jaclaz

Two things, just for the record. 1) be aware when you buy one of those trays, that they have 80 leads cables, quite a few of the cheap ones have the old IDE 40 lead cable, and if you have a newish/faster drive you'll experience problems. 2) @cannie, it depends on a number of factors, NT 4.00 was doable on FAT 16 volumes. http://www.forensicfocus.com/index.php?nam...opic&t=2159 Windows 2K introduced a complication: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=90495 but it was still doable, at least on FAT 16 and 32 volumes. I never tried with XP, nor with NTFS volumes. Most probably robocopy or strarc: http://www.ltr-data.se/opencode.html or some similar software may be able to handle the permissions. About XCOPY, Nick Rage: http://www.duxcw.com/digest/Howto/hd/cpyhd/cpyhd2.htm is to be credited for the: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=24650&st=9 I SERVe Kentucky Fried Chicken Hot! jaclaz

My guess is that the question of the OP is a little different, more like: If this is the question, the answer is NO. You need to "feed" nlite with the original "base" disc, the source of latest SP and the sources of ALL the later updates you want to include. In other words nlite won't touch your current install. Probably an easier way would be to use another app, like HFSLIP: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showforum=129 or RyanVM integrator: http://www.ryanvm.net/msfn/ to create an up-to-date "full" install source, and then use nlite on this. jaclaz

I may add that generally speaking SERVER machines have by design very fast disks and comparatively low CPU power. On the other hand Common END USER PC's have relatively slow disks and usually very fast CPU's, that are often not used to their full capabilities. Consequently, since: TANSTAAFL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TANSTAAFL Compression is a trade-off, you are exchanging some CPU cycles for faster data access/transfer. It's up to you to find out if the "deal" is advantageous in your particular case. Also, compression, even if not as much as encryption, adds a layer of complexity that can make, should disaster strike, recovering data more difficult or impossible. jaclaz

Also, the operation is quite CPU intensive, and there is however some degradation of quality / loosing of sync if you don't have good, fast hardware. Depending on the amount of VHS you need to convert and the time you want to spend on them, a hardware solution may be faster/more convenient (even if you have to spend some more money). Here some ideas are listed: http://www.howtodothings.com/electronics/a...vhs-to-dvd.html Of course if you need/want to edit the videos, add "special effects" and the like the PC solution is the one to choose. jaclaz

John, try expanding the luna.th_ file you made with EXPAND.EXE. What happens? Then, try again with the original luna.th_ file in the \I386 directory of your CD..... jaclaz

TWO things: 1) First thing ANYONE should do is to fix the "stupidest" (IMHO - there may be much stupider ones ) default setting of XP: http://www.pctools.com/guides/registry/detail/229/ Knowing WHICH exact STOP ERROR comes on the BSOD is usually half to 3/4 of the solution. 2) do what cluberti says, though not "specific" to this board, and although you are responding very nicely even without probably having read it, do read the "common sense advice" here: http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?act=boardrules with particualr attention to point #f and expecially point #f.3 By looking a a full dump cluberti can tell you more things about your system that you will learn in months of studying. ...... Ok, I lied , they were three: 3) NEVER introduce more than one change/fix at the time, if you introduce two or three of them together you will NEVER be able to understand WHICH one is the actual fix (and it's needed) and WHICH one(s) is irrelevant to the problem at hand. jaclaz

Yep, part of the idea of the event log is to clear past logs and re-create the crash. Then you'll have the exact idea of what happened exactly before the crash. In any case there should be a number of triplets of I (info) entries showing you that the service was started (source eventlog codes 6005, 6006 and 6009), something like this: 6005 Eventlog service started <- the system booted allright 6009 Microsoft ® Windows ® 5.01. 2600 Service Pack 2 Multiprocessor Free. <- the system is booting allright 6006 Eventlog service stopped <- the system was shut down allright Basically, if you have a crash, you will find a 6009 and a 6005 (when the system was booted/re-booted after the crash) WITHOUT a corresponding prior 6006 (meaning that the crash didn't give the service the opportunity to stop properly and log the event) jaclaz

Well, no, strangely enough, I mentioned the Event Viewer meaning the Event Viewer. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308427/en-us jaclaz

Well, maybe we've come to the "real" question. I am not at all into "themes", but luna (both ms_/mst and th_/the) have entries in TXTSETUP.SIF: luna.mst = 1,,,,,,,68,0,0,luna.msstyles luna.the = 1,,,,,,,129,0,0,Luna.theme Would this help? Hint...Hint.... If not, these may : http://gosh.msfn.org/txtsetup.htm http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=14852 jaclaz

