jaclaz

Maybe it is not an "invisible folder" it is an "invisible partition", or at least sort of, it could be a particular kind of .iso where an entire bootable filesystem is written in the bootable sectors, or it could be an image of either a filesystem of a CD inside a monolithic file that is mounted at booting. I cannot say more without knowing the exact application that is used, is this the one program?: http://www.ntfs.com/boot-disk.htm If it's this one, I did look at the trial version: http://www.ntfs.com/downloads/boot-cd-iso.zip it appears to be a "normal" El-torito emulation bootCD with an image of 2.880 Mb floppy as bootsector. When you boot from the CD, the "hidden" files are not hidden at all, the floppy image is mapped either as A: or B:, and the files within it are normally visible. A small reference is here: http://forum.winimage.com/viewtopic.php?t=2454 Search with google for "el-torito" and you'll find several informative articles. A word of warning, though, referencing to "files downloaded from Rapidshare" and to "Hiren's", could mean WAREZ which are a NO NO on this board: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=18408 jaclaz

Yes, that would be nice, but right now I have no idea on how to do it, unless we cycle to another menu.lst through the "config-file" command, but I cannot see at the moment how to conditionally do that. If I remember right, there is a feature like this in "Linux" grub, that uses variables, there is this guy, Adrian Raulete, that made this "Grub superdisk" or something like that. It uses this feature to make a very complex multilevel boot menu but last time I played with grub4dos it didn't have this feature, or at least I wasn't able to make it work. I'll have a look at the idea and see if something comes out. Well, that should be the easiest thing, it should just be a Reg file merged at the end of GUI setup or, if you prefer, on first "real boot" of the newly installed OS. I am not an expert at all on this but in one or the other "unattended" sections of the board there is info for this. Maybe cdob might help on this particular thing. jaclaz

Problem might be if the destination drive is formatted as NTFS, one could put up a triple boot on the stick with DOS files and this utility: EditBINI™ This utility will allow you to edit \BOOT.INI in an NTFS partition from DOS or Win9x. http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/utilities.html But if the path to the drive is wrongly hardcoded into $winnt$.inf, one would need to use NTFS4DOS, which is free for PERSONAL USE only: http://www.free-av.com/antivirclassic/avira_ntfs4dos.html to access the NTFS drive from DOS. Personally, besides licensing problems for Commercial users, I always prefer the simpler solution so I guess the above could only be an "extreme" workaround, if nothing else work. I didn't get if you completed the install and if you got with the the correct C:\ letter on the hard disk (without migrate.inf). I guess that the setup re-scan the systems and gets again the "HardDisk0" and "HardDisk1" directly from Bios, bypassing the "temporary patch" made by grub4dos. In a couple VM I tried, the TXT mode map (hd0) (hd1) map (hd1) (hd0) map --hook .... works allright, most probably one could prepare instead of a pair of menu entries, several pairs, to allow for "strange" BIOS behaviour... jaclaz

Yep. if the image is somehow doubled, the fond --set-root won't work, as devices are scanned in order.... A lot of info is coming out from your experiments, I'll have to study it a bit and do some more tests myself...continue reporting... jaclaz

Well, who put ntldrstp on the HD? However in this case (on the stick that is prepared before) one can use another file, such as menu.lst, or in "find --set-root" command or directly a "special" marker file, simply open notepad, and save the file as USBOOTME.1ST on the stick.....,"find --set-root /USBOOTME.1ST" will not possibly get the "wrong" root. hmmm, it is possible that the laptop BIOS has some incompatibilities with grub4dos. What happens on the laptop with the "alternate method": You can try, issuing single command lines from the command line, one by one, grub4dos in this case is more "verbose" and one can hopefully pinpoint the single command that causes an error. jaclaz

