jaclaz

Yes, as you probably have no subfolders in Z:\SETUP\95OS2\WIN95\ You could replace with COPY Z:\SETUP\95OS2\WIN95\*.* C:\CABS Please note that the trailing backslash after destination is unneeded. or, if you have subdirs, using XCOPY XCOPY Z:\SETUP\95OS2\WIN95\*.* C:\CABS\*.* /s I would add a /V switch (verify) jaclaz

There are a few progs to change the BIOS LOGO, but it's risky business, don't even think of changing BIOS CODE! A few links: http://deepthought.ena.si/logo/bios/howto.html http://users.cybercity.dk/~dsl6178/bios/Bioslogo.html http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Chip/4378/ a simple Google search for "edit bios", "editing bios", "change bios logo" and the like will get you more results. This is aninteresting proggie if you really are into risking your PC motherboard/processor health: http://www.hasw.net/8rdavcore/ There also a few editors for videocard BIOS. jaclaz

You can format all drives/partitions EXCEPT FOR THE ONE WHERE THE OS RESIDES! For that one you must boot with another system, i.e. the boot cd. jaclaz

Just for the record: Uninterruptable Power Supply If your mains go down while converting a partition, you can be pretty sure that the result will be messed up! I know that nowadays power shortages are rare, but you never know, and sometimes, depending on the cabling where you live, it is enough, for example, that you have a building site near you that starts a big electrical compressor or whatever to send to your lines a power surge strong enough to fail the process. jaclaz

@Mhz Yes, you summed up what I wanted to say. The big difference is that different Dos/windows see only some kind of partitions, so ignores the one it doesn't know anything about, quick reminder: Dos and Windows 95 1st edition ->FAT16 only NT 3.51 and 4.00 -> FAT16 and NTFS (v4.00?) Windows 95 OEM2, 98 and ME ->FAT 16 and FAT32 Windows 2000/XP/2003 ->FAT16, FAT32 and NTFS(v.5.00?, automatically convert older v4.00 partitions to v.5.00 without asking the user) The rule of the thumb if you want/need more than one OS on the same machine,are the following: 1) always install operating system in the order of their age (older first) 2) avoid having more than one Primary partition on 1st hard drive, if possible, or use a Boot Manager to hide other Primary partitions, if the operating system can read it (i.e. if you have DOS on the 1st active Primary partition and you install NT on another primary partition on 1st Hard Disk, you have no problem if the latter is NTFS, as Dos cannot read it, if the latter is FAT 16, you could get problems) 3) avoid to have Primary partitions on 2nd, 3rd, etc. Hard Drives, or , better, make on them a small FAT 16 Partition and Hide it with a BootManager, for recovery purposes only. @big_gie Though it SHOULD be safe, it is always better to have a backup, though I know how it is difficult to make backups with these big drives and all the things we put in it. A "Safer" method, if you have roughly 1/3 of the HD free, is to : 1) Defrag the partition 2) Use Acronis to reduce partition size to a minimum 3) Use Acronis to make a new Logical partition in the thus freed space 4) Use Acronis to image the partition on the newly created Logical (images are compressed, if your original files are not all zipped or JPG, you probably will get 50% size) 5) Use Acronis to convert Primary partition to logical 6) If all went well delete the Logical Partition with the image I used Acronis quite a lot, and it never failed me, but Murphy's law is always around! P.S. If you do not have an UPS, don't even THINK of doing this! jaclaz

@crahak You are perfectly right in saying that choice.com is the most logical solution, and again you are right when you say that it is not possible to mimic the choice.com behaviour by batch commands only. Still, it is possible if you can use a small portion of VBScripting. The example I posted is, as said, a poorman's possibility, nothing more, it does work, you need to press Control+C to break the execution to be able to send the Yes or No. @Thauzar When you call the .bat the first time, you do so without passing parameters, so the I.1 and I.2 are just ignored. I.3 and I.4 are just messages to the user and can be changed. I.5 and I.6 are the interesting part, let us take I.5 for example: the command ECHO @%0 Y > Y.BAT does the following: 1) The echo sends everything until the > to the object on the right of the >, so it actually creates a file named Y.BAT and writes in it 2) the @ is just as hte Echo Off command 3) the %0, parameter 0, is the name of the batch file is executing, in this case YN 4) Y is the 1st parameter passed 5) So you are actually creating a batch file called y.bat that invokes your original batch (YN) passing the Y as 1st parameter. 6) When you input Y followed by enter, you execute this Y.BAT file, calling YN.BAT and feeding it with the Y, that this time is filtered by I.1, and so the result is going to the :Yes label. I.6 does the same for No. Hope the above is clear enough. One note, in using choice, you should make a trap to make sure that the user does not press a letter different from Y or N. A good example is here: http://www.ericphelps.com/batch/samples/sleep.txt jaclaz

