jaclaz

Yep, FYI: http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=2267 the -iso-level 4 mean in "plain English", "use the 1999 ISO extensions", and since MSCDEX was written before 1999 it cannot work with them. jaclaz

@ilko_t Sorry I tried to "beautify" your post using [ codebox ] - [ / codebox ] tags instead of [ code ] - [ / code ] ones, but the board fails the parsing, please do recheck the data, I may have unwantingly introduced some changes while testing the output. @all Please find here the references, within the LOONG XP on USB thread, about modifying NTDETECT.COM: http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?sho...c=19235&hl= (post #3) before you ask for a direct download or something like that, do read this: http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?sho...3784&st=334 "level #4" people should NOT "play" with this kind of things, they may well find thenselves with an unbootable system jaclaz

Fred, some time ago I invited bearwindows to the boot-land community, mainly because of his great UNIVERSAL VIDEO DRIVER, he accepted and he has now his own little corner there: http://www.boot-land.net/forums/Universal-...driver-f60.html where he posts also about his other projects. He is a nice guy, and from time to time he visits the Boot-Land Forum. You can contact him through boot-land, should you not want to join there, just let me know if you want me to start a topic or PM him pointing him to this thread..... jaclaz P.S.: He is also member here at MSFN: http://www.msfn.org/board/m142976.html

Generally speaking there are TWO kinds of drive faults (once you are positive it is NOT the cable or motherboard): 1) Hardware ones, that comprise both electronics (the controller board) and mechanics (the innards of the drive, spinning motor, head displacement motor, defective heads) 2) Software ones Data recovery in case of faults of first kind CANNOT usually be performaed by End User, as, apart deep knowledge and experience in the field, specific hardware, spare parts and tools are needed. Data recovery in case of faults of second kind CAN usually be performed by the End User, provided that he has a little more than average knowledge, and that he is willing to spend some time on it. See this thread: http://www.msfn.org/board/Data-recovery-tool-t84345.html for a number of tools you may try to use. MAIN thing in Data Recovery is to make a "dd like" image of the disk on a new, healthy one (ideally you should make TWO copies) and attempt a recovery on the copy ONLY. This way, depending on the value you give to your data, the original, untouched, filesystem in the faulty drive can be given to professionals for another attempt. jaclaz

First things I would check would be: 1) if a RAM expansion card/chip is present take it out / check contacts / re-seat 2) if the processor is upgradeable (on a add-on card) take it out / check contacts / re-seat 3) take the cd/dvd out / check contacts / re-seat 4) (warning in most cases needs a partial disassembly of the laptop) take the HD out / check contacts / re-seat 5) (warning needs a partial disassembly of the laptop) open it up, remove keyboard / check contacts / re-seat thoroughly clean the innards from dust jaclaz

Main thing is that problem is solved! Happy about that. jaclaz

You can use MOUNTVOL command. This can be included in a batch file, if you use also vlm, part of the DSFOK toolkit here: http://freezip.cjb.net/freeware you can easily select the drive from it's label or Symbolic link. just run: MOUNTVOL >C:\Mountvol.txt and VLM >C:\vlm.txt to see which output they produce, then read "between the lines" of this: http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbstick_e.html and get the good ol' mnt / unmount: http://www.uwe-sieber.de/files/unmnt10.zip If you search on the board, you should find a number of posts about batches using MOUNTVOL to determine drive letters. jaclaz

In other words, this is the output of DIR | FIND "<DIR>" with a "right" numbering: and this is the output of the same command with "your" numbering: jaclaz

Some links/info in this thread: http://www.msfn.org/board/NTFS-support-Win...ME-t110814.html jaclaz

First try TESTDISK: http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk (i.e. Partition based recovery) and only of it does not work, a file based recovery program, like the enclosed Photorec, or any of the other ones, just search the board there are several threads listing them. 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