ran

Ah, the venerable Jaclaz answers! Thank you for your answer and the humorous analogy that I am attempting to treat an illness in a totally unrelated, unconnected, uninformed, unhelpful, and unrealistic manner (!). That's a bummer. Any idea why the partition info is completely lost - I am wondering if trying to recreate the partition would at least allow me to try to recover the data that is on it as the data recovery tools I am using now are all stuck at even finding a partition.......

Sooo...... two days ago, my seemingly fully functional Seagate ST1000DM003 (firmware: CC47, date: 14076) drive decided it was no longer functional. Pertinent data: 1) recognized in BIOS upon bootup, but with SMART error. 2) CrystalDiskInfo cannot read SMART info 3) Windows Disk Manager recognizes the drive and wants to initialize it (uhh..no!) 4) Data recovery software (e.g. GetDataBack NTFS) recognizes the drive but cannot read (a bunch of LBA access errors) A couple of years ago, my dad's HP computer died - it had one of the Seagate 7200.xx drives with the known problems. I had created my own serial-USB connector cable from the CA-42 cable and successfully resurrected his drive (which is still working fine today). Soooo.. I thought... *maybe* there would be a way to resurrect this drive, at least enough to get data off. Let me say that I do have a mirrored NAS plus an external 2TB as redundant backups of important stuff, so while this isn't a "oh, I lost all my pictures and videos of my beautiful children for the last 10years <sniff>" story, there was stuff on here I wanted, but not super essential critical (enough adjectives for ya'? ). I decided to pull out my CA-42 cable, pulled hyperterminal from an XP VM onto my Windows 7 machine, installed some PL2303-GPS drivers (many others didn't work) and hooked things up. Current situation: If I just plug in a SATA power connector to the drive, it does *not* automatically spinup. If I additionally hookup the CA42 cable, open up hyperterminal (38400,8,n,1,n) and type Ctrl-z, the drive spins up. If I type Ctrl-C (supposedly a spin down/reinitialize command), the drive spins down. I never see a prompt in the hyperterminal window That's it. I can endlessly spin up and spin down with those commands, but I see nothing in response in the hyperterminal window. (Loopback test using Terminal is fine) I've tried sliding in some paper to block the PCB-drive connectors (not the 3 motor connections), but that doesn't seem to do anything. So, I'm curious if any of the previous gathered knowledge regarding Seagate firmware problems, LBA/BSY issues and such would be applicable in this situation.......or not. I haven't tried any of the PCB pin shorting described on this forum as my particular drive has not been mentioned....nor do I add any external power to my CA-42 cable, just plugged into a USB port. Thoughts?

I just had to send a quick post to say this has got to be one of my top 3 most useful software ever created. I, as I'm sure many others are, highly dislike having to install app upon app upon app to muck up my windows install and slow it down to complete ooziness. Furthermore, given my rather high rate of re-installs (again like many others here), having a folder with all these apps that I can just pop onto a new install or flash drive and have instantly available saves me hours upon hours of tedious install time... Thank you thank you thank you for making MY life easier. Ran

Thanks a BUNCH! This was just what I needed to send .wav files (~200-400mb in size) from an old Windows 98SE recording machine to an XP (NTFS) machine over the network to do the burning of the .wav files. Ran

OK, you know what...I'm a goofball. The reason that works for me (e.g. the -y and all) is because I repackaged 7zip myself last year as a 7zip sfx..and...just...forgot! Doh! Sorry for the confusion.....

That is odd, as this: REG ADD %KEY%\045 /VE /D "7zip v3.13" /f REG ADD %KEY%\045 /V 1 /D "%DVD%\MyStuff\Applications\7z313.exe -y /q /r:n" /f ...Works for me... Trying to use the /S prompt asks if i want to install. That's kinda weird, eh?

As an alternative, just do a quick .reg add during your unattended setup for those things. That's what I've setup. Ran

Well, I know there are several ways to to do this...but I use the following in my RunOnceEx file: REG ADD %KEY%\060 /V 3 /D "%SystemDrive%\Install\Applications\jre150_u5.exe /s /v\"/qb ADDLOCAL=jrecore IEXPLORER=1 reboot=Suppress reboot=ReallySuppress JAVAUPDATE=0 INSTALLDIR=e:\Progra~1\java\jre\"" /f This allows me to just download direct from Sun (no offense RyanVM - you do excellent things for us!), block rebooting (never could figure out which of those two reboot commands really works - have seen both), prevent immediate updating, and choose the install directory. Note - don't forget all the quotes! Also, keep in mind that you can't use Strings when choosing the install directory (e.g. %Program Files%) Hope that helps.... Ran

