jaclaz

I don't understand, you ask for help, I suggest you a FREEWARE program, and a SAFE method to try recovering your data, you decide to ignore my suggestion, use a demo of another program, that has the same functionality as the suggested one, and you want to know if the full version of it will work directly without damaging your data? Well, the answer is yes, PROBABLY it will work. But what if MURPHY's law decides to prove itself right in this particular case? It's your data, so you will have to decide if it is worth risking it. Active Partition Recovery is an excellent program, but what if this is the 0.01% in which it fails? Personally I use other programs, but I do have some experience in this field, so I have a bit more "liberty of action" than that I would suggest to a newbie, nonetheless I would NEVER write ANYTHING to a disk BEFORE being absolutely sure I am able to revert the disk to a previous state. jaclaz

That is NOT an XP install, it is a BartPE install. Here is the FIRST and ONLY WORKING project to boot a FULL XP from USB media: http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=14181&hl= (still experimental, but WORKING) jaclaz

Probably, yes. But you will need another PC with a working OS. It is possible to make a bootCD but it is NOT advised. Find another PC with ENOUGH space to hold the data you want to salvage and connect to it your HD as Slave/Secondary. Read this (and links therein): http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=65337 if your lucky and just some "pointers" were altered, it's a matter of minutes. If TESTDISK does not work, you will need some actual data recovery program. There is the freeware PHOTOREC (included with TESTDISK) for some types of files and this other one: http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/UK/welcome.htm and this one for NTFS: http://memberwebs.com/nielsen/software/scrounge/ The IDEAL situation is to make a COMPLETE IMAGE of the drive BEFORE attempting recovery so that if something goes bad, you can restart from scrath (and original situation), you will need a drive at least the same size of the "defective" one and a byte-by-byte copy program. Here are some ideas: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=67961 but there are a lot of them, including Roadkil's programs (just google for "Roadkil's") and quite a few command line only, like the DSFOK tools or dd for windows jaclaz

If only Microsoft would not continuosly change their web links.... Through Google Cache: [GUIRunOnce] Method http://64.233.179.104/search?q=cache:0DepO...kb_cnc_zanp.asp jaclaz

You can set the volume bit to "dirty": http://www.ss64.com/nt/chkdsk.html or schedule it: http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_defrag.htm jaclaz

Yes, you can, the problem is not that it is FAT32, but that is the boot volume or you have files in use: READ these: http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:bFNOP4...kd_tro_xudm.asp http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documen...-us/chkdsk.mspx http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_defrag.htm http://www.ss64.com/nt/chkdsk.html jaclaz

3ENE = ENG files 3ENS = STD files 3ENW = WEB files The CD is for sure made with CDimage: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=49821 jaclaz

Yep, but supposedly there is a way out: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/04/08/th...st_way_to_kill/ and another one: http://blog.codefront.net/archives/2003/11...dows-messenger/ more: http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=288 http://www.infopackets.com/channels/en/win..._windows_xp.htm jaclaz

Most probably it uses a "cracked" (by MS, LOL!) setupldr.bin, like this one: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=58410 jaclaz

Maybe I got the wrong idea about your problem, but did you try vfdwin? http://chitchat.at.infoseek.co.jp/vmware/vfd.html jaclaz

NO prob, that was an easy one. jaclaz

Well, maybe you could use another approach. Am I right in understanding that you have, say, 500 directories of 1 Gb each and that these are (mostly) the contents of XP CD's? If yes, you should use some of the "advanced" features of the NTFS filesystem, i.e. junction points and hard links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS_junction_point http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_link you'll have to read a bit of MS docs to get the idea. Just recently a nice freeware utility has been released to manage this kind of problems: http://alax.info/blog/category/utilities/ntfs-links/ or more traditional ones: http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/Junction.html http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/techi...ew/hlscan-o.asp http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documen...-us/fsutil.mspx http://www.ractive.ch/gpl/HardLinker.html http://www.netikus.net/products_nttoolkit.html?SESSION= http://www.jensscheffler.de/dfhl_en.html http://www.pearlmagik.com/winbolic/ http://forge.novell.com/modules/xfcontent/...nk2.1_installer http://www.rekenwonder.com/linkmagic.htm http://schinagl.priv.at/nt/hardlinkshellex...nkshellext.html I am sure you will find others too.... jaclaz

Well, yes, you can install windows from CD by using a "normal" DOS/WIn9x boot floppy disk, as long as the bootfloppy has access to the CD. If the CD is an internal one (IDE/ATA/ATAPI), there are no problems ANY DOS/Win9x you can download from here have the needed drivers: http://www.allbootdisks.com/ http://www.allbootdisks.com/index.php?opti...er&filecatid=10 If it's external, PCMCIA or USB some more drivers will be needed. Once booted, at the A:> prompt, change to the CD drive letter , say D:, then change directory, CD i386, then run the 16 bit install program, WINNT.EXE. Alternatively, you can prepare the 6 (six) boot diskettes for XP install, make sure that you choose the right version of XP you have: http://www.allbootdisks.com/ jaclaz

