glnz

jaclaz - Aah! I get it. So then I keep the PE source folder. When I want to add a utility, I add it and then re-do the USB stick? Does this all mean that ONLY "portable" utilities and drivers can be added to the PE source folder? Or do normal tools get "installed" when the PE is built into the stick? I suppose I have to really get into it and start learning before I ask this level of Q,

jaclaz - great!! But just for my knowledge - if I am able to create Win PE 7 on a stick (with some initially included useful tools/utilities), then, later, will I be able to add more tools to the stick? I think your answer is no, but in my ignorance that is surprising. After all, when I boot from the stick, it runs. Why not install new stuff? (Maybe it's an issue of lack of internet connectivity, but can't that be in the stick in the first place?) Also, I gather that where I first make the stick will limit that stick to a particular architecture and BIOS. That is, if I make the stick on my Win 7 Pro SP1 64-bit Dell PC, which has a UEFI BIOS*, then the stick will boot only in other 64-bit UEFI machines and will not boot in a 32-boot non-UEFI machine. And vice versa. So if I really want to impersonate a PC repairman, I'll need two sticks, as well as the right tool belt, yes? By the way, if you read about smoke over the Upper West Side, you'll know I'm still in learning mode. ____________ * My Optiplex 7010 MT (which dual boots Win 7 Pro SP1 64-bit and Win 10 Pro 64-bit) is UEFI BIOS but NOT SecureBoot and WITH Enable Option ROMs checked. However, I guess that it is exclusively UEFI because it will NOT boot off a non-UEFI 32-bit CD.

Gang! 1) How are the Dec 8 POS updates? Safe for my dog-eared XP machine? (Two Win 7 Pro 64-bit machines updated nicely this week, but a third one hung on the reboot and I had to go massage it. So I'm just a tad nervous for my more important XP senior citizen.) 2) Also, I just downloaded and ran heinoganda's Cert_Updater.exe for the first time ever. Its last Modified date is Friday, October 23, 2015, 8:51:56 PM. But I understand that's not important because it reaches out to MS for the latest certificate information. Am I correct about that? Many thanks.

jaclaz - just for my info, where would I get the Win PE 3.x to install on my USB stick anyway? If this is relatively basic, please just point me to some links. (Couldn't find it on Google.) Thanks.

jaclaz - thanks again. A) If I figure out how to use RMPREPUSB, EASY2BOOT, RUFUS, and/or UEFI MULTI, will one of them run like an OS for the stick itself? That is, after I boot from the stick, will I be able to download and "install" my favorite tools on the stick and its OS so the stick has all the app and common files for each tool? So that later, when the stick boots, it shows me all the tools as installed apps and I can start them and point them to the machine's sick hard drive? And so that even later I can install more? B) Is there any way to do all of this with Win PE that looks like Win 7? (For free or somehow deriving from my existing Win 7?) I ask because I assume that RMPREPUSB, EASY2BOOT, RUFUS and UEFI MULTI are all Linux.

jaclaz - by the way, with the replacement hard drive, I am having some Event Viewer errors with Windows Indexing (Ci) not working, and a double-mention of bad libraries (suggesting that in Device Manager I should uninstall the drivers for my external USB back-up hard drive and my never-used USB stick, delete the existing libraries, reconnect the two USB devices and run "Find new hardware"). Is any of this related to a changed Disk Signature as you mentioned above?

jaclaz - thanks for the warning!

jaclaz - you wrote "168105984/255/63=10464,113538748832866479925303455 <- not a particularly 'round' result" I sort of understand (actually faking) that 63 is a good number for 32-bit XP on a plain old hard drive made with vacuum tubes and gears. Am I losing anything in my new setup? Thanks.

