selyb

I think maybe I can install svn + webdav on my server with apache and map a drive letter to it.

Jaclaz is correct on all accounts. Another solution I thought of is to have some way to point to two files as if they were one file file1 -> partA + partC file2 -> partB + partC BTW, working on windows would be a perk but is not required. I can install the solution on a linux box or VM and share the folder(s) with RW permissions.

I'm not sure if I could explain differently :-/ I'll try a different situation Let's say I have a small business and I install Linux distros on client's computers. For the good of the community, I share these distros back using bittorrent. Let's say that in every one of the ISO's I like to insert my company logo as a default desktop background and the most efficient way to do this is to modify the ISO. In this scenario, I may have 50 different 4.6GB ISOs that I share on bittorrent and 50 more that are my customized versions. The difference between each original and it's customized version is only a couple megabytes so 99% of the data is the same between each pair. Bittorrent is not going to ignore any little part so there is no way (that I know of) to share only that 99%. The solution I had in mind is by using something like a small diff patch, I could give programs access to two different files while most of it points to the same data. Currently, I use hard links to the same data from multiple file names. What I need is some way to (for example) have "c:\somefolder\somefilename" point to "c:\otherfolder\otherfile" with "c:\patchdata\otherfilepatch". In this way, Bittorrent could share the original file and Imgburn could access the modified file but I don't have to lose nearly 50x4.6GB of redundant hdd space.

I need the unmodified tracks for bittorrent but they don't have ReplayGain info in the metadata so I keep a separate copy of the entire album with RG tags. Also, some have the album cover injected into each track. I remove this and use a single folder.jpg.

That is what I'm doing now. I have duplicates of a couple gigs of flac albums. I could also think of a few other uses for such a system

I want to set up something like hard links but only to parts of a file. I have searched all over for something like this or maybe a versioning file system that doesn't make complete copies of the original file. Here is my scenario: I have a folder with music albums. I want to add metadata to these but I want to keep the original unmodified files as well. I'm searching for some way to be able to access either file versions but I really don't like having to keep all the redundant data around.

Yeah, I'm coming to the same conclusions :-/ maybe I could install DSL + VBox or VMWare to a throwaway flash drive

Update: After more research, I've learned that a JeOS is designed to run in a VM, not host one... So, I need to look at ESXi again but I'll probably go with a minimal linux distro and install a VirtualBox or VMWare package

I must not have been clear... I want to be able to shut down the windows VM and run just a linux distro or vice versa, so as of yet, I'm probably going to set up a JeOS distro, with VirtualBox or VMWare. So far, I have read some people prefer one over the other for this reason or that and have seen one or two benchmark comparisons that doesn't really put one ahead of the other...

right, my proc definitely supports AMD-V, I read that the mobo has to support the extensions as well and I did not see an option in my bios but I assume that since CPU-Z recognized that extension then my bios 'should' support them I definitely do NOT want to make this a headless box. I did read about some solutions being meant for headless boxes but it never occurred to me to try to use this to narrow my options, so thank you. certainly EditOK, that didn't help much with searches :-( anyway, as of yet, I would like the options of shutting down linux, or windows or having two or three running at the same time. Virtualbox can do this, yes?

Goal: Run Win7 x64 full time, run 1 or 2 distros of linux simply for recreational purposes, run XP x86 sometimes for software that refuses to work on vista, run DOS occasionally. It would also be nice to have another XP to use for sandbox for untrusted software. If possible, I would like to do all this without having to reboot for each OS I'm a little overwhelmed with the options for this. I have an ASUS M4A77TD with Phenom X2, 4GB DDR3 @533mhz, Radeon 4870, and 3x 320GB SATA 3.0 hdds in RAID0. CPU-Z claims my processor supports AMD-V. I have a spare sata drive I can throw in here just to test things out. This box is for personal use, no servers will be hosted on it. I'm leaning more toward a bare-metal VM or JeOS but I'm open to any real suggestions. My technical level is decent, I've setup 5 different flavors of linux, hundreds of installs of windows 9x/XP/Vista/7, have taken some cisco certification courses, can follow nearly any scripting language etc, etc.

