jaclaz

You can try File Viewer Lite: https://windowsfileviewer.com/ though it is a huge program in size and has a limited number of compatible files (the "Plus" version is Commercial) it is seemingly still XP compatible. jaclaz

Yep, but you are still missing the (general) point. Quick View (Plus) was (is) a sort of Swiss knife or if you prefer a Leatherman Tool, a single executable could (can) open/view 200+ different file formats and was very, very useful as a "preview" tools as - generally speaking - it was much faster to load a file than the "native" tool (provided you had it available) and it was additionally a handy tool against possibly malicious unknown attachments. Of course you can replace a Leatherman with a set of screwdrivers, pliers, a small saw, a file, can opener, scissors, etc., but it still is another thing. jaclaz

Those are (as the name implies) PE Tools, they are about PE executables, and that's it. Quickview is/was a "generic" viewer for many filetypes. The "commercial" version Quickview Plus allowed(allows) to quickly view the contents of most files (including Office documents, images in not-so-common formats, etc.), it was at the time a "must have". Apples vs. Oranges. jaclaz

A (USB) card reader may behave somewhat strangely, in the sense that many will have a drive letter assigned to them even if there is no card in the card reader slot, the label of the volume on the card may not be shown. Also (it may well depend on the specific version of windows) some files on the root of the volume may interfere with showing the label in Explorer,. see: https://www.askvg.com/fix-windows-explorer-always-shows-local-disk-as-drive-label-name/ jaclaz

Yes and no. Meaning that what you remember was likely not much the actual differences between Win98 and XP, but rather the differences between the capabilities of the hardware you were running them on, in those days two or three years apart in hardware meant a lot in terms of amount of memory and speed of processors, but also hard disks speed. jaclaz

The one about the nationality of software and hardware firms and more generally about software authors and hardware vendors(and their ancestry). jaclaz

Though the joke has become old enough to be not anymore funny (if it ever was), the Padvish antivirus has reportedly been tested in 2017 (on Windows 10) by a German security institute and found rather effective against ransomware: https://www.av-test.org/fileadmin/pdf/reports/AV-TEST_Padvish_Ransomware_Test_October_2017.pdf jaclaz

looky, here, probablement, see the answer: https://msfn.org/board/topic/149556-registry-keys-that-control-explorer-folder-view-options/ jaclaz

Happy you made it. About the "strange" key with a space in it, maybe it is not the space but "something else" (I don't remember issue with just a space in the key name, you just need to enclose it in quotes using - say - reg.exe): https://www.windows-commandline.com/delete-registry-key-command-line/ Check the Permissions/Owners of that key. If you can use a Linux of some kind there is a tool, hivexsh: https://www.libguestfs.org/hivexsh.1.html that sometimes allows more "freedom" than the native Regedit or reg.exe. jaclaz

Maybe the 64 version is different, but in 32 bit XP the .SP1 and .SP2 files are empty, see: https://msfn.org/board/topic/111302-xp-sp2-bootable-cd-asking-for-sp2-cd-in-drive-a/ https://msfn.org/board/topic/111302-xp-sp2-bootable-cd-asking-for-sp2-cd-in-drive-a/?do=findComment&comment=731152 jaclaz

Not exactly. When you ask to load a hive you first choose which hive (actually the hive backing file) you want to load and you assign to it a "new" name. As an example, you have a SOFTWARE file coming from your old install, you make a copy of it and place it in a folder called old_install on your C:\ drive. So the file you want to load is C:\old_install\SOFTWARE. When you load it in the registry you first select that file (C:\old_install\SOFTWARE) and then you assign to it a new name, let's say OLD_SOFT. The name is a sort of alias, similar to mount point for the hive (actually the hive backing file), so when you unload it the changes you made to the hive "OLD_SOFT" will be committed to the backing file that is still C:\old_install\SOFTWARE. Your loaded hive MUST be a NEW name directly in HKLM and it MUST be unloaded once you have done your edits, before closing the Regedit and/or rebooting, the Registry itself, in this way won't be modified, only the loaded and unloaded hive will be. Some keys may have Owner and/or Authorization that you (as Administrator) do not have access to. The Registry is a structure in many aspects very similar to the NTFS, and each key may have particular Owner(s) and Permission(s) attached, they can usually be changed but it is tricky business. Then you need a second instance of the OS (or a PE or a Live Linux) capable of replacing the "current" SOFTWARE hive (the one in %windir%\System32\config\SOFTWARE, od which you MUST have a backup copy, made form the same secoinf instance or PE, etc.) with the edited one (the one in C:\old_install\SOFTWARE). At next boot the Registry will be assembled using the edited %windir%\System32\config\SOFTWARE. Whether it will actually boot without errors will of course depend on the edits you made, even a teeny-tiny mistake in them may prevent the OS to boot fully and/or without errors, in which case you need to boot to the "other" OS and restore the backup of the SOFTWARE and start again. jaclaz

