jaclaz

Well, well. @danw To resume your post: 1. You have a boss that tells you what the solution to the problem has to be, not caring if that solution does not exists or it is inferior to an alternate one. 2. You fail to see what the "open mindedness" of several different programmers can add to a recovery process. I will try and explain myself better, though I am NOT a professional in data recovery, over the years I have developed an interest in this branch, and quite naturally I have been in the Company I worked with the "reference man" when a problem occured on a Mass Storage device, so I claim to have some knowledge in this field. In my experience, not a single program, either Commercial or Open Source is "perfect", a software that succeeded 100% in an occurrence of data corruption failed miserably in another one, and vice-versa. Rules are as follows, as I see it: 1) ALWAYS make a bit by bit copy of the damaged media, if possible, make TWO of them 2) Run against the image EVERY single piece of software you can think of, starting with a program you know and trust, but do NOT overlook "minor" ones or "narrow" ones, i.e. those aimed to recovery just a certain type of file or a certain type of damage 3) Given the low cost of todays hardware, NEVER attempt repair on original media, only do it AFTER recovery was succesful on the copy, what you were not able to do might be possible 4) Do not EVER give up, I was able to recover data that "so-called" professionals had determined to be an impossible recovery, simply by using a different tool or making some minor manual corrections. 5) TELL the customer that recovery has MANY levels of accuracy and corresponding many levels of time involved and cost, explain him that even if a quick scan determined that no recovery was possible, a deeper analisys may give some results, data recovery if not successful with "easy - press one button and go" tools, manual recover is often possible, and in some cases even partial data can be of great help, all in all is a matter of the VALUE the customer attributes to lost data Programs I can swear by: TESTDISK (Freeware) File Scavenger (NTFS only -Commercial) TiramiSU (FAT16-FAT32-NTFS-ZIP disks - not anymore developed - Shareware - Commercial - acquired by Ontrack) jaclaz

Quite obviously, most "COMMERCIAL" data recovery programs are aimed to MS originated filesystems, whilst for *nix based filesystems most of the work is done by Open Source project/contributions. To this you add that until a short period ago, using Unix, Linux or BSD was "reserved" to people which know what to do, actually 2 words: BACKUP OFTEN! However there are such programs, here are a few: TESTDISK and PHOTOREC: http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec Disktype http://sourceforge.net/projects/disktype Foremost http://sourceforge.net/projects/foremost Fileextractor: http://sourceforge.net/projects/kkfileextractor Data recovery tools (ALPHA) http://sourceforge.net/projects/dr-tools Safecopy: http://sourceforge.net/projects/safecopy Hdrecover: http://sourceforge.net/projects/hdrecover FIRST: http://sourceforge.net/projects/first http://www.first.org.my/index.php?id=0 But I am quite sure there are many others. jaclaz

And don't forget this: http://johnson.tmfc.net/dos/ jaclaz

Yep, hopefully everything is OK, happy to see you again Fred jaclaz

Yep, that's why I suggested using an image. After all a presentation is nothing but a slide-show, you just add to it more images with the different filtering results and you are done. Moreover you are safer from a crash or a wrong command given, I know that it never happened before, I know, but if it happens, it will do the most possible damage, according to Murphy's Law and it's corollaries. jaclaz

Open your file in Excel Set it to full screen Press Printscr key Open Paint Edit -> Paste Save as bitmap Open bitmap in any more featured image editor and modify it if needed Save it again as bitmap or .jpg Add the image file to your presentation Repeat for more sheet views jaclaz

One. jaclaz

Have a look at this project too: http://winner.windowsdream.com/ jaclaz

Yep, as said, the BIOS did not appear to be the problem. In my experience first thing that can cause such a problem is actually RAM, you should try doing the following: 1) Remove all RAM from the system 2) AFTER having made sure that you discharged possible static electricity, use a rubber eraser, NOT the type for pencils, the "old" round shaped ones meant to coorect typewriter errors (they are slightly more abrasive) to clean contacts on the RAM sticks 3) use a GOOD, NON OILY type of spray contact cleaner to clean the sticks connectors on the motherboard 4) SWAP RAM sticks, i.e. put the one in connector #1 in connector #2 and viceversa 5) Run for at least 24 hours (of course if you can boot) memtest86: http://www.memtest.org/ 6) If ANY errors are detected, re-do from point #5 without the faulty stick 7) If NO error are found, try replacing the processor (with the one of the identical machine) 8) If it stil does not work, the motherboard is 99,99% a goner ALL the above tests must be made with the LEAST possible devices connected, i.e. Video Card (if not on board one) and Monitor, keyboard and mouse. Disconnect hard disk, floppy disk and, if you have multiple USB ports, the cable(s) that connect motherboard to front ones. Set the BIOS as "Failsafe Settings" or similar, disable LPT and COM ports, EVERYTHING. Then, if it works, re-enable or re-connect one by one the devices and ports. jaclaz

