jaclaz

Very loosely, yes. But that is what is INSIDE the USB stick. What you will obtain (after having mapped the floppy image to (virtual) device) should be that of having to all practical effects a "A:\" drive containing the floppy image contents. Grub4dos can (or can not) be the "main" bootmanager on the stick, you can use *whatever* bootmanager or bootloader you normally use on the stick and chainload grub4dos (either grldr or grub.exe) from it. For the record the motherboard BIOSes (normally) only have limited suppport for USB, basically ONLY allowing access to the USB boot device so you cannot normally have both a USB stick and USB floppy visible at BIOS level. If using (again) grub4dos, its recent versions (of the 0.4.6a series) do have an own USB stack, so - maybe - it would be possible to access both devices, but due to the differences in the various motherboard BIOSes, it not a "universal" solution. There is a whole section of the board dedicated to installing (XP) from USB, as a couple (or more) additional tricks are usually needed, you should become familiar with the various tested methods/tools there: https://msfn.org/board/forum/157-install-windows-from-usb/ jaclaz

And the answer is yes/no (actually more BUT/BUT). Most USB floppy drivers won't work. BUT it is possible with some tweaks to the .inf file to have a USB floppy, see: BUT there is actually no need for a "real" floppy for F6 use, you can use grub4dos to map an image to a virtual floppy, see: 911CD is no more, still: https://web.archive.org/web/20090401085334/http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=20543 and: jaclaz

Only for the record, UNlike what most people thinks, the $MFTmirr is pretty much useless as it is the mirror of only the first 4 (or 8) records of the $MFT. https://flatcap.org/linux-ntfs/ntfs/files/mftmirr.html jaclaz

Well, about the first part of the report, if you - at any time - had both the hard disks connected when booting XP, one of the two will have had its Disk Signature automatically changed. The one with the original Disk Signature will boot normally, the one with the changed one won't (stopping/BSODding at the time the drive letter is needed/assigned). This problem can be solved by modifying a couple entries in the Registry "MountedDevices". The second part is puzzling. Still, it could be connected to the first part. You need anyway to check the Disk Signature and the corresponding Registry entries on both drives, if the "install" volume is FAT/FAT32 you can use DOS and good ol'Registry Viewer (which is also an Editor) from DOS: http://paullee.ru/regstry.html jaclaz

Sure, do you want it black or with milk? jaclaz

Yep, but the easier/more user friendly solution is a PE (of some kind) and by now you should have not 1, not 2 but no less than 3 such bootable environments (on USB or on CD/DVD). Hint: A "normal" Windows Vista (or later, let's say 7) install DVD actually boots to a (very minimal) PE. AFAIK/AFAICR the offlinereg program and DLL run just fine in such a minimal environment, so you can simply make a bootable copy on USB of the install DVD and go from there: http://reboot.pro/files/file/340-quickpe/ or use the ADK: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/winpe-create-usb-bootable-drive jaclaz

Well, no offense intended , but you do sound something like that . Of course offlinereg cannot boot, it is a program, not an operating system. You need a PE of some kind and add to it the offlinereg or boot to another (already installed) Windows OS and use offlinereg on it. If you like the Linux way, there is hivexsh (AGAIN a program, not an OS): http://libguestfs.org/hivexsh.1.html (but you won't probably like it). jaclaz

You could try the "other" (BTW IMHO "right") way, i.e. create a really minimal build and then add programs: http://mistyprojects.co.uk/documents/MiniXP/index.html Right now - for *some* reasons - the reboot.pro site (where you can find help/support and more info) is down, but the above has the basic files and the actual documentation. jaclaz

Old phones, yes. New ones, no. Thank the good guys developing Android for removing this useful feature, the good guys developing Windows for NOT providing drive letter/file access via MTP and the sheep common people for not having made a big fuss about it. There are workarounds, and third party tools, though: https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/22979/drive-letter-for-mtp-connection-under-windows https://forums.androidcentral.com/general-help-how/495665-how-mount-mtp-ptp-drive-letter-usb-mass-storage-ums.html https://forums.androidcentral.com/samsung-galaxy-s3/210019-how-can-i-get-drive-letter-windows.html jaclaz

