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  #1  
Old March 23rd, 2014, 11:11 PM
justacruzr2 justacruzr2 is offline
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Question Hard Drive Label Problem

Hi. I'm seeking help with an elusive problem that has bugged me for some time now. No matter what I name ("label") my C: drive, everytime I restore my registry it gets capitalized. Never used to do this until after installing the Intel App Accelerator. Uninstalling the update has had no effect. Replacing every file it touched with the system originals has had no effect. Of course I had made a registry backup before the install and restoring that registry has had no effect. I used InCtrl5 to monitor the install and checked to see that everything Intel did was reversed. It actually touches very little. So I rename the drive again. Just caps and small letters (ie. Local Disk). Looking at the registry key
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version\Explorer\Mount Points\C (for the "C" drive) shows that what I have renamed it is there ("LabelFromReg" subkey). I save the registry with Registry Checker and reboot into DOS and use the Windows\Command\scanreg way to restore the registry (that I just made with the new name) and reboot. When boot is complete I open My Computer and there is the name (Label) re-capitalized again. I go into the registry editor again and look at the above mentioned key but now it is all zeroed out. Using the "run" method (scanreg /restore) produces the same result. It's annoying. Seems like during boot something is intercepting the label from the registry and using the volume name from the hard drive (sector 0 volume name). I have tried replacing the iosubsys files that I think might be involved at boot with their original counterparts (assuming that one might have become corrupt) but that does nothing either. This problem only happens when I restore the registry. Otherwise, it remains unchanged from each shutdown to the next startup. I have thought of every possibility I can (and tried them) yet.....????? Anybody have an idea that I haven't thought of? Thanks in advance.
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  #2  
Old March 25th, 2014, 02:23 AM
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Murf Murf is offline
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NTFS partitions allow lowercase names, FAT 32 does allow only CAPITALIZED names.

Your partitions FAT 32?
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  #3  
Old March 25th, 2014, 05:08 PM
justacruzr2 justacruzr2 is offline
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Hi Murf. Thanks for your reply. All drives on my system are FAT32. I have 4 and there is an opersting system on 3 of them. Specifically 98/ME/XP. When you click on My Computer, Windows Explorer comes up and the first thing you see are all the drives attached to the system... an icon with the drive name below it. They have always been as such: "A: Floppy Disk, C: Local Disk, D: Local Disk", etc. And that's what I'm talking about. 98 and XP show it this way and so did ME until I installed and then uninstalled the Intel Application Accelerator update. Everytime I restore the registry when I'm in ME, "C: Local Disk" gets changed to "C: LOCAL DISK" even though I have put back everything the way it was before the install. I tried the same Intel update in 98 to see if I could catch something I missed when I was doing it in ME but saw nothing unusual and when I uninstalled it from 98 everything went back to normal in 98 and I am not getting the same problem there...kinda wierd! The Intel update program probably does something a little different on ME than 98 since ME has some very different system files than 98. In fact, this update is for the Intel 810/815 chipset so it is designed to be used on any of the operating systems I have including XP. Guess I could run it again in ME and see if maybe there was something I missed. Since 98 and XP are not doing the same thing I'm guessing that the Intel update doesn't do anything sneeky like flash some new values into the BIOS rom as that would affect all drives on the system. Back to the drawing board I guess.
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  #4  
Old March 25th, 2014, 05:10 PM
justacruzr2 justacruzr2 is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Murf View Post
NTFS partitions allow lowercase names, FAT 32 does allow only CAPITALIZED names.

Your partitions FAT 32?
Hi Murf. Thanks for your reply. All drives on my system are FAT32. I have 4 and there is an opersting system on 3 of them. Specifically 98/ME/XP. When you click on My Computer, Windows Explorer comes up and the first thing you see are all the drives attached to the system... an icon with the drive name below it. They have always been as such: "A: Floppy Disk, C: Local Disk, D: Local Disk", etc. And that's what I'm talking about. 98 and XP show it this way and so did ME until I installed and then uninstalled the Intel Application Accelerator update. Everytime I restore the registry when I'm in ME, "C: Local Disk" gets changed to "C: LOCAL DISK" even though I have put back everything the way it was before the install. I tried the same Intel update in 98 to see if I could catch something I missed when I was doing it in ME but saw nothing unusual and when I uninstalled it from 98 everything went back to normal in 98 and I am not getting the same problem there...kinda wierd! The Intel update program probably does something a little different on ME than 98 since ME has some very different system files than 98. In fact, this update is for the Intel 810/815 chipset so it is designed to be used on any of the operating systems I have including XP. Guess I could run it again in ME and see if maybe there was something I missed. Since 98 and XP are not doing the same thing I'm guessing that the Intel update doesn't do anything sneeky like flash some new values into the BIOS rom as that would affect all drives on the system. Back to the drawing board I guess.
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  #5  
Old April 7th, 2014, 01:32 PM
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The Dude The Dude is offline
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Hi buddy.....