OK, so definitely we need the SETUPLDR.BIN and NTDETECT.COM on root. A possible "definitive" way out could be: In the second item if ntldr is found on both disks, it could maybe cause problems, one could use another file as a marker even if it is found in a subdirectory, the "root" will be to the drive, I am not at all an expert in this, but if one cannot find a file that is on the HD and not on the stick, it should be possible to create it with some entry in TXTSETUP.SIF or similar. Also, maybe there is something "between the lines" of this: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/312569/en-us (if we can find an alternative to the "loong" wait and/or the extraction and reinsertion of the key, we would have a potential "unattended" method) jaclaz

VERY GOOD. Also, try with "root" instead of "rootnoverify".... jaclaz

@ilko_t VERY good! It seems like we are almost done. I guess most of the merit has to go to cdob, whose help and knowledge has been decisive, and to porear whose contribution of ideas and testing was fundamental. While the first of your menu.lst entries does make sense to me, I am still curious how the second one works, as I see it things must have some logic behind, if BOTH the entries work, this: should be also working if rewritten as: by the same principle, viceversa, the entry: should work as well if rewritten as: As said, the final boot command is unnecessary, and it should be possible to replace: with: to avoid copying SETUPLDR.BIN and NTDETECT.COM to the root of the stick. And, besides, once you have issued a root or rootnoverify command, root is established, and you only need the forward slash, i.e. : should be functionally equivalent to: (as in the second menu.lst entry) I would be nice if you could test the above and make a new post with all steps together, something one could post a direct link to, to avoid other members to jump forward and backward on this longish thread, as is it is causing me headaches, and I already now most of it. jaclaz

Won't good ol' REG.EXE be enough? http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documen...g.mspx?mfr=true http://www.robvanderwoude.com/ntregistry.html http://www.robvanderwoude.com/ntregquery.html Or maybe REGFIND? http://www.petri.co.il/download_free_reskit_tools.htm The win2k version should work allright on XP, with only a minor glitch, easily fixed: http://www.jsifaq.com/SF/Tips/Tip.aspx?id=6003 jaclaz

@brucevangeorge Start from here: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=81788&st=6 http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=61384&hl= http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=86946&hl= jaclaz

...and I may add that there would have been NO reason whatsoever to post a screenshot with the name of the file (badly) overwritten if everithing was supposedly "kosher" in the mind of the poster.... ...there is an old Latin say: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exempli_gratia#E that appears to be really right for this case, the simple fact that monopoly_tyc tried to hide something means that he perfectly knew that what he was trying to do was, in a way or another, reproachable. And if you go to a locksmith asking him to open a door without providing a proof of some kind that you are entitled to open it, and he refuses to help you, usually you don't tell him "I see, too bad you haven't any locksmithing skills", mainly for TWO reasons: #1 it is VERY unpolite #2 the locksmith is holding a BIG hammer in his right hand ....even if noone is brandishing a hammer and monopoly_tyc is definitely out of reach , reason #1 still stands . jaclaz

I can't wait to see Bill Gates with a shaved head singing "Baby One More Time"! :P jaclaz

Hmmm, evil is not always ALL on one side , why wouldn't it be possible that one uses a (legal) trial version of a program to access illegal content? On the other hand, one "in the trade" wouldn't surely need help unraring an archive, won't he? Let's say that if you have a close look at the (supposedly obfuscated) picture posted, you can understand with a bit of immagination that the title is relative to a very known game (suffice to say that involves car driving). A quick google search (with the right keyword) will show you that on the net there are links to a WAREZ released version of that particular title, that casually has been divided into 39 .rar's of which the last one has the exact name that you can see from the posted picture. If you search a bit more, you will even find some posts of people that weren't able to extract last part, due to the different name. So the original request is basically help for CRACKING an archive containing WAREZ, whether the activity is legal or not, particularly in the country where monopoly_tyc resides, might be a topic of discussion, but definitely it appears to be against the rules of the board. And noone is invading other's privacy, I only examined what monopoly_tyc submitted, by his own will, in a public board. jaclaz