I have searched, researched, tried, tried again and I seem to be running in circles here I'm trying to install 7 Pro Retail for a client's business The problem: After 7 installs and reboots, the system hangs at the "Windows is starting" 4 color blob logo or immediately after disk.sys in safe mode The system: Dell Dimension 8400 with SIL3124 based addon card and 4 sata hdds What I've tried: I used Win Integrator to integrate raid drivers into the install which didn't help at all because I still have to load drivers from a USB drive for install to recognize the controller. (SIL3124 driver is WHQL) I tried disabling diver signature enforcement during install and during boot. The board has an ICH6R chipset but I have no hdd's connected to it so I don't think it's relevant. Anyway, BIOS has two options for this (RAID,AHCI), and (RAID,ATA). I have tried both I have tried installing from CD and USB flash drive. Other Notes: The video card is PCI-E but there is no onboard video and I have nothing to swap with. The BIOS is Rev. A05 and the latest is A09 but AFAICT, it requires windows installed to upgrade it and I can't even install XP on this d*mn thing with only one hdd connected (after 1st phase of install, it constantly reboots and flashes some kind of error then reboots again) EDIT Ok, now my situation is that I cannot get Win7 to recognize the raid array. I have updated the rom on the add-on card. I have updated the Dell bios to the latest rev. When I load the Sil3124r.inf no drives are recognized. After that, I can load the Sil Pseudo Processor driver. Still doesn't recognize any drives. I can't even figure out wtf I did before to get it to recognize a raid array.

How to Replace a System Program without Modifying System Files or Permissions If you like to use replacements for system programs like notepad.exe or calc.exe then this is for you. This will show you how to use a popular replacement for notepad.exe or any other exe by using "Image File Execution Options" key in your registry. You must have Administrator privileges to edit the registry key and these settings affect all users but this is very simple, does NOT involve taking over file permissions, does NOT involve replacement of any files, and is VERY easily reversible. This works for Windows NT/2K/XP/Server 2K3/Vista/Server 2K8/Win7 KNOWN ISSUES: 1) If you use this to replace example.exe, ANY program named example.exe located anywhere will execute the replacement instead of itself. 2) If you used 'App Paths' to point to a different executable, then it bypasses this method since windows doesn't try to run the original exe 3) On x64 systems, the key for 32-bit apps is HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options DESCRIPTION: The 'Image File Execution Options' registry key is used by the NT family originally for debugging applications. Conveniently, we can use this method to run another command and pass the name of the executable to it instead. The problem is that you need some way to execute a command but skip one argument since most applications are not aware that one parameter is meaningless. Here I show several examples of how to accomplish this DETAILS: Under the registry key HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Optionscreate a subkey with the name of the exe you want replaced. Add a string value called Debugger. Modify Debugger with the command you want run. When any user tries to run any executable with the name of the subkey, Windows executes the Debugger command with path\name of the original exe and all command line parameters appended. (Did that make sense?) TEST: Create a subkey named 'notepad.exe' Add the string value Debugger Double click Debugger and enter cmd /k echo when you double click on c:\some.txt the command that is executed is cmd /k echo "C:\windows\system32\notepad.exe" c:\some.txt Full Tutorial and example scripts Here: http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/244527-p...ermissions.html

Drempels

USB1.1 < CD < DVD < USB2.0 CD - 52x is approx 7.2MBps DVD - 16x is approx 21.6MBps those are the max speeds when/if you get to the outer edge a 16x dvd drive should start reading approx 6MBps at the center a 52x cd drive should start reading approx 3MBps at the center USB1.1 can transfer at 1.5MBps USB2.0 can transfer at 60MBps CD-R and DVD-/+R have a much more strict limitation on number of writes and i wouldnt consider using RW in opposition to a flash drive Pros: 1. you can update setup files as needed without erasing the entire medium and re-writing @Jaclaz: I've been looking over your posts about installing from USB for the last couple weeks and i have what i think is a great solution to the problem with files being deleted: copy setup files to target hdd and write bootloader and boot sector to boot the installation i installed slax frodo on my usb drive i format the target hdd as ntfs, write the boot sectors, and copy xp setup files to the hdd now i need to figure out how to get the setup files i need to copy to the hdd i used winnt32 /makelocalsource /syspart: /tempdrive: but this makes the files specific to that hdd (boot.ini points to C:\$WIN_NT$.~BT\bootsect.dat) what im trying to do is make the process a few steps as possible so others can benefit step 1: update xp setup files step 2: batch file to create setup folders to skip text mode part of install and 7zip them step 3: copy updated 7z's to flash drive soon i will write a simple script for slax to ask which hdd you want to install to and then format and copy all setup files to that disk then you remove the usb drive and reboot the pc the temp setup files will be removed from the hdd as they should be and you dont have to copy the files back to the usb drive every time you do an install

the code /\/\o\/\/ posted cant be used in vbs, it is VB code the only way i have seen to make API calls from vbs is using a 3rd party activex control like wshAPItoolkit.ocx you dont have to register the control if you run your script from the same folder as the ocx you might also try searching the web for something like 'refreshscreen.exe' or something similar

