jaclaz

If you have a Windows 95 or 98 (not sure about ME) you can re-build a minimal (Standard mode only) Win3.x, using some base files included in the Win9x release, alternative freeware, and freely available patches from MS. It is NOT the "real" thing, but enough for some experiments. Read these: http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=16754 http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=623 jaclaz

Yes, you can. You can use grub4dos to "exchange" floppies. Example (to be TESTED): title Flip floppies and boot from B: map --mem (fd0)/Floppy.img.gz (fd1) map (fd0) (fd1) map (fd1) (fd0) map --hook root (fd0) chainloader /IO.SYS or something like that. Get latest grub4dos here: http://grub4dos.jot.com/WikiHome Browse here: http://www.boot-land.net/forums/Grub4dos-f66.html Start from this one: http://www.boot-land.net/forums/Jaclaz-A-F...mine-t3963.html jaclaz

Can you tell us more on what you want to achieve? The common way to do that is to use a duplicate finder to "clean" the base: http://www.filetransit.com/freeware.php?name=Duplicate_File and then use a backup or a "sync" program. Maybe something like this: http://www.flexense.com/flextk/ will do. jaclaz

Try analyzing it here: http://www.hijackthis.de/ jaclaz

Comeon, stop the whining , get the WAIK, a HUGE download: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details...;displaylang=en And optionally, a GUI tool: http://www.msfn.org/board/GImageX-v201-Bet...UI-t108083.html http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=3001 jaclaz

That's queer, I have never seen a VIA EPIA motherboard not being able to boot from USB. Or is it one of those third-party motherboards that use VIA C3? What BIOS (Award or Ami) and version do the machines have? jaclaz

There is my alternative take on the problem: http://www.boot-land.net/forums/DOCX-conve...more-t3378.html Basically telling people to use NOT proprietary formats, if they want to "talk" with me. jaclaz

NO, there is NO law against writing a program able to read and write a "patented" filesystem, on the contrary, the recent EU anti-trust sentence states exactly the opposite, the more methods to access a given protocol the better. Point is whether Microsoft is entitled to require a fee for USING the "patented" filesystem. The validity of the patent has been denied in Germany: http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS9467496750.html which will be most probably provoke it to be judged NOT VALID in all the EU. As everyone knows, the release of the patent by the US office has been MUCH controversial: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/04/15/fat_patent_review/ http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/01/11/...tpatents_1.html I find the idea of asking a fee to software producers absolutely queer, but, should the patent be proved to be valid, asking the fee for hardware items sold pre-formatted as FAT (like USB sticks, MP2 players or the like) might have it's merit. jaclaz

...thus OVERWRITING the old ones.... if this is the case, files may be gone forever... jaclaz

[maybe off-topic] I guess that we can anyway agree that between NT4.00 (without explorer) and Vista there is a x10 factor. That should mean that having (instead of the 64 Mb of RAM that made a NT 4.00 machine decently running), 640 Mb on a Vista machine, would make it as well decently running, but actually 1 Gb is what I see as the bare minimum to run Vista (almost, but not quite, unlike ) decently. A "bare" NT 4.00 would fit on a 100 Mb Iomega zip, if I remember correctly a "standard" install was about 150 Mb, 2K about 600 Mb, XP around 1.5 Gb. Now, a "standard" Vista install is about 5Gb, with a multiplying factor of x33! And all "newish" apps tend to be larger and larger. So, besides the sheer memory requirements/occupation, I would like to see how the peaks go when doing on the two systems comparable everyday tasks like: checking e-mail writing a letter using a spreadsheet to check your bank account balance save some data on a CDR Everyone has his theory, mine is that the key to swift computing is to downgrade, i.e. using yesterday software on today's hardware, as Microsoft have this tendency to add lots of (nice, mind you ) "bell and whistles" to their software in such a way that at the time of it's release it will behave "fast" only on existing "top grade" (read MUCH expensive) hardware. [end possible off-topic] jaclaz

Nothing connected with downgrade rights. You might have heard that you need a valid license for each installed/running Operating System, though. jaclaz

