jaclaz

Probably also setup.hiv and .inf files need to be amended... You can try renaming other drivers, i.e. ATAPI.SYS->ZTAPI.SYS, just for the sake of checking? I don't think it will work, as an ATA/IDE drive will be both under ATAPI.SYS and DISK.SYS..... jaclaz

ALL of them. There are THREE of them: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=111406 http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=121446 http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=120444 And a "special" for U3 devices: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=121502 You either try all of them and see which one suits you better or just choose one. Please, also note that this is a technical board, not a chat, and you are supposed to write in English a post, not a SMS. jaclaz

I have no idea, don't even know if it will EVER be bootable. I mean, exFAT support needs to be integrated in NTLDR/SETUPLDR.BIN, otherwise there is no way for intial stages of booting, maybe it is possible to "enhance" current "advanced" method "Fake Signature"/"XP Kansas City Shuffle" to support using a "normal filesystem" kicker image and switch during the shuffle the filesystem? But anyway we'll need to wait for exFAT32 support in grub4dos.... About updating the batches, as soon as I find some time to do that, I hope I will be able to , though if the above speculation is true there would be not much of a point, would it? jaclaz

Look , the given thread is about a user that had: NO DOS NO DOS experience NO floppy disk And he managed to flash his BIOS with the given instructions. You DO NOT need: mscdex.exe gcdrom.sys autoexec.bat tweaking config.sys tweaking Just forget about them, forget about the CD you have, forget about Caldera Dos, forget about multisession, forget about Nero, forget about editing .iso images, just read the thread with an open mind and follow the instructions I gave there: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=127593 Feel free to post any doubts you may have, related to the procedures there, i.e.: downloading a suitable floppy image download and install a virtual floppy disk driver expand the downloaded image add to it your BIOS files use IMGBURN to create a new, bootable, el-torito floppy emulation CD or .iso I will try and help you. jaclaz

As a "general" rule, when you are looking for something 9x and Me related, check first on MDgx's pages : http://www.mdgx.com/newtip18.htm tip #2 jaclaz

Just for the record, MS released exFAT drivers for XP SP2 or SP3: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showto...128994&st=5 jaclaz

Try reading the above as : See here: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=125116&hl= jaclaz

Well, you cannot do 12*10,000,000, you have to take into account some holidays.... jaclaz

Additionally, disks to burn BIOS should have the LEAST possible anything on them, BUT system files, the flash utilities and updated BIOS file. You DO NOT need USB support, or CD support for burning the BIOS. Read this: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=127593 on bootdisk.com there is a "special" CLEAN boot diskette for FLASHing BIOS purposes. jaclaz

Yep . All in all, I would say that most probably chances are a bit lower than what initially estimated, but still in the same order of magnitude. Just for the record, my previous post took "your" 1,000,000,000 and divided it, for several reasons, by several factors: 3 (maybe current production) 3 (maybe number of drives in the "family") 1.1 (rounding by defect)=>at this stage the number of drives in the possibly "affected" family is 100,000,000, i.e. 1/10 of "your" 1,000,000,000 10 ("safety factor")=>at this stage the number of drives in the possibly "affected" family is 10,000,000, i.e. 1/100 of "your" 1,000,000,000 500=1/0.002 (to take into account Seagate statement) (3*3*1.1*500*10)=49,500 i.e. 1,000,000,000/49,500=20,202 => 20,000 In other words, the hypothesys is that throughout 2008 Seagate manufactured between 10,000,000 and 100,000,000 drives of the "family". Then, the lower number is taken and multiplied by the smallest possible incidence of "affected drives" (per Seagate statement) 0.002, i.e. that 1/500 of the drives in the family may be affected. Since "some percentage" can mean ANY number <1, the found 20,000 can easily come out by a lesser number of drives "in the family" manufactured multiplied by a higher percentage: 10,000,000*0.002=20,000 (1/500) 5,000,000*0.004=20,000 (1/250) 2,500,000*0.008=20,000 (1/125) 1,000,000*0.02=20,000 (1/50) while still within the same definition of "some percentage", and at the lower end of it...... Without official data, and as clearly stated, the above numbers are just speculative, and, while they might be inaccurate, the order of magnitude seems relevant enough to rule out that the 100÷150 reports here on MSFN, represent NOT a significant fraction (1/7 or 1/8) of all affected drives. jaclaz

Thanks for the heads up. Of course this will draw a neat line between Vista/XP and previous OS's. Let's hope we'll have soon a 9x/Me and 2K (besides Linux, for which an experimental - read only - driver has been made and things seem to be "in the works" ). jaclaz

Still, not entirely my point, it's a bit hard to explain myself. the 1/3, in the hypothetical system depicted, makes things a bit different depending on values with which the initial counter is set in factory. First 3 "critical values" are: 320 =(320*0+256) 576 =(320*1+256) 832 =(320*2+256) Since 320 cannot be divided by 3, IF the counter is initially set to 0, AND all logs are made in three entries, you have 0% probabilities to hit 320, as 106*3=318 (n=106) and 107*3=321 (n=107) next occurrence is 256 steps away, but since 320+256=576 can be divided by 3, you have 100% probabilities (read certainty) to hit 576 (with n=192), and so on. If the counter is intially set to 1, you have 0% probabilities to hit 320, as well as 0% probabilities to hit 576, but you will hit 832 with (with n=277) If the counter is intially set to 2, you have 100% probabilities to hit 320, (with n=106) If the counter is initially set to 3, same as if it were set to 0, only first hit will come at corresponding n-1: 192-1=191 ...and so on. Of course, just as in the case of a single event log per power cycle (where if you started with value 319 you were dead on first shot), if you start with 317 you are dead, but if you start with 319 you have 171 chances before hitting next "critical value". Best value to start with is 1 with which you have 277 cycles, but starting with 4, 7, 10 .... will only lessen your cycle life by 1 , 2, 3, etc. If you are unlucky and start with 2, you have only 106 cycles...... Roughly the difference between 3 and 9 months of "life". If the logs are written sometimes in triplets, sometimes in couples, sometimes in single "lines", I don't think there is a way to calculate probabilities, but however the probabilities should be lower than what calculated for all single "lines". jaclaz