jaclaz - sucess, but, as it turned out, my options were limited by a few problems, and I did the drive duplication in the least interesting way. Although, on eBay, Mwave (Walnut, California) had sold me a 3.5" replacement velociraptor hard drive, they actually shipped the 2.5" model (a different model number) without the "IcePack" heat sink for 3.5" bay. When I called to complain, I had to argue with them to check, and they finally got back and said they had none of the 3.5" model, so they sent me an RMA email to return. They continue to offer the non-existent 3.5" model under various fake seller names in eBay, by the way. All their pages are the same. That left me with (1) a dying original 150GB XP drive (slowly increasing re-allocated sector count, although Speccy didn't show any trouble at all, and error messages on boot), (2) my previously used but available 500GB Momentus XT hybrid HD-SSD, and (3) a USB external drive (WD MyBook). I shut down the XP machine and put its failing hard drive into a bay of my good Win 7 Pro SP1 64-bit machine. The Win 7 saw the drive and gave it a letter but also an error message and would not access it at all. Said it had zero byte capacity. So no go on doing anything in the Win 7 machine. (By the way, the Win 7 machine had no problem seeing the used Momentus XT drive, which was also for an XP machine, so not an issue of MBR vs GPT or 32 vs 64 or BIOS vs UEFI. The failing drive was just failing, I suppose, and the Win 7 machine disdained it - not a good Samaritan.) So I knew I had to do everything in or connected to the XP machine from which the drive had just been removed. First, I decided to try to save the old data on the Momentus. So with the Momentus still in the Win 7 machine and using Aomei Partition Assistant Pro 5.8, I reduced the Momentus's old C:\ partition to 80GB and converted both that partition and the hidden Dell utility partition to Logical and Hidden and changed their drive letters to None. In the process, I indicated I wanted those partitions to be "Aligned", an option in the Aomei Partition Assistant Pro. I then turned the 385GB± unallocated space into a new partition, and I later divided that into two new partitions, one very small and the other large, to be targets for receiving "Restore" copies of the failing XP hard drive's utility partition and its C:\ partition. Formatted the tiny one FAT32 and the big one NTFS, both Primary, the big one also Active, both "Aligned", and assigned the drive letters None to the small and C:\ to the big. I was hoping somehow to preserve the old Momentus data, and it turned out I succeeded. By the way, Aomei alone didn't do the job 100%. I also needed EaseUS Partition Master to really make both old partitions truly Hidden and Logical and without drive letters, as the Aomei conversion didn't take 100%. Then, with the old failing drive back in the XP machine, I hooked up the external USB WD MyBook drive to that machine, rebooted with my CD media copy of Aomei Backupper Professional 2.5, did not copy or clone anything, but instead did a Backup of my failing drive to a folder in the external USB WD MyBook drive. All via USB, so with verification it took more than two hours. Then I removed the old failing drive and replaced it with the re-partitioned Momentus XT. When I rebooted with my CD media copy of Aomei Backupper Professional 2.5, instead of doing a normal Restore of everything (which would have wiped out the old data on the Momentus), the Aomei gave me the option of restoring partitions from the Backup, so that's what I did. Again, Aomei gave me the option to "Align", so I did so. When that was done, I tried to boot from the Momentus, but I got a boot error. My XP machine said I didn't have a bootable drive. So I put in my CD of Macrium Refect Free, rebooted, and directed it to repair the MBR of the Momentus. Macrium gives four ways to do that, and I picked all four. After that, IT WALKS - IT WALKS. My old XP machine is up and running, with the Momentus instead of the old failing drive. No more SMART warnings, and no error warnings on bootup. And using EaseUS Partiton Master, I see that I also saved the old data on the Momentus in the two hidden partitions, if I ever want it. (Those two hidden partitions also show on the XP's Disk Management as Logical and also as a single "Extended partition".) Now, I would like to check whether or not the C:\ partition of the Momentus is really "aligned" or not. Seagate's Partition Offset Information tool says its Offset is ... wait for it ... 168105984 . Is that good? The same tool says its "Phys Sector Size" is 512, which it also was before. So where am I? Heaven or New Jersey? (Reminder that C:\ is now after three other partitions.) Also, from one of your posts above, I realize that the Macrium Refect Free might have done more than needed - anyway for me to check? For example, maybe Disk Signature was changed? And if I'm up and running, does it make a difference? The Momentus seems to be faster with some things and slower in others. Averaging the same, by feel. Please suggest any tests I should run. Thanks again.

