[rdsok]

jtdoom, on Oct 19 2007, 10:26 PM, said:

(Q; why do you want to use sound in UBCD4win?)

Let me throw out some info about this question and cover a bit more concerning how UBCD4Win ( as the team ) may see the issues as well as the PE community as a whole can or does look at it in regards to the drivers themselves and not so much on the programs that are used for those or other purposes.


UBCD4Win's main focus is and has always been with diagnostics, repair and recovery as the main or primary goals. This happens to be what the original BartPE was developed for primarily and the PE community has extended it well beyond those goals to also include using PE for many other areas...

The BTS DriverPacks are by far the most complete set of drivers found anywhere in the Windows community so it was just natural that the PE community looked at them as the "holy grail" so to speak in this area. As the BTS team can attest too... its no small feat to combine all of the drivers into one set.

I think its obvious to most users why the mass storage drivers are probably the most important for diagnostics, repair and recovery purposes. While there can be no perfect solution since new drivers are introduced all of the time... the BTS driver packs certainly cover the majority and their only exceptions are limited by technical reasons such as the standard ide driver vs the raid ones... or simply because a new driver was introduced that hasn't yet been integrated.

Many neophite ( newbies ) users would think that the video drivers would be the next most important... that really isn't the case. Most video cards are also vesa compatible so even if a specific driver isn't available, they will still work at the higher resolutions. Then, those that may not be completely vesa compatible... are still VGA compatible so video is always covered even if basically.

Actually... the LAN drivers are just a bit more important than the video... With lan drivers a user can save their files to any server... whether its on their own network or a web server with FTP access. So for recovery purposes... this can be very important.

Now to address the question that started my long explaination and why a user may want sound drivers. ( Its about time eh... LOL )

Sound drivers are actually helpful in the diagnostics area for a PE build... I'm not talking about just being able to play your favorite music... but to be able to tell if the sound card is actually working. Of course the problem for this issue is still going to be the size of a build... to cover a large majority of sound drivers would also probably end up requiring a DVD instead of a CD... This would probably mean requiring a seperate PE build just to be able to test sound for most any system. This makes this area one of the last that will likely be addressed.

[SteelTrepid]

I agree with most of your points. While sound may be "cool" for some, my focus is also on recovery. UBCD4Win and BTS will NEVER be perfect because everything changes and I know my main focus is to keep UBCD4Win as compatible as possible. With everything being updated all the time, I and some of the others have little time adding "fluff" to our builds. I personally only want and like UBCD4Win as a diagnostice, file/disk recovery, and Virus/Spyware cleanup tool. Honestly, my personal build is a very stripped simple build when compared to the full UBCD4Win releases. Users requests and suggestions have led us to a more "bloated" build which is fine. However we have voiced many times that there will be little development time spent on adding "fluff" or "fun" features because our focus is on the Ultimate recovery CD.

[SteelTrepid]

I love when posts are made at about the same time!!

Randy ( rdsok ) probably helped make any of my possible rambling sound better? Well, at least that's the way it usually works!!

Anyways, I bought into that sound not working thing a while back. I agreed at the time that yes it would be a good diagnostic test for onboard sound. I don't know though, I think I'd rather give a customer a $10 sound card in place of charging them $35 for all the work and effort that messing with that probably bad onboard stuff.

[jtdoom]

Hi Steeltrepid,

the future of DPS Mass Storage is currently being tested.
I knew about problems where the motherboard BIOS setting messed us up, and I applied a tip by Debugger.

Suppose you had a Jmicron, Promise, or another driver that can be set to AHCI, or RAID, or plain old base IDE, and the mass storage plugin cannot differentiate the mode because the MOTHERBOARD vendor or CARD vendor supplied only 'indifferent' floppies.
(In the case of Jmicron, they do make their floppy look for raid/ahci.. I was cause "aka culprit" to an issue because I had used the PnP INF rather than the TM inf for txtmode. I fixed that not long ago.)
Other vendors, however, are not writing consistent drivers.
They suppose that the seller or OEM supply only those drivers applicable to that particular rig, and later on, their UPDATE can mess it up because it cannot "make" a difference because they use same ID..

That sitiuation was a pain in my eye, and I tried to get around it.
I first invented SFXminiPacks.
And now, I made a real effort to get rid of SFXminiPacks.
It should work around most BIOS mode and BIOS version issues.
Overflow has seen the work, and it is posted in the PUBLIC forum on driverpacks.net (mass storage) because it has to be evaluated by real live people testing on real live non-production machines.
(in other words, machines that can be formatted without concern for data loss.)

I want to thank you all for working with us.
You know who you are.
You need US? We need YOU.
Thank you for helping us help you.

[jtdoom]

Oh, Steeltrepid,
the $ 35 example is the best example in reasoning I saw for a while.

