jaclaz

@chee SO you want to try an EXPERIMENTAL OS, not yet RELEASED, in a UNDOCUMENTED way? I am afraid there is no known way at the moment to do so. @RJM The first link in your post refers to BartPE, i.e. Bart's PRE-INSTALLATION ENVIRONMENT, NOT to a Windows OPERATING SYSTEM. The second one is a Microsoft document stating which requirements WILL be needed WHEN they will release a USB bootable operating system. @all Just for the record, it has recently become POSSIBLE to boot a FULL Win2k or XP from USB, thanks to the great work of Dietmar at the 911CD forum, the procedure is still HIGHLY experimental, but it works: http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=14181&hl= jaclaz

@all Here there is a new member asking for help with an unbootable system, probably UNLIKE you, a normal user has FILES, i.e. IMPORTANT DATA on the PC hard disk and re-formatting is NOT an option. Besides, Operating Systems, EXPECIALLY Microsoft ones, come with a Licence and usually Microsoft likes to be PAYED for them! So please do refrain from suggesting unrelated opinions on how better is windows 98 or 2000 or whatever and about how clever you were to run a Microsoft Operating System on a below-specs computer, this is simply not the right place for this kind of discussions, you can open a new thread for this. @SarahC Yep, what you just succeeded at is booting to the "minimal" DOS prompt, as for the moment you don't need CD-ROM support, select 4) Minimal. Now what you probably have is a PC with Registry and/or some corrupted system files on the hard disk, but the fact that you booted from floppy should mean that there is no hardware defect. Check, by issuing a DIR scan*.* command at the prompt, that you have the files: SCANDISK.INI SCANDISK.EXE SCANREG.EXE on the floppy, if not, sorry, you downloaded the wrong floppy image, and you have to get this one: http://www.allbootdisks.com/index.php?opti...er&filecatid=40 Now issue the command SCANDISK http://www.computerhope.com/software/scandisk.htm to try and fix disk errors Then issue the command SCANREG /FIX http://www.computerhope.com/scanregh.htm to try and fix Registry errors Now try rebooting without the floppy and see what happens. If it does not work, re-boot from floppy and this time try issuing the command SCANREG /RESTORE http://www.helpwithwindows.com/windows98/start-145.html (article is about Win98 but ME is similar) You should be able to select between FIVE backups: Now try rebooting without the floppy and see what happens. If it does not boot normally, next best option is to re-install Windiws ME over itself. You will need the original CD that came with the laptop, or depending on models, you might have the files already on the hard disk, possibly in a \support or \cabs sub-directory in the \Windows or \WinME directory, they are a bunch of .cab files. Post progress results and info about your laptop, if you have the cd, if you found the .cab files...... jaclaz

Sorry, I was editing the post while you replied. So, no prob, just follow the MS tutorial in the link above to retrieve the copy from end of partition. Though the fact that it is seen as "unallocated space" seems more like a MBR problem, usually partitions that have a faulty bootsector but a valid MBR show normally under disk management, then when you click on them in explorer, windows says that partition is not formatted.... jaclaz

Did you delete the MBR of a hard drive or the bootsector of a partition? Test disk should be able to help in both cases. Read here also: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=30378&st=30 To re-create the MBR AFTER Testdisk has recovered the correct geometry. If it is a bootsector of a partition, can you post which filesystem is used on that partition? NTFS stores a "spare" bootsector: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...b;EN-US;q153973 Read these also FAT16/FAT32 only: http://forum.winimage.com/viewtopic.php?t=163 http://forum.winimage.com/viewtopic.php?t=276 http://forum.winimage.com/viewtopic.php?t=278 jaclaz

Sorry Jeremy, I did not want to "duplicate" the things or "spoiling" your good work, I just wanted to add the links to the two programs, and to say that in my experience, whilst UNDOUBTEDLY they are by no means good/complete when used alone, they represent valid "post-processors" for RegSeeker. jaclaz

I usually know what I am saying/writing, thank you. I just like COUM better than CODM, and I also find UNcompress more exact than DEcompress (which has more meanings) and surely better than Extracting, maybe Expanding could be more appropriate, but it still has wider meanings and can easily be confused with the Microsoft EXPAND command. FYI: http://www.wordwebonline.com/en/DECOMPRESS http://www.wordwebonline.com/en/UNCOMPRESS http://www.wordwebonline.com/en/EXTRACT http://www.wordwebonline.com/en/EXPAND jaclaz

Look here: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=68677 Comparison of 32 apps by Jeremy. jaclaz

