jaclaz

RJARRRPCGP, Windows 95, 98 and ME are based on DOS. The DOS is not there as backward compatibility, it is the CORE. Windows 3.1 has never even been called an OS, it is a graphical shell over DOS (up to 6.22) Unlike that, Windows 95, 98 and ME are Operating Systems, based on DOS 7.0 or 7.1 and 8.0. Microsoft have made miracles to convince people that windows 9x/ME are really self-standing Operating Systems, (and succeeded with you), but they are not. jaclaz

quoque tu, prathapml? Sorry if I say so, but I quite frankly expected by Moderators (and I am thinking about un4given1's posts, that often show a pretty useless aggressivity) a less simplicistic and more mature approach to a debate. My personal PC experience: 1) I went from DOS/Win 3.1 directly to NT4 (skipping Win95), then upgraded to Win2k (skipping over Win98) 2) I never used professionally Win98, but in my business environment MOST machines are/were Win95/98 so I can say that I know quite well all MS systems 3) I have quite a few XP machines that from time to time help mantain, though I, due to the limited hardware I own, and the cost of a legitimate copy of Windows XP, still use only Win2k Every one of the above OS has its good and bad sides, but a discussion should be based on mutual respect, it is incredible that I, that NEVER liked Win9x, should feel compelled to post in this board to actually defend Win9x fans. It already happened here: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=39573 Quite obviously a newer OS, AFTER SOME INITIAL PROBLEMS, has: - more features - better handling of problems found in previous version - better security - better support (drivers and devices) BUT it: - requires more powerful hardware (processor speed, HD size, memory size, etc.) - requires additional "training" on the user part - is more targeted by hackers/virii So it all depends on how you use it, WHICH features do you need, how MUCH money can you spend on it, I'll make a few examples: roughly 15 years ago I started using Excel 3.0, and Word 2.0 on a DOS/Win 3.11 platform, I did then, more or less, the same job I do now. Do you think that you need Office 2003 to make a simple spreadsheet or write a letter? I ALWAYS take the Audio card off my work PC, (I don't like sounds when working)should I need to upgrade to another OS because my NT 4.00 (running smoothly on a 64 mb 450 Mhz PC) has not good Audio Drivers? I have a subnotebook with 48 Mb of Ram 133 Mhz Processor, after MUCH experimenting, I found that it worked very well with a "Lite" 98, allowing me to do my normal work (with all the limits of the small screen), read my mail, go on the Internet whenever I connect it through a PMCIA Lan adapter. Should I spend some $ 1,000÷2,000 to buy a new one? I recently helped out a friend put up a small server in his design office. I forced him to spend the extra-money needed to buy 10,000 RPM SCSI RAID disks, and Windows Server 2003 as I reckoned that was what was NEEDED. Should I have said to him "Save the money and buy a normal PC with XP and normal ATA disks? I bought a computer (together with all the family) as a present for my cousin, which is an almost complete computer illiterate, but likes a lot music and videos, I chose one with XP Media Center Edition 2005. Should I have chosen a REDHAT Linux OS? My nephew is 14 years old and likes a lot computers, he views himself as a small hacker, he already has a PC with windows XP (re-installed n times), I helped him install KNOPPIX Linux as dual boot, he likes it a lot better than XP, do you think I should not have done that? When comparing Operating System there is NO "better" or "worse" OS, there are "newer" and "elder", "advantages" and "disadvantages", "brighter" and "darker" sides, as in MOST things in life. Again: XP is more secure and has more features than 98, BUT needs newer hardware and uses more space and resources 98 is leaner and faster (on the same hardware) BUT is less stable and lacks advanced filesystem features Linux is more difficult to setup and requires learning a lot of new things, has poorer hardware support, BUT it is free and has some outstanding features, like VERY advanced filesystem features, a high level of security, an enormous amount of free applications BSD is even more difficult to learn, BUT it is free and has exceptional security features jaclaz

You're welcome. jaclaz

Costless=Risky $$$=No Probs (The above applies to other things too, not only BIOS flashing) jaclaz

Read this thread here: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=39160 jaclaz

Ranish won't run under ANY NT based system. It needs direct hardware access. (but you could install it to its own bootable partition on the HD) If you know what you are doing, you could use either PTEDIT32 or Beeblebrox. They will just edit the Partition table, then you have to use format as usual. jaclaz