OK, just for the record, now that everyone has had his part of fun and hopefully mandrake10 has learned a few neat tricks, why not using a more featured, pre-made FREEWARE and OPEN SOURCE app?: http://gravityfx.org/ http://gravityfx.org/?id=projects http://gravityfx.org/?id=wxp (a .NET solution, so not really useful unless you need .NET for any other more meaningful reason) jaclaz

A couple of ideas: @echo off :CHANGE SET /P CHANGE=Change: For %%A in (YES YEs Yes yes yeS yES yEs YeS NO No no nO) DO IF %%A.==%CHANGE%. GOTO :Nextstep%CHANGE% ECHO Error! Please Try again... goto :CHANGE :NextstepYES REM was :COMPANYNAME ECHO COMPANYNAME %CHANGE% PAUSE goto :CHANGE :NextstepNO REM was :REGISTRY ECHO REGISTRY %CHANGE% PAUSE goto :CHANGE @echo off :CHANGE SET /P CHANGE=Change: ECHO %CHANGE% | FIND /I "YES " >nul IF %ERRORLEVEL%==0 goto :COMPANYNAME ECHO %CHANGE% | FIND /I "NO " >nul IF %ERRORLEVEL%==0 goto :REGISTRY ECHO Error! Please Try again... goto :CHANGE :COMPANYNAME ECHO COMPANYNAME %CHANGE% PAUSE goto :CHANGE :REGISTRY ECHO REGISTRY %CHANGE% PAUSE goto :CHANGE Please note that in your source you missed a couple of combination for "yEs".... jaclaz

Or you can use Grub4dos grldr as a no-emulation bootsector, then load either directly or thorough memdisk two different floppy images, one for ME and one for 98. Always get latest "nightbuild" of Grub4dos here: http://grub4dos.jot.com/WikiHome jaclaz

@the_doc735 You should read on this site: http://www.robvanderwoude.com/ particularly these: http://www.robvanderwoude.com/local.html http://www.robvanderwoude.com/ntset.html Briefly, Enabling Command Extensions modifies the way some commands are carried out and allows for particular syntaxes. To make sure that Command Extensions are enabled, you should begin a .cmd file with (after @Echo OFF): SETLOCAL ENABLEEXTENSIONS jaclaz P.S.: We technicians have the habit of referring to those, respectively, as SMALL, MEDIUM and LARGE pan, or as #1,#2 and #3 skillet. B) Using the correct words helps!

Since the .iso image works and the CD does not, the problem must lie in the way you burned the CD. Did you actually use NERO properly? Or you just put the .iso in the new compilation folder? In the old NERO 6 you had to choose "Burn Image", I think this is unchanged in 7: http://www.govideo.com/index.Asp?GV=CDWriteHelp Also, ALWAYS burn bootable CD's at LOWEST possible speed, until you find that a higher speed will work as well. jaclaz

I think you will agree that "works like a dream" cannot be defined an objective benchmark measure, I suspect that other people may find your "dream" a "nightmare". In my experience, the single hardware feature that affects the most the behaviour of a full Win98 SE is the amount of memory, not really the processor speed. If you have less than 64 Mbytes of memory, Win98 becomes slowish, due to swapping to HD. I have found that with 32 Mbytes or less, you really see the difference if you use 98lite or another means to use the core W95 files. Exactly my thought , though about: You have to understand that marketshare, while having a direct relationship with availability of help and support, has NO relationship whatsoever with quality of the product. Consider this: Windows 2000 came out at the beginning of 2000, at the time Microsoft marketing had things divided as follows: a. Professional users should MIGRATE from NT4 to Win2K b. New professional system should have Win2K c. Consumer systems should have WinME, that came out in summer 2000, as the NT technology is too complex for them, almost every PC sold in 2000/2001 had ME pre-installed Shortly after, the idea was completely changed: Windows XP came out at the end of 2001 and was pre-installed, either in home or pro version, to almost every single PC sold afterwards. Windows 2K was not taken out of the market, mainly because until SP1 came out, no professional would have even thought of "upgrading" to XP, I bought my latest licenses for 2k in 2004. SO you cannot really compare the numbers of ME or 2000 with those of other systems: 1) ME came pre-installed for a short period, around 1 and a half year 2) 2K was very rarely pre-installed, and it's main "lifetime" was about two years 3) XP, either home or pro, came pre installed since end of 2001 till today, and probably for several months still, until the release of Vista 4) In the period since 2000 up to now, the number of PC's in households has greatly increased, today alost everyone has a PC, 5 years ago, if you think about it, it was not so. These are just partial data: 1997 - http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/c...ort97/tab01.pdf 2003 - http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/c...2003/tab01A.xls But a "penetration" rate from 36.6% to 61.8% hints about the trend quite well, here are more numbers: http://www.cybertelecom.org/data/statcomputers.htm jaclaz

