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

Hmmm. Nothing better to do than looking for troubles? 39 Mb + 47.53 Gb + 95.64 Gb = ÷ 143.56 Gb > 128 GiB or approximately 137.4 GB Hard disk barrier: http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/bios/sizeGB128-c.html LBA48: http://www.48bitlba.com/ Most probably NTLDR has still 28 bit LBA. Overall support for "NT family" was introduced in Windows Service Pack 3 / Windows XP Service Pack 1: http://www.48bitlba.com/enablebiglba.htm I don't think that besides fixing the driver and putting the setting for EnableBigLba in the Registry they updated significantly the NTLDR. Possibly BOOTMGR has not such a limitation. jaclaz

YES: http://homepages.tesco.net/J.deBoynePollar...no-answers.html Bootpart does NOT edit the NTLDR. It may add entries to a BOOT.INI for bootsectors. But what you need, you can do it easier and faster with Notepad or with a "dedicated" GUI tool. Read these: http://www.msfn.org/board/BOOTINI-and-diff...ive-t25365.html http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=210 jaclaz

@Droiyan3 There are good chances that TESTDISK can rebuild a partition table: http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk make SURE you read docs and howto's BEFORE attempting the recovery. If the partitin trable cannot be rebuilt, you still have an option to recover SOME data using PHOTOREC (companion app to TESTDISK): http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec jaclaz

Just for the record, and not necessarily applicable in your case, in ye old times (when DIN connector was used as well as "PS/2" ones) a common problem was the little fuse: http://www.computer-engineering.org/ps2protocol/ I guess the same happens on newish ones, though I never had the occasion/need to fix one. jaclaz

Since you posted in "General Stuff->General Discussion" you may want a "General Answer". Here it is: You have gone to the wrong sites and evidently completely failed to search on this one. Besides that you also completely failed to provide ANY not-so-trivial detail like which OS are you working with. This said, start browsing this Forum: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showforum=157 Starting with this thread: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=111406 Read also this one: http://www.msfn.org/board/USB-Booting-issues-t119963.html where another user has been able to solve a similar problem. jaclaz

Just FYI, the entry: title NTpassword root (hd0,3) kernel /NTpasswd/vmlinuz rw vga=1 initrd=/NTpasswd/initrd.cgz /NTpasswd/scsi.cgz initrd /NTpasswd/initrd.cgz is WRONG . ONLY initrd.cgz will be loaded, thus if you try it on a SCSI machine it won't work. Read these: http://www.boot-land.net/forums/?showtopic=5433 http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=19643 Then, FORGET about them , newish releases of grub4dos do support multiple initrd's. A correct entry is listed here: http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?...6119&st=118 jaclaz

Ok, now that you have reached (actually you think you reached ) your goal through a "simple" method, it's time for you to start with a simpler one. I am assuming you have a C:\ drive with (at least) these files: NTLDR NTDETECT.COM BOOT.INI IO.SYS MSDOS.SYS COMMAND.COM AUTOEXEC.BAT CONFIG.SYS Add to it following files: grldr grub.exe menu.lst from this download: http://nufans.net/grub4dos/ http://nufans.net/grub4dos/grub4dos-0.4.4-2009-03-25.zip Edit BOOT.INI adding to it this line: C:\grldr="grub4dos" Boot from the system as if you were booting in XP, choose among BOOT.INI choices the entry "grub4dos", choose among menu.lst choices entry "find and load IO.SYS of Windows 9x/Me". You should boot to Win9x/Me normally. Exit Windows GUI to "pure" DOS. Run C:\grub.exe. Choose among menu.lst choices entry "find and load NTLDR of Windows NT/2K/XP". You should be back to BOOT.INI choices. jaclaz

Generally, yes. Are you talking about WinPE 1.x or 2.x? You may need to "fix" the Logical Volume inside Extended Partition to act as "primary", see here: http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/ Post some details and I'll give you some more relevant links. jaclaz

No, it's about user's experience and opinions, everyone has his own preferences and reasons to prefer one or the other app. Good. I tested many more than that and find imgburn perfect for my uses/needs, due to it's portability and small size. FYI : http://www.boot-land.net/forums/?showtopic=4398 jaclaz