No, for the "current installation", the BCD000000 exists in *any* Windows Registry since Vista and it is actually a mount point for the BCD (Boot Configuration Data) that your BOOTMGR (or BOOTMGR:EFI) uses when booting, either /boot/BCD or /EFI/Microsoft/Boot/BCD. Though the Registry does not really "exist", it is assembled automatically at boot time mounting in a structure the relevant "backing files", these are in various places on your disk and are "put together" for convenience, typically: %windir%\System32\config\SYSTEM --> HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \SYSTEM .%windir%\System32\config\SOFTWARE-->HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \SOFWWARE %windir%\System32\config\DEFAULT--> HKEY_USERS \.Default %UserProfile%\NTUSER.DAT--> HKEY_CURRENT_USER About loading an offline hive, let's recap. Open the registry editor. Select the HKLM (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE), then click on File -> Load Hive, then in the dialog navigate/select the (offline) hive you want to load, and finally you are asked a new (temporary) name to give to the loaded hive. In the above video, the "hives" folder is only a folder that was made on the desktop to store (a copy of) the offline hive(s)/registry backing file(s). jaclaz

No. There is something that you are doing "wrong". The BCD00000 is a key where the BCD is mounted, you shouldn't touch it. When you select to load a hive, a dialog will (should) prompt you to give to the key a new name (possibly a distinctive one, like "my_software"). See if this video helps: jaclaz

Yep, crystal ball (when properly tuned) is far more accurate, but with i-ching, I asked how will the evolution of Chrome be and I got #12: http://the-iching.com/hexagram_12 not bad at all. jaclaz

You shouldn't need a crystal ball for these kind of predictions[1], usually i-ching is good enough for this kind of "generic" ones. jaclaz [1] in my experience crystal balls are touchy, you ask them the "wrong" question (according to them) and they will instantly produce garbage and need to be sent to the shop for re-tuning. The problem is not so much with the cost, but good crystal ball technicians are increasingly rare and you have to wait weeks before your ball can be serviced, at least here in Italy.

The common "Y" USB cable has two male USB connectors (one data+power, one power only) and a single female one, the idea is to draw power from two USB ports on the computer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-cable#USB but if you have an external power adapter (provided it works correctly[1]) then that is not the issue. You said you have USB drive cache disabled, have you tried deleting these small files with it enabled? It should be not *needed* on modern disks that have plenty of internal cache, but you never know, it could also be *something else* at the USB or Mass Storage driver level, but if it happened to you on two different OSes (Xp and 7) it is not probable. jaclaz [1] I have seen power adapters that behaved just fine but that in case of peaks of draw dropped voltage, so a test with another adapter is anyway a good idea

Yep, but you are roughly 99% right, 5 TB 3.5" disks are rare, they seem to "jump" from 4 to 6+. There is still (only for the record) the good ol' poor man's way of defragmenting (you won't like it, as it needs an extra hard disk). Back in (good ol') NT 4.00 times there was no defragmenting program included in the OS, and what I used to do was to copy all the files to another hard disk, delete (or even re-format, depending on cases) the "main" hard disk volume(s) and then copy back all the files. Of course it took (and would take given the size of your volumes and number of files, notwithstanding the increased speed of devices and buses) "forever", it is a lot of time since I did any test of speed, but if I recall correctly,. the throughput of imaging a disk should be between 150 and 400 GB/hour (with some particular fast programs on extremely fast devices topping at 600 GB/hour) , and copying should be much slower than that. jaclaz

These data losses may well be connected to Issues with the power draw from the USB connector. Those are USB 3.0, right? The limit should be 900 mA (@5V). If I were you I would try with a Y USB cable and see if the behaviour remains the same. jaclaz

Very good finding about the version of the Paragon GPT included in the HFS thingy. I am not sure to understand, the WD50EZRX does (or did?) exist: https://www.disctech.com/Western-Digital-WD50EZRX-5TB-SATA-Hard-Drive About exFAT, yes, I am not much familiar with that filesystem, but Defraggler and UltraDefrag should be able to defrag it (there may be many more third party tools capable of that) since it is a not a very common filesystem and support on XP for it was added as an afterthought I wouldn't be surprised if there is a "main" version of it (that XP can access just fine) and some later versions or sub-versions (that in some cases XP has trouble with). The defragging (by this or that third party utility) may well make the filesystem backwards-compatible with the version supported in XP. jaclaz

