jaclaz

...or maybe simply change the drive signature with mbrfix: http://www.sysint.no/Nedlasting/MbrFix.htm http://www.sysint.no/Nedlasting/MbrFix.zip http://home.graffiti.net/jaclaz:graffiti.net/index.html or with a disk editor. Reference: http://thestarman.pcministry.com/asm/mbr/Win2kmbr.htm http://thestarman.pcministry.com/asm/mbr/Win2kmbr.htm#DC http://thestarman.pcministry.com/asm/mbr/W...br.htm#DiskSigs jaclaz

What do you have on your Primary channel? Unlike what many people may think, having two optical devices on the same channel is not the best thing to do. And Cable Select, in my experience, has proved to be more prone to errors than good ol' jumper settings. Also, read here: http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/ide/confCable80-c.html http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/ide/conf_CS.htm your cable may simply be non-CS compatible. If you have a hard disk as Primary Master, I would try putting the DVD as Primary slave, then your CD writer should go on Secondary Master (or if you have a second hard disk, put the CD writer as Secondary slave). Use jumpers with the proper settings on both hard disks and optical drives. jaclaz

If the partition data has not been overwritten (just the partition table), your best bet is TESTDISK: http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk If, on the other hand, partition data has been overwritten behond recovery, you can still recover single files by using the accompanying PHOTOREC app. There are a number of other COMMERCIAL utilities, just search on the board for keyword "testdisk" to find similar threads and experiences. jaclaz

It is usually a good idea to SEARCH on the board for previous similar requests and (hopefully) answers to them: http://www.msfn.org/board/Question_possibl...ive_t75413.html jaclaz

The "usual" way to check for the existence of a directory (no matter if it has a dot in the name) is to check for the nul device inside it. Under NTFS or Novell it is more correct to check for nul.ext, i.e.: if exist corb.dir\nul ECHO YES or (better) if exist corb.dir\nul.ext ECHO YES Reference here: http://www.msfn.org/board/Batch_Scripts_Im..._Ap_t98853.html jaclaz

Just as a confirmation: works in Italian. jaclaz

Maybe the problem relies in a nationalized version of the OS midiboy is running. Your small batch does not work on my system (italian) because of the "findstr/b Soft", changing it to "findstr/i Soft" works, as instead of "Software version" the output of the command contains "Versione del software", and thus the CALL to :OSis is never made. jaclaz

Just to close this topic, a hotfix has been released: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/943075/en-us Though not very much publicized. The basic statement hinting that it is a minor bug as it involves the "showing" of result, as the calculatin is performed correctly, which has been already proven to be false is still there: and is contradicted by the subsequent statement : Why, IF the calculation is done correctly, one should "recalculate the spreadsheets that are in manual calculation mode" , really escapes me and is the final (unneeded) confirmation that the bug affected calculation and not display of wrong values only. As a reader plainly put it here: http://blogs.msdn.com/excel/archive/2007/0...sue-update.aspx It seems to me a very serious bug, and I find the "official silence" or "understatements" by MS, definitely inappropriate. Another thing that really makes me wonder is the sheer size of the hotfix, about 34 Mbytes and the number of files involved! jaclaz

You can easily use this (just copy and paste into a new file newer.cmd): @echo off SETLOCAL ENABLEEXTENSIONS SETLOCAL ENABLEDELAYEDEXPANSION Set /A Counter=0 FOR /F "skip=2 tokens=4" %%A in ('dir %1 /o-D') DO ( IF !Counter!==0 ECHO %%A SET Counter=!Counter!+1 ) use as newer.cmd "drive\Path\directory" this will simply display the filename of the most recent file in the given directory. Just change the %1 in the FOR loop with your hardcoded path (if you wish to do so) and change the ECHO command into your xcopy one. The following is slightly more elaborate but returns more data on the file: @echo off SETLOCAL ENABLEEXTENSIONS SETLOCAL ENABLEDELAYEDEXPANSION Set /A Counter=0 FOR /F "skip=2 tokens=4" %%A in ('dir %1 /o-D') DO ( IF !Counter!==0 ( ECHO Name : %%~nA ECHO Extension: %%~xA ECHO Full Path: %%~fA ) SET Counter=!Counter!+1 ) In a command prompt type FOR /? to see other possible expansions of variables. jaclaz

@xrayer Did you try the "Universal drivers"? (link in post #2) jaclaz

It seems like that driver is from PQI: http://www.msfn.org/board/usb_drivers_98_t...6.html&st=7 GOOD work! jaclaz

Chack this too: http://jointtech.com/today-a-client-asked/xls-csv-convert/ jaclaz

There are a number of programs more or less called "xls2csv" or "xlstocsv", some are Commercial, some are Freeware. Last time I needed one I used this: http://software.techrepublic.com.com/downl...px?docid=230702 but they were a number of simple files, your mileage may vary. Or you can use a VBS: http://forums.xaprief.com/showthread.php?s...p;threadid=3159 jaclaz

Maybe these help: http://uanr.com/sdfloppy/ http://pinouts.ru/Memory/sdcard_pinout.shtml I know it is not what you were asking for, but there are some details and links to the actual signals that are on a SD connector and a handy way to make a connector, moreover it mentions the "magic" word, "SPI", i.e. Serial Peripheral Interface. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_Peripheral_Interface_Bus Now a search on Google for "USB to SPI" adding as further search term either "interface" or "converter cable" should get you to a number of interesting results. This appears to be the right spot to begin with: http://www.ftdichip.com/ http://www.ftdichip.com/Projects/MPSSE.htm http://www.ftdichip.com/Projects/MPSSE/FTCSPI.htm http://www.ftdichip.com/Projects/MPSSE.htm#SPI It should be fairly easy to build one of the various converters, problem might be the actual driver for this device.... It seems like there are no pre-made solutions, unless maybe some manufacturer uses these buses for their products, but then again probably there won't be a "universal" driver. jaclaz