Nice work Jeremy! Your findings are very similar to mine. I would like to add a couple more "specialistic" proggies OLE/ActiveX related (FREEWARE): OLECLEAN http://www.geocities.com/drdole/ScreenShots/OleClean.html Control Registration Utility 2.00 http://www.softcircuits.com/dl/apps/regctrls.zip Using Regseeker, then the two above, and later using ERUNT http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/ that includes NTREGOPT, has made the smallest, cleanest Registry I could expect, much better than many COMMERCIAL apps. jaclaz

For a simple backup I can recommend you: Cobian backup http://www.educ.umu.se/~cobian/cobianbackup.htm Freebyte backup http://www.freebyte.com/fbbackup/ and the one I use, SAMEDIR http://samedir.sbn.bz/ (all FREEWARE) jaclaz

@mzar720 READ the article: http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documen...us/winnt32.mspx WINNT32.EXE expects an "answer file", i.e. unattended.txt, NOT a WINNT.SIF file. Read these: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=314460 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308662/EN-US/ http://support.microsoft.com/kb/155197 jaclaz

Well NO, you know, you cannot have an "Unattended CD" on a partition, but you can do three things, in order of difficulty: 1) make a bootable hidden partition with DOS files that restore a pre-recorded hard disk image (just like the Dell does with GHOST) 2) make a bootable hidden partition with DOS files and a copy of the (Unattended) setup files, starting them using WINNT.EXE 3) make a bootable hidden partition that boots directly (SETUPLDR.BIN) to a copy of the (Unattended) setup files Read these: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=26185 http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=37939 http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=14723 http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=61384 (seemingly unrelated, but not much) I don't know how your Dell hides/unhides partitions, does it have a "hot" key or you need to use a special floppy or something else to hide/unhide it? jaclaz

Yep, it is really slow, however the problem is not when compressing, after all we could well adopt a COUM (Compress Once Uncompress Many) approach, the problem is that it is exceptionally slow at UNcompressing! I wouldn't mind having a far longer time when compressing IF uncompressing is fast and with the promised 20% smaller archives... jaclaz

Looky here, this one must be tested too: [url="http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=68523&hl=firewall"]http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showto...523&hl=firewall[/url] jaclaz

Thanks DigeratiPrime, it looks like nice! jaclaz

I think is something connected to the Refresh settings (right click on a page), but it happened to me too, and now it works, cannot really say why. jaclaz

The fact that TESTDISK lets you see the files, does not mean that everything is OK. If TESTDISK did not report any error, assigning a drive letter can be the solution. If TESTDISK reported errors, you should read the docs and repair those errors with TESTDISK. jaclaz

The LVUMSFD.SYS seems like a Win98 Logitech Driver: http://drivermagic.com/p/nph-display.php?a=2943.141 for a USB camera: http://drivermagic.com/p/nph-detail.php?a=2943 Cannot see anything Winamp related.... jaclaz

Most probably it will be enough to recover the MBR and Partition Tables, read these: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=59145 http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=30378&st=30 jaclaz

looky here: http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=16048 jaclaz

I think that Maks is referring to changing a boot.ini entry while unattendedly installing, there is something like it here: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=66101&hl= jaclaz

Here you are: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=55041 Links to other proggies: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=55041&st=16 http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=55041&st=23 I use the one from Nirsoft: http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/product_cd_key_viewer.html jaclaz

It's not really my "field" of knowledge, but should you not stop the Service and re-start it? net stop wuauserv net start wuauserv Maybe you can get more help here: http://www.wsus.info/forums/index.php?act=idx jaclaz

You mean something like nmap: http://www.insecure.org/nmap/ http://www.insecure.org/nmap/nmap-fingerpr...ng-article.html jaclaz

Wow, how many PC's did you recover this way? If we average 50 US$ per RAM stick, it needs to make US$ 2,000,000 (the bare minimum to say millions) : 2,000,000/50=40,000 sticks Assuming that less than 5% of all the PC's develop this kind of problem, and averaging two sticks per PC, it means that you were managing (prudentially) something like 40,000/0.05=800,000/2=400,000 PC's Supposing this chore was spread over a 5 year period, averaging 230 working days per year: 40,000/5=8,000 sticks per year 8,000/230=34.78 sticks per day Assuming 8 hours of work per day: 34.78/8=4.35 sticks per hour i.e. more or less one stick every fifteen minutes. ...or you had just one day per week for "RAM laundry" say Friday? in the latter case we have 34,78 x 5=173.91 sticks to be washed on friday that makes: 173.91/8=21.74 sticks per hour, i.e. something like one stick every three minutes. I know that "hundreds" sounds very similar to "millions", but maybe you got confused.... jaclaz

Read these: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=41643&st=5 http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=40837&st=0 Or, if you can wait a couple of days, try this: http://www.loginrecovery.com/ jaclaz