One can use Nirsoft's Serviwin to see which file corresponds to which service, though that won't work for svchost.exe "hosted" services. jaclaz

Recent (like in the last 10-15 years) ATX PSU's have generally short circuit and overdraw/overcurrent protection, i.e. if you draw too much power they will simply switch off, but it is not necessarily true, el-cheapo, no-name PSU's may well lack this form of protection, though it would be an exception. And there is no way to know[1] for sure. Additionally, there is no easy/cheap device to actually test a PSU behaviour under load, all the testers that you can find are essentially multi-channel voltmeters, they are used to verify that a PSU is providing voltages within specs without load (or with a minimal one), what would be needed is a series of shunts or an electronic load, such devices can be found for several hundreds of dollars at a minimum and, given the high amount of Amps (or Watts if you prefer) involved you would need particularly beefy ones. There are many "PSU calculators" available but the results they provide (given that your hardware is listed on them) are - in the best case - a vague approximation of the real power needed, and - on the other hand - a PSU. particularly if old/used may well still work fine with a lower load but fail if too much Amperes are required by the motherboard or devices. As well, there is software that can check load/power but it depends on sensors that your specific hardware may or may not have https://openhardwaremonitor.org/ A better approximation would be using a surely powerful enough PSU with the actual hardware, first checking how much the PSU draws form mains socket and then with an amperometer/multimeter how many amperes are drawn on each rail. It is anyway a lot of work, not worth it (IMHO) unless you are trying to optimize a build for some particular reason. Try estimating the needed power via one or two of the online calculators, and if the result seems roughly compatible with your PSU, try it, if it overdraws current in 95% or 99% of cases the protection will kick in and switch it off without damage, in the remainling 1%-5% it will release the magic smoke and you will have to buy a new (more powerful) PSU (which you would need anyway, the differnce would be only about having an old spare working 450W PSU or not). jaclaz [1] you could - in theory - put a fuse on each voltage line/rail

It greatly depends on what is "broken". The \Program Files folder in itself is pretty much "portable", it is (mainly but not only) the Registry and drivers that are linked to the specific install/machine, generally speaking, bar the standard default files in a pristine install, it is difficult if not impossible to recreate (in a VM or on real hardware) an "exact" copy of the \Program Files folder (some programs that were installed on the old machine might be missing, or you may add by mistake some other versions and the old Registry entries won't be valid. I am not sure to understand how you plan to operate, what do you mean by "dock"? Depending on the size of your hard disk, how much space you have, etc. it would probably make more sense to install a second instance of XP on another volume/partition and then try to do the copy/paste of the missing/broken files, i.e. make first a dual boot system, and then use the second instance to source the files for the old install, but it is a looong, complex repair attempt without any possibility to know the chances of success unless first the reason why the old XP install has "broken". I mean if the disk/partition has issues and caused the error(s) corrupting files or making them disappear, it is not likely that by copying them over the OS will be any better. jaclaz

Yep, sure , those are 1 TB hard disks, not 1 GB ... I was just having a little bit of fun at your typo, 1 GB hard disks were common around 1995 or 1996, maybe earlier, and of course they were IDE or SCSI, SATA specifications were first released in 2000 and it took some time to become common, but by then (2003) the minimum capacity of (SATA) hard disks was more like 40GB or so . jaclaz

There are basically two ways to access an "external" Registry "backing file". #1 is mounting the file as a (temporary) hive in the "current" Registry (this can be done with the "normal" Regedit), for an example look here: https://4sysops.com/archives/regedit-as-offline-registry-editor/ #2 using an "offline" Registry editor such as: http://reboot.pro/index.php?showtopic=11312 For what you want to do the "normal" #1 way is "better", but it is what you want to do that is extremely complex and that is difficult or impossible with *any* method, as it would imply hundreds or thousands of settings, many of whlch may be contrasting with your current Registry. In theory you could load one of the old windows Registry backing file as a temporary hive, select and export the relevant keys to .reg file, manually edit the .reg file (to change the temporary hive name to the "real" one) and import the .reg file in the "current" Registry, but as said likely we are talking of hundreds of small .reg files and a mistake may always happen. Besides, the .reg file does not "carry" some metadata (authorizations) so that when you import them the authorizations may be incorrect for some particular keys. jaclaz

Oops, sorry, my bad. jaclaz