Yep, LLXX is right, what actually you "should" do is: 1) make a byte-by-byte copy of the damaged media to a file on your hard disk a program like: http://www.roadkil.net/ http://www.roadkil.net/DiskImg.html is what you need 2) make ANOTHER copy of the file 3) mount the SECOND copy of the file as a virtual disk, with something like: http://chitchat.at.infoseek.co.jp/vmware/vdk.html http://home.graffiti.net/jaclaz:graffiti.n...ts/VDM/vdm.html 4) try recovery with program on the mounted virtual disk 5) if results not Ok, change program and loop to 4), if image has been altered, loop to 2) jaclaz

Personally, I would try using the FREEWARE version of Effect Maker: http://www.effectmaker.com/application/ and assemble the thingy in a "screensaver" jaclaz

..or you need to upload the image to a FREE server, then put the link in the post. Read here: http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=15995&st=7 to post the link, you press 8th button from left: 1 B Bold 2 I Utalic 3 U Underlined 4 S Striken 5 A Text Color 6 hyperlink (world with chain) 7 e-mail (envelope) 8 image (tree on lawn) 9 quote (balloon) 10 code (#) jaclaz

Yep, just put a statement in it like this: SETLOCAL ENABLEDELAYEDEXPANSION http://www.robvanderwoude.com/local.html and here is the details about Why it won't work without delayed expansion disabled http://www.robvanderwoude.com/ntset.html#DelayedExpansion When you have a doubt about batch files, go here: http://www.robvanderwoude.com/ (if there is a solution, normally is there) jaclaz

A few more alternatives (besides du-baron): http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=15809&hl= Another one: http://www.easeus.com/disk-copy/index.htm though I don't think that "resizing" of the partition is handled by the above utilities, but there is one that is FREE and should have this feature: http://www.miray.de/products/sat.hdclone.html Another one that I am not sure about: http://www.pcinspector.de/clone-maxx/uk/welcome.htm Here is anice review/comparison of commercial ones: http://disk-imaging-software-review.toptenreviews.com/ jaclaz

See links in my posts here: http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=15854&hl= jaclaz

Yep, the idea behind testdisk/photorec (and MOST but not ALL file recovery programs) is to access directly the hard disk (or memory card) data, bypassing the filesystem driver of the OS. If the camera is shown as a drive letter, it means that there is a working physical connection, so it will work. The AMOUNT and/or "quality" of recovered data cannot be estimated offhand, though, very often in these cases recover is TOTAL, some times it is partial, a few times is NO recovery at all. As a general advice as different utilities use different "strategies" to acces the data, if recover with one is not total, you can try another one. jaclaz

Well, the "correct" way of re-formatting under ANY OS is to do so AFTER having wiped the disk, expecially if some "strange" application like bootmanagers or proprietary programs that hardcode data into hidden sectors were used on the drive. There are tens of programs able to do so, you don't need a "secure wipe" one like these: http://www.thefreecountry.com/security/securedelete.shtml just a program that writes all 00's or FF's to the drive, like this one: DSFOK http://members.ozemail.com.au/~nulifetv/fr...ware/index.html part of the DSFOK tools is the program XDL (6 Kbytes): It is possible that in some cases hard disk format under win2K/XP "misbehaves", just as it does floppy disk formatting:http://www.denispetrov.com/format144/ jaclaz

You need to boot from a boot CD, as an example the WIN2K one, or floppy. The error you are reporting is typical of a non-formatted (and non-fdisked) drive. When you boot from the Win2k Cd the install program will detect the drive and allow you to partition and format it. jaclaz

..or try with the program that comes together with testdisk: http://www.cgsecurity.org/testdisk.html ...it is called PHOTOREC, the name says it all.... jaclaz

Strange, DOS 7.x (aka Win9x) files instead of the MS-DOS 6.22 ones) i.e. NATIVE FAT32 access, should NOT be able to load the Win3.x GUI unless 3Xstart is loaded.....but maybe this applies to 3.1 and not to 3.11... Some links about the matter: http://www.oldfiles.org.uk/powerload/ 3XSTART http://oldfiles.org.uk/powerload/win3x.htm http://www.devedia.com/dosghost/dos/ph_w31.htm http://mw16.2ya.com/ http://www.geocities.com/politalk/ http://www.geocities.com/politalk/rmdrv/win31.htm jaclaz

As every one has shared some knowledge, I'll throw my two cents in: @ECHO OFF REM ATTRIB -H -S -R C:\BOOT.INI echo [Boot Loader] > C:\boot.tmp echo Timeout=0 >> C:\boot.tmp type boot.ini | FIND /V "[Boot Loader]" | FIND /V "Timeout=" >> C:\boot.tmp Copy C:\BOOT.TMP C:\BOOT.INI > NUL DEL C:\BOOT.TMP REM ATTRIB +H +S +R C:\BOOT.INI (you will need to UNrem the two remmed lines) Maybe it's brutal, but no need for FOR loops, conditional statements or external utilities.... jaclaz P.S.: the line "type boot.ini | .....>> C:\boot.tmp" has to be on the SAME line