jaclaz

It's in BIOS, nothing much you can do about it, unless you want to start fiddling with BIOS, NOT, and I mean NOT recommended, you could end up with an unbootable system and need even a replacement BIOS ! jaclaz

@dorisno1 Please STOP double posting. the other thread is here: http://www.msfn.org/board/HELP-unmountable...me-t117693.html Post there some details and surely someone will try and help you, right now noone can have an idea of what you are talking about, what is disk #8, what is your hardware, and so on. jaclaz

But you cannot as well say that. It may well be an intermittent problem. You will need anyway to check the hard disk. jaclaz P.S.: You should also check your keyboard, your "!" and "?" keys appear to get stuck...

Well, unless you have a working crystal ball or some ESP powers, there is no way to conclude that a HD is "busted" because of an "unmountable boot volume" error. Cause can be ANYTHING among: bad cable/connection corrupted filesystem bad BIOS settings Reference: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555302/en-us http://support.microsoft.com/kb/297185/en-us Usually a CHKDSK /R, re-seating the cable (or changing it) and checking the BIOS settings resolves the problem. Particularly: is not accurate, it is the filesystem (not a single file) that cannot be properly mounted. jaclaz

Another approach, that I find useful: http://www.msfn.org/board/util-or-shell-ex...4.html&st=8 As it opens a command prompt in currently opened folder, I have both on my 2K, so that I can open a command prompt everywhere. jaclaz

@mf_2 Read here about REDIRECTION: http://www.robvanderwoude.com/redirection.html Redirection is not documented inside ANY command as it is a "generic" feature of the OS. Since some commands output to "standard error" instead of "standard output" in some case you will need to use the: command > NUL 2>&1 syntax jaclaz

Besides the thread previously referenced, about WinRE, check this one: http://www.msfn.org/board/System-recovery-...ion-t84411.html I guess that you can use the grub4dos PARTNEW and/or map --in-situ features to re-map the "DE" partition if needed. Some reference: http://www.boot-land.net/forums/?showtopic=3287&st=50 jaclaz

If it's a DVD it is possible that SETUPLDR.BIN (read NTLDR) is "beyond reach" of the bootsector. See this: http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=20248 jaclaz

Yep, as I see it, 7zip has about 35,94 € of advantages: http://www.winrar.it/listino.html I am greedy, I know jaclaz

Well you may want to have only one of those lines in config.sys. But with a blank autoexec.bat and config.sys, it should work normally. And you are positive that you are using "normal" IO.SYS, MSDOS.SYS and COMMAND.COM from WIN 98SE? I am 100% positive it worked with 0.4.2, but if I recall coorectly it did with 0.4.3 as well. You may try with those versions, right now I have no way to test latest version, but will do and see what happens. jaclaz

Yes, normally it works allright. The problem appear to be some TSR or driver you are loading in autoexec.bat or config.sys, they tend to "confuse" grub4dos. How are you loading grub4dos? Directly, via DEVICE, via SHELL ? Which version are you using? Get latest from here: http://grub4dos.jot.com/WikiHome jaclaz

If needed: http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_numlock.htm http://www.somacon.com/p339.php Also, check tis thread: http://discussions.virtualdr.com/showthread.php?t=206491 jaclaz

Yep , but that is a "peculiarity" of DELL Bioses, the idea of the thread was to use the MBR or a bootloader/bootmanager (independently from any BIOS make/brand/code). More (GOOD) info on the DELL partition utility is here: http://www.goodells.net/dellutility/index.htm The BIOS has code that "intercept" the F12 and "recognizes" setting it active, the "DE" partition. jaclaz

Yep, that is the so-called "Wake on alarm" or "RTC alarm" feature of ACPI motherboards, but I don't think you can access the "timer" settings in BIOS from batch , or may be there is some utility for them? However, surely the batch cannot run on the switched off machine. In linux there is support for it: http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/ACPI_Wakeup but it seems like it has been giving lots of problems jaclaz P.S.:A (also command line) wake-on-lan app: http://www.depicus.com/wake-on-lan/