Yep. for reference say you have on B2 the formula: =A1 is called "relative" addressing, when copied to C3 it will become =B2 the way spreadsheets see the above is "point to the cell one column left and one row above" =$A$1 is "absolute" addressing, when copied to C3 it will remain =$A$1 the way spreadsheets see the above is "point to the cell in first column and in first row" There are two other ways: =$A1 is absolute column/relative row, when copied to C3 it will become =$A2 the way spreadsheets see the above is "point to the cell in first column and one row above" =A$1 is relative column/absolute row, when copied to C3 it will become =B$1 the way spreadsheets see the above is "point to the cell one column left and in first row" In Excel, when you have the cell address highlighted, press the F4 key, it will cycle through the four possible ways of addressing each time you press it. jaclaz

Well, no, I see it perfectly. On the contrary, you seem to miss the fact that noone (or at least most probably noone from Acer or Microsoft) pointed a gun to the head of webeto's mother-in-law forcing her to buy THAT Acer PC with THAT recovery CD. She could have payed a few MORE bucks to buy another brand PC that came with a full OEM licence and disk or pay substantially MORE bucks to buy a PC and a FULL XP retail licence. Now, if you are saying that Commercial policies of Microsoft and of Acer do not comply with your idea of how they should be made, it is OK with me, calling Acer liers or affirming that webeto's mother in law has been a victim of a ripoff seems to me a bit excessive. I doubt that there is any ground for such claims, but you never know : http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/310...msftsued03.html jaclaz

Just for the record, here: http://hddguru.com/content/en/software/ there is, besides other related utilities, MHDD a very goot FREEWARE program: http://hddguru.com/content/en/software/2005.10.02-MHDD/ jaclaz

Sorry, I don't get it. In a spreadsheet cell you can input either a formula, something like: =3*4*A12 or a value, for example: 10 or : =10 First one is a "variable" as the result depends on value of cell A12, the latter two are "constants" they will have 10 as result no matter what you change in other cells. jaclaz

Albator, you seem to have a little "peculiar" idea of software property . Even if you have a VLK licence, you still ONLY own a licence (that allows you to legally do a lot more things than a Retail one and even more than a OEM one), the price you pay, directly to Microsoft or through the OEM or dealer, is proportionate to the amount of "freedom" of use given by the accompanying license. Just read any EULA.TXT, you wil find the sentence: jaclaz

@phkninja Just to clear things a bit , first thing I usually do on EVERY system I use, is to strip or disable the sound card and speakers, as I use my PC's for work, and I like TOTAL silence when working. So I am actually the LAST person in the world actually wanting to "drive the speaker" . I replied to a however interesting idea by blackmodder that has been called impossible because of different drivers required for sound cards, simply stating that maybe it would be possible to drive the internal speaker, which, as far as I know, does work with generic drivers and has (limited) playing abilities: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_speaker (and links therein) It was normal in the time of DOS that games played music and even "talked" from the internal speaker, many later PC's equipped with Win9x didn't have a soundcard and there were programs to play (again, poorly) music from the internal speaker: http://www.ulihansen.kicks-a**.net/speaker/index.htm This has already been done with Linux: http://linuxgazette.net/issue69/mathew.html http://linux.omnipotent.net/article.php?ar...197&page=-1 V2OS guys announced some work on it: http://v2os.v2.nl/cgi-bin/v2wiki.py?show=PCSpeaker So, it is possible. As said HOW to do it on WinXP setup is far off my knowledge and interest, and the quality of the sound will be anyway so bad that I don't think that anyone "in his mind" will ever take the time to find a way for doing it. jaclaz

I may be wrong, but it seems to me like you are coming here to get help on how to unpack a WAREZ release of a game (yes, the name can be read allright from your posted image)? I guess you won't stay on this board for a long time.....: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=18408 jaclaz

Maybe it would be possible using the PC loudspeaker, the thingy that beeps when you boot the PC. Before sound cards, old PC's had a "real" loudspeaker fixed to the case and connected to the motherboard, that could be easily driven, newest ones usually have a piezoelectric one on the motherboard, so I really doubt they can emit anything but a beep. And also with the good ol' ones the quality of the sound was more like that of a 1930*s telephone line than that of a Hi-Fi..... jaclaz