MD5 is a "hashing algorithm" that can verify the "checksum" of a file, i.e. it's integrity, against a known one, useful to prevent problems caused by data corruption for any reason, or, if you prefer, a way to make sure that two files are identical. Here is an easy tool: http://nunobrito.eu/download.php?view.4 More: http://www.boot-land.net/forums/?showtopic=2532 jaclaz

An even shorter review: IMGBURN: http://www.imgburn.com/ tiny, freeware, portable across systems: jaclaz

Maybe you gave it up too early. I would be curious to know about "all the other alternatives", though. jaclaz

Because: Read this small article by the Author of Unlocker, Cedrick "Nitch" Collomb: http://ccollomb.free.fr/blog/?p=59 Then get WinsetupfromUSB: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=120444&hl= Do not introduce variations, follow instructions and you won't need reading "20 pages". jaclaz

Yep , correction: jaclaz

FYI: http://www.pcdecrapifier.com/features jaclaz

It's hard to say how you can get away with it. If I were you I would EITHER: use the XP installation floppies use grub4dos to directly chainload the SETUPLDR.BIN in the \I386 directory, but cannot say how an XP install will behave from d:\, you'll need to edit TXTSETUP.SIF: http://www.msfn.org/board/Alternative-loca...en-t119742.html Don't you have a spare USB stick to install from it?: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showforum=157 If you are going the "Bart" PE + WINNT32.EXE way, you can most probably build an an easier manner the LiveXP with winbuilder with instructions given here: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=121446 jaclaz

Oh me oh my, that looks involved. Any suggestion which byte to change with a disk editor? Disk Editor? WHY? Use beeblebrox: http://students.cs.byu.edu/~codyb/ ot PTEdit/Ptedit32 Read the given links, particularly this one: http://www.boot-land.net/forums/?showtopic=2959 Comeon , a MBR is not black magic , it's just a bunch of bytes (512 to be exact), of which you are interested in DATA: 4x16=64 of them and there are nice graphical tools to manage them. jaclaz

Should for any reason the above be not working, try using this floppy: http://johnson.tmfc.net/dos/usbdrv.html to experiment with various drivers. jaclaz

NONE of them. You are missing a point. As long as the CHS and LBA data are "balanced" there is no problem whatsoever with "converting" an existing CHS partition in it's corresponding LBA one and viceversa. Even if they are not, it should work allright with CHS->LBA (while it normally WON'T for LBA->CHS) All it takes is changing 1 (one) byte in the MBR. You might want to read the links I gave to dencorso here: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showto...130689&st=8 AND this seemingly unrelated one: http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=21049 jaclaz

For the record, both theory and evidence of reports lead to these conclusions: for CD's (and EARLY DVD burners) the LOWER the speed it is burned the more it is likely the burned CD won't have problems on any machine (this was expecially true on older PC's and burners where processor speed and cache made a difference) for recent DVD's the "best" settings is around mid-range, i.e. in the "ideal" speed of the device http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=21043 Basically, old CD and DVD burners were "slow" units "supercharged" to reach high speeds, newish ones are "average speed" units that are both "supercharged" to obtain max speed and "dumbed down" to work at lower ones. The "half the max speed" is a good rule of thumb. There are however several factors involved, including the actual brand of the media and also some "coupling" between a particular media and a particular burner: http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=20755 There is also an intermediate situation between "total failure" and "everything allright" which is what Access Denied reported, i.e. the data is "all there" and can be read "allright", but when reading in bursts, the reading is not 100% effective and another (or more than one) "reading passes" is needed, thus actually slowing down the booting/install. jaclaz

aviv00 Maybe you could edit your initial post adding in it some more explicit instructions, like which exact lines need to be edited, instead of this: or possibly attach an already edited and known to be working TXTSETUP.SIF, I could put together a simple batch to do "automagically" just the needed edits.... jaclaz

You're welcome. "See" you soon, hopefully with news of a success. jaclaz