Here: http://www.reasonco.com/vista/vistadowngraderights.htm http://download.microsoft.com/download/d/2...grade_chart.doc http://forums.microsoft.com/genuine/showpo...6&siteid=25 jaclaz

Yep, what I meant was that "re-writing" a 9x driver from a NT kernel source, is not "porting" something, us re-writing it and there are very few people with the right knowledge for doing such a difficult task, the only ones I know are exactly Alter (main author of UNIATA) and bearwindows/KtP (Author of UNIVBE), besides some of the good guys at ReactOS/Tinykrnl, which are definitely not interested in 9x/Me. More generally, testing and using a read/write disk driver is VERY, VERY dangerous (much more than a video one). So I think we have to wait for Alter to succeed in the items listed before 9x/Me support: jaclaz

Well, no, I am afraid you are presuming wrong. Most probably the first partition data (and structure) is beyond recovery, maybe the logical one can be fully recovered. You can nonetheless have a try with TESTDISK: http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk and/or with Tokiwa Partition Recovery: http://tokiwa.qee.jp/EN/PartitionRecovery and/or ScroungeNTFS: http://memberwebs.com/nielsen/software/scrounge/ But most probably you will need a file based (as opposed to partition based) recovery program, the good news is that only a very little amount of files can be deleted in a few seconds, so most of the data should be recoverable. Among the Freeware ones I can recommend PHOTOREC (same author as TESTDISK). Read also this: http://www.msfn.org/board/Data-recovery-tool-t84345.html http://www.msfn.org/board/Data-recovery-to...5.html&st=7 jaclaz

You don't need "specific" drivers under 2K/XP, they are built into system. Just format it again from Windows XP, it is possible that gparted partitioned/formatted it with "wrong" or however "wrong for XP" partition data/bootsector data. If it still does not work, use the HP formatting tool, see FAQ #4 here: http://home.graffiti.net/jaclaz:graffiti.n...SB/USBfaqs.html Independently from the fact that it will also be made bootable, the stick will be partitioned/formatted properly (single partitions). If you need two or more partitions on it, you will need to install a filter driver (either Hitachi Microdrive Filter cfadisk.sys or Anton Bassov's dummydisk.sys), otherwise only first partition will be visible/accessible from XP. jaclaz

Can you post a picture of it? I seem to find NO reference whatsoever to those two numbers. jaclaz

What some of the younger members might be unaware of is that the same team that originated ReactOS originally came from a DEAD project aiming to re-build Win9x from scratch, called FreeWin95: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReactOS#FreeWin95_to_ReactOS While I do respect the abilities of most ReactOS team members, I concur with Nuno that they all seem more aimed to "academic" talking about this or that "fine tuning" and "high level" programming of a completely unusable module, rather than producing anything actually working, even in a limited way. As I see it, they completely fail to see that to allow for a wider diffusion of ReactOS, and thus ultimately get more contributions, they should try to produce (and they do have the capabilities to do so ) something that answers the current needs of "advanced users", i.e. whatever features are missing from MS products. To have initially a "mixed system" made out of MS base and some ReactOS components is what would guarantee a wider use of the project. Things appear to start slowly changing, the latest FREELDR appears to have been successfully used to boot 2003. But I don't think that anyone there will likely go back and do something for Win9x.... ...the real bad thing is that whatever has been done in 1996 and 1997 was never publicly released, as it may be useful as a base for people possibly interested in the Win9x project. Sadly, from my experience, there is some kind of CATCH22 going on: Anyone interested in Win9x re-building is NOT a programmer capable of doing so. Any programmer capable of re-building Win9x is not interested in Win9x rebuilding. jaclaz

Patchworks, if I am not mistaken, by your own admission, you are not a programmer, (I am not either, so we are even ), but you have to understand that Win9x is DOS based and a COMPLETELY different operating system from NT based ones. We are talking here about a NT kernel driver, not a "high-level" app. So this is not the case of "porting", but rather to re-write from scratch a .vxd for win9x use. jaclaz

The 0x0000007b error is generally due to a missing/wrong Mass Storage device driver, typically on newish machines it is a missing/wrong SATA driver. jaclaz

