mönch panther and a link to a seemingly unrelated thread: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=95271 and, not really news, but SP3 is out for Winflp also: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details...ylang=en&tm jaclaz

AFAIK one of the smallest ones is the Kingmax: http://www.kingmax.com/en_03_product_content.asp?sn=44 superstick mini Slightly smaller than the superstick: http://paulstamatiou.com/2009/01/13/review...usb-flash-drive http://neomercurial.blogspot.com/2008/05/k...ick-review.html jaclaz

Or none and use grub4dos grldr as no-emulation bootsector and directly chainload ANY DOS/Win9x/Me (IO.SYS) or NT/K/Xp/2003 (SETUPLDR.BIN) or Vista/2008/Windows7 (BOOTMGR) system files/loaders . jaclaz

No prob , you only need some patience and go through this threads: http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=5316 AND links given there. To understand what options you have, then, you might use a "direct" Syslinux approach: http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=7481 or use (advised) grub4dos grub.exe as kernel and have possibly more options. jaclaz

I didn't get you were familiar with grub. If you are, you may want to fiddle a bit with grub4dos: http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showforum=66 Basically, you can make grldr bootable by using method #8 to #11: http://diddy.boot-land.net/grub4dos/Grub4dos.htm (or add it as the only boot.ni entry int eh "main" boot.ini on HD) and use methods #5/#6 Then have a couple of floppy images as hinted here: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=127900 Each one with a boot.ini with a single choice (thus the white text on black bakcground won't be shown ) jaclaz

Yep , you see : http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Chinese_Proverb/ http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/2279.html No, AFAIK the boot.ini choices "look" is not changeable. jaclaz

To be picky, it's grub4dos, not "legacy" grub. jaclaz

Did the recovery partition (BEFORE fiddling with partition magic and the HP tool) show? Usually these partitions have a "special" partition identifier that makes them invisible from the "normal" system. When you press a "special" key, I guess F11 in your case, the identifier is changed in such a way that the partition can be booted. Read this thread to get an idea about the way it works: http://www.msfn.org/board/Create-My-Own-Re...on-t108515.html I'll see if I can find some HP specific info and let you know. jaclaz