Yea I just checked on my computer (98se) and C drive is listed as "Local Disk" (For type)

Try this: Goto MY COMPUTER then right click 'C' and choose properties and see if you can set the label there.... (And it stays correctly)


Good luck buddy!
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  #6  
Old April 7th, 2014, 05:23 PM
justacruzr2 justacruzr2 is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by The Dude View Post
Hi buddy.....

Yea I just checked on my computer (98se) and C drive is listed as "Local Disk" (For type)

Try this: Goto MY COMPUTER then right click 'C' and choose properties and see if you can set the label there.... (And it stays correctly)


Good luck buddy!
Thanks for the advice. I'll try that. Did have something different happen over the weekend. Both C: drive and E: drive got capitalized right in front of my face and without restoring the registry. So I'm thinking that the restore is not the problem but that it may be the file (.exe or .dll) that is responsible for monitoring the registry. Either that or maybe something in the way Norton Utilities 2001 works. Have had some wierd things happen from time to time with it. When I first bought it in 2001 I went to the update sight and there was an update for it. But now when I go it says I don't need any update even though I uninstalled it and re-installed it just in case something got corrupted. HA! No update indeed! I think they just took everything off their system for the older versions and just tell you that to get rid of you. Thank you Symantec. The investigation continues.
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  #7  
Old April 7th, 2014, 10:44 PM
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The Dude The Dude is offline
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Yes it can be a bother for sure!!

Im glad your sticking with ME,i know a few ppl who have NO PROBLEMS with it.......

Do you remember what update you installed before this one that messed things up?? (A file might have been changed in which case re-installing THE LAST UPDATE might correct it)

You do have SFC on there right? (System file checker) You should run that and that will tell you what files have been changed and will give you the option to restore the prev. version of it...
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  #8  
Old April 8th, 2014, 06:15 PM
justacruzr2 justacruzr2 is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by The Dude View Post
Yes it can be a bother for sure!!

Im glad your sticking with ME,i know a few ppl who have NO PROBLEMS with it.......

Do you remember what update you installed before this one that messed things up?? (A file might have been changed in which case re-installing THE LAST UPDATE might correct it)

You do have SFC on there right? (System file checker) You should run that and that will tell you what files have been changed and will give you the option to restore the prev. version of it...
Thanks for your reply. Actually I have 4 hard drives in my system and 3 of them have an operating system...98SE/ME/XP. The 4th drive is my "junk" drive. I also have 3 USB flash drives and 2 DVD rom drive burners and 1 floppy drive. ME was the operating system that came with my desktop. It's a 2001 eMachines eTower 633ids and it's still running strong. I just like it and see no need to change. I know they talk about "security issues" but no one is targeting the 9X series anymore. I've never had a problem or a virus and I don't use a firewall or virus software. ME is the OS I use the most followed by XP. I got XP Professional from a friend when the internet stopped supporting IE6 and there was almost nowhere I could go that wouldn't cause IE to crash or lock-up. It's the retail version so it can be put on any machine and does not force Windows authentication and all the other annoyances XP is known for. I will give it credit for being a very stable OS though. And it is set to the Windows "Classic" look so it's hard to tell that it's XP. 3 of the 4 hard drives I have I got from where I worked when they upgraded their PC's. They were just going to throw them out so I asked them if i could cannibalize them for whatever might be useful. All 3 had 98SE on them so that is how I came across 98SE and the 3 extra drives. Took me 2 weeks to clean up the one best 98SE since they had been used as network computers. The other 2 I wiped clean and put XP on one and the other is the "junk" drive. Anyway, just a little history of my system and now back to ME. Yes, I'll stick with ME. I've heard all the negative comments about it too but I really haven't experienced many problems with it...no more than any other Windows OS. They all have had their problems. I did every MS update that was availble for ME which might be why it runs well. Most people don't bother to keep their OS updated and that's why they probably have problems. So it's kinda hard to say which update was the last one. I wasn't keeping track 'cause I never expected this to happen. And I have been thinking the same thing as you too. Re-running the previous updates might fix it. And one other thing that I'm going to check out today. I think there was an update to Explorer back in the day and the one time I blew my system I had to put back the original version and I don't think I re-ran the update on it. This could be an Explorer problem too. Unlike 98, ME does not come with SFC as such. It does have the SFC dll in \Windows\System but not the exe. My guess is that MS integrated that into System Restore. I have System Restore turned off on my system. Never cared for it much. It's best use is to roll-back a bad install but it's no substitute for a backup. I put MS Backup from 98SE on ME. If you look at your Applets files in ME, one of them HAS MS Backup in it but it is disabled ("REM"ed out). I just copied all the files/folders from 98 and made all the registry entries manually, edited the LAYOUT files to include the entries for the files/folders and made a new CAB file to include those files. Now MS Backup shows up in the Add/Remove Programs Windows Setup tab just like in 98 and it works like a charm. Use it all the time. Wonder if MS was going to include MS Backup in ME but changed their mind. I also just recently installed KernelEx on it too. This was after the problem I'm trying to correct and so is not the cause. Really like it. I haven't had one problem since installing it and now I can go back on the internet with ME and 98SE also. Saw one guy on the KernelEx website ask why he couldn't use IE7 or 8. KernelEx won't make newer Windows programs/components work on 95/98/ME. They have to be 3rd party software that doesn't rely on Windows components. Besides, when you upgrade from one IE version to another Outlook Express and the Windows Addres Book get upgraded at the same time because they all work together. I keep the older OS's for backward compatibility also. Lets me exchange files with 3.1 and 95 users and the XP allows me upward compatibility with Vista. Only issue these days is the change that was made to hardware. As you probably know, Microsoft decided to quit supplying drivers for hardware back around 2007/2008 (I think) and left it up to the hardware manufacturers to supply the drivers which they do by burning the code into a rom chip in the hardware. So it's become difficult to find new hardware, when something on my system finally wears out, that is compatible with 98/ME. I've been buying, when necessary, used hardware off eBay. I know that's a gamble 'cause you never know how "used" it is but what else can you do these days to keep the old OS's alive. One last thing. A long time ago I had to re-install the original Windows setup from the restore disk that came with my computer. Something I did really wiped it out and I had no choice. So what I did was burn a complete copy of the "C" drive as it originally came on the computer when I bought it. That way I would always have a benchmark of the original system before any modifications and the ability to replace any original files without having to restore the whole system and lose all the changes that have been made over the years. Hope you don't mind my lengthy reply but I like the opportunity to talk computers...especially the technical side. Reply if you wish. Would like to hear what you have.
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  #9  
Old April 9th, 2014, 12:14 AM
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The Dude The Dude is offline
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No please,we have been kinda slow here on CTH lately.... Getting long replies like yours is good!!