Take it easy , no need to start a flame war, anyone is free to have his own opinions..... I now see how being a PC user since the age of 5 qualifies you for being trusted on your word, whatever you affirm (at least browser speed related). jaclaz

Any file on the XP CD with an underscore as last character (_) is compressed, not necessarily "cabbed with cabarc from microsoft SDK". Actually there is a MS "COMPRESS.EXE" app that corresponds to the "EXPAND.EXE" one, there are several versions of it: http://searchwindowsserver.techtarget.com/...1280435,00.html http://windowsitpro.com/article/articleid/...it-utility.html though most probably you are right and cabarc.exe or makecab.exe was used. I doubt that mscompress was used though : http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/mscompress.htm Such a file can be viewed/opened/extracted by 7zip, among others freeware compression utilities. Something that may interest you: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=112121 jaclaz

All the merits should go to the work done by user madurai_tiger at the http://forum.notebookreview.com I simply pointed you to it. Happy everything worked out as expected. B) jaclaz

The snippets you posted are referred to REG.EXE, NOT to REGEDIT.EXE. http://www.ss64.com/nt/reg.html Most probably they are referred to part of a RunOnceEx.cmd, that usually begins as: cmdow @ /HID @echo off SET KEY=HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnceEx See here: http://unattended.msfn.org/unattended.xp/view/web/31/ http://gosh.msfn.org/using_runonceex.htm And here: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=23751&st=0 for some details. 1055 is just a "large" number to make sure that keys like "005" or "010" are executed before, in other words by changing the name of the key to a higher or lower number you are able to execute the command line within it after or before other ones. jaclaz

Not that I know of, nuhi tends to give not extended informations on the inner workings of nlite. There are others methods/apps that may (or may not) be of help in understanding what's going on: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=124220 Also, some reduction can be made using HFSLIP: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showforum=129 http://hfslip.org/advanced.html as always, your mileage may vary... jaclaz

Sorry for being not able to fulfill your wishes , but NO , I won't trust you on your word and self-declared experience. When I'll see some data I may. Of course, as long it is your personal opinion on the matter, I will hold it in the greatest consideration. , but still at the moment it sounds to me more like a: kind of innuendo. jaclaz

[sarcasm] No, I use the Italian flag because I like how green and red are matched with the white. [/sarcasm] [italian] Prego. Buon Natale e Felice Anno Nuovo anche a te. [/italian] Just in case, you may find this article nice and interesting, even if you are NOT a Bear of Little Brain : http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=1966 http://www.wd-3.com/archive/InfFiles.htm jaclaz

Care to share some data? Are there more recent tests? http://nontroppo.org/timer/kestrel_tests/ http://celtickane.com/webdesign/jsspeedarchive.php Or are you talking of "pure" javascript speed? http://ejohn.org/blog/javascript-performance-rundown/ http://w-shadow.com/blog/2008/09/03/google...-js-speed-test/ It seems like latest 10 Alpha is much faster in them too: http://www.download.com/8301-2007_4-10113913-12.html However, I guess that the small differences in tests cannot really be appreciated in "real life" use, and choosing one over the other should be made over a "personal feeling" rather than on benchmark data.... jaclaz

Yep , often first year covers part of the "downhill" section of the typical bath tub curve. jaclaz

Maybe the old IDE/ATA/PATA drivers had a role in it. You should check your Event Viewer, when such crashes as the ones you describe happen there should be an entry, something like "The device, \Device\Harddisk0\DR0, has a bad block." Unlike what is hinted in the message, this means often a bad driver or a bad cable/bad connection (which would be compatible with the CS thingie). jaclaz

I find difficult to believe that AVG is the culprit. CS (Cable Select) is known to be a trouble maker, there is no reason in the world why you cannot make it Slave with the HD jumpers that is generally speakking more reliacle. Let's for the moment get just the concept of BOOT and SYSTEM drive disambiguated: http://homepages.tesco.net/J.deBoynePollar...em-volumes.html Let's define the bootstrap volume as the one containing NTLDR NTDETECT.COM and BOOT.INI (or bootmgr and BCD). Let's define the Operating System Volume as the one containing all the rest. How are the disk partitioned? Could you re-list the drives, the partitions (or Volumes) specifying which holds what? Just for the record: there is no such thing as a low-level format of an IDE/ATA/PATA/SATA hard disk, the most you can have done is a disk wipe. jaclaz

