Tripredacus

Being able to check from within the OS itself is trivial. As in the op, the disks were not allowed to be booted. Now the documentation for DISM FFU does show what is and isn't allowed: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/deploy-windows-using-full-flash-update--ffu In typical fashion, we cannot be entirely certain if the line of "Captures of disks that have Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) enabled are not supported" means: - vss is enabled and a capture is present or - vss is enabled but a capture hasn't occurred yet. The worst part is that while DISM will fail a capture for verify specific reasons (not generalized, or vss is enabled) the log file do not make sense. It will just show some strange message that you have to figure out what is causing it. As an example, this is the errors that DISM will throw if the OS is not generalized COfflineHiveT<class CEmptyType>::Init#63 failed with 0x0. CWindowsOSHelper::GetOSInformation#197 failed with 0x800703f1 CDiskReaderT<class CEmptyType>::GetOSInformation#280 failed with 0x800703f1. CManifest:Initialize#836 failed with 0x800703f1. CManifest::CreateInstance#536 failed with 0x800703f1. FfuCaptureInternal#420 failed with 0x800703f1. FfuCaptureImage#116 failed with 0x800703f1. I did not save the log file for my test capture which was a disk that had an OS that had VSS enabled and was not generalized, but the errors were different. There seems to be a load order regarding what DISM looks at for compatibility, as the log had different errors entirely with nothing in common with this one. I also am not sure about this statement: "Deploy Windows faster on the factory floor by using the Full Flash Update" since I can't imagine how it would be faster to push an image tens or hundreds of gigs in size vs an image that is ~8 GB.

Put those files into a container first. Also you may want to see if the limitation is with the destination file system or not. Explorer can be a limiting factor as it does not support all 255 characters in ASCII, but command.com does. Other programs may also not care about symbols in filenames. To see what kind of symbols you can use, on a modern OS you can use Character Map. Say select Arial and then change the character set to DOS: United States. It will show all 255 characters you can use to create paths (or possibly) filenames with on Win9x, including "No-Break Space."

We don't need more than one "Windows 10 is terrible" threads.

DISM FFU (sector based) does not work if VSS is enabled, among other things. In the end, it was one of those other things that determined I could not use it... the fact that the OS on the disk was not generalized.

No problem with themes.

I had to install drivers only twice. I think the last time was in October of last year. Their software does have an option to disable auto-update, but not auto-download. It is kind of annoying.

You'll have to wait a while before adding a link in your signature.

I also use an RX 580, but specifically the Sapphire model that has the BIOS switch. At the time I was researching for a new video card, I was only able to find that Sapphire sold cards with 8 GB and supported legacy. The other brands (and still some of Sapphire's) were UEFI only. That doesn't make a difference in regards to drivers, but for viability on a Win7 legacy system in general.

Sharing information on how to download custom Vista ISOs on this site is forbidden. Make sure to read and abide by the forum rules in order for this topic to remain active.

I have three disks that have Windows 10 on them that I have to image. The caveat is that I cannot boot into these disks to see if VSS is enabled prior to doing this. If VSS is enabled, is there a file or folder present that is there and is not if disabled? What about registry keys?

That font doesn't look bad to me. Maybe it is a bit thin. For Twitch, I know that they changed something recently with their fonts, perhaps in the past month. Even on Chrome on Win7 it looks different. Not usuable but something definately changed. But perhaps Twitch didn't change anything and maybe something changed in Chrome. Also that site you put your screenshot on put some giant black box over it, I had to edit the local HTML to see the picture. Maybe put screenshots to someplace else like Imgur.

I didn't know it was the case either until I had requested a custom firmware. One in particular was when I was dealing with a particular board that only supported 32bit EFI, but our imaging platform runs on 64bit EFI. In the initial request, the ODM had provided a BIOS that disabled 32bit EFI and enabled 64bit. This wasn't correct for our uses, and they corrected it by providing a BIOS that has 32bit EFI enabled for Hard Disk and 64-bit enabled for USB/LAN. However, this ability may vary based on the hardware. I only have these two situations from personal experience (the other being the NUC that could do dual 32/64bit EFI) to go on. Physical hypervisors may be different, I haven't bothered to play around with them, nor with bothing to boot EFI on VMWare. Only that in Hyper-V, the hypervisor doesn't seem to care and it is only the VMs that are set to being EFI or not. Also then again, I don't know if you can do 32bit and 64bit on Hyper-V at the same time.

Be it either with WMIC, Powershell or directly interacting with WMI itself. The situation is that Windows reads from DMI during boot and this is the information you can find in the hardware based WMI classes such as Win32_Baseboard. The problem I run into is that if I change the data in the DMI, Windows does not return the new information when reading from the WMI class again. It seems to be because it had populated that information on boot, it doesn't expect it to change. I have verified the information is changed in the firmware, but the relative fields in WMI do not update automatically.