To finalize the matter, here are other methods by Tino Salmi, NT/2000/XP only: http://www.uwasa.fi/~ts/http/http2.html#cmdscript including a vbs one From ts@uwasa.fi Tue Aug 10 01:00:19 2004 Subject: 19) How can one build a delay / sleep / wait procedure for a script? Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2004 01:00:19 From: ts@uwasa.fi (Timo Salmi) @echo off setlocal enableextensions echo %time% call :ProcDelay 250 echo %time% goto :EOF :ProcDelay delayMSec_ setlocal enableextensions for /f "tokens=1-4 delims=:. " %%h in ("%time%") do set start_=%%h%%i%%j%%k :_procwaitloop for /f "tokens=1-4 delims=:. " %%h in ("%time%") do set now_=%%h%%i%%j%%k set /a diff_=%now_%-%start_% if %diff_% LSS %1 goto _procwaitloop endlocal & goto :EOF The output e.g: D:\TEST>cmdfaq 10:30:49.84 10:30:52.34 There is another, makeshift alternative, but it requires that the PC has TCP/P. For a two second delay one can try to ping oneself as follows @echo off ping -n 3 127.0.0.1>nul which would produce e.g. D:\TEST>cmdfaq 15:24:47.57 15:24:49.62 As you see, it is not dead accurate. Not that it is essential. Furthermore, you could have @echo off & setlocal enableextensions enabledelayedexpansion echo WScript.Sleep 1000 > %temp%\tmp$$$.vbs echo %time% cscript //nologo %temp%\tmp$$$.vbs echo %time% for %%f in (%temp%\tmp$$$.vbs) do if exist %%f del %%f endlocal & goto :EOF which would produce e.g. D:\TEST>cmdfaq 13:13:03.00 13:13:04.07 I tried a Google search for "timeout", but found the above searching for "delay".... jaclaz

I am sorry you take it like this: If you use choice.com, you have the delay built in in the command. The point was to have the result without having choice.com, the idea was to have this: @ECHO OFF IF "%1"=="Y" GOTO Yes IF "%1"=="N" GOTO No ECHO Yes or No? Press Y or N followed by the Enter key . . . ECHO DEFAULT ANSWER IN ABOUT 10 seconds will be YES.... ECHO @%0 Y > Y.BAT ECHO @%0 N > N.BAT ::The timing is non exact, the 10000 is roughly 10 seconds PING 1.1.1.1 -n 1 -w 10000 > NUL GOTO YES GOTO End :Yes ECHO. ECHO You answered Yes GOTO End :No ECHO You answered No :End if exist y.bat del y.bat if exist n.bat del n.bat If you try it, you will see that it works. As Rob puts it, you can use it in emergency only, but it is still a good example of batch "sideways" scripting. jaclaz

vann, it's really ok, maybe it's just me, but I felt like crahak's attitude wasn't that friendly, and just said so. No offence taken, but I think one has to say what he thinks. jaclaz

@crahak I do not want to argue, but in English is called "delayed execution of a command" If you think it is better to call it a timeout, do it, you are free, but don't go around teaching others. jaclaz

But did you edit: FINDCD.EXE AUTOEXEC.BAT CONFIG.SYS as per instructions here: http://flyakite.msfnhosting.com/98se.htm ? jaclaz

If you do not want to "spoil" your new M$ OS with older files, like choice.com, you could use this workaround, as found on Rob van der Woude excellent page: http://www.robvanderwoude.com/index.html @ECHO OFF IF "%1"=="Y" GOTO Yes IF "%1"=="N" GOTO No ECHO Yes or No? Press Y or N followed by the Enter key . . . ECHO @%0 Y > Y.BAT ECHO @%0 N > N.BAT GOTO End :Yes ECHO You answered Yes GOTO End :No ECHO You answered No :End but still you have the problem of waitibg 60 seconds, which can be done with this other PING trick: For any MS-DOS or Windows version wit a TCP/IP client, PING can be used to delay execution for a number of seconds. If specified (-w switch), PING will wait for a number of milliseconds between two PINGS before giving a time-out. PING 1.1.1.1 -n 1 -w 60000 >NUL will delay execution of the next command 60 seconds, provided 1.1.1.1 is not a valid IP address (I previously used -n 60 -w 1000 which should theoretically result in the same delay, but as Greg Hassler pointed out this may be highly inaccurate on some computers). found here: http://www.robvanderwoude.com/wait.html jaclaz

