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

Just for the record, the KB article is here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/943144/en-us The good thing is that, at least in this case it's STATUS is: and not a "by design": http://www.boot-land.net/forums/?showtopic=3541 jaclaz

@Omal You should check the date of last post in a thread before posting, this thread is almost two years old, I hope the problem has been in the meantime solved. jaclaz

What you want to try doing is a Repair install, see if you can follow EXACTLY this article: http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm jaclaz

To install (and run) XP or Vista ON a USB device, check tutorials in Dietmar's signature: http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=14181 To install XP or Vista FROM a USB device, see here: http://www.msfn.org/board/Install-XP-from-USB-f157.html jaclaz

Really? Can you elaborate on that? jaclaz

Check this thread about partition boundaries: http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=21186 cannot say if it applies to your case, but it is worth a check. jaclaz

Isn't that for MAC? jaclaz

I am not sure I understand what you are asking for. Waiting for the completion of a filecopy process should be default. Why don't you post your batch at the point it is now, so that we can have a look at it and maybe show you what needs to be added? A check for ERRORLEVEL: http://www.robvanderwoude.com/errorlevel.html may be used, starting a second batch and checking for it's termination, or using directly something like: start /wait cmd.exe /c call anotherbatch.cmd param1 param2 Getting just the name of last-in-tree "parent" directory should be possible parsing the %~p1 variable, using a FOR loop using the backslash as delimiter, but what is it needed for? jaclaz

If I may, NO. The "4" parameter implies that every file has been named conforming to a (non existing) N+3 convention, i.e. ALL files need to have an extension and the extension MUST be exactly three characters long. This is not the case always, and expecially nowadays, with the new extensions the good guys at MS invented for Office files: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Off...file_extensions it is (or will be VERY common to have files with four or five characters extensions) The internal filenames parsing of the tilde expansion uses the dot as separator between filename and its extension and it works with any length of the extension. This can be replicated by parsing the variables and finding the position of the dot, but it is unneeded, as the above method works perfectly. jaclaz

You can easily "parse" separately filename and extension, by using the tilde parameters substitution, see this: http://www.robvanderwoude.com/ntfor.html The above works also for variables passed by CALL functions. Something like this: @ECHO OFF SET file1="C:\foo withspace\foo.txt" CALL :PARSEVAR %file% FOR %%A IN ( file1 fullname fullpath drive filename fileext firstpart addedpart newfile) DO SET %%A GOTO :EOF :PARSEVAR SET fullname=%~1 SET fullpath=%~f1 SET drive=%~d1 SET filename=%~n1 SET fileext=%~x1 SET firstpart=%~dpn1 SET addedpart=test SET newfile="%firstpart%%addedpart%%fileext%" GOTO :EOF Should give you the idea. jaclaz

CDFS hardlinking. Basically any two files that are identical are written only once, and the other entry in the CD directory is a "hardlink" to that one. If you have MOST identical files, the space savings is VERY noticeable, if you have only FEW, it will be negligible. Most probably the two versions you are trying to have on CD are very different. jaclaz

From the fact that you are using the For /F syntax, I get that you are going to run this in 2K/XP or later OS. In such cases, it is advised NOT to use the .bat extension but rather the .cmd one, but it is not needed, it's just a way to make sure you won't run it in DOS/9x/Me. The problem should be only where you "expand" the variables and "pass" them to a command. The default separator is the space, thus a name that includes a space is seen by the command processor as TWO parameters. Simply enclose the variables with quotes. START /WAIT /B COPY /V "%NAME%" "%NEW_FILE%" This should apply also to "FILENAME" which is given as second parameter when calling the batch. But I seem to fail seeing the variable "NAME" defined anywhere in the batch, I guess it should be everywhere either "FILENAME" or "NAME". You need to strip the quotes in order to add the date in front of the name, and enclose the date+name in "new" quotes. SET NEW_FILE="%dd%-%mm%-%yy%_%hh%%min%_%NAME%" There are several ways to do so, most notably using a CALL with parameter and expanding %~1, or something like SET NAME=%NAME:"=%. But the line: START /WAIT /B COPY /V "%NAME%" "%NEW_FILE%" Won't work correctly as it misses the PATH to both the source and destination files. Check this site: http://www.robvanderwoude.com And these threads: http://www.msfn.org/board/Rename-File-With...-Fi-t47812.html http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?act=idx/showtopic=37572 To see some examples, post again if you need more help. jaclaz

Cannot say if it applies to your case, but FYI: http://www.boot-land.net/forums/?showtopic=2681&st=24 Tested on 2K/XP, but should work with DOS/9x/ME as well. jaclaz

But of course nothing prevents from making a "dd-like" image of the smallest possible working USB stick and deploy it to any (same or bigger sized) other USB stick. All motherboards nowadays "accept" a nx255x63 geometry, so there will be NO problems whatsoever. Sure, if you use a 1Gb image on a 2Gb stick you will (temporarily) loose 1 Gb of space, and you will have to check to use a "little-less-than-tag" capacity if you use the image on another 1Gb stick, as capacity may vary slightly with different sticks, but that's all. See this seemingly unrelated thread: http://forum.winimage.com/viewtopic.php?t=3121 jaclaz

You appear to have made the mistake most if not all people do at first attempt(s). A .iso file is ALREADY an integral image of a CD. You do NOT write the .iso file INSIDE the CD (possibly selecting somewhere else in your burning app to create a bootable CD). You write the .iso OVER the entire CD, in other words you do not see the .iso file when browsing the CD, but rather the files contained in the .iso file. Check these howto's, though they are made for earlier versions of Nero, nothing important has changed: http://www.weethet.nl/english/cdrw_usingnero_iso.php http://wizardskeep.org/mainhall/tutor/neroiso.html This one is non-visual but covers a lot of other softwares: http://iso.snoekonline.com/iso.htm jaclaz