Yes, it is not in Home edition. jaclaz

Try with Autoruns (MS/Sysinternals), it could be something on an external drive or a DVD, see: https://superuser.com/questions/1060908/windows-explorer-opens-at-every-startup Or good ol' by Mike Lin: https://www.portablefreeware.com/?id=249#comments jaclaz

Sure there is (please read as "you have a "queer XP" ) it is schtasks.exe https://www.robvanderwoude.com/schtasksxp.php and it is the command line program to manage tasks, the whole stuff is then delegated to the related task scheduler service, mstask.exe is windows 9x/Me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Task_Scheduler jaclaz

Some news (not actually good news, still ...) : https://www.win-raid.com/t3802f42-Intel-I-O-drivers-and-Touchpad-in-Windows-Asus-Precision-Touchpad.html The issue with the stupid ELAN touchpad is not confined to the (stupid) Lenovo, ASUS has it as well. Although that issue above has not been solved Fernando (and the other good guys at Win-Raid Forum) seem way ahead of us (or at the very least waaay ahead of me) in the analysis of the problem, so you might want to - after having read the above thread - make a new one over there asking for assistance jaclaz

Can you post a link to the specific ELAN driver you are using? It must be seen how the installer is made, sometimes the installer executable itself contains some commands/Registry settings that are actually needed (or if you prefer, direct installing might anyway lead to *something missing* and fail - in a different way). I'll have a look at the devmanview output and see if I can spot anything jaclaz

At first sight everything looks fine BUT the third and second last images (System devices), it seems like you have some duplications there (but it is absolutely possible that your system actually has that many devices and that it is "normal"). Anyway Device Manager is not the "right" (no offence intended of course) way to list devices when there is this kind of troubles, and seemingly you have not set the "DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES" environment variable, so it is possible that a "phantom" device (or its driver) is involved in the issue. See: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/315539/device-manager-does-not-display-devices-that-are-not-connected and: https://www.raymond.cc/blog/uninstall-hidden-devices-calling-ghostbuster/ You should IMHO try to re-install (if needed) the AMD and the ELAN drivers (in order to recreate the Code 12 situation), then get the nice Nirsoft DevManView, open it, check in Options that "Show non-plug-n-play devices" is selected, refresh (if needed) then select all devices and File->Save selected items to a tab-delimited text file. Then attach this text file, any willing helping member will be able to load the file in *any* spreadsheet program and order/filter/whatever the results easily. Even if this: https://superuser.com/questions/119236/this-device-cannot-find-enough-free-resources-that-it-can-use-code-12 is seemingly related to different hardware, the "root issue" of a conflict or race condition might be the same or similar. jaclaz

Reading the given thread: https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Lenovo-IdeaPad-1xx-3xx-5xx-7xx/Ideapad-320-touchpad-not-working/td-p/3771756 it seems like that machine can have both a AMD or an Intel processor/motherboard/chipset and that the drivers provided only work on the Intel version and not on the AMD version? But the post on the page nitroshift provided a link to seems poorly worded, there are three items listed on the post: https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Lenovo-IdeaPad-1xx-3xx-5xx-7xx/Ideapad-320-touchpad-not-working/m-p/3890012/highlight/true#M50519 You could try the first one (the AMD drivers) AND NOT the last one (which is seemingly Intel only). Maybe there is a conflict right now (because you attempted to install both)? Code 12 should mean that the same resources are used by more than one device. See (only loosely connected, it seems like it is the opposite situation) here: https://www.jodybruchon.com/2012/03/15/code-12-on-windows-7-the-device-cannot-find-enough-free-resources/ jaclaz

Yes, a good IDE is not that much slower than a SATA with "normal" HDD's, of course SSD is another matter. The USB fastish transfer could be probably for another reason, seemingly USB transfer for FAT 16/32 was dumbed down after 2000 (NTFS should be however faster than 2K) JFYI: https://msfn.org/board/topic/125116-fat16-vs-fat32-vs-ntfs-speed-on-usb-stick/ jaclaz