Could you post some more info on the files, i.e. structure of directories/subdirectories, extensions of files, attributes of files? Most probably the most efficient solution is to use a small batch file to generate a "listfile" to be feeded to WINRAR. jaclaz

yep, but you see, the problem is that you CANNOT run gdisk from within XP, so you can boot to the DOS partition, hide or unhide it, but next time you boot, if you have hidden it, you cannot SEE it! and if you setup the system as depicted above you won't even get to boot.ini, because it would reside on a hidden partition! That's why you need a bootmanager that can hide/unhide partitions BEFORE any Operating System is loaded. jaclaz

@prathapml Yep, I borrowed some ideas here and there, most probably is not well worded, legally speaking, but it is how I feel free software should be.... ...and how people should behave. Besides it seems like it worked for you, even without actually USING the proggie! jaclaz

Well, according to Microsoft, if you are not on theirs OEM/ENTERPRISE/IT PROFESSIONAL list you are not even allowed to KNOW it exists! Ok, just joking, here is the story: http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/program...port/winpe.mspx In plain words, it is not a Public Release, nor you can buy it, unless you qualify for the above. Windows PE is more or less a stripped down version of Windows XP/Server2003 that can run from CD-ROM, it is useful for these uses, mainly: - accessing a dead system - data recovery - data forensics (but there are much better tools) - first install of windows on new PC - make a windows live-CD, like Knoppix or Morphix do for Linux Luckily enough, this wonderful guy, Bart Lagerweij, has found a way to recreate a very similar environment: http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/ with ordinary files you can have legally. Go to Bart's page above to get everything you need apart your own LICENSED copy of Windows XP/Server 2003. Then, build your 1st basic copy of Bart's PE, play a little with it, and come back to this forum to learn how you can better, fine tune and customize it. Hope the above clears the matter, please correct me where I am wrong. jaclaz

I see, the problem it's this, as you don't want ANY 3rd party bootmanager, the partition can be seen by "NORMAL" Windows XP: a DOS parttition, to be bootable, MUST be : A) ACTIVE B) the 1st partition on the 1st hard drive So you can partition your drive with a small PRYMARY FAT16 partition and one (or more) huge partitions (either FAT32 or NTFS), which actually is the way that Gilles Vollant, author of bootpart, recommends and that I have used for years without any trouble: "C :" FAT 16 PRIMARY on which resides: MSDOS.SYS IO.SYS COMMAND.COM BOOT.INI NTLDR NTDETECT.COM Autoexec.bat config.sys Ghost.exe ...all other imaging/rescue programs, including BOOTPART boot.ini has two entries: C:\BOOTSECT.DOS="Reimage Drive" multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT="Windows XP Professional" [followed by any switch you might use] Rest of the disk is a big EXTENDED parttion in which you have at least one FAT32/NTFS partition "D :" to which you install Windows XP 2) If you want a REAL recovery partition, i.e. that is normally HIDDEN, you need to find a way to HIDE/UNHIDE it at will, which means that you need a 3rd party bootmanager. I do recommend you XOSL, which you can find on Ranish's page and that is: -FREEWARE -GRAPHICAL -PASSWORD PROTECTED if needed jaclaz

A few ideas: ZMATRIX http://zmatrix.sourceforge.net/ A matrix like font (for messages, windows titles, or whatever): http://www.1001fonts.com/font_details.html?font_id=2555 A small animated gif: http://www.deviantart.com/view/6656561/ should you want it to use it in your phone too! jaclaz

Sorry, I don't get it: if you want to create a "recovery" partition on a HARD DRIVE, you should use a program like Ranish's Partition Manager, http://www.ranish.com/part/ if you want to create a bootable CD option, you can make an Image of a bootable FLOPPY with autoexec.bat and ghost.exe or whatever, and add it to whatever bootcd menu you use. BOOTPART is a program that helps in the creating/modifying of boot.ini, and optionally can create bootsectors for various OS's, it does nothing to PARTITIONS. Please post again explaining better what you want to achieve. jaclaz

As you might know, there is this Virtual Disk Driver from Ken Kato: http://chitchat.at.infoseek.co.jp/vmware/vdk.html that allows to mount to a Drive letter, Disk Image files made with VMWare, plus a few more types. The driver is a real must have for anyone using VMWare Disk Image files, but being command-line only it is sometimes awkward to use. I just wrote Virtual Drive Manager, a GUI interface to the driver that makes its use much simpler. It is version 0.9 Beta now. I would like to have comments, suggestions, bug reports from VMWare users. You can find Virtual Drive Manager here: http://home.graffiti.net/jaclaz:graffiti.n...ts/VDM/vdm.html jaclaz

