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LiquidSage

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Everything posted by LiquidSage

  1. Since you want them white or black (I'm a bit confused exactly what you want after reading the 3rd paragraph...), you won't need to go crazy trying to get a mirror shine on it. Krylon paint for plastics would probably be your best bet. It bonds very well and is durable. A few important pointers..... 1.Prep is key to all paint jobs! 98% of painting is prepping. Make sure you tape of and cover what will not be painted. Do what the can says for cleaning the plastic. The paint will bond to the plastic so there should be no need to scuff up the speakers as long as they are clean. 2. Be extra diligent spraying several light coats. You must resist the urge to do 'touch ups' right after you spray or else you will get runs in the paint. Also, make sure you spray across in a straight line. Try not to 'arc' as you spray. (If you use a spray paint that isn't made for plastics, the whole process can become a chore. Takes lots of time and to do it right, requires more $ for adhesion promoters and supplies.) However, I prefer to use TopFlite Monokote. http://www.monokote.com/ It's a film that is mainly used on model airplanes. It comes in several colors and is extremely durable. All you need is a iron and a hairdryer and you can stretch it to cover most anything. I used this quite a bit back in the day when I was modding X-BOX's for people. -It looks cleaner than most paint job's (esp. the silver color. It literally provides a mirror finish). -There is no mess or chemicals and you can handle you project immediately. -It bonds permanently with plastic. Monokote is by far more resistant to 'wear and tear' damage compared to paint. (You can use it for things like game controllers and it won't rub off or get nasty.) However paint will look better when / if damage sets in. You can get a roll of Monokote at hobby shops or online. A roll should run ~$20 and will cover a pretty large surface area. Should be more than enough for 2 speakers. (Most hobby shops can cut you smaller sheets if you don't want a full roll.. Hope fun!
  2. .cgi It fits.... Though I tend to exploit right back if detected
  3. Simple misunderstanding. Glad you didn't take it to personally. Also, if you plan to edit more exe's in the future you might want to try PE-explorer or Restorator 2007. They are not free, but I find them to be more convenient and quicker to work with.
  4. Okay.... this is going to be harsh and I would like to think every post I have ever made on MSFN has been a positive contribution. Now lets get the facts straight and see where it takes us. 1st. What type of menu are you trying to make? A boot menu or a windows autorun menu? There is nothing original at all about that menu. MS has never made a boot menu even remotely like it. It is a custom boot menu made just to mimic XP's autorun menu. Now I assume you want to add/change some pics & text while maybe moving a few choices to different menu pages. This leads me to... If this is an autorun menu. You are right none of them will work. However, you don't want to delete options like "Boot from UBCD for Windows" or "Boot from Hard Drive" either. In an autorun menu these options are completely ludicrous. If however, you aim really is to create a nice XP setup-ish GUI boot menu, then I'm just going to be blunt.... You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. It helps to actually just sit down and read the dreaded help files and maybe try one of their example projects. You can make a multi page XP-setup style GUI boot menu with what I said in my 1st post: bcdw, cdshell+bcdw or Easyboot. If your goal was a autorun menu you would have pulled up pages and pages of results and usable projects and was to edit the original MS exe if you used the SEARCH feature and actually read some of the threads. No matter what kind of menu you are trying to create, you basically just want to edit a few text strings and change a pic or two. Doing just that is incredibly fast and easy. Stop wasting your time scouring the net hoping a solution will appear and instead familiarize yourself with the files in your project and the syntax they use. Again, please keep in mind I'm no stranger to my own advise and I'm actually trying to help you out. I'm more than willing to help (as most are on MSFN) if you are willing to start over, take a little time to explain again what type of menu you are editing, what it will be used for, and what changes you wish to make. ****It seems the solution worked itself out while I wrote this post. Go figure.
  5. For wma/wmv DRM files you can change the folder view to Details. Then add "Protected" detail column and simply sort by "Protected" to weed out those files. If you have many songs in many folders, you can use search to list all files and then sort by 'Protected' as well. Not sure if this will work w/ other file types however. You might try looking in the preferences of whatever converter you use to see if allows automatic and/or silent continuation if it encounters an error.