You do not specify WHICH actions did you take. I am just guessing, but there are two probabilities: 1) The arcpath in your boot.ini is invalid 2) The hidden partition has been set as ACTIVE in the partition table How to for 1): Still guessing, if your C:\ drive is NTFS, make a Win9x boot disk with this utility: EDITBINI: http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/utilities.html And use it to add some more arcpaths in the boot.ini, if your actual entry is: Add a line like: If your drive is FAT 16 or FAT 32 you can use the EDIT command on the "standard" Win9x boot disk How to for 2): Get a DOS partition table editor, like this one: PTEDIT: ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_...ties/ptedit.zip And use it to set back the non-hidden partition to ACTIVE (i.e. 80) You might need to do BOTH of the above. Find here some info on the way NT/2k/XP/2003 boot: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=33030 You could also try to make the NT/2k/XP/2003 boot diskette depicted in the xxcopy site, this should allow to access the XP install booting from floppy, but you still have to make the repairs on the HD. jaclaz

Please RE-READ the above posts. Nothing is supposed to happen in the SAME command prompt session. You need to open a new one to see the effects. jaclaz

Is it a NEW drive or it has been already used? I am asking this as sometimes the FORMAT tool under Win2k/XP "finds" some previous formatting, and "keeps" it, if this is invalid, that is the result. You could have a go at it with MBRFIX and MBRWIZARD, read here: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=30378&hl= http://www.911cd.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=10956&hl= jaclaz

You mean like the "ELGHOST": http://www.nu2.nu/bootcd/ http://www.nu2.nu/bootcd/#elghost by the way result #1 in a Google search for "how to make a bootable ghost cd" (wthout quotes) and this is result #3: http://ghost.radified.com/ghost_caveat.htm jaclaz

It's not so straightforward. The MBR is made of more parts, of which the two main ones are: 1) 446 bytes are the actual MBR CODE (The one that gives control to the BOOTRECORD on the FIRST ACTIVE PRIMARY PARTITION of the drive at boot time); it is pretty much useless if you are not going to boot from that drive. 2) After some other data, there are 64 bytes, that are actually 4 fields each 16 bytes long, that are the four main PARTITION ENTRIES, i.e. the data pointing to the various vlolumes. MBRfix and fixMBR, like an fdisk /MBR, will rewrite the MBR sector LEAVING UNTOUCHED the said 64 bytes. From what Spinman said it is the 64 bytes that got corrupted, so the only way is to try and correct them. There are two utilities to do so under Windows NT family of OS: PTEDIT32 ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_...es/PTEDIT32.zip BEEBLEBROX http://students.cs.byu.edu/~codyb/ The correction must be done MANUALLY, so you have to know what you are doing. See here for reference: http://home.att.net/~rayknights/pc_boot/pc_boot.htm http://therdcom.com/asm/mbr/MBR_in_detail.htm Alternatively, you might want to try this FREEWARE utility, TESTDISK: http://www.cgsecurity.org/index.html?testdisk.html and a tutorial: http://therdcom.com/testdisk.html MAKE SURE you have backed up the MBR as is BEFORE attempting any of the above. jaclaz

Easy Burning and more: http://cdr.dpaehl.de/ jaclaz

It "could" be the infamous corrupted MBR problem. I have had this once, it seems like Win2k (and most probably XP as well ) need to find a "CLI" instruction in the MBR. You can replace the MBR from a DOS/WIN9X boot diskette, with FDISK on it. Download MBRWIZARD here: http://mbrwizard.tripod.com/ and copy the dos mbrwizd.exe version to the diskette. Boot from floppy, then at the dos prompt issue these commands (I am assuming you only have 1 Hard disk on the system): mbrwizd /save=a:\ORI.MBR (the above makes a copy of your original MBR. fdisk /mbr (the above re-writes a standard MBR) If it does not work, please post the ORI.MBR file here as an attachment, I'll fix it and re-post it corrected. jaclaz

@clavicle yep, if you have problems, just post here the batch you made and I'll see what I can do. jaclaz