A bust sound card.. Okay, it could take your sytem down if it has blown.
Modem? Ditto.
I saw a thunderstruck modem bring down system, and that was after I put the "struck" modem into a NEW box.
(It actually scrambled the Mobo BIOS when I powered up. Thank goodness the bootblock was still OK, and that I could use recovery flash.)

UBCD4WIN has earned a place in my heart.
With good mass storage drivers, you can access hard drives and rescue a system, or rescue data.
(I forgot the most important. You can also access a drive after you put it in a different rig. UBCD4WIN is awesome. )

Data most often costs more than the entire rig.
Businesses that lost all current data, can go out of bizz because they did.

A system that does NOT write to hard disk, is the best tool to start data rescue/system repair.
You know that, I know that, and all we want is to make the drive accessible.
The user gets the licence for the plugins, and away they go.

DPS has a large repository of drivers, and mass storage is not easy to make everything work in.
Your work has made us open our eyes.
What works for UBCD4WIN, works for me.

This post has been edited by jtdoom: 20 October 2007 - 01:01 AM

[SteelTrepid]

jtdoom, on Oct 20 2007, 01:29 AM, said:

I want to thank you all for working with us.
You know who you are.
You need US? We need YOU.
Thank you for helping us help you.

It's all for ONE goal man!! To help all computer geeks! We all kick ass and do the best we can to help others and everyone else. These "relationships" between other groups are what really make me happy!! We all have puzzle pieces that will in the end build the complete puzzle that will help everyone!!

[hilander999]

Quote

I want to thank you all for working with us.
You know who you are.
You need US? We need YOU.
Thank you for helping us help you.

It's a WIN-WIN situation for everyone.

The initial hours spent developing the first bartpe support for the driverpacks base is an amazing number.

More work will come in time and I believe the end result should be that all driverpacks can be used within any PE environment.

Sound has merrit in a recovery environment, so does multimedia support.
Let's say a end-user hosed a drives filesysten that contained the only video footage of a vacation or a family member who died last year.
Now lets also suppose that the same user has 10,000 other video files on the same hard disk and in thier recovery attempt, all files are now labels like FILE0001.

Being able to actually play the files so you know you got the right one, instead of haveing to backup all the files which you may not have room for, especially if you trying to use a usb stick as the storage medium, is at least as important as being able to scan for a virus on a dead system.

The word RECOVERY is a key issue for me and I do believe that all sides of this conversation do have merrit, yet I still plan to have a full multimedia option availble for the users who want it.

[DigiWiz]

hilander999, on Oct 20 2007, 01:54 AM, said:

Sound has merrit in a recovery environment, so does multimedia support.
Let's say a end-user hosed a drives filesysten that contained the only video footage of a vacation or a family member who died last year. Now lets also suppose that the same user has 10,000 other video files on the same hard disk and in thier recovery attempt, all files are now labels like FILE0001.

Being able to actually play the files so you know you got the right one, instead of haveing to backup all the files which you may not have room for, especially if you trying to use a usb stick as the storage medium, is at least as important as being able to scan for a virus on a dead system.

I would actually argue just the opposite, but for the same reasons you mentioned... how to do that?

I submit that if one has a few very important videos that must be retrieved, all with non-descriptive filenames - if one doesn't have the time, and/or the space to properly backup these files for later examination with a working OS (of course I would also say that if you can't afford $90 for a 500GB HD - or significantly less for smaller drives, then they must not be that important to begin with), then one certainly doesn't have the time to go through 10,000 files looking for perhaps ONE video using a PE disc.

Assuming checking one video file every 30 seconds for 8 hours a day, it would take over 10 days to go through all those videos. 10,000 file. 20,000 double-clicks. Can you say carpal-tunnel syndrome?

Or, if one smokes, you could quit for one carton's worth (assuming about $40/carton), and use that money to buy a large spare hard drive online - free shipping/no tax



DW



The above is friendly bantor. Don't take too seriously.

[hilander999]

Quote

I would actually argue just the opposite, but for the same reasons you mentioned... how to do that?

With a little style of course.

Quote

Assuming checking one video file every 30 seconds for 8 hours a day, it would take over 10 days to go through all those videos. 10,000 file. 20,000 double-clicks. Can you say carpal-tunnel syndrome?

Well, Multimedia support also adds thumbnail previews in explorer without creating any .db files in the filesystem, so finding the important file was actually quite easy and I found it within 15 minutes of looking which is why I mentioned that scenario. This was a real experiance, so it does have merrit. Perhaps I was just lucky and next time I will spend a week smoking my way to the requested file?

Quote

if one doesn't have the time, and/or the space to properly backup these files for later examination with a working OS (of course I would also say that if you can't afford $90 for a 500GB HD - or significantly less for smaller drives, then they must not be that important to begin with)

Way too many people keep telling themselves "It will never happen to me." and we see that in at least 5 posts a month here, where people are scrambling to recover a file they did not backup, and have very little extra storage space and no money to speak of.

