UCyborg

On the topic of this being a technical board etc., aren't the same old topics getting...old? #include <stdafx.h> void Windows_XP() { HongKong_Browsers_XP(); China_Browsers_XP(); AntiMalware_XP(); Misc_XP(); } int main() { while (1) { Windows_XP(); } return 666; }

Made an image with DMDE, always great to have to preserve all the details of the source file system. 5 sectors couldn't be read, I left the default pattern to be written for bad sectors, just changed the setting to try to read them up to 3 times. Even if you scan the entire file and get the offsets of those patterns in the image file, how do you know to which file they belong, if any, in case of NTFS file system? In my case, I can still compare the directory tree in the image to the directory tree made with robocopy, just not sure what to use. I used WinMerge in the past, but for much smaller files. Back then, the only detail about binary files I was interested in was whether they differ or not. I don't remember if there was a hex view to compare. I'd just like to know if any copy is better than the other, then make sure all good files end up in the file system image.

I wonder if anyone here happens to know where Event Viewer stores its settings, eg. what columns are selected, how wide they are, the height of the entire list view listing. First Windows supplied program I encountered in a while where it doesn't seem obvious just browsing the registry, besides Bags and BagMRU for folder view settings! Although this is run in the context of MMC, for which I only found the list of recent *.msc files at HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft Management Console\Recent File List. There's just an empty Settings key in Microsoft Management Console.

Something I've been wondering about, this car has EFB+ battery installed. There's not much written about the plus part, seems to be a Volkswagen thing, they only have written on one of their sites that it has surface-active carbon additives for more effective power consumption and charging capacity. But carbon additives are mentioned at other places for EFB (without plus)... The main part, the car keeps the battery charged at 80% max, supposedly to save fuel and reduce emissions, something about alternator not being run all the time by the usual means, but engaging when using engine for braking and using kinetic energy to run the alternator. I've noticed with the help of diagnostic interface that when the car is sitting for a day, battery discharges from 80% to 72%. That's a whooping 8%! The manual does mention something about shutting electronics down if it goes too low, but nothing specific, just that it can't prevent battery from going empty if you do something stupid like leaving the ignition on with the engine off. So about EFB's longevity, while it's designed to operate better at reduced state of charge, I wonder if it would still be beneficial long-term to charge it every once in a while, given that the car is mostly sitting in garage for weekends and a week at a time few times per year. Edit: Higher state-of-charge should still be the better state to be in. https://microtexindia.com/efb-battery/

Out of curiosity, what problematic monitor do you have? One disk started getting wonky here, whether the rest will follow is yet to be seen. The whole computer is 14 years old and only few components are younger, the remaining disks should still be over the decade old, but the youngest component, a GPU, is 9 years old. The second monitor is 19 years old and still working without noticeable defects.

Yes, seems to be a tricky issue only occurring under specific unknown circumstances.

Pale Moon 32.1.0 did crash two times on me, 32.1.1 hasn't crashed so far. If it's still the same bug...I definitely couldn't find a pattern to invoke the crash. Edit: forgot to mention, it happened on exit, window was already closed, but the process was active, had most of memory allocated from before and consumed a small amount of CPU for a while before the crash.

Encountered 3 files that couldn't be read the first time. Definitely last time to get everything off, this disk is really going the way of the old one where bad sectors just kept spreading. Heh, refresh definitely didn't keep those files fresh. If a person is a big collector of digital stuff, it definitely complicates matters when you gotta back these things up as it takes forever. And doing it the slower way this time around... Though I don't get much new stuff these day, I'm trying to go by with less, so unless my messed up mind clicks in some strange way, I'll probably keep max capacity of my internal storage at 2 TB. Also have history/cache keeping turned off in my web browser...I'd probably feel bad about losing it if I did... But some people can't imagine going by with "just" 2 TB. Though it's also true if the same people play modern games...those are of insane these size days so it's understandable the space goes quickly.

Thanks for the DMDE suggestion, will try it out at the next opportunity. Robocopy seems to be in the 4th quarter of one of the biggest folders, with any luck, bad sectors are only the ones without files on them. Since the issue has existed for a while, it shouldn't crap out entirely right way. How does DMDE handle bad sectors, though? I figured I should at least have touchable copy of the files, though full partition image would be nicer and can still make it later. I do have dd figured out to the extent that I'm able to use it confidently to make images of my partitions, so far, I used it to makes copies of bootable partitions containing an operating system and also for backing up the first sector on the disk.