  6. That menu more than likely was made with bcdw. Look for a bcdw folder or a bcdw.ini file. If not bcdw then cdshell+bcdw or Easyboot would be my next guess. Open your ISO in UltraISO and see if any folders are hidden if you can't find the config file. Doing a web search for the bootloader or reading the help file will explain proper syntax and provide many examples. (Actually, if you first tried doing a simple search for 'boot menu' or 'UBCD boot menu" you probably would have been done with this already)
  7. Do not touch the lens! If a squirt of compressed air isn't enough to clean it then…well… (This reminds me of such memorable stories as the old lady who forced a floppy into a cd drive and the kid who put his PB&J sandwich in the VCR hoping to watch it.) Optical drives use a laser diode driver to properly access media. To be backwards compatible with the CD-R/W standard, current DVD-R/W's incorporate Multimode laser diode drivers. This allows the drive to adjust the beam and operate at the proper current and pulse to handle the media type you choose to give it. If this was damaged, the drive most likely wouldn't work at all. However, it has happend to others as GrofLuigi pointed out. But...it is possible to adjust the beam intensity manually and if the little control inside your drive managed to move a bit, it could interfere with accessing CD's properly. I mention it only because it is a possibility. Realistically, I wouldn’t worry about it at all right now. Adjusting the beam intensity is a rather well known DIY fix for playstation's and XBOX's that have problems reading game discs or to increase the likely hood of successfully recognizing home burned discs depending on the drive. This shortens the lifespan of the drive, but beats buying a new system for a while. Adjusting beam intensity manually should never be done on R/RW drives however. Okay...so lets try a few things to make sure it's not a software/ OS issue. You tried 2 different win98 systems, but more than likely have the same wnaspi layer installed and burning software plus who knows what else. 1. Delete Upper and Lower device filters from the registry. Most DVD/ CD related software install their own hardware filters to interact with your drive. It's very possible that some of your filters are buggy or have conflicts. Just about any and every problem you can think of could be caused by filter issues. (Bad TOC's, CRC problems, system lock up's when the drive reads media, slow burns, etc) Now to repair in 2000 or newer systems, navigate to: HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318} and delete UpperFilters and LowerFilters. Immediately reboot the PC. I'm a bit rusty with win98 so you may find it easier to just search the registry for the above class to delete the U/LFilters entries. An easier method if you have WMI/WBEM repository installed. Filter Detection and Removal Tool 4.6 (After reboot, you may later find that some programs that interact w/ your drive won't work anymore. Find the most recent version of the program in question and reinstall to fix. I would make it a point to do 1 at a time to evaulate it's effect on the system. It would be wise to backup your registry before editing the registry.) 2. Go to http://radified.com/ASPI/forceaspi.htm and download ForceAspi. The author recommends to then: Can't beat good advise...... 3. Now grab an audio CD and a data CD, and see if you have any luck. Also check that DVD's are recognized as well. If not just let us know and we can try other solutions that are even more frustrating and time consuming to complete. I'd like to point out that your DVD drive is sharing an IDE channel with a HD. On old mobo's the IDE channel will default to the fastest setting of the slowest drive. Basically your HD is not as quick as it could be, esp. because you set the DVD drive to PIO-4 IN BIOS. Addionaly, the BIOS defaulting to lowest PIO mode on that channel would suggest you are using a 40pin IDE cable or a damaged 80pin cable. Go to newegg, fork over ~$5 and get yourself the proper cable. In fact, replace the other IDE cable if it's in bad shape or is 40pin. It will cost you next to nothing and will improve speed and reliability of your drives. If you do decide to keep that HD connected on the same channel, avoid burning any data directly from it. Move any files you decide to burn to one of your 120gb hd's first or you could run into I/O issues and wind up making coasters. Hope it helps!