I would guess that processor speed of a turned off PC would get to 0 Mhz quite soon , so the batch or whatever won't have much speed of execution. At least "something" must be on to run any program. If you are on a network, you can use the "Wake on Lan" feature of most recent machines to turn them on, but still at least one machine on the network needs to be switched on to process the script and send the WOL signal/packets. Some info: http://www.ezlan.net/WOL.html Beside the above, with some operating systems and through specific utilities it is possible to hybernate a PC and resume (wake up) it at a given time. An example is here: http://genntt.webs.com.ua/ But the PC will be on, only in hybernate/suspend mode. jaclaz

It may also be some problem with your local "Swedish" version of 98 not mixing well with the English pack. Did you try BOTH drivers or just the Maximum Decim one (it should be the "better" one, but also the one "less compatible" with non-English OS). The other one should be more "generic". And it is also possible that, as reported in the thread: http://www.msfn.org/board/Generic-98-USB-d...cks-t99220.html you have some other problem, like "wrong" version of DCOM or OLEAUT. jaclaz

Apart from the posted problem, does that mean that somehow SP3 is not "really-really" cumulative? Or is it some "setting" that Vista misses but that are normally set when the "direct" SP3 slipstreaming is done on XP? jaclaz

Really ? I wonder how the batch script could work before this key info was posted here. But wait, how is this info going to be useful to solve the problem dkreifus posed? jaclaz

A couple of small things: 1) the :EOF label is unneeded / wrong, :EOF is an implied label in 2K/XP that means End Of File. When you CALL a subroutine, the final GOTO :EOF is interpreted like the "RETURN" statement in most languages, i.e. the program understands that there is nothing else to do there and goes back to the first instruction after the CALL statement. 2) You do not actually need the subroutine, the FOR loop and the SET commands. This should do: IF NOT EXIST "E:\CognosData\Cubes\%~n2" md "E:\CognosData\Cubes\%~n2" COPY %2 "E:\CognosData\Cubes\%~n2\%~n2_%DATE:/=-%%~x2" (a little less readable, but definitely simpler) jaclaz

Well, WinPE 2.0 is available to everyone, and there is still BartPE or Winbuilder. FYI, there is a IBM suitable bootmanager that has been referenced here: http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=18480 And grub4dos allows for using in grldr.mbr a "hot key", F10 should work everywhere, whilst F11 and F12 might not work on some systems, depeding on it's BIOS. jaclaz

Seeing that Yzöwl already replied I should shut up, but maybe you can find in my post some further ideas/explanations. %random% generates a pseudo-random number between 0 and 32767. You need to "parse" the output to somehow generate a fixed number of characters. An example is here: http://www.robvanderwoude.com/files/random_nt2.txt And another one inside this seemingly unrelated batch salt.cmd: :sneaky:http://www.boot-land.net/forums/?showtopic=2984&st=28 This is limited to numbers, you could use a substitution routine with a subset of characters, like a÷z and A÷Z. A good example of such a routine can be found here: http://www.fpschultze.de/smartfaq+faq.faqid+262.htm You will need to use numbers in the range 10÷99 and use two characters instead of one, with a list in the FOR loop like 10A 11B 12C, etc., with Call :Exec Set s=%%s:%_:~0,2%=%_:~2,1%%% leaving the numbers 0÷9 "pass through". The alternative is using an external .exe to generate the pseudo-random alphanumeric string, any of the freeware MD5 generators would do, like this one: http://www.diamondcs.com.au/consoletools/md5.php you just run it against some machine specific file, than extract from it the needed amount of characters. jaclaz

Hey peeps , you might want to notice that this thread dates back to 2004. At the time Winrar was probably the best one around, nowadays 7zip or Izarc are better, or at least equal in functionalities and are several bucks cheaper. KGB has a tight compression, but how muach time does it take to compress and decompress? WinRK is said to be (slightly) the best one around, but not freeware. jaclaz

Here: http://www.msfn.org/board/Maximum-Decim-Na...ers-t43605.html and another one here: http://www.msfn.org/board/Generic-98-USB-d...cks-t99220.html jaclaz

Hiren's is WAREZ and thus ANY discussion about it are forbidden on the Forum. Search, search, search. Example: http://www.msfn.org/board/Acronis-true-ima...cd-t116681.html jaclaz

@dencorso Thanks. jaclaz