Is there any reason to believe that you can't install in the exact same fashion with the boxed version? In other words, locate the "setup.exe" for each of the products you want to install on the cD..and go from there...? I'll look into it right now.... Ran

Doh..it's an msi...I can't read...

some more searching..... HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Internet Settings/Cache/... there's cache in binary - not sure what I could do with that..but there's also values in other locations such as default user and current user.... I'm just a bit confused....... Which/how should I change? hmmmmmm

OK, sometimes I'm slow and I forget that google is my friend. I've found this so far: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\Cache\Paths\path1] "CachePath"="E:\\TEMP\\Cache1" [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\Cache\Paths\path2] "CachePath"="E:\\TEMP\\Cache2" [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\Cache\Paths\path3] "CachePath"="E:\\TEMP\\Cache3" [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\Cache\Paths\path4] "CachePath"="E:\\TEMP\\Cache4" [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders] "Cache"="E:\\TEMP" [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders] "Cache"="E:\\TEMP" Changing these should allow me to move it to a temp directory outside the user profiles. However, I'd also like to change the cache size. any ideas? Ran

As the title suggests, I would like to automatically set the location and cache size of IE's temporary internet files. any idea how to do this? Ran

Excellent, thanks fugg!

And the -o option to specify *where* to unpack.....good to know when installing from CD/DVD... 8-) e.g. -o"%SystemDrive%\temp"

OK, this is weird Why does this work: FOR %%a IN (c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z) DO If exist %%a:\XPProSP2.txt set CDROM=%%a: But this does not: FOR %%a IN (c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z) DO Dir %%a\XPProSP2.txt > NUL && SET CDROM=%%a: || echo %%a failed The second code actually puts a *space* after the %CDrom% variable. In other words, if the cdrom was in M:, the first would have this path: M:\mystuff But, the second does this: M:\ mystuff (note the space after the '\') Why???? I need to do the second because I find that the batch crashes if there are empty drives in line before the install CD (e.g. another CD drive, or some empty flash card drives). Piping the dir output to Null gives me a fail/not fail result and doesn't crash the batch..... Ran

This is slightly off topic, but deal with some of SiMoNsAyS' code as shown below: REG ADD %KEY%\028 /VE /D "Nero Burning Rom 6.6.0.1" /f REG ADD %KEY%\028 /V 1 /D "%CDROM%\Software\Nero\nero6601.exe" /f REG ADD %KEY%\028 /V 2 /D "%CDROM%\Software\Nero\NeroLang.exe" /f Specifically, how do you set the %CDROM% path variable before running RunOnceEx? I've just realized that there's no point in having everything copied to the %SystemDrive% if I can just install everything straight from the CD.... (duh, ok I'm slow...) Do you just call a .cmd file at some point while performing the RunOnceEx commands that identifies the CDROM as shown below: :CDsearchA FOR %%a IN (c: d: e: f: g: h: i: j: k: l: m: n: o: p: q: r: s: t: u: v: w: x: y: z:) DO Dir %%a\XPProSP2.txt > NUL && SET XPCD=%%a || echo %%a failed IF NOT Exist %XPCD%\XPProSP2.txt GOTO NEEDXPCD If so, will that "SET" command in the .cmd be retained throughout the running of the RunOnceEx, or is it lost upon completion of the .cmd file?

Nope, it works with any valid Nero 6 key That is most cool I have a valid key...so....woohoo! 8-) Now, do I have to install my boxed Nero, and then apply the updates, or are these nero downloads the complete programs?

You know, I'm thinking it may not be as bad as we think... Keep in mind that the dll cache does not contain *all* the dll files that windows uses...so, could we be prompted for this simply because it can't find the copy in the dllcache?

Ryan, I wish I knew of a way to do that. I've been looking around, and I can't find anything. You'd think that it would be a simple enough thing. Can you "pipe" the output to a text file? The syntax is escaping me..something like: sfc /scannow || missingfiles.txt I know that's not right, but you get the idea.... Ran

I'm looking for a decent (preferably freeware) utility that can accurately compare and view the Windows XP registry. Any suggestions? Ran

bear in mind that MS forgot a file or something with that..some people are having problems running it on their XP machines... do a google search, and you should come up with the problems - maybe someone has fixed it by now......

anyone?

Cee-Kay, You should repackage the extracted files directly. That is, 1. run the original installer and allow it to unpack the files. 2. Locate the directory (in Local settings/temp usually) and copy paste that directory somewhere else. 3. Cancel the installer. You now have the extracted files. You can simply create an executable .exe 7zip archive from that folder - and you will now know exactly where the files are being unzipped. Ran

And WinAMP! Ran