  8. Did you run chkdsk with the /f switch on the active system partition before making your image? If not, give it a try. As with all software, the latest version may not be the best to use. Try making an image from a TI build that is a bit older than the one you are using now. I've been using TI since version 6 and actively participate as one of many beta testers. Acronis has a somewhat well known track record for releasing minor build updates that sometimes cause major headaches. Broken compatibility with controllers that normally are supported and image creation/restoration issues under certain conditions is not uncommon to run into. I would think any imaging or partition utility is just as likely to run into those problems. What makes Acronis better than most IMO is their genuine interest to resolve issues, provide support for newer hardware, and release updates. (I can think of a few companies that hardly ever issue updates for new controllers or fix major bugs.) Keep in mind they can't fix what they don't know is broken. If you are sure you have done everything right, you should let tech support know and they can give you a little utility that will collect the necessary hardware info they need to correct the problem. Also, you should give a serious look at the TI FAQ's + Common Problems/Solutions thread over at Wilders Security Forums. http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=29880
  9. Since MPC and WMP9 can play the files, you can take a deep sigh of relief knowing that your wmv files are fine. This is a codec issue and / or a WMP .dll registration issue Please refer to this very insightful webpage that covers just about every issue involving WMP & wmv/asf. WMP FAQ: A trouble-shooting guide for Windows Media Player problems I believe your problem specificlly is a dll issue and is not a major hassle to fix. However I'm willing to bet a reinstall of MS's codec package will fix the problem quickly. Get it here. Install and reboot. If for some crazy reason you still can't play your files, get Dial-a-fix and run it using the options to register WMP, Direct X, programming cores/runtimes, etc. If in the future you do have a damaged .asf/.wmv file and need to repair it, try either asfbin or Movica. Both are free. asfbin is IMO the best utility you can use to re-index and remove damage from those files.
  10. 1. Do you have enough free space on the drives you are using to make this? Also, your partitions should be NTFS to make this...they are right? 2. What switches are you using in CDimage gui? 3. Are you messing with the folders while you are compiling your image? You can always try mkisofs or UltraISO, MagicISO to name a few.
  11. Yes....it is a shame. It was a great project. MS apparently didn't really go into detail explaining their decision to do this. The project was active for many years that MS had to have known of it's existence. For now the last builds they may not have objected to are still available on the torrent page. http://autopatcher.m2ys4u.co.uk **If a mod decides to blank out the above link... I'll understand
  12. 80x Boot Codes - Make sure that cdsh.bin is at the proper location. - If the image size is 1.5gig+ then mount the image using a virtual CD program and reference the drive in Virtual PC instead of the .ISO directly. - Make sure you are using an agreeable mkisofs for what you are doing. There are quite a few modified versions. (Try using the mkisofs that is included with Bart's PEBuilder.) Please post the structure of your image after it was made with mkisofs. Your problem most likely is incorrect file/folder placement. Nlite allows you to build a ISO with a custom boot loader using mkisofs. Perhaps you should try building through it's GUI and see if that doesn't help you find where you are going wrong.
  13. Alcohol and UltraISO can copy a multisession DVD or CD. Just keep in mind that that the ISO format does not support multisessions. Save your disc image as .nrg, .bin/.cue, .mdf/.mds or any of the other various formats that support a multisession.
  14. Both VMWare and VirtualPC can have problems booting big ISO's. Virtual PC in particular is well known for failing on large ISO files. Do not assume that your DVD ISO is a coaster yet. 1. Whenever testing bootable ISO files that are bigger than 2gig's in size, always mount the ISO to a virtual drive (Alcohol 120, Alcohol 52, Daemon Tools, , Elby Virtual Clone Drive, MagicISO's MagicDisc). Then reference the virtual drive letter instead of the actual ISO file. 2. The NTLDR is probably a result of the above issue but if it still exists, try making a cd size ISO with just a few OS builds at a time. If they work on a CD size ISO, they will work on a DVD size ISO. Additionally, problems may arise if the DVD is bigger than 4 gig's. I remember reading that causes some additional booting issues if not handled correctly due to the placement of files on the actual disc.