If one could go this way , "other possibilities" include (with the premise that the OP may keep the PC underground, but knows what the BIOS is) that a little mouse could have eaten the IDE or SATA cable. B) More seriously, I have seen often SATA cables get disconnected even if the case had no or very little shocks/movements...double checking cables would be a good idea anyway. jaclaz

If the drive is not detected by BIOS: the poor MBR appears as innocent, as well as "other media" and probably also "sata mode".... jaclaz

Could you please state exact version of BOOTMGR.EXE's? "latest WAIK" and "a previous WAIK" are a bit labile as references... jaclaz

@Gibby @Oliver.HH What I was trying to say here: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showto...092&st=1048 was that if certain events are logged "in pairs" or in "triplets", the actual probabilities would lessen a bit. Take as an example the "normal" XP Event Log, you usually get when booting NT based systems a : 6009 - Microsoft ® Windows ® 5.01. 2600 Service Pack 2 Multiprocessor Free. 6005 - Event log service was started And a: 6006 - Event log service was stopped when switching off. In "normal" power cycle of a (highly ) hypothetical install where no errors, no warnings, nor other notifications are logged, the entries would be always in triplets. To get to 320 in such a system, the "initial" address x would have to be x+3*n=320 as a function of n power cycles, i.e. only values satisfying x=320-3*n, from the bottom: thus reducing the probabilities to 1/3 of what calculated for the "single event" addition. About this: Here is a simple graph for first 12 months (assumed as being 30 days each, using working days of course will flatten the curve): I see it more like gambling on a coin throw: Everytime you switch the thing on you throw a coin, on average for the first six months you will win, besides being not at all what one is supposed to do with data, gambling beyond six months, where percentage gets to 50.6% is betting money on an "unfair" game. jaclaz

being sure that the read-only CD-like device (and the source files in it) cannot be tampered with? not needing any modification to a working CD/DVD? jaclaz

I am not sure I get fully your question. If you use migrate.inf, the stick will be U:\. So you should be able to SET CDDRIVE=U:\ And live happily. Of course without knowing which paths you use in cmdlines.txt and in your batch files it's impossible to say whether they will work or not. If the batches or whatever point to: %CDDRIVE%$OEM$ they won't work. Maybe they could if you : SET CDDRIVE=U:\$WIN_NT$.~LS\ but it all depends of the contents of the batches. jaclaz

Let me answer this way : files bigger than 4Gb are NOT allowed on FAT16 filesystem files bigger than 4Gb are NOT allowed on FAT32 filesystem files bigger than 4Gb ARE allowed on NTFS filesystem Read NO as an answer to your question. BUT there are a few Registry changes you can make to reduce the writes on the NTFS filesystem. Here is a list (only some apply to your case): http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=6564 jaclaz

What jaclaz means is less "philosophic" than anything else in this thread. Using the approach in the given links works. I don't care if it's TOC related, LBA related or whatever related. (but it's LBA related ). It is not strictly "ISO" related. It works on CD and on "normal" filesystems, and on any media, of course on fast media (internal hard disks) difference is much LESS noticeable. jaclaz

Yep, point is just: WHY F8? There are "special" MBR's that can change while booting the Active and Hidden status of partitions, usually they use F9 or F10. Read these: http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=6830 http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=6865 http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=6893 AND links in them. jaclaz

That would be a great thing. I have a few PM's by people who don't know English very well, so I'm trying to find the time to translate existing guide (into Italian), but I am a bit reluctant as this "kind" of people tends to be also not particularly "tech savvy" and the procedure is fairly complex for the newbie, and the risk of somehow "frying" the drive by mistake is great. Having something along the lines of what I hinted here: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showto...28807&st=48 tested and working, could make the difference. About the other point, of course you are free to choose your way, but: jaclaz

Victoria Looky here: http://www.benchmarkhq.ru/english.html?/be_hdd.html jaclaz

Sorry to say so , but that's not really a "valid" argument, as I (and some other people) see it : http://homepages.tesco.net/J.deBoynePollar...ess-metric.html jaclaz

The "Dietmar's way" XP install on USB is already fairly portable. BUT, of course there may be problems with device drivers. I have never had the time/will/need to do experiments, first thing that come to mind is the use "by default" of UNIATA and UNIVBE, in this only seemingly completely unrelated thread: http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=21711 there are some links Or add the entire set of driverpacks....but the build will grow in size. Another approach, for which I seem to completely fail to find interested contributing members is the XPCLI project, utterly and fully experimental and unfinished: http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=3717 In it's (future) XPCLINL evolution, it may be what you are looking for: http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?...=3717&st=31 As a side note project evolved (or involved ) into yet another unfinished thingy: http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?...c=6393&st=0 jaclaz