I bought a nice PNY USB 3.0 stick at Best Buy for $30± but I don't know how to turn it into a bootable USB with lots of stuff on it. My fantasy is that it will be a bootable USB (1) that will boot in EITHER my old Optiplex 755 machine with XP Pro SP3 32-bit (with a classic MBR BIOS boot and only USB OR my newer Optiplex 7010 machine that now dual-boots Win 7 Pro SP1 64-bit and Win 10 Pro 64-bit (with UEFI but NOT Secure Boot, and with USB 3 as well as 2), and (2) will have lots of useful stuff on it - not only install/repair of XP Pro SP3 32-bit and Win 7 Pro 64-bit and Win 10 Pro 64-bit, but also tools like the "Create Media" versions of AOMEI Backupper, AOMEI Partition Assistant Pro, Macrium Reflect Free, EaseUS Backup, EaseUS Partition Master, etc., and (3) as I find more tools, I can add them to this bootable USB without wiping what's already there. Ideally its "background" OS will be a Win PE version of Win 7 32-bit with as many useful features of Win 7 as possible, like Disk Management. That would be better for me than Linux, which I have hardly ever used. My fantasy is that I plug it into either of my two PCs, it boots, and after the Win PE 7 is running, it gives me a menu of which useful thing I want to do. (Or maybe it gives me an initial menu as to whether I want to install/repair XP, 7 or 10 or go to the second menu with tools, and if I go to the second menu, it boots into its Win PE 7 background and offers me those tools. Just guessing.) But I haven't a clue how to get started. The more basic websites (like HowToGeek) seem to describe how to set up the USB for ONE purpose, like installing Win 7, but not as a complete bootable toolkit that gives me lots of choices. And most of the more advanced websites are too advanced. Pendrive[something].com assumes I already know about Linux, Ubuntu and how to cook roast pig, and I just ... DON'T. Also, I have previously used this PNY stick for something (a fresh install of Win 10), found that for some reason its only usable partition was 32GB± instead of its complete 128GB, then I used it for something else, then I "hid" that small partition and then reformatted the PNY in Disk Management, so right now it is one confused sick puppy. It is NOT recognized by my XP machine at all although it does appear in Disk Management in my Win 7 machine. This means I should completely re-clean or re-format it and/or re-partition it first, and again I have no idea what I am talking about or how to get started. If I reformat it, what format? Disk Management in Win 7 gives me way too many choices, and I have no idea which to use. Please point me to the beginning of this education, and the next step, and the next. Thanks.

jaclaz - thanks again. When the time comes next weekend, I will again read your superb posts here and try NOT to set fire to my PCs. Meantime, having been burned by Seagate DiscWizard and not really being in love with AOMEI Backupper, today I installed Macrium Reflect Free in each of (a) my XP SP3 32-bit (soon to die) PC and (b) my dual-boot Win 7 Pro SP1 64-bit + Win 10 Pro 64-bit PC and made a separate bootable CD from each, each with its own version of Win PE. (I discovered that the bootable CD made from my XP SP3 32-bit PC will NOT boot in my dual-boot Win 7 Pro SP1 64-bit + Win 10 Pro 64-bit PC, but that its own bootable CD will boot in that newer PC. Probably a BIOS-vs-UEFI or a 32-vs-64-bit issue.) I assume that your "2) clone "as is" (with Disk Clone)" should be done using the first bootable CD in the XP SP3 32-bit (soon to die) PC, with the old and the new hard drives plugged into the SATA sockets on the motherboard. That way, everything will be as native as I can get. I assume you recommend that I NOT move the two hard drives first into the newer dual-boot Win 7 Pro SP1 64-bit + Win 10 Pro 64-bit PC. Later. when I do your 4) and 5), i will plug BOTH the original, troubled XP hard drive and the Momentus XT HD-SSD into the extra SATA sockets in the newer dual-boot Win 7 Pro SP1 64-bit + Win 10 Pro 64-bit PC. I will just run the Macrium in the Win 7 OS and point it to the XP HD as source and the Momentus as target, yes? But will that UEFI-64-bit flavor of Macrium Reflect Free somehow make the Momentus unbootable when I try it in the old PC? Or are my concerns here irrelevant? Thanks.