  15. I also asked a while back about Virtual CD-RW software. http://www.msfn.org/board/Virtual_CD_RW_DVD_RW_t62174.html
  16. You may need to change the settings a little bit w/ some burning programs.... ex: If you use Nero, you obviously need to select loader.bin as the image to use. Additionally, in the advanced settings area you must use - No emulation # of loaded sectors: 4 Load segment: 07C0 (Actually you can use 0000 but the older 07C0 is the more known entry due to all the bootable guides. Don't forget to tell Nero not to add ;1 Keep in mind that some bootable programs may have other requirement (ex. lower case, Joliet (+extended), RockRidge, etc) Because I always test my distro's in VMware before burning....I always build the ISO first and then burn the image. Programs like CDImage and UltraISO use the "El Torito' style by default so just selecting loader.bin is all you need to do. (I personally use mkisofs to build my ISO's) If the both of you are still having issues you can look at Brinkmann website. He has a BCDW info section with a quick How-To.
  17. I always recommend to anyone buying a new laptop home PC to always get an additional extended warranty (3-5 yrs). Getting replacements is so much easier I've dealt with Sony, HP, and IBM for clients w/ standard warranty coverage and I have never been impressed. The turn around time for a replacement is too long, you usually have to pay for shipping and they seem to always try to pin the problem to negligence on the buyers part which means that they will then proceed to charge big $$ if you want them to repair it (plus a possible inspection fee ). Little things like mobo's and HD's are easy enough to get coverage or RTM's on but PC's are just too expensive. getting to your question The hassle and time for trying to enforce standard coverage on things like battery chargers, cords and such is not worth it IMO. Laptop power cords for example usually do get extensive abuse by the user which means the warranty won't cover it . I would probably say the same for most accessories as well. When you figure you will pay for shipping on the item as well, it's usually easier just to get buy replacement. However, a warranty in general must provide coverage for all items that are packaged (for computers it does not need to provide coverage for software.) The warranty may have restrictions on the length of coverage for certain items and integrated parts or circumstances that would void coverage. Also, there may be a clause present that may define when a product is actually considered defective. Anyone who has ever bought a new flat screen monitor just to see dead pixels when they 1st turn it on should know what I'm talking about.... So though the warranty technically should cover battery chargers and cords and such, the likelihood of actually getting those items replaced are slim. As for Vista.... your stuck with it. If the screen coating is so reflective that it interferes with your enjoyment then go with a higher quality screen type or different manufacturer. Just bear in mind that screen coatings have made huge advances in the past few years. If the screen is glossy (shiny), it does not necessarily mean that it is going to have a glare problem when the screen is actually on. I have a Sony laptop which uses WXGA TFT with XBRITE-HiColor. The screen indeed is glossy but looks fine to me even with a light source behind me. Also, proper room lighting and monitor placement should be the major concern. Any type of screen is going to be a strain to look at if the room's light is going against you. I've been to some office's where something as simple as taking out a few fluorescents or changing any area to use more indirect light made a world of difference
  18. You really need to explain what you are trying to accomplish as _Erik suggested. You want to add a new HD on a add-on SATA card for more storage. Then you want to wipe your Raptors before you even get the add-on card or drive. You end by wanting to connect your new drive and worry about the OS being able to detect the new drive. (Your OS at this point would have been wiped BTW) If you are simply adding the new HD, you will first need to install the drivers for the add on SATA card before the OS will be able to detect the new HD. Very simple and will not require an OS reinstall. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ You can find way cheaper add-on SATA cards if you don't ever plan on using the card for the RAID aspect now or in the future. Based on your choice however, I assume you would like RAID to be an option for your card. Though I don't care much for HighPoint out of personal preference ...from a quick glance I would strongly suggest that you do not buy the HighPoint RocketRAID 1810A. For the same price at newegg you can buy the newer HighPoint RocketRAID 2210 PCI-X SATA II Controller Card. This has support for SATA and SATA II and the latest and greatest features like SATA II's theoretic 3GB transfer rate, support for NCQ, hot swap and hot spare, a much quicker initialization than the 1810A card, Online Capacity Expansion, Online RAID Level Migration... blah blah blah.... Here is the link... HighPoint RocketRAID 2210 PCI-X SATA II Controller Card RAID 0/1/5/10 JBOD
