jaclaz

The "base" posts are these ones: http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=19663 http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=18782 If installing from CD, you should have a migrate.inf with a few different MBR signatures entries and manually set the actual machine HD MBR Disk Signature (i.e. bytes 1B8h through 1BBh ) to one of those: http://thestarman.pcministry.com/asm/mbr/Win2kmbr.htm with an utility such as MBRWIZ: http://mbrwizard.com/ or MBRFIX: http://home.graffiti.net/jaclaz:graffiti.net/index.html (links at bottom of page) or any disk editor. (mind you, completely UNLIKE tested) Another possibility is to, AFTER install, changing the %SystemDrive% letter, which can be done, but it can be tricky. jaclaz

I don't think that the issue can be because of the RAID in itself, are you sure you are loading the appropriate (F6) driver? If yes, there is a probability that the drive ir RAID setup is corrupt. We are talking about a hardware RAID, don't we? I guess your next best bet is making yourself a PE of some kind (with the appropriate drivers). Doesn't the motherboard or add-on board manufacturer provide "low-level" diagnostic tools? RAID 1 should be a "total" mirroring solution, thus the two drives should be identical and each of them should be accessible separately as a "normal" disk, disabling the RAID setting in the BIOS. Make sure however that you firstly inspect the uncoupled drive with a read only system. jaclaz

You will need to fiddle a bit with Registry too, see this: http://www.msfn.org/board/Missing-Language...ion-t66594.html I guess you can take the relevant keys from one of your "working as they should" installs. jaclaz

You could try using (before actually installing) a PE of some kind (or maybe even DOS) and create a migrate.inf file, machine specific. Search both here and on 911CD boards for posts by me and cdob with keyword "migrate.inf" jaclaz

@damian666 Actually, .ini, .inf and .sif files present the same "basic" structure, i.e.: [Section] Item=value with just a few minor changes, for example the linked to .ini viewer seems not to "like" items inside double quotes, but I guess that can be easily fixed, in other words, if it will work for .sif files then it will work also for .ini and .inf ones . About helping you, I am afraid I am the latest person on this board with programming knowledge, exception made for a few small batches.... .... but I know AutoIt has a treeview feature, so it should be possible to write this thingie in AutoIt language. jaclaz

Cannot say whether it fulfills your "time stamp" correction requirements, however do have a look at STRARC: http://www.ltr-data.se/opencode.html http://www.ltr-data.se/files/strarc.txt jaclaz

If you "just" formatted an hard disk, you DO NOT need a "file recovery" program, what you need is (more simply) a "partition recovery" program, i.e. TESTDISK: http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk ony IF it does not work, for any reason, you will need to use a "file oriented" approach. jaclaz

Here you can find in the attachment a very small one (for RC): http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?sho...20983&st=18 jaclaz

I can do better than that, get this Shareware program (one month Trial) which I just found: INI EDITOR 2001 http://phristov.4mg.com/inieditor.html Download and screenshot: http://www.winsite.com/bin/Info?19000000036985 Direct download : ftp://ftp.monash.edu.au/pub/winxp/sysutil/INIED2K1.ZIP And use it to open a (expanded) TXTSETUP.SIF (NOT a compressed TXTSTETUP.SI_) and you'll get what I mean. If we could have a similar tool that "understands" lines prefixed by ";" and represents them as "greyed out", plus something like a "related items" window, conceived in such a way that when you select a "key value" it parses its contents and shows other occurrencies of the same "key name" and "key value", we would have, as I see it, the perfect tool to tweak besides .ini, also .inf and .sif files. Also a "duplicate sections" merger would be needed, since I have found that some sections ARE duplicated: W:\OFS\TOOLS\wimb>find /n "[SourceDisksFiles]" txtsetup.sif ---------- TXTSETUP.SIF [189][SourceDisksFiles] [10817][SourceDisksFiles] [10849][SourceDisksFiles] [10890][SourceDisksFiles] [16251][SourceDisksFiles] jaclaz

In RC, TYPE is a command, like DIR or ATTRIB, if you type HELP (and press [Enter] key) you will see a list of availanle commands, what I meant was type (in the sense of press the keys): TYPE C:\BOOT.INI not type (in the sense of press the keys): C:\BOOT.INI jaclaz

It shoud be the same, but you should make sure you have the same "level" of it, expecially if you copy back to the HD any file. I.e., if you have XP SP1 installed on the PC, use Recovery Console from XP SP1, if you have XP SP2, use RC from XP SP2.... From RC, you should be able to issue the command: TYPE C:\BOOT.INI if BOOT.INI is set as Hidden or System or both you might need to use the ATTRIB command before to make it visible. Post the contents of boot.ini jaclaz

Wait a minute, once you have the right NTLDR, NTDETECT.COM and correct entries in boot.ini, it should not search on \minint\, but rather on the original %SystemRoot% (usually \Windows\). Check (or post) the contents of BOOT.INI. You can make a Recovery Console CD in (almost) no time, by using the floppies available from Microsoft, read here: http://www.boot-land.net/forums/Recovery-Console-t2254.html jaclaz

Not true. You still had to install the two USB support packages on OSR 2.5. Sure, what I meant was that USB support came together with the OS, and you did not need to go searching for anything on Dell's (or any other manufacturer's) site. jaclaz