Read this (and links within): https://msfn.org/board/topic/161886-how-best-to-clone-the-c-hdd-w98fe/ Basically: http://www.xxcopy.com/index.htm or: http://www.partition-saving.com/ jaclaz

Not what you asked, but you may try (if you can make an image/backup/etc,) to change the mode post-setup. For XP it is/was possible so the same should be possible on 2000. JFYI: https://msfn.org/board/topic/120444-how-to-install-windows-from-usb-winsetupfromusb-with-gui/?page=40&tab=comments#comment-884409 http://reboot.pro/topic/11729-how-to-load-sata-drivers-to-offline-windows-xp-system/ It is possible that for *some* reasons the "right" driver cannot be integrated/started/whatever in the setup. You could also try (if you want to rinstall) with a (fake/virtual) F6 floppy (via grub4dos), again tested on XP but should work on 2K as well: https://msfn.org/board/topic/154071-f6-without-a-floppy-drive/ jaclaz

Yes, but 2 GB is "queer". Personally I would rather try first to install a XP SP1 and see what amount of RAM it actually sees (with /PAE switch) before going down the path of these kernel patches[1]. Only for the record the PAE access limitation was introduced (arbitrarily) with XP SP2, but there may be other reasons (usually BIOS related) that prevent anyway to see only part of the RAM installed. jaclaz [1] Which - all of them - have been reported as being generally speaking NOT stable, and since the actual (official) reason for the limitation to RAM access with XP SP2: https://web.archive.org/web/20061123232102/http://support.microsoft.com/kb/888137 was to remove compatibility problems with third party drivers, I wouldn't want a non-stable, experimental, patch on a system on which drivers are already not functioning or are however hacked/parched/adpated and not fully tested.

Well, I doubt that administrators and lawyers are yet ready for this, your screenshot may be of some GUI Linux runnning in the Linux Subsystem running on Windows 10, sadly . jaclaz

Yep, that's it. Maybe then they are not the "right" drivers. Please try again as in the post https://msfn.org/board/topic/178354-win-7-no-usb-drivers/ But click on the tab "Details" to get the PCI\VEN & DEV. This madness usually happens when there is a (bad/wrong/whatever) driver included in the OS that "prevails" on the new one, but shouldn't happen in your case because you are in Code 28, i.e. no drivers installed. You can still try with pnputil: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/devtest/pnputil-command-syntax https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/devtest/pnputil-examples but before that let's check the actual PCI\VEN & DEV of the "unknown device" jaclaz

Good , though if you can it would be useful to compare those to your friend's ones. The Mass Storage devices seem to me like not relevant (even if the may be part of the mess). What happens if you delete the devices and lt after reboot Windows 7 find them? Or try forcing the instal of these (x86/x64): http://driverpacks.net/catalog-drivers/device_id/hwid-PCI\VEN_8086%26DEV_1E2D?os=windows-7-x86 http://driverpacks.net/catalog-drivers/device_id/hwid-PCI\VEN_8086%26DEV_1E2D?os=windows-7-x64 jaclaz

Hmmm. Try removing all USB related devices (those with the exclamation mark), reboot and see what happens. Along the lines of: http://farmtek.net/win7_driver_fix.htm Check also hidden devices, *like* here: https://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/165554-usb-driver-general-fix-problems.html Personally I would use devcon, instructions here: https://www.robvanderwoude.com/devcon.php actual freely redistributable file (recompiled from the orignal MS source) here: to list all USB related drivers: DEVCON DriverFiles =USB and to list all devices: DEVCON Findall =USB saving the lists to .txt files and compare them against the same files on your friend's system. jaclaz

Not that Gnome classic is in any way pleasant to the eye. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder still, after all these years, I still cringe at the general ugliness and clumsyness of *most* Gnome desktops (*any* version) looks, IMHO KDE is way better. Anyway, most probably the best candidate for an XP->Linux transition is -still IMHO - Zorin OS (Gnome based): https://zorinos.com/ or Netrunner (KDE based): https://www.netrunner.com/ jaclaz