  19. adding on to nmX.Memnoch's reply... Proper planning before even creating the array so a optimal block size is chosen is just the beginning of RAID madness. This requires an involved knowledge of the kind of activity and size of files the array will be handling to obtain the best performance possible while not burdening the CPU more than needed. There is a lot more to it after that as well when you consider partitions still need to be created, cluster sizes need to be chosen, future scalability and backup/recovery solutions need to be considered. The list goes on and on. For most companies I have done on-call tech support for, this is not a big deal since they set up RAID mainly with database files, huge CAD files, etc in mind. The data files tend to be similar in size so it's not terribly difficult to choose what would be appropriate. The financial resources certainly help as high quality gear makes it possible to see the performance gains that all those nice shiny boxes in the store tell you can be achieved. Fr33m4n, I'm sorry that I'm going to use you as an example of where you can go wrong. Try to take comfort in the fact that I'm no stranger to bitter lessons learned. Now on to RAID really saturating the mainstream consumer market.... Most home users with good intentions at heart, want the machine to be as fast as possible (I know I do). In this case, it's RAID. The mobo manual even gives you a quick walk through in setting up the array which is 10pg's of pictures and half a page of written instructions. Quick and easy to do. This leads us to.... Okay... sounds good. However Fr33m4n then went on to creating 2 partitions.... a system partition of 70gig and another at 400gig for personal use which is accessed quite heavily for the games and movies etc. This basically is no different than setting up 2 partitions on 1 HD without considering the impact it will have on the drive's performance. A 2nd partition can be really useful for holding personal items or when your OS has a disaster. The drawback is that the HD now spends considerably more time traveling from one partition to the other to access data. However, since the person is using more than 1 physical HD to set up an array, this situation is often overlooked. So in this case eyeball, I would argue that the improvement one would expect RAID to provide, is marginal at best. In fact, Fr33m4n probably would have had a faster system had he skipped RAID and used 1 HD for personal stuff and the other HD for his OS (while making an effort to keep his system partition tidy since he has so much stuff...). More importantly, he wouldn't be stressing his situation nearly as much. Too bad dedicated arrays require more HD's and the money to buy them doesn't grow on trees. Fr33m4n....getting a temporary HD to use is really the only safe way to protect your data in this situation. All the little tricks that I could thinks of would be time consuming and very risky. Perhaps if you free up more space and get rid of things you honestly don't need or can reinstall (delete the games while keeping the save data or burn some of those movies to DVD), we could try a few things to move everything else. As to your DDR dilemma, try this... 1. Get a can of air and attach the straw to it. 2. Unplug your PC. 3.. Blast your slots to make sure there isn't any gunk or some mangled plastic bits if you really forced the RAM in the slots. Might as well quickly clean the inside as well.... 4. Plug the DDR modules firmly in the slots and then remove them. Do that 3-4 more times to all memory and slots. 5. Get a lint free cloth and use some denatured alcohol (or Caig DeoxIT & ProGold if you have it) to clean the contacts on the DDR modules. (Use rubbing alcohol is you have a hard time finding denatured.) 6. Let dry. Plug in the DDR and then the power cord. 7. Go into BIOS and disable any overclocking or special turbo memory settings that you may have enabled. 8. See how it goes for a while and tell us if it worked Good luck!