Maybe this helps: http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=18971 jaclaz

Care to expand on that? As far as I know integers: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. are the same in ANY OS, any Earth lamguage and ost probably (read definitely) on any othe planet as well.... jaclaz

Should not - by any chance - DOSBOX work properly, you can also run good ol' DOS in a "full" VM, like the freeware QEMU (+Qemu manager) or Virtualbox: http://www.davereyn.co.uk/ http://www.virtualbox.org/ jaclaz

USB support is built-in since Windows 95 OSR 2.5. You need NO additional drivers for "USB support", unless your install is somewhat faulty, you might need specific drivers fro the USB device you want to use, if it's a "Mass Storage" device (read USB stick or HD) see here: http://www.msfn.org/board/Maximum-Decim-Na...ers-t43605.html http://www.msfn.org/board/Generic-98-USB-d...RKS-t99220.html jaclaz

Boy, do I like when people reasons like that! jaclaz

Maybe these explain further : http://www.msfn.org/board/Drive-letters-sh....html&st=28 http://www.msfn.org/board/Partitions-Prima...078#entry233078 About THE question: NO, it is not. jaclaz

The matter is COMPLETELY different in Window 9x/Me from NT/2K/XP/2003. On NT based systems, the OS detects the device (on DOS based ones the BIOS is "more trusted") and loads the drivers accordingly. Which means, as an example, that a "normal" USB stick CANNOT be "fdisked" (i.e. using Disk management) unless it is seen by the OS as "fixed", hence the use of either the "removable bit flipping manufacturer utility" or a Filter Driver, or the "special" utilities like the HP one, petousb, makebootfat, and Swissknife, on the contrary DOS/Win9x/Me will allow to use fdisk allright. See these for some references and links: http://www.msfn.org/board/USB-Multi-Partit...37.html&hl= http://www.msfn.org/board/USB-Autorun-t112098.html&hl= Once a hardware "mass storage" device is recognized, if a partition or volume is found it is assigned a drive letter, then comes into play the file system recognizer driver, that checks whether the letter corresponds to a volume formatted as a known filesystem (for which a driver is installed on the system), if it is when you access the drive by double clicking on it you will see the files within it, otherways you will be prompted for formatting the volume. Nonetheless, it is possible to access the device as RAW data with particular programs. If you could expand a bit on the question and on its backgrounds, I may be able to give you a more "targeted" answer. jaclaz

It's interesting, thanks. But it just makes a few mods. I am no programmer, and I have NO idea whether the following is possible or not, or whether it would be excessively difficult to do the same in a "portable", possiblu running from PE too,program, but I can maybe describe how ideally an all purpose program like this should work, based on a spreadsheet based one (yeah, I know, but still MUCH better than the 60 Mb of .Net stuff and libraries that need to be installed to run a "Hello, world" program). Basically I read the entire content of TXTSETUP.SIF, order it along a more "logical" order (at least to me) of sections than the original one, then add a structured category "tag" for each entry depending on the section it is and its contents and a "flag" to disable (by adding a ";" at the beginning) then I check or uncheck either "catgories" or "items" tags and export as .txt the second sheet in the spreadsheet containing formulas that extract the data from first one. I have tried this approach on a (VERY limited project) minimizing Recovery Console: http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?sho...20983&st=18 and this (small scale) approach is rather handy and does speed up testing considerably. Maybe if the same or similar approach is used in a "real" program, it could be very useful on larger things like a "full" install, PE builfing or whatever, even .ini files that use this [Section] Item=value I dream about something that looks more like a filesystem (as seen in Explorer "Explore") or as the Registry (as seen in Regedit.exe) with structured tickboxes near "directories" ([sections]) and "files" (Items)... possibly such an app already exist and I never happened to find it... jaclaz

Have a look at both these batches: http://www.boot-land.net/forums/MBRBatch-0...LPHA-t3191.html http://www.boot-land.net/forums/MakeBScmd-...EASE-t2362.html You should get enough info to write a few lines of batch to use dsfo/dsfi to perform what you want, or you can do it manually, see here: http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?...=3226&st=15 and just use "446" instead of "512". jaclaz

FYI, in a couple of seemingly unrelated threads, here: http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?sho...c=20983&hl= and here: http://www.boot-land.net/forums/XPSP1-with...0-MB-t3717.html we are trying to get very reduced systems in order (also) to "better play" with the loading of drivers, expecially USB "boot" ones. Nothing useful has (yet) come out, but maybe we'll get soon somewhere . jaclaz

Sorry, but if it's not in that thread or in any link on it, it means that the Kingston tool does not exist (or more probably has NOT been found yet). However, you seem to fail the point of previous posts two conditions must be true concurrently, the settings on the machine AND how the stick is "seen". If you do not find the tool to modify the hardware, you need to modify the software, and since most probably you need to tweak something on the machine anyway.... Here are a couple of related threads with some good links and info: http://www.msfn.org/board/Autorun-USB-pend...ble-t60338.html http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=13205 jaclaz

The "usual" way is to go and buy a LICENSE, the guys that sell them tend to give you a "Retail" original CD also in exchange for your money. You might want to read attentively these: http://www.msfn.org/board/Forum-Rules-Upda...ead-t18408.html before going further down this path. jaclaz