Happy to know you have been busy on better occupations (the babies ). jaclaz P.S.: Something you might soon be needing: http://tk.ms11.net/

Yes, basically when you delete a file, you do not actually "wipe" it, you just clear the pointers to that file. Just imagine a file system like it was a book, when you delete something it is the same as if you erase the index of the book, the pages are still there, but you cannot find them easily. Searching for the file is just like browsing through the pages of the book, it does not make any harm. On the contrary downloading or installing anything would be like writing over the printed pages. jaclaz

Yep. Point is that a system should be SHUT DOWN as soon as possible and the recovery initiated on another system where the "problem drive" is attached as "slave" or through an external (USB or Firewire) adapter. Since yours is a "data" partition, you should have no problems in using the machine, as long as you use another partition to save the downlad and install the program. DO NOT, and I mean DO NOT download and install the recovery program to the same partition. Recuva usually is a good utility, you may also want to try: PHOTOREC http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec PCINSPECTOR http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/UK/welcome.htm FREEUNDELETE http://www.officerecovery.com/freeundelete/ SOFTPERFECT FILERECOVERY http://www.softperfect.com/products/filerecovery/ jaclaz

You are missing a logical step. The bootsector of the CD (something that's sometimes referred to as "Microsoft Corporation.img", sometimes as "Arnes boot record", sometimes as "xpboot.bin") is a 2048 bytes file that normally chainloads files BOOTFIX.BIN and SETUPLDR.BIN in either the ROOT of the CD or in the \I386 directory. If you use another directory name you need to edit that file, but if you need to choose between various install files you need a CD loader, such as CD Shell, BCDW or grub4dos that will provide you with a choice menu. Moreover, you CANNOT put the \I386 directory INSIDE another directory, setup files need to be ONE level lower than root, NOT TWO, and you NEED to edit the setupldr.bin (not .dll) to point to the right four-letter folder. You need to restart from the flyakite guide, following it: http://www.flyakite.msfn.org/ jaclaz

@RYU81 Yes, I am sure that you do have a "Dane-Elec zMate Pen USB2.0 Nacre" thingy , point is that there are a limited number of factories actually making the controller chips and only a few more that actually assemble USB sticks. Each manufacturer should "mark" his own code on each device they produce, but this code (the Vid or Vendor id) is linked to the actual Vendor, not to the real manufacturer, so there are THREE cases: 1) the Vid is that of the manufacturer of the chip (all of them have their Vid) 2) the Vid is that of the assembler (some of them have their Vid) 3) the Vid is that of the vendor (few of them have their Vid) Exactly the SAME stick (internally) can arrive to the final user with three different Vid's (and with three different external encasing, this is why it's difficult to say which is which. Generally speaking the Pid (Product id) is set to a code that represents the chip used, but not always. Dane-elec seems to be a "final" vendor, so it is well possible that uses a Vid in common with other manufacturersm euther that of the chip manufacturer or that of the assembler. The Vid of 0930 appears to be connected to Toshiba. The Pid of 6533 does not seem to be referred to anything (or at least I cannot find any info) The Memorex Traveldrive seems to have the same Vid/Pid too: http://listing.driveragent.com/usb/0930/6533 (and it's Win98 driver uses the same pu20sysd.sys as the PNY drives) Sandisk (which uses it's own Vid) appears to use for some sticks Toshiba controllers as well , you may try this tool: http://www.sandisk.com/Oem/DesignSupportTools/ http://www.sandisk.com/Assets/File/OEM/Des...b-test-tool.exe but I doubt it will work as most probably it has encoded it's own Vid of 0781. A good source for links to "low-level" formatters is this forum: http://www.everythingusb.com/forums/ This is an example: http://www.everythingusb.com/forums/showth...;threadid=10901 jaclaz

Usually yes. You need to try a data recovery program. How were they deleted? I mean from Explorer, keeping SHIFT pressed) from a Command Prompt using "Del" command, by formatting a partition? Is the partition where they are: 1) a "data" partition (i.e. NOT the one where the operating system is installed 2) formatted as FAT16, FAT32 or NTFS ? Which Operating System is it? I need the above info in order to suggest you the most appropriate program. jaclaz