A UEFI isn't really 32bit or 64bit. The Firmware vendor uses a hidden ("BIOS") setting to enable booting 32-bit or 64-bit EFI applications. The hardware market is kind of "rigged" these days, where most firmwares will only run a 64bit EFI application. The exception is for low-powered devices which may be set to run 32bit. There do exist some hardware with some BIOS versions that support booting either that I have encountered in the past. The question regarding your test on the Surface Pro, that apparently worked, is whether or not the image you have created has the EFI boot application or not. I suspect that it never really mattered what the disk type was for booting EFI, but that the market just figured to have gotten past 2 TB disk sizes by now and reality just hasn't caught up yet. Also the consideration that the industry only really cared about the security functions of UEFI, such as Secure Boot and whatever else, as being the reasons why EFI/GPT was/is being pushed so hard.

From the questions (copy-pasta the questions in a reply if you want) Do you plan to upgrade to Windows 10 in the next 12 months? Most people probably only have one computer so this question would be valid. Technically, I already upgraded to Windows 10, but I don't use that computer for my daily web surfing. I suspect I may eventually get to a point where I'd need up upgrade my gaming PC to Win10, but so far that doesn't seem like it would be any time soon. The driver for that will likely be game clients, once they eventually drop Win7 support. There is also the aspect that some software that requires Windows 10 will work on Windows 7 (or the server equivalents) by making use of home directory dependency pathing. Are you paying for extended support? No What is the main reason you haven't upgraded? Everything stills works as required. I guess this response would fall into the "Don't Want to Upgrade" option that was in the poll. I could also technically fit into the "I'm moving to Linux" response, since the computer I have Win 10 on is a dual-boot with Linux.

Welcome to the MSFN!

When Microsoft uses the term "install" they are referring to Setup.exe and an unaltered installation. They also use terms in relation to what is supported, not what is technically possible. MSFT has also told me you can't install DOS with WDS which is not true. Is it a lie or is it just that it is something that they do not support? What about the fact that it is commonly accepted you can't boot both 32bit and 64bit (dual/hybrid) on the same hardware in EFI mode, despite the fact that there are boards where this is possible? The capabilities of being able to boot (or use) Windows in unsupported configurations is solely dependent on the hardware and what the firmware allows. I see in your examples you only did this on a virtual machine. Repeating this test on different models of actual hardware may yield different results.

As a bare minimum, I usually run a setup like so: - Chromium based browser, typically Iron but sometimes Chrome. - Mozilla based browser that supports NoScript. - Malwarebytes free version for impromtu scanning - CrystalDiskInfo for checking hard disk health. - 7zip for opening archives. I do not use an actual anti-virus software on any machine. Defender (built-into Windows) does well enough and other anti-virus are not worth the overhead on the system. Hardening the system via browser settings/add-ons and using the firewall (in Windows or as hardware) properly (using alllow-list standpoint) is much better than running with reckless abandon and hoping your anti-virus program will save you. I also never use actual email clients, only webmail.

Its as if you need to get a dedicated phone just for the bank website. Like one that isn't even on a plan and you connect only using wifi or something.

Is that for all updates or just the ESU Licensing Preparation Package?

If you know the kb numbers, you can get updates for the Embedded SKUs from the Update Catalog: https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Home.aspx IDK if they will install to the retail OS, I haven't had the need to install an update in awhile.

On a well used system, trying to dig through the dir structure manually is a real pain. The visualisation programs are so much easier for that task.

There is a Treesize for Win9x as well, all the way at the bottom of this page: https://www.jam-software.com/treesize_free The UI is reminiscent of some Norton program that did/does the same thing, but I can never remember the name of it.

Which HAL is installed? This shows up in Device Manager in the Computer section. I have seen a wrong HAL in XP cause a MP appear as a UP in both Device Manager and Task Manager Performance tab. https://www.betaarchive.com/wiki/index.php/Microsoft_KB_Archive/309283

It is invalid parameter. Also not aware of this IE9-vista.msu. Usually you install IE9 by way of installing the 3 .msu pre-requisite updates and then running the .EXE. In this scenario, IE9 is not integrated into the image, rather is installed during first boot. There are also compatibility issues regarding Vista where you may need to use the WAIK for the OS version. WAIK 1.1 for Vista SP1 servicing. Also that you may need to use peimg to service images instead of DISM. Verify /english exists. /image is for a file not a mount point. Make sure you are using the Deployment Tools Command Prompt.