I've searched and found a wealth of info on this stuff, mostly from Jaclaz but I haven't found everything I'm looking for and I didn't want to bring back old posts now, please correct me if i'm wrong, my impression is that the latest state you can have the install process that is still unspecific to each machine is when the boot record has been written and the hdd contains $WIN_NT$.~BT and $WIN_NT$.~LS what i mean by this is that any part of the process done after this state could not be copied to another machine with different hardware, correct? so, my idea is to use "winnt32.exe /makelocalsource /noreboot" to produce these folders then 7zip them on my usb stick, i want to have a batch script format a drive to ntfs, give it the boot record that xp setup would have given it by this point, and extract the 7z of the folders to that drive i dont have a preference between dos or linux but, as of yet, i havent found a 16-bit version of 7zip i don't know how to give the hdd the boot record it needs also, can someone confirm for me that it doesnt matter if the setup files are cabbed or not? it's possible that 7-zip will give better compression if the files are not compressed already if anyone is curious about my reason for wanting to go this way, here are some benefits: 1. after the files are copied, setup continues from the hdd so the flash drive isnt needed anymore 2. no files are deleted from the flash drive during setup 3. the setup files will take less space this way 4. different installations could be scripted using the same setup files by extracting different sets of files

you dont want to unregister that dll, running the above command does many many things the Show Desktop command in Quicklaunch is an scf file (SHCmdFile), its a text file containing [Shell] Command=2 IconFile=explorer.exe,3 [Taskbar] Command=ToggleDesktop and named "Show Desktop.scf" for existing users it resides @ "Documents and Settings\[uSER]\Application Data\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch" for new users it resides @ "Documents and Settings\Default User\Application Data\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch"

i mean that i dont like explorer on any windows ive been using litestep for >4 years and switched between file managers for several years im not going to use Windows 64 unless i can find a way for litestep to spawn 64-bit programs and i find a 64-bit file manager i like i wish i could find a free file manager with half the functionality of Directory Opus

ProgramfilesDir="c:\Programs" CommonProgramFilesDir="c:\Programs\Common" ProgramFilesDir(x86) = "C:\Programs32" CommonProgramFilesDir(x86) = "C:\Programs32\Common" this is what was doing it i changed to this ProgramfilesDir=C:\Programs CommonProgramFilesDir=C:\Programs\Common ProgramFilesDir(x86)=C:\Programs32 CommonProgramFilesDir(x86)=C:\Programs32\Common windows installs but folders are wrong i do have C:\programs and C:\programs32 but i also have C:\program files (x86)32 and C:\program files32 oh well, i give up on x64 for a while anyway because i dont like explorer and so far i cant find workarounds for the quirks of running a 32-bit shell/file manager

i got the 32bit working, ill try the 64 again tonight

LMAO hahahahahahahahahahaha ok... im not laughing at you, promise im laughing to keep from being offended ive had much success with using answer files in the past and for some reason just the past couple of days ive been getting this error first time i saw it i was trying to install x64 on my main computer i purposely posted minimal information hoping that someone had run across this error and had linked it to either some simple syntax error i overlooked even though i slowly scanned the entire file, or that maybe someone had had an error with NFM's Pre-SP2 pack for x64 since no one has replied with such an error and considering i got the same error on an unmodified xp pro, im willing to bet money its some syntax error maybe one of the string values requires quotes? im trying to use a modified version of an answer file that has worked for me before and now im getting another error "Temp setup files could not be found. ~you cannot use a non-cd floppy install with a cd install~" or something like that winnt.sif

this was an unmodified copy of regular xp pro (32 bit)

i did try and i still got the same error also, i stripped the file down to some bear necessities (attached) and used it for regular winxp pro and STILL got the same error winnt.sif

i manually installed NFM's Pre-SP2 pack for x64 (how do i know if SP1 is installed?) i manually edited three inf files and recab'ed them my winnt.sif is attached from what i get on google for this error, it should have been caused by the programfiles options in my winnt.sif but ive tried several different combinations and cant get any to work i looked at the partition after the setup crashed out and there were win\ and profiles\ folders TIA to anyone who can winnt.sif