jaclaz - you are THE MAN. Many thanks for such a great strategy and clear instructions! Just before I came back here to read your post above, I already made backup copies of MBR and PBR of the XP machine using a tool called Bootice from www.ipauly.com via softpedia. It and the resulting .bin files are copied safely on my Win 7 machine just in case. (The PBR turns out to be a Dell utilities hidden partition, btw.) The Momentus was used before in an old Dell D830 laptop with XP. Shortly after I copied over that laptop's XP hard drive to the Momentus, the laptop blew up, possibly due to heat. The Momentus might run hot when it runs, and to use it in my current XP machine (a Dell Optiplex 755 Desktop), I have purchased a caddy with a built-in fan that's separately powered off a Molex plug in the desktop case. But I think I need instructions how to "clean" the Momentus so it's properly formatted before I System Clone/Migrate the XP into it. Also, I ran fsutil fsinfo ntfsinfo on both the Momentus hybrid HD-SSD and my old soon-to-fail XP HD, and here are some results: The fsutil fsinfo ntfsinfo command shows that my Momentus XT has the following:Bytes Per Sector: 512Bytes Per Physical Sector: 512Bytes Per Cluster: 4096Bytes Per File Record Segment: 1024Clusters Per FileRecord Segment: 0 The same command on my old XP hard drive that I need to clone says:Bytes Per Sector: 512(There is no Bytes Per Physical Sector.)Bytes Per Cluster: 4096Bytes Per File Record Segment: 1024Clusters Per FileRecord Segment: 0 What does that say to you? Is it possible that the Momentus XT is NOT 4K? The Seagate help-desk person said that BOTH drives are 512E, with E standing for emulate. I have NO IDEA what any of this means. But when I "clean" (and maybe reformat ??) the Momentus, what type of formatting should I choose (if any)? Thanks!

Jaclaz - you are the greatest, in the greatest forum - no doubt about it. But I'm a bit overwhelmed by the detail. Since my original post above, I played a bit with my Momentus XT HD-SSD hybrid drive and Seagate's DiscWizard program, all in another PC running Win 7 Pro 64-bit. Seagate's DiscWizard program (which is a "limited" version of Acronis True Image) was a freaking disaster. Wouldn't work consistently and almost wrecked my Win 7 PC, which is finally back to normal (I hope) after numerous sfc /scannows and chkdsk /f. I still have my original problem - my older and much-valued Dell Optiplex 755 XP Pro SP3 32-bit PC is going to die because the hard drive (a 160GB WD Velociraptor WD1600HLFS-75G6U0 SATA-II at 3Gb/s) is beginning to fail. I get error messages on reboots, and although it is working this instant I am afraid the next few reboots will be the end. I need to copy (?) everything over to a new hard drive. I just ordered on eBay a "new" WD Velociraptor SATA-II at 3Gb/s from the same year and slightly larger at 300 GB. It should arrive after Thanksgiving. Also, instead of Seagate DiscWizard, I am thinking of using Aomei Backupper to do the migration, from a bootable CD. I already have two versions of Aomei Backupper on bootable CDs - Standard 3.2 and Pro 2.5, both issued this year. Both of them give me the choice of "Disk Clone" or "System Clone/Migration". What is the difference between System Clone/Migration and Disk Clone? What are the pros and cons of each? The old hard drive is a Western Digital Velociraptor WD1600HLFS-75G6U0 (156GB, SATA-II 3.0Gb/s). The new hard drive will be EITHER (a) a very similar new Western Digital Velociraptor (WD3000HLFS VelociRaptor 300GB) that is larger than the existing hard drive OR (b) (if I decide to use it after all) a Seagate Momentus XT hybrid HD-SSD (ST95005620AS with 500GB) that we bought in 2011 and used only briefly in a long-gone laptop. Maybe your answer (System Clone/Migration vs Disk Clone) depends on which one I choose as the new hard drive ? In either case, the new drive will be larger than the old, so somehow I will need for the space to be expanded without wrecking any needed "alignment". Please provide lots of detail (at my tourist level) !! And any tips on doing this correctly. Thanks again.

Gang - All OK with the Nov 10 updates? No BSODs? Per two posts immediately above, should I avoid KB3092601? (I don't know what LvlLord's patcher is and would probably not be able to figure out how to use it.) Off-topic - I have posted a different query at http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/174776-tips-on-cloning-xp-hard-drive-into-momentus-xt-hybrid-hd-ssd/ Since this is a very knowledgeable group, and my new thread is also for keeping my XP machine alive, if you have a moment, please go over there and let me have your thoughts. Thanks!