@Mandy Happy everything is fine. @twalk482 Well, that is really nice , I wouldn't dare attempting building one like that, expecially mouse, monitor and keyboard ! However something like this is simpler and more playful, very good as a PC for a kid: http://www.mini-itx.com/projects/legobox/ Cheers, jaclaz

FYI, this can be solved as well , as long as you have some Lego pieces, some plywood and a few more surplus parts around, and quite a bit of time : http://www.redfrontdoor.org/cd-changer.html and there is even a solution if the CD does not work as expected : http://www.techeblog.com/index.php/tech-ga...lego-cd-thrower jaclaz

Ok, probably completely unrelated, and just as a reference, this is the command line I use with the mkisofs.exe version that comes with BartPE for a bootsector that is NOT 2048 bytes long: I "studied" mkisofs more than one year ago, and in the meantime I have forgitten most of what I had learned, and I never tried building a Vista DVD, but maybe you could experiment along these lines, the settings that could create problems could be: 1) if the bootsector is longer than 2048 bytes, the "-boot-load-size 4", that is replaced by "-boot-load-seg 0x1000" 2) the "-relaxed-filenames" has been, at least in one occasion, reported to be not working, see here: http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=18088 You can try substituting it with either "-iso-level 3" or "-iso-level 4" 3) as a habit, I always assume that "Linux derived" tools are always CaSe SeNsItIvE, and I remember reports of BartPE builds that had some problems with lower or uppercase letters, cannot remember, try double checking Letter Cases I have found on this Japanese blog (of which I do not understand a single word ): http://naknet.jpn.ph/blog/ a reference to this command line: that would confirm the "-iso-level 4".... jaclaz

Just for the record: 1) There is NO known way in the world, setting aside tarots and crystal balls, to determine from the info Mandy posted which version of Bart PE it is, not even approximately, however "recent" (meaning since 2003) history of BartPE starts at 3.0.0 : http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/changes.txt There were however a WinPE v1.5 and a WinPE v1.6 before current WinPE 2.0 (Vista based), but if the label saus BartPE it should actually be BartPE 2) The above is a generic and apodictical nonsense. Microsoft has NO issues over the using of BartPE for Personal or Commercial usage if the corresponding XP or server 2003 licenses are legal and valid and if there is NO concurrent usage of the SAME licensed OS. See this: http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/#licensing 3) What Mandy wants to do is perfectly possible (and legal, within the provisions of the license terms above) with BartPE, UBCD4WIN, Winbuilder AND WinPE 1.5/1.6/2.0. Funny enough, licensing of WinPE 1.x has been for years "reserved" to Microsoft partners and OEM and only recently became publicly available, under the presumption that a "normal" customer building his own system is a OEM of sorts: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=10315 http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=56488 @Mandy The real problem seems to me that it is NOT a wizard type procedure in which you press "Next" a number of times and you have your CD working as you want it, nor something that can be explained in a few lines post. It involves understanding the basics of the innards of a PE build, then proceed by trial and error until you get what you want.... ...you will need to search, read and understand a number of posts, here on msfn.org, on 911CD forum and possibly on boot-land.net before being able to even start a build. Since you want to be able to eject bootCD and insert another one, what you are looking for is RAMDISK or SDI/VDK booting , but as said you have a long path before you. Maybe, just maybe the easiest projects for newbies (no offence intended ) like you would be the ones based on Winbuilder, which however is still in Beta stage: VistaPE: http://www.boot-land.net/forums/VistaPE-f51.html or PicoXP/NativeEx: http://www.boot-land.net/forums/NativeEx-and-LiveXP-f52.html Both "standard" BartPE and WinPE have been developed as "bare" Pre-installation Environments or emergency recovery, and, while being without "bells and whistles" need some work to add features, if you need/want a more "XP like" bootCD, Reatogo: http://www.reatogo.de/REATOGO.htm or UBCD4WIN: http://www.ubcd4win.com/ are better and they are more "mature" than the projects on boot-land.net, which on the other hand, have the advantage that, being newish and as said experimental, might provide better support.... jaclaz