I was brought a dead hd a while back that had the only video footage of a woman who had died 3 years ago, and yet the owner of the drive had never burned it to a cd or made any type of backup copy. Why do people do this??? I've no idea, but I do know that this seems to be normal behavior and will not change any time soon. I've also noticed that most of the users I talk to who actually do backup thier files, do so because they have already suffered a data loss at some point, and that is when they learned the lesson the hard way.

This hd was a special case because it really was dead and I had very little time to recover the data because the only way I could get any access to it was to freeze it with a fire extinguisher (wrapped in plastic of course) which in certain situations has been a valuable tool for me, but is also a last ditch effort to recover a file and you must have everything setup and ready to go because you only have a few minutes before the drive becomes unreadable again, and every added attempt at this type of recovery lowers the chance that anything will be left on the drive to recover in the first place.

[The Piney]

Not meaning to go "off topic" but I've been thinking about that freezer trick lately. With the external drive enclosures you could put the drive in a freezer while it's connected and the system booted - when your ready you'll only have to open the freezer and turn on the drive and you could leave it in the freezer if you keep it well insulated from moisture. I'd like to get a drive that is failing just to try that out and see if it works any better..

[hilander999]

The Piney, on Oct 20 2007, 05:28 AM, said:

Not meaning to go "off topic" but I've been thinking about that freezer trick lately. With the external drive enclosures you could put the drive in a freezer while it's connected and the system booted - when your ready you'll only have to open the freezer and turn on the drive and you could leave it in the freezer if you keep it well insulated from moisture. I'd like to get a drive that is failing just to try that out and see if it works any better..

Any time I've needed to use that trick, the cold adds another problem getting the drive to spin-up after adding power. I had to tap or spin the drive on a flat surface to get it to spin-up, so keep that in mind if you decide to try this. Remember that this is only for situations where the platters are not making contact with the media any more, which is normally only found on very old drives that are overdue to be replaced, which is the normall cause of the problem in the first place. I liked the co2 fire extenguiser better because a 2 minute blast is all it takes to deep freeze a hard drive, while placing it in the freezer you need to leave it in there for about 24 hours before you start working. The same principle can be used where if you take measures to protect the drive by wrapping it in several layers of plastic &/or a ziplock freezer bag you can position it in a mannor where you can give it an aditional shot of CO2 to extend your working period, but again do not expect this to actually work because this is concidered to be a "Last Ditch Effort" to recover files from a drive that is "Truly DEAD".

[Konman]

Problems with BTS Driver Pack Installation.
No sure what I have messed up but the appearance of the driver pack does not seem to be similar to what others have described.
In the plugin list I currently Have the following showing.

NO # DriverPacks.net - BASE - Press <CONFIG> to enable or reset DriverPacks plugins DriverPacks.net\DriverPacks.net\BASE.inf
YES # DriverPacks.net - MassStorage DriverPacks.net\DriverPacks.net\MassStorage.inf
YES # DriverPacks.net - MassStorage DriverPacks.net\MassStorage.inf

I do not seem to get a line "# DriverPack MassStorage Text Mode" As described in other posts on the forum.

It seems to me that if there are 2 massStorage.inf files there may be conflicts.

I do not have a system with a raid controller handy to test the installation right now. Is there any way of looking at the in my c:\UBCD4WIN\BartPE directory to make sure the driver pack files are correctly installed?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[rdsok]

Konman,

Which version of UBCD4Win are you using?

What did you attempt to do when this happened?

[Konman]

Thanks for the quick reply.

I am using Version 3.06
With Windows XP Pro VLK.

I pressed Config to enable or Reset DirverPacks Plugin and after the refresh I had 2 lines with Differing Mass Storage Driver paths.

I then downloaded a new version of UBCD4Win from the net and did a clean install with the same results after pressing the config button.

Thanks Konman

rdsok, on Nov 18 2007, 02:12 PM, said:

Konman,

Which version of UBCD4Win are you using?

What did you attempt to do when this happened?

[rdsok]

In v3.06 there isn't a reason to rebuild the drivers unless you have downloaded an updated set from Driverpacks.net.... it already come enabled by default.

But when released.... the driver packs were not setup properly in the paths and I can help you correct "our" mistake in that area...

Go into the \plugin\DriverPacks.net\DriverPacks.net and locate the BASE.inf file
... move it to the \plugin\DriverPacks.net folder

Now, go into the \plugin\DriverPacks.net\DriverPacks.net\BASE and locate the CONFIG.cmd file
... move it to the \plugin\DriverPacks.net\BASE folder

Now delete the extra \plugin\DriverPacks.net\DriverPacks.net folder ... do another test Config to make sure that we didn't just create an error and you got the files I mentioned in the proper location.


It has been a long time since v3.06 was released... Driverpacks.net is always updating their driver packs... so if you want to use the latest... go to http://www.driverpacks.net/ and download the latest MassStorage pack and place it in the \plugin\DriverPacks.net\BASE\DriverPacks and remove the older one... the use the Config button to rebuild.