If you can "write" the text file as you wish, the problem can be solved like this: FIND /V /N "thisisanabsurdstringthatwontbeinthefile" colours.txt will output: so you can do Set choice=3 FOR /F "tokens=2 delims=]" %%A IN ('FIND /V /N "thisisanabsurdstringthatwontbeinthefile" colours.txt ^| FIND "%choice%"') DO ECHO %%A You should get the idea.... jaclaz P.S.: Real "random" number generation is very difficult, but a "pseudo-random" is relatively easy: http://www.robvanderwoude.com/ http://www.robvanderwoude.com/files/random_nt.txt http://www.robvanderwoude.com/files/random_nt2.txt

See here if it's enough: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=83617 jaclaz

I guess it all depends on the use you make of a PC and how you "keep" it. Just for the record I run Win2k since 2003 on this PC, and previously had it run another 3 years on a previous one and NEVER re-installed on either machine, nor EVER had a BSOD. jaclaz

Plamdi, maybe you got it wrong: 1) mstester does NOT want a prompt for deleting file(s) 2) normally there is NO prompt when deleting a single file UNLESS it is either a Read Only or System file: 2a) If it is Read Only, the prompt will be "Access Denied" 2b) If it is System, the prompt will be "Cannot find file" 3) if you are deleting MORE than one file, using a wild card, like in del *.*, a prompt will come out asking whether you want to proceed So, the /s will do the same command in each subdirectory, but if you use wildcards, you will be prompted once for each subdirectory. The /q suppresses the prompt generated by MULTIPLE deletes (i.e. using wildcards) the /p will FORCE the (unwanted) prompt for EACH file. the /f forces the deleting of Read Only files the /a (optionally followed by the type of attribute) will allow deleting files with particular attributes, /ar is the same as /f, /a means every file but those that are Read Only So, if you want to delete files with NO prompt whatsoever, the right syntax is del /a /f If, from a batch file or from command line you want to bypass the prompt generated by a wildcard, without pressing S (Y in English) you use: echo S | del \dir\*.* i.e. you pipeline a "S" or a "Y" into the command. If you use the /s parameter, of course only first prompt will be bypassed, this can be useful in some occasion INSTEAD of the /q. jaclaz

WARNING! This can be a long and troublesome troubleshooting. First thing it would be necessary to understand which controller chip the USB HD uses. If you can physically open the case, just post whatever you can read on the chips, together with EXACT model of your Hard Disk. Additionally, get this program and run it on both the working laptop and the failing desktop, posting results, the interesting part is the Vid and Pid: http://www.pretec.com/WebRoot/Store/Shops/.../UsbIDCheck.zip jaclaz

Well, the parameters given in the link do have a sense, if only you would take the time to read the doc, the suggested one is: YOUR should be something like this: mkisofs -iso-level 4 -l -d -D -J -joliet-long -b -boot.img -hide boot.img -hide boot.catalog -allow-multidot -no-emul-boot -volid "MYCD" -A PEBUILDER/MKISOFS -sysid "Win32" -boot-load-size 4 -o "/home/kurumin/xpcd.iso" "/home/kurumin/Unattended/xpcd" Quite different to what you posted: The main things you obviously missed are: -no-emul-boot that tells mkisofs that you want a no-emulation mode CD, NOT an El-Torito one that tells mkisofs that the no-emulation bootsector you are feeding it is 4 sectors long that make mkisofs hide the boot image and catalog the other ones have lesser importance, and can probably be omitted though it really depends on the structure of the CD and the names you used (or you have) for files, most probably you can omit them and also set -iso-level to 2 or 3 if the cd has just "normal" 8.3 names. jaclaz

boot.img is the no-emulation bootsector for the CD, i.e. the thingy that makes it bootable and that invokes the SETUPLDR.BIN, if you don't use it, the CD wonìt be bootable or it won't boot the setup. Under Linux, as well as under XP, you can use mkisofs to make the .iso, then burn it with any burning program. Here is a mkisofs short guide for BartPE, which is similar in the booting part to a setup CD, to get you started: http://www.bootcd.us/Mkisofs_options.htm Check your build of mkisofs under linux for the presence of same switches, if I recall correctly -iso-level 4 is not present, you can try -iso-level 3 jaclaz

Can you elaborate on this? Which tools you use, how you make the Ramdisk, how you copy HD image to it, how you boot it? A similar (open) thread on 911CD: http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=18326 jaclaz

nlite: http://www.nliteos.com/ has an option to integrate drivers: http://www.nliteos.com/guide/part2.html (but read the whole guide) jaclaz

Yep, but EVERY PS (Power Supply) built for Desktop PC's in the last, say, 20 years has been a Switching Mode one, so the acronym is a bit redundant.... jaclaz