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

Just FYI, the tiniest of the Winbuilder project, PicoXP, can be considered a step in that direction, currently you can build a 14 Mb boot CD with basic CMD.EXE support. "Bigger" projects range in 30÷70 Mb sizes. A simple description and all needed links in this post by the main developer of WinBuilder, Nuno Brito: http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?sho...=19586&st=2 jaclaz

Maybe it's the permission that causes the problem. Log in as Administrator (or user with Admin rights) and try getting ownership of the file(s): http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308421/en-us Do also try getting the ownership of all parent directories in the tree. First step is being able to access/copy the file(s) freely, until then I cannot say more. jaclaz

Sorry, I still do not get it. For a moment let's forget about encryption. Did you use the "Password protect" option while saving the excel file on disk from within Excel 2003? (There is NOTHING on the hard disk that can prevent, being deleted, a password protected - yes, it is encrypted - file from opening with the correct password, an Excel password protected file is just like a .zip or .rar password protected one, can be opened on ANY system with the corresponding app) Or did you use ANY other third party tool to encrypt password protect them? (if this is the case, one needs to know which tool) Or did you wrote the files on a NTFS encrypted filesystem? (if this is the case, this is the ONLY way that by reinstalling/deleting some other files you can make the files unreadable) Are you finally able to copy the file with Explorer to another drive or make a copy of them? If yes, would you be able to e-mail me one of those files (the smaller the better)? (you see, Excel - any version - is not really smart, and cannot distinguish between a corrupted file and a password protected one. I gather that when you double click on the .xls file you do get a prompt asking for the password, if not, the file is probably corrupted) It is possible that before, during the backup some files were copied badly or became corrupted or that the media (which one?) that you used to backup developed some errors. Which app did you use to make the backup? You did verify the backup against original files (file compare and/or MDA5 Sum) before deleting the original data, didn't you? jaclaz

I am not at all an expert on Vista, but there are a few things in your command line that don't "look" right (I may be wrong, of course): 1) Are you sure that the no-emulation bootsector for CD/DVD is "etfsboot.com" 2) Why there isn't a full path in front of it (i.e. why it is "boot/etfsboot.com" and not something like "F:\boot\efsboot.com")? 3) Why you are using forward slash "/" instead of backslash "\"? 4) Is the etfsboot.com (provided it is a bootsector) exactly 2048 bytes long (you are allowing 4 sectors for the bootsector)? jaclaz

Yep, but if the user of the machine where the CD is inserted has checked "view hidden files and folders", the CD directory will be visible allright. This trick: http://www.dq.winsila.com/tips-tricks/how-...ble-folder.html may give a (very little) more "security". jaclaz

As far as I know the first article dealing with this is this one: http://www.pcwelt.de/news/software/104785/index.html dated 12.11.2004 14:10 An English similar article is here: http://www.pcwelt.de/know-how/sicherheit/104830/index.html A few days later Microsoft officially replied, here: http://www.pcwelt.de/news/software/104952/index.html dated 19.11.2004 10:15 Basically Microsoft Representative Erin Collen affirms that the reference to "deepz0ne" is due to some "metadata" in a "placeholder" not properly cleared, the official statement is here: http://www.betanews.com/article/Microsoft_...ions/1100756076 Though it may be "news" to everyone that would reply like "Oh, I didn't know that!" it is not really "new", since it is more than two years old. And I guess that MSFN.org has not the ambition to hold ALL information ever published on Microsoft Corporation and its (supposedly bad) behaviours. jaclaz

This seems more like a filesystem problem. Can you describe IN DETAIL: How you originally created and/or encrypted a file? Were the files moved from a system to another? If yes, which was the filesystem on the original PC, which one is on the actual one, how did you transfer the files? Are you running with Administrator privileges? Please add any other detail on the "history" of these files that you can remember. jaclaz

Cannot say where did you get this information. With grub4dos you can make a double boot (XP installation + Linux) allright, as well as a BartPE+Linux. jaclaz

@emadhamdy2002 I see that your spell checker does not work very well , but an even worse problem seems to be your keyboard: it is evidently missing a few keys. Here: . (full stop or period) , (comma) ; (semicolon) ; (colon) ? (question mark) ! (exclamation mark) Please feel free to copy and paste them generously between words , it is called "punctuation": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuation and, besides helping people better understand what you write, it is a form of politeness towards other members. jaclaz

Of course you are sure that the password is correct, aren't you? I don't think there has been any change in the encryotion between the two versions, is it possible that the file is somehow corrupted? You can have a try with openoffice.org, it can open Excel 2003 password allright: http://documentation.openoffice.org/online...protection.html You might want to use a "Portable build": http://portableapps.com/apps/office/openoffice_portable So that you don't need installing it to try it. jaclaz