I do have a firewall and im glad I do as last week I had an attempt to list all files on my computer!! (The attempt was blocked by my firewall) I was going to a site I usually goto and it was quite slow,not responding,etc.......... I finally checked my firewall and It had several INTERNAL ERRORS listed in the log and 1 blocked event from the domain I was trying to load....... I think whatever tried to load FROM THIS DOMAIN put my firewall thru hell!! (Crashed it a few times but thankfully DID NOT GET THRU!! (The program re-starts automatically when it crashes thankfully (Or its supposed to)))

The Event was: HTTP NETSCAPE DIRECTORIES (I think) and its an attempt to get the file list on the computer its attacking to be sent to it.....

Here is details

http://www.iss.net/security_center/r...irectories.htm


I dont know what could have happend if I didnt have my firewall running!!

Last edited by The Dude; April 9th, 2014 at 12:18 AM.
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Old April 9th, 2014, 05:08 PM
justacruzr2 justacruzr2 is offline
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. Glad to hear your firewall did it's job. Never had anything happen myself. Just lucky I guess. It's also why I keep all my personal and non-OS stuff on the 4th drive. The other 3 only have the operating systems on them. Anyway, I Googled for a Windows Explorer update yesterday but nothing came up so I guess I was wrong about that. The label problem is also happening at other times too so it's not related to the restore. You may be wondering why I restore my registry so frequently. I do this as a safety precaution after I've been on the internet. By keeping a clean copy of it any sneeky stuff put in it by whoever or whatever gets wiped out. I'm still thinking the same thing you said about the updates I did. They were done many years ago and I've lived with the label problem for a long time now. Just thought it was time to try and solve it. It may be a strange reaction between all those updates. And one other thing occurred to me. It might have been right around the same time that I installed a RAID controller card so I could use those extra drives I got. I wonder if there is a strange reaction with that too. ME has some very unique features compared to previous Windows versions. While looking for answers to my label problem I ran across an article that talked about how ME was actually a testing ground for W2K and XP. That explains why I have seen many W2K/NT/XP dll's, vxd's, etc on my system. When you right click on a file like a dll or vxd and select properties and then look at the version tab and click on the Product Version line you see the operating system it was meant for. There is also one funny thing I have noticed in 98SE. I have 2 DVD burning rom drives in the system and they are both the same model and manufacturer. Yet when I bring up Device Manager in 98 and expand the CD Rom folder it only shows 1 DVD rom drive attached to the system but Explorer shows 2 and both are accessible seperately. And it does show all 4 hard drives even though 3 of them are the exact same model and manufacturer. Kinda strange. Probably just a bug in 98. Oh, I did find one other thing yesterday too. Part of what I noticed about the label problem was that every time it happens the desktop refreshes, a new desktop.htt file is created in \Windows\Application Data\Internet Explorer and my registry jumps up in size about 60K so I wondered if maybe it was related to the Control Panel - Display option. I looked at my DESK.CPL file properties and noticed there was no version tab. Not all files have a version tab but most do and in the past I have noticed that when they don't (and they should) they are corrupt. I pulled out my original system disc and was right. The file should have been 217K but was only 95K so I replaced it. Wasn't the problem though. Wonder how Display worked with so much of it missing? Anyway, I'm going to keep investigating and re-run those updates one-at-a-time and see what happens.
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Old April 10th, 2014, 03:47 PM
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The Dude The Dude is offline
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Ya That IS a good idea!!!!