... or you could Dynamically find the Letter assigned to cd-rom drive in the Registry, using something like this: :: For Windows 2000/XP SETLOCAL SET CDROMS= ::Following tempfilenames are just arbitrary SET Temp1=%Temp%.\tempcd1.$$$ SET Temp2=%Temp%.\tempcd2.$$$ START /WAIT REGEDIT /E %Temp1% "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices" TYPE %Temp1% > %Temp2% TYPE %Temp2% | FIND "\\DosDevices\\" | FIND /V "\\DosDevices\\A:" | FIND "=hex:5c," > %Temp1% FOR /F "tokens=3 delims=\:" %%A IN (%Temp1%) DO CALL :ParseW2K %%A SET CDROMS DEL %Temp1% DEL %Temp2% ENDLOCAL & SET CDROMS=%CDROMS% GOTO:EOF :ParseW2K IF DEFINED CDROMS (SET CDROMS=%CDROMS%,%1:) ELSE (SET CDROMS=%1:) GOTO:EOF found on this excellent batch file page, slightly edited to make it simpler: http://www.robvanderwoude.com/amb_cdrom.html#CdRom2 http://www.robvanderwoude.com jaclaz

Well, Bochs is not really a Virtual Machine, but rather an Emulator. i.e. Virtual Machines, like VMWare or Connectix/Microsoft Virtual PC, simulate an actual "Hardware PC", you see the boot screen, you actually install a video card driver for the hardware it simulates, and so on. Bochs is more like a software layer. Hope the above makes some sense, however fact is that BOCHS is really slow. If you plan to run on the virtual machine a simple OS, like DOS, and you have an average PC, it is ok, if you want to run WinXP inside the virtual thingy, you better get yourself either VMWARE or VIRTUAL PC. (I prefer the first over the latter, but it's just personal). Before buying either, try Virtual PC, there is a downloadable time limited version. If you want to have a try with BOCHS, why don't you try with REACTOS, http://www.reactos.com/ If you want to run DOS in an emulator, try also DOSBOX, http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/ though it has been developed for games, quite a lot of software runs in it. jaclaz

I don't know if this is what you want, but this is how I resolved the problem the "third" way. I simply put aside M$ own RAMDRIVE.SYS, replacing it with Franck Uberto's XMSDSK.EXE. (you can find it everywhere on the net as furd19u_i.zip) The good things are: 1) no 32 Mb limit in Ramdisk size 2) possibility to assign a letter from command line This way I don't need to find which drive letter, I just map it to R: and go on. Hope the above helps. jaclaz

Yes it is quite a complex thing, maybe this example, taken from Rob van der Woude excellent site helps in clarifying the matter: Finally, support for delayed environment variable expansion has been added. This support is always disabled by default, but may be enabled/disabled via the /V command line switch to CMD.EXE. See CMD /? Delayed environment variable expansion is useful for getting around the limitations of the current expansion which happens when a line of text is read, not when it is executed. The following example demonstrates the problem with immediate variable expansion: set VAR=before if "%VAR%" == "before" ( set VAR=after; if "%VAR%" == "after" @echo If you see this, it worked ) would never display the message, since the %VAR% in BOTH IF statements is substituted when the first IF statement is read, since it logically includes the body of the IF, which is a compound statement. So the IF inside the compound statement is really comparing "before" with "after" which will never be equal. Similarly, the following example will not work as expected: set LIST= for %i in (*) do set LIST=%LIST% %i echo %LIST% in that it will NOT build up a list of files in the current directory, but instead will just set the LIST variable to the last file found. Again, this is because the %LIST% is expanded just once when the FOR statement is read, and at that time the LIST variable is empty. So the actual FOR loop we are executing is: for %i in (*) do set LIST= %i which just keeps setting LIST to the last file found. Delayed environment variable expansion allows you to use a different character (the exclamation mark) to expand environment variables at execution time. If delayed variable expansion is enabled, the above examples could be written as follows to work as intended: set VAR=before if "%VAR%" == "before" ( set VAR=after if "!VAR!" == "after" @echo If you see this, it worked ) set LIST= for %i in (*) do set LIST=!LIST! %i echo %LIST% see http://www.robvanderwoude.com/index.html for more jaclaz

I feel like thinking that roy1984 was more looking for this: Disable the Ability to Right Click on the Desktop (All Windows) This tweak removes the context menu that would normally appear when the user right clicks on the desktop or in the Explorer right results pane. Open your registry and find or create the key below. Create a new DWORD value, or modify the existing value, called "NoViewContextMenu" and set it according to the value data below. Exit your registry, you may need to restart or log out of Windows for the change to take effect. Registry Settings User Key: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\ Explorer] System Key: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\ Explorer] Value Name: NoViewContextMenu Data Type: REG_DWORD (DWORD Value) Value Data: (0 = disabled, 1 = enabled) found here: http://www.winguides.com/registry/display.php/160/ jaclaz