Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with boot

Brown Men's Dress Boots

saladin — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 12:09:17 -0800

Metafilter Personal Shopper: Men's Dress Boots I'm looking for a very specific type of dress boot and, having scoured both the Internet and various NYC area stores for several weeks to no avail, have now turned to the awesome power of Metafilter for help.

What I want are a pair of brown, ankle-ish high men's zip dress boots. Seems easy enough, but there are a large amount of things that I don't want on the boots, which is making the search much more difficult.

I don't want laces, buckles or Chelsea-boot style flexible panels; only zip will do. I don't want much of a heel (like this), nor do I want them to be as oddly flat as these.

I emphatically don't want a square or pointed toe, or much overhang of the sole... this is sort of the ideal toe profile I'm looking for, both in terms of shape and in terms of how much the sole protrudes out the sides of the boot (virtually none).

I don't really want any stitching or detail on the boot as a whole, but especially on the toe; what I want is a smooth, trim, continuous expanse of leather. I also don't want any texture (no pebbly, no faux-alligator, etc.).

I don't want any slouchy leather in the ankle area. I don't want any significant tread (ideally they will be leather-soled).

I don't want burgundy or tan boots, nor grayish brown. The ideal color I'm looking for falls somewhere between cognac and chocolate on the brown spectrum; the Prada boots linked above are pretty close to perfect.

Essentially, these boots would be perfect if they were zip instead of Chelsea-style.

And finally, I'd prefer to pay south of $500 for these non-existent, totally perfect dress boots.

Do these boots exist? And if so, where the heck can I buy them?

This disc was made for bootin'

CodeMonkey — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 13:10:19 -0800

I would like to make a custom boot disc that is very simple to the user. All it would do is restore an image from 6 DVDs to a hard drive. The only options I would like the user to see is: 1) format drive 2) restore drive 3) exit I would like to create this menu and all sub menus that I see fit. I have seen UBCD but it is too complicated for the people I know. I would like to use Driveimage XML and have it read the discs one at a time to restore the drive. Any suggestions?

My Dream Dual Boot Netbook

lemonfridge — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 13:39:01 -0800

Help me build my perfect netbook! I've had my iBook G4 since I started Uni over 6 years ago, but it's starting to show it's age and things are starting to play up (apart from the battery!)

So I've ordered myself a Samsung NC20 with a 2Gb of RAM upgrade. I'd really like to dual or triple boot between Windows, OSX, and....something.

1. It comes with XP, but I'm tempted to go for a Windows 7 upgrade. Thoughts?

I like OSX and wouldn't mind keeping it an option.

2. I'd like a flavour of Linux or possible the new Google OS. Thoughts?

3. I really like how quickly my current iBook waked up when I open the lid. Can I expect the same thing from my new NC20?

4. Where is the best guide to acheive what I want? I've never dual booted anything before.

Cloned drive won't boot

willcosgrove — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 00:56:43 -0800

How do I get a new hard drive, that's been cloned from my primary drive, to boot as the new primary drive? A few weeks ago I started seeing the signs of my primary drive starting to fail. So I bought a new drive. My old drive was a 300GB IDE, and my new one is a 500GB Sata drive. I used DriveXML to clone my primary to the new drive. After that was done, I took out my old primary and tried to get my computer to boot off of my new cloned drive and it's not working. I can see the drive I want to boot off of in the BIOS, and I tried setting it as the first choice to boot off of (I have 4 drives in my computer). Even with that it's not working. The screen will sit there, then it says "Boot from disk:" or something of that nature, and then an Nvidia and Intel copyright something or other pops up, and then it has a very small error message, and then it just loops over and over (But minus the post. It only posts once.)

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Help me debug this bluescreen.

DarkForest — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 14:13:30 -0800

Windows XP Home machine goes blue screen on boot. I'd like to fix it without reinstalling. Details inside. I'm fixing a Windows XP Home machine for some friends. This machine has been fine for a couple of years, but is now going blue screen on boot. I've tried a bunch of things with it, but haven't gotten anywhere. I'd like to be able to fix the machine with all their applications and data intact. I've already made a copy of their hard drive. The computer is a Dell Inspiron 530.