Robocopying stuff off the drive. Wanted to make an image with ddrescue at first from Linux, but this program does not come with sane defaults and works extremely slow, even on good parts, which should most of the disk for now, and I'm not sure what parameters to use exactly, so going the old fashioned file level copy. dd also sucks out of the box, but there's a published script somewhere on the internet to determine the fastest block size setting, so I find it to be OK to make a raw partition image of a disk that still works. Admittedly, there is a lot of junk on the disk I only keep for sentimental reasons. I do cleanup occasionally, but it's never enough. Among the junk are also outdated drivers, even for the graphics card that has been sitting in the basement for last 9 years. And NLited Windows XP SP3 ISO I probably used last with the previous computer...seriously, I haven't used that OS on bare hardware since 2009 and I'll NEVER do it in the future either. I don't have high hopes, the day I posted the screenshot, even though the disk was just idling, several hours later it reported two more bad sectors. It's probably going the way of the previous one that started developing bad sectors during the warranty period. Might try zero-filling it after I got the data off and see how it behaves afterwards, will check what options WD's program (Data Lifeguard Diagnostics) has that I still have installed on that XP x64 partition. I once saw a modern replacement on a coworker's computer and oh my, what have they done with the UI? Although DLG on XP for some reason can't read S.M.A.R.T., but HD Tune can...wut?

Looks like the disk is getting wonky. I didn't run any special program to go through empty space, just went and duplicated some files to fill most of it I think, assuming it will catch those sectors and remap them. Guess not. More bad sectors. Bleh, I don't know, I'll try to make an image of it in the near future, then see what happens after zero-fill or just writing the image back to it. I have a feeling it has run its course.

DaveH and @Dave-H, small, but significant difference.

Does the monitor lose signal? I think I'd run MemTest in any case, just in case, next would be to see if the issue only happens on Windows and if replacing the graphics card with a spare (if you have it) helps.

Maybe I said this before in another topic, but things would get ugly very quickly if the power goes out for a longer period...people are nuts as it is without disasters of such proportions.

Slightly OT (continuing from mentioned old Atari computers and old disks), seems the oldest tech still at home are the two ISKRA car battery chargers (POKO 10 and POBI), from the 80s if not older. I know POBI still works and the other one should as well. Until last year, we still used the freezing cabinet from Gorenje that must have been at least 37 years old. But the rubber or whatever material covering the pipes deteriorated to the point that it wasn't fully cooled anymore. The people that might still remember its exact age, they're long dead. A gloomy remark, none of us will work as well in 40 years.

I've heard on the news Slovenia is one of those countries where people sleep the least. I definitely don't belong here, LOL. One can't work properly without enough sleep, you know.

Well, it only goes so far, I was recently looking for info related to public class fields (that they're called like that) and that was in Chrome 72. I really only use Chromium engine (WebView) on Android with a lightweight app as the browser that just uses the WebView because there's nothing else as usable (resource consumption) there AFAIK and really only update it to the bare minimum version required for decent enough compatibility with modern web and for which I find properly made APK (with only native libraries for the phone's CPU architecture, uncompressed inside the archive so they don't have to be extracted and waste more space). Those logs are useful for consideration what version to go for. Still getting by with version 87. But yeah, each newer one is bigger and more complex. Not good for old devices, even with this one I have visual glitches sometimes that I didn't have with version 79 (if I remember correctly what I used before), but going to home screen and back helps at least... Really wish there was another usable alternative...

I do skimp through some of them (topics), but there isn't much time and energy left after the endless pointless tedious daily cycle of "working for the living", even for interests of my own discovery. My favorite sight has become that of a cozy bed. They say sleeping is the closest thing to death while being alive. I'm wondering more often if there's even a point to keep going.

I would look at changelogs every once in a while. Is there another place where they're put together like that? Guess Wayback Machine will still be useful for up-to current versions.

Found the name for the popular JavaScript class functionality, one of the UXP killers, as seems to be the definition of the common MSFNer. Now, I forgot how common MCP developer refers to it, but we could call this one C++ism. Public class fields

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome_version_history Recently deleted, Firefox version history might end up the same.

Can't be polyfilled, must be rewritten differently to get around UXP limitations.

Cool, but are they used regularly?

Hm, my computer history is shorter, the first one in second half of 90s was obsolete in few short years (133 MHz Intel Pentium, 16 MB RAM) and replaced with faster machine with 2 GHz Intel Celeron and 256 MB RAM, before any serious failure occurred. Two Maxtor disks that were subsequently used one after another in the newer computer throughout its lifetime didn't last for many years and both failed mechanically (click of death). Windows XP's BSOD was pretty much the last thing that computer displayed back then. Current computer from 2009...the 500 GB WD disk I started with (WD5000AAKS) started developing bad sectors within warranty period, I remember messing with Spinrite and HDD Regenerator, neither helped with that problem, the disk was sent back to retailer and they sent me a new similar model (WD5000AAKX). So far, I indeed cannot say I've seen pressing need or convincing (to me) evidence for regular refreshing, even for the case when data hasn't been written in a while. At least I know the other disk I refreshed still works 99,99%.

I've got similar score as @Anbima in Speedometer 2.0 on XP in 360Chrome 13.5, using AMD Phenom II X4 920 (over)clocked at 3 GHz. Don't recall the exact number, should be somewhere between 36 and 39. Seems simply CPU bound test.