@rcatank I used to have one of those laptops (I actually still have it) it's an Acer Travelmate of some model, that judging from the age must be similar to yours. I can confirm that the slots were not "CardBus", aka PCMCIA II, but rather PCMCIA I, the slot has a "notch" to prevent the insertion of a "Cardbus card", my wife managed to insert a new modem in it (of the wrong type) with such force I had to use some pliers to extract it . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_card Old PCMCIA worked at +5 V, newer at +3.3 V so, besides not working, you also risk frying it if you force it in. When I bought it I also bought a little wonderful product by Archos that doubled as a "CD walkman" and as a (8x ? ) CD-Rom reader with PCMCIA interface. Something like these (that must be later models): http://www1.shopping.com/xPP-cd_rom_drives--archos I think they are not available anymore, maybe on e-bay? jaclaz

@Wimb Yes, I know it would be a lot of work, but you don't actually need to log really everything, the tee.bat works only for "simple" commands, it needs to be integrated in the batch to work in this procedure. Also, if you wish, feel free to integrate the "working part" of both binifix and MakeBS into the main batch. jaclaz

The idea of a log file is excellent. Cannot say if it would cause slowness, in the procedure, but before a separate tee.exe, I would try to use the .bat/.cmd version, available on Rob van der Woude's site: http://www.robvanderwoude.com/tee.html integrating it in the main batch. jaclaz

I stumbled upon this kb: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/941137/en-us Intersting use of the adverb "severely". Can my need to write 2+2=4 and the inability to do so be enough to consider myself be severely affected: or that can be used only when I have to write numbers with several 0's and a $ or a € sign? jaclaz

Just to keep things together, here is an old thread with a .reg file for it: http://www.msfn.org/board/Automatically_ad...uts_t30065.html jaclaz

Some "semi-random" ideas and suggestions: @Wimb if you check my binifix.cmd there is a small routine that checks the ATTRIB status of a file, sets it to writable, visible, non-system in order to allow modifying or overwriting, then resets attributes as before. You can use it to overcome the reported ACCESS DENIED problem. @lilas (aka ktp ) An interesting test would be if you could partition (temporarily) the 8Gb key to a smaller size in order to format the partition as FAT16 and see if the speed difference is due to the filesystem rather than to the controller. See this (now getting old) comparison between different USB Flash drives (read different stick controllers) and their access and transfer speed: http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/321 jaclaz

@lilas The ideas of the z-1 came EXACTLY because some people might want to install XP on a non-first disk: http://www.msfn.org/board/boot_install_USB...html&st=204 http://www.msfn.org/board/boot_install_USB...html&st=240 Latest version: http://www.msfn.org/board/boot_install_USB...html&st=280 with this amendment: http://www.msfn.org/board/boot_install_USB...html&st=286 Just open the .cmd in notepad, it should not be too difficult to follow it's way of working. You might think of the way XP sets arcpaths as a FIFO stack, if you boot off a drive, it will get a z of 0, effectively "pushing" all other arcpaths for (n) drives to z(n)+1, what the batch does is simply to reverse this behaviour for the newly installed system. Partition numbers w, being "relative" to hard disk number, are unaffected by this inserting the USB stick before normal boot drive. VERY GOOD WORK in reporting, we need more feedback as accurate as yours. jaclaz

Another new entry, found by ktp: http://www.clonegenius.com/ added to the 911CD thread: http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?sho...c=16534&st= jaclaz

As I see it, 99.99% of users of this method will normally use on their PC's, at one time or another, a PE of some kind, and of those 99.99% will use a SP2 build, so we can make the drive letter X: as fixed, and that will cover in 99% of cases, then provide an easy way for the remaining 1% to change letter manually. jaclaz

For the record, the "Repair" procedure is NOT "destructive" as a "re-format/re-install" and it is however worth a try, do read attentively the linked page, though. jaclaz

@ilko_t Thanks for the clarification, I lost myself a few posts ago. So, next step is to find a way to "reverse" the logic of the dummydisk.sys. @lilas Unfortunately the CDFS trick implies fiddling with the USB controller firmware (actually the U3 is an "already fiddled with" firmware) I have found at least one controller (and it's manufacturer utilities) that allow setting the USB Flash mamory as a CD, but this would only apply to that model, and to this you add, if they were not enough the peculiarities of the various BIOSes. @All The problem with grub4dos booting from .iso is a non-problem, I am afraid. Though most probably this feature will eventually be added to grub4dos, we already have ISOEMU, but the limit it has (being able to boot DOS and Linux images, but NOT 2K/XP/2003 ones) will remain in grub4dos. The problem, AFAIK, is not in grub4dos code, but rather in the way NTDETECT.COM works. The solution will be when (and if) someone will find a way to use a disk image driver (like filedisk, VDK or Imdisk) instead of the RAMDISK driver, or when (and again if) someone will write a "monolithic" "miniport" USB driver, that can be used as NTBOOTDD.SYS. Or maybe when the guys at tinykrnl.org or at reactOS.org will produce a new "compatible" set of loader files. Here we are in a real CATCH-22 situation: Anyone interested in this has not the knowledge/experience to write this code. Anyone who is capable to write such a code is not interested in this. jaclaz