Sure , being a bit technically knowledgeable, and an engineer by education and trade, I do know what a MTBF is. But what I wished to see (and keep hidden to my PC's ) is data about actual MTBF declared by manufacturers AND the way they calculated this AND an actual database of past events to be able to analyze it's data statistically and find out what the actual Life of the object would be/have been, which is a totally different thing from MTBF. Since you like Wikipedia articles, in computer matters, very often Service Life: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_life is shorter than expected MTBF but actual Life can greatly outnumber BOTH. Besides, there is also the Planned Obsolence problem: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence At least theoretically a computer should be a Durable good: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durable_good but MTBF does not make much sense or it is impossible to be calculated reliably on a complex system like the PC is. It can - at most - be applied to parts of it: http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/pc_hardware_fa...t_34_years.html like an hard drive, but you don't really espect MTBF to be reliable and applicable to the particularly small sample (two units) the OP has: http://www.tech-faq.com/mtbf.shtml Here is a more accurate definition of MTBF: http://www.relex.com/resources/prediction.asp "Computer-life" is nearer to Reliability than to MTBF, this might be of interest: http://www.vicorpower.com/documents/quality/Rel_MTBF.pdf But still it is a probability, and from an engineering or mathematical point of view, "3 to 4" years is a non-number, it's a "vague range", and applying it generically to ANY PC, regardless of: how many hours per day how many days per week how many weeks per year it is on, regardless of: make/model/technology used type of applications running on it whether it is always on or swithed ON/OFF often quality of AC power ("straight", filtered, UPS) quality of environment (conditioned room/outdoor shed/cellar/your bedroom) maintenance performed (dust cleaning/checking fans/checking thermal paste where applicable) and of course: luck is simply inaccurate. In other words the "3 to 4" years does NOT represent "computer-life", it is simply puntoMX's report on his personal experience, or that of his friends, or that of the places where he worked, of course it is worth consideration , but not in the least represents a one-size-fits-all value, at the most it could be called "rule of thumb" or "common sense" . jaclaz

Read this: http://vlaurie.com/computers2/Articles/inf-file.htm LAST is value (0) or if you prefer 0x00000000. 0x00010001 is flags, REG_DWORD in this case. jaclaz

Hmmm, let's see if I can put down a "schematics" of your idea in the way I may be able to understand it: The USB stick (modified with Manufacturer's Tool) has two parts, LUN1 (CD-ROM) and LUN2 (HD-Like device). Th PC is booted from the LUN1 (CD-ROM), which contains: grldr as no-emulation bootsector menu.lst WHAT ELSE? The LUN2 (HD-Like device) contains: \I386 WHAT ELSE? The point you seem to have not fully considered/understood is the way NTLDR or SETUPLDR.BIN actually boot. Until you are in "real mode" (read Text Mode, including BOOT.INI choices or the blue screen SETUP) the information from BIOS (and the ones "faked" by grub4dos) are trusted. As soon as you "switch" to "protected mode" (read black screen/loading progress bar) ANY info from BIOS (and from grub4dos) is ignored, it simply vanishes in thin air, a new scan of the hardware is performed and unless a given hardware is found AND an appropriate driver for it is loaded, the booting will be aborted, possibly with a 0x0000007b BSOD STOP ERROR. The exception being that of a driver that is loaded "forcibly". The only known one to be working is the RAMDISK.SYS driver used in conjunction with the SETUPLDR.BIN coming from SERVER 2003 SP1 or R2 (NOT "gold", NOT SP2). There may be other possible ways, but it seems like the topic is not of much interest: http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=1507 http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?...c=5512&st=7 http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?...c=5512&st=9 Would you be "game" for this? The "trick" of the "XP kansas City Shuffle" is simply that of loading through grub4dos mapping a smaller image that appears to the NT booting IDENTICAL to the actual partition on hard disk. During "real mode" the mapped image is accessed, during "protected mode" the real partition is loaded. This allows for two newish things: 1) booting from USB on computers with no or defective booting from USB support 2) speed up the booting on computers with USB-2.0-chips-but-only-USB-1.1-speed-support-while-booting, since only the files in the smallish mapped image is loaded with the USB BIOS routines whilst the large number of files on the partition are loaded through the native NT drivers, at USB 2.0 speed In the particular case you posed, it could have the "advantage" of having a "fixed" LUN1 booting (but still with the "USB_multiboot" tricks) a "variable" part on LUN2, in other words you would only need to run the Manufacturer's Tool once and setup the DISK SIGNATURE of the LUN2 once, after which you would be free - within limits - to change the contents of LUN2 with ordinary file tools. jaclaz

Sorry to say so, but you appear to have completely failed to. Could you try to further explain your thoughts? If I get it right, and I am not at all sure to do so, what would it be the advantage over a "plain" XP from USB install? I also cannot see the use of Autorun on a stick that is used to install XP. jaclaz

You seem to have the "right " set of files. Look here: (google cache - forum seems down right now) http://209.85.135.132/search?q=cache:wdy_V...t=clnk&cd=1 Rather obviously, you mileage may vary.... jaclaz