I'm going to clone an old, beginning-to-fail hard drive for my favorite XP Pro SP3 32-bit Dell Optiplex desktop PC (146GB capacity) to a Momentus XT hybrid HD-SSD (500GB capacity). The Momentus is Model Number: ST95005620AS, Firmware Revision: SD28, Sector size (Logical/Physical/Allignment): 512 / 512 / 0. (I think we bought this in late 2011.) The Momentus was previously used in my wife's old and abandoned XP laptop so it is NOT "clean". It was the OS drive for her laptop and still has everything on it. I have backed it up and am willing to erase everything on the Momentus and then make it into the clone of my current, active XP desktop. Now, here's what I'm going to do - unless you think this is a bad idea: I have a third PC running Win 7 Pro 64-bit with extra hard drive bays and SATA sockets on its motherboard. I'm going to connect BOTH my XP desktop hard drive AND the Momentus XT to the SATA 2 and 3 sockets in my Win 7 desktop. Then I'm going to run EITHER Seagate Diskwizard in the Win 7 OR AOMEI Backupper Standard and use it to clone the XP hard drive (SATA 2) into the Momentus XT hybrid drive (SATA 3). 1) Do I have to "clean" the Momentus XT first? The Seagate DiscWizard manual seems to say the cloning will do that automatically (or prompt me to do it). 2) Will the Momentus XT clone be properly "aligned"? a) The Seagate manual says it will be automatically "aligned" but gives no detail. (I assume my source old hard drive is NOT "aligned".) b) AOMEI says it has a check-the-box option to "align" at 4K. Should I check it? 3) As you can see above, the sector size on the Momentus XT is now 512. I am NOT sure whether this model was actually expecting Advanced Format 4K sector size (4,096 instead of 512). What do you think? 4) Should I make any effort to make the clone as Advanced Format 4K sector size in the Momentus even though the source hard drive is probably 512? Keep in mind this will stay an XP 32-bit machine when I'm done. But if you think I should try to make the clone Advanced Format 4K sector size, how do I do that? (Is that what Aomei is saying? I think the Seagate DiscWizard is saying something else.) 5) Any other tips and advice? 6) Where else should I post this? EDIT - Maybe Seagate (Acronis) and Aomei talk about "align" differently. Maybe Seagate (Acronis) uses "align" to mean only a particular "offset" whether or not the segment/sector size is 512 or 4K. Maybe Aomei uses "align" to mean forcing a segment/sector size of 4K but without any attention to offset. Don't know, and I don't know what I'm talking about anyway. Please discuss. Thanks.

Gents - As this thread remains very expert (and I am not), permit me to ask again whether everyone is happy with these Oct 13 updates from WU-MU on his XP machine and that there are no melt-downs: KB 3080446 KB 3093983 KB 890830 (mrt) KB 3085618 KB 3085544 That's what I'm getting in MU - waiting for your OK before I install. Many thanks!

heinoganda and Dave-H - How's it going? Are Tuesday's patches good? Hey - it's Fall - back to work. Thanks.

Dave-H - Have you installed KB3087985 and KB3077715? You OK out there? Getting worried pal.

Dave-H, dencorso, Mcinwwl and monroe - thanks. Have just finished downloading last Tuesday's updates. No problems. MEANTIME, for dencorso and silverni and jaclaz and heinoganda, I have ATTACHED my list of completed updates for NET Framework -- this list was generated by Belarc Advisor. Which .NET UPDATES am I missing? Many thanks. 8-17-15 NET Framework update list.doc

Hey brave people (and thanks to Dave-H) - has anyone else had any issues with last Tuesday's patches? No smell of smoke? No weird error messages and user folders creating themselves like January? Thanks.

Hey gang - Wasn't two days ago patch Tuesday? The update icon in my XP tray has not popped up. Are there any updates?

FWIW, I have uninstalled only KB3035583 from my Win 7 Pro SP1 64-bit, after which the various files and folders with "GWX" in their names disappeared. (My Win 7 PC never had the special Win 10 icon in the tray, and still does not have it.) KB3035583 has not come back on its own and so I cannot "hide" it. We'll see in a week or so, yes?

Yes - just saw the prompt to install https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3079904. Anyone having any problems with it?

heinoganda and dencorso - all seems OK. There was one glitch - the new (July) Malicious Software Removal Tool (mrt.exe) wouldn't install from Windows Update - kept failing. So I downloaded the file from WSUS (I think) and installed it in Safeboot. Then, while still in safeboot, its quickscan stopped at tcpip.sys with an error message, but when I rebooted normally, its quickscan ran all the way. Anyone else have a problem installing the July Malicious Software Removal Tool? PS - Still not getting those six error messages per posts above - certainly happy about that. Thanks.

Thanks, guys, but can we get back to my Q - first post above?