  20. Well RAID 0 is volatile to begin with so that wasn't the best move if those 2 HD's hold all your stuff. If you are using the mb's on-board raid, I doubt you are really utilizing whatever the RAID 0 might be speeding up (if anything at all). Assuming your system is on your RAID setup... Easy way would be to swap the mobo with a new (better if you want...) mobo that has the same type of RAID controller your current one has. There are several software solutions that can recognize, migrate and rebuild a RAID config. Most will require an equal amount of space as your current config to work with though. Some disk image prog's (I believe Acronis and Paragon) can backup an arbitrary (but intact) RAID array and convert the contents to a simple disk image. Actually there are a lot more ways to attack this but it would help if you clarify what is on the RAID exactly, what type of RAID controller used, why you went with RAID 0 in the 1st place since you should always be prepared to lose it at any given time.
  21. loader.bin is the boot file it is in the bcdw folder. Loader.bin will look for bcdw.bin in the bcdw folder and then process your bcdw.ini configuration. Root (loader.bin set as boot file) bcdw ---bcdw.bin ---bcdw.ini
  22. If you have a good amount of RAM and don't use many resource-intensive apps in the background (esp. P2P & Audio/Video), you may not need an extra scratch disk. RAM The best improvement for speed would be going to the menu Preferences... and increasing the Memory Usage setting. 65%-75% would be a good starting point. I've read some people being happy with 90%+ (a bit high for me since I often have several things running when I use PS). Also, I keep the cache level at 4. Adding more RAM to your PC and taking advantage of PS's Memory Usage would be the best way to go IMO. (I was going to discuss using a RAM drive as an option but it would be unnecessary because of the above setting.) HD If you are using huge files or have a large number of layers open at once then RAM may not be enough. Adding a dedicated high speed HD on it's own channel would be best. Try not to use an old HD you liberated from a PC that is older than you are. Remember, since speed is your concern, you want the fastest HD you can possibly find and ideally use it only for cache/swap. By not storing your personal files or apps on the HD you can avoid ever having to defrag the drive as well. (Just a reminder to anyone reading this... creating a new partition on your primary HD and using it for swap space is one of the worst things you can do.) USB, Flash.... No. Though I don't mind discussing the reasons about why not if you really want to.
  23. Most probably you have a ASUS PTGD1-LA Goldfish mobo. Northbridge cooks at stock speeds and the cooling on this mobo is dismal. I find the board to be a bit unstable as it is..... trying to OC with it is pretty pointless unless your doing it to amuse yourself. Plop down $60- your $ limit and replace the mobo (don't forget your cooling too... ) if you are looking to OC. If you have this board....you have Intel on-board video. Look for a vid card / mobo combo and you'll see a world of improvement.
  24. In the system32 folder of your ERD Commander build you will want to open a file called DT.CFG. This file is used to for desktop shortcuts. Example shortcut name NotePad position 170, 10 icon %SystemRoot%\system32\notepad.exe program %SystemRoot%\system32\notepad.exe I don't use ghost but if you have a folder 'Ghost' at the root of the CD and want to start a program called 'Ghost32.exe'... shortcut name Ghost32 position 250, 110 icon %SystemDrive%\Ghost\Ghost32.exe program %SystemDrive%\Ghost\Ghost32.exe * For every new desktop icon add (+80 to go down, +100 to go right) * %SystemDrive% is the root of the CD. * %SystemRoot% starts in the I386 folder (or the MININT folder if you installed ERD Commander to HD or USB media). Also, file associations can be added or changed somewhat by modifying the FE.CFG which is also located in the system32 directory. Some of the associations like .txt can only be changed by modifying ERD's registry hives which is a bit more time consuming to do.
  25. The files in the hp partition need the security attributes reset. You can use something like ERD Commander to reset the permissions or through windows, highlight all files and folders and then reset security permissions by 'taking ownership' (replace the owner for all files and objects). You may at that point want to add to a new group to the security list...select the "Everyone" profile and enable all permissions. You should then be able to access the drive. (I have an HP as well and I opted to after the above, to just make a compressed image of the drive w/ Acronis True Image to back it up and delete the partition. Then I imaged the working OS. This way a restore only take ~ 4 min. compared to the long wait of Recovery option that HP provides) Hope it helps.
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