Would be nice if you could get the computer to use THE SAME REGISTRY everyday! (Everyday @ boot it backups the reg so then there are 2 cabs saved (then 3,4,5)) I have it set to 5...

I notice sometimes the cab files become unrestorable for some reason.... Like if i click the 3rd,4th or 5th cab files sometimes (from days ago) and try to restore it,it says "UNABLE TO RESTORE" -- I dont know why........


1 time I had some issues so I marked one of the cab files READ ONLY hoping it would not be changed! (The contents in it) and for a month I had that saved cab file in there (Since it was marked "read only" it wasnt auto deleted) -- A month later I went to restore it AND IT WORKED!!!!! (So my idea of making it READ ONLY kept it from being ruined)

Very strange for sure!!!!! (Why are they sometimes compromised if not marked READ ONLY??)
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  #12  
Old April 10th, 2014, 05:23 PM
justacruzr2 justacruzr2 is offline
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Yeah that would be nice. Maybe it could be done by saving the SYSTEM.DAT, USER.DAT and CLASSES.DAT files (SYSTEM.DAT and USER.DAT in 98), after they have been restored, to the Windows\Sysbckup folder and then use a couple lines like this in the AUTOEXEC.BAT file:

COPY C:\WINDOWS\SYSBACKUP\SYSTEM.DAT C:\WINDOWS
COPY C:\WINDOWS\SYSBACKUP\USER.DAT C:\WINDOWS
COPY C:\WINDOWS\SYSBACKUP\CLASSES.DAT C:\WINDOWS

You would probably need to use a switch after each of those lines to turn off the confirm. I might try this for fun to see if it works. The only other way would be if you put a line in AUTOEXEC.BAT like this:

C:\Windows\Command\Scanreg.exe /Restore

But that wouldn't work 'cause Scanreg (DOS version) always reboots after restoring the registry and you would wind up in an endless loop. And you couldn't use Scanregw because it needs Windows to run and at boot you're in DOS mode.

I've seen that happen on mine too. It's pretty rare and like you I have no idea what causes that. They show up as RBBAD. Making it "Read Only" is a good idea. I'm going to do that with mine too. Maybe Windows is set up to trash the registry backup when it gets too old? Another idea would be to save an extra copy, which I also do, in another folder or on another drive if you have more than one. Even a flash drive if you have one. I learned this from the same experience as you when you go to restore the registry and find the backup is no good. Now you're in trouble. If you do backups of your hard drive it would be in there too and could be restored to the drive and then restored using Scanreg. Anyway, still working on the other problem but no success yet.
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Old April 13th, 2014, 07:13 PM
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Quote:
Maybe Windows is set up to trash the registry backup when it gets too old?
Yea that could be,I cant explain it!! (Happens on ALL os's (@ least all WIN os's))

You would think all the saved cabs would stay re-storable until they are auto deleted though!!
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Old April 13th, 2014, 09:41 PM
justacruzr2 justacruzr2 is offline
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Cool

Yeah, you'd think they would have set it up so it wouldn't shoot itself in the foot. XP, and so probably all the newer NT based OS's, do not save a copy of the registry at boot or any other time. There is one extra copy in the folder called Repair but it's from when XP was first installed and so if you ever had to restore it you'd be back at square one. You could copy the current registry over to it from time to time which would at least keep it reasonably fresh but the best way is to keep XP and the newer ones Backed-up,

Still working thru the other problem and found a couple of updates that were missing files or the versions were wrong but they were updates un-related to anything that works with the disk drives or the registry so they didn't fix that. At least those little things got taken care of. Didn't know until yesterday that qfecheck.exe did this. Try it on yours to see if all your updates are good. Qfecheck.exe is usually found in the \Windows folder. Just left click it and it will show you all the updates that you've done in detail and whether anything is missing or incorrect. I made a shortcut on my System Tools menu so I can run it whenever. Stay in touch.
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Old April 14th, 2014, 02:06 AM
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Ya alot of interesting files for sure......

WINFILE is excellent!!! (Only program that helped me re-assign one of my associations one time (It was messed up))
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