Yes, IcemanND snippet is the easiest way, here is a more complete batch (that needs to be modified for your use of course, but that should give you a good starting base: @ECHO OFF rem ------------------------------------------------------------------------- rem appdisk.cmd Script to mount a virtual disk and rem attach a REDO in RAMdrive rem by Sanbarrow rem modified by jaclaz rem ------------------------------------------------------------------------- echo Mounting Applicationdisk :: Keep variables local SETLOCAL :: Check temp if "%temp%" == "" goto _err ::HERE THE PATHS MUST BE SET Set FilePath=\programs\kenkato\ Set Filename=program-disk Set FileSuffix=-s001 Set FileExtension=.vmdk Set DestPath=R:\kenkato\ Set FiletoOpen=%systemdrive%%FilePath%%Filename%%FileExtension% Set DiskFiletoOpen=%systemdrive%%FilePath%%Filename%%Filesuffix%%FileExtension% :: Check if file/path exists and create it IF NOT EXIST "%FiletoOpen%" GOTO :Error1 IF NOT EXIST "%DiskFiletoOpen%" GOTO :Error2 IF EXIST "%Destpath%*.exe" del "%Destpath%*.exe" IF EXIST "%Destpath%*.sys" del "%Destpath%*.sys" IF EXIST "%Destpath%%Filename%%FileExtension%" del "%Destpath%%Filename%%FileExtension%" IF NOT EXIST "%Destpath%" md "%Destpath%" IF EXIST "%systemdrive%%FilePath%vdk.exe" copy "%systemdrive%%FilePath%vdk.exe" "%Destpath%" > nul IF EXIST "%systemdrive%%FilePath%vdk.sys" copy "%systemdrive%%FilePath%vdk.sys" "%Destpath%" > nul :Start :: Search the file line by line FOR /F "tokens=* delims=" %%A IN ('TYPE %filetoopen%') DO CALL :ParseFILE "%%A" GOTO:EOF :ParseFILE :: Store quoted line in variable SET Line=%~1 :: Check if this line is the required one to be modified ECHO.%Line%| FIND /I "%Filename%%Filesuffix%%FileExtension%" > NUL IF NOT ERRORLEVEL 1 ( FOR /F "tokens=1,2,3,4 delims= " %%A IN ('echo %Line%') DO ( rem UNCOMMENT FOLLOWING TWO LINES IF NEEDED rem Echo Original line = %Line% rem Modified Line = %%A %%B %%C "%DiskFiletoOpen%" ECHO %%A %%B %%C "%DiskFiletoOpen%">>"%Destpath%%Filename%%FileExtension%" ) )ELSE ( ECHO.%Line%>>"%Destpath%%Filename%%FileExtension%" ) GOTO:EOF ::Here is the action ::UNCOMMENT FOLLOWING TWO LINES rem "%Destpath%vdk.exe" START rem "%Destpath%vdk.exe" OPEN 0 "%Destpath%%Filename%%FileExtension%" /UNDO /P:1 /L:S: :Error1 ECHO. ECHO File %FiletoOpen% does not exist! ECHO. Goto :EOF :Error2 ECHO. ECHO File %DiskFiletoOpen% does not exist! ECHO. Goto :EOF :_err echo. echo No temp variable set... echo Try adding a ramdrive... echo. :EOF ENDLOCAL Echo Program Terminated This one searches and substitutes entire lines, and should be what clavicle needs too. jaclaz

I have put together a small guide on how to format and make bootable a USB Pendrive, you can find it here: http://home.graffiti.net/jaclaz:graffiti.n...B/USBstick.html Suggestions, corrections and improvements are welcome. jaclaz

I cannot say if it will help, but you should have the floppy for the PROPER BIOS (i.e. Award OR Ami) and disconnect ALL other devices, including Hard Disk and CD-ROMS, external HD, mouse, LAN, EVERYTHING. Just keep floppy, Keyboard and Video card/monitor connected. If the Video card is not in the motherboard, you can try to take it out as well, the PC speaker (if you have one should emit BEEP CODES). Finally, usually a corrupted BIOS hangs the PC, does NOT re-boot it, you could have a Power Supply or memory problem. jaclaz

Just disable WFP (Windows File Protection). jaclaz

As always, truth is halfways, if anyone has ever tried 98lite, he knows what I mean. jaclaz

Did you try opening ANOTHER command prompt ? The above tricked me until IcemanND explained it. jaclaz

or free fdisk: http://www.23cc.com/free-fdisk/index.htm jaclaz

Gedrog, just go here: http://www.robvanderwoude.com/ for batch (.cmd) scripting and here: http://www.ss64.com/nt/ for command line reference. jaclaz

SendMail http://www.diamondcs.com.au/index.php?page=console jaclaz

Have a look here: http://www.everythingusb.com/hardware/inde...ser_reviews.htm jaclaz

Thanks, IcemanD, I'll look into the VB specifications. About the problem of an user creating a CDROM22 variable, you could "personalize" the varianle names, such as: ICEMFIXED ICEMCDROM ICEMREMOVABLE this way it is unlikely that an user will make these variables. Cheers, jaclaz