The only recent thing they can tell me they did to the machine was to install then uninstall some facebook toolbar control. This is a family machine, full of games and misc. junk. There's plenty of room on the hard drive.

The only information on the blue screen is the stop message with the numbers 0xC0000005 0x8053A363 0xF7A6D684 0xF7A6D380. No other error message or filename is given. No minidump is produced.

Trying to boot in safe mode shows a list of files being loaded, ending with mup.sys. A second or two after that, the system hangs in a blank blue screen. From what I've read on the net, this does not indicate anything with mup.sys itself, but something that loads after it. Booting Safe Mode with Logging does not produce a boot log.

I've been booting the machine with Ubuntu and UBCD4WIN live disks, and trying the recovery console on the Windows XP install disk. I've run Ubuntu's memory check, and chkdsk from the recovery console, and these seem not to be the problem. I can look at the filesystem and registry with no problem.

I have updated the BIOS, tried removing the video card and using the integrated video. I've run several virus/malware scans. I've tried reverting to older versions of the registry from restore points. I've tried disabling the video card driver and audio driver from the recovery console. None of this has made any difference. I'd like to be able to use the autoruns tool to experiment more with enabling/disabling things, but it doesn't seem to run on an external registry.

So, what am I missing? There must be corrupt or outdated driver or perhaps some malware in there. Dell's site does show several updated drivers, but I can't install them because I can't boot the target OS. How can I trace the drivers being loaded at startup or find out more about where it's blowing up? Any leads would be appreciated.

Also, if you know of a good forum to ask this sort of question in, please let me know.

Thanks for your help.

Help me get Adobe out of my boot sector!

Elminster24 — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:17:18 -0800

How do I COMPLETELY uninstall Photoshop CS4 to allow me to reinstall it properly? I am debating wiping my master boot sector. I installed the trial version of Photoshop CS4 (on a Windows 7 64-bit machine) and the installer froze partway through so I powered down, started back up and tried reinstalling. However now it just does not install period.

My research seems to indicate that this is due to Adobe installing a nasty bit of code in the boot sector to prevent people from simply uninstalling the trial after it expires and reinstalling it. Unfortunately for me I never even got to use it.

I tried using RevoUninstall and then the Adobe Cleanup Script for PS CS4 and none of that worked. I have Dreamweaver CS4 installed and that still works fine but I tried doing a system restore to a point prior to installing any Adobe software and tried reinstalling and that didn't work either thanks to this little boot sector gem.

Any ideas on how to get completely rid of this so I can reinstall it from scratch? I have been debating wiping the master boot record per these instructions (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927392) but I've never done anything like that before and am worried I won't be able to reinstall Windows properly with all my fun little Alienware extras.

So...question is how do I remove Photoshop CS4 COMPLETELY, and if there's no easy way to do that which I haven't tried already, how can I properly wipe my boot drive to remove their hidden key and get my machine operational again (I have my Windows 7 install disc and can get all the necessary drivers off the Dell support site).

Happy to answer any questions to clarify things.

How can I get my laptop to boot up properly?

AngryTypingGuy — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 16:36:05 -0800

Was in the process of system restore but now I can't boot up my PC. How can I get it to start up correctly? I was in the middle of cleaning up (defrag, viruses, spyware, etc.) someone else's laptop when I ran into a problem. There was some spyware I was trying to get rid of using a few antispyware programs but none of them seemed to work. So I went to my last resort and used system restore.

The laptop was never able to boot up correctly. It got to the F8 screen and listed the alternative bootup options (Last Known Configuration, Safe Mode, etc.). I tried them all but none of them had any effect. A blue screen would appear for a second and then it would shut down and try starting up again. It just does this in an endless loop.

By the way, I don't have the Windows XP installation CD.

The only other thing I can get into is the BIOS setup utility.

Any other ideas to get it to startup correctly? I really hope I can get the laptop back to the owner without screwing it up any morewhen I took it.

Thanks for your help.

emergency boot disk for laptop

Wong Fei-hung — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 09:19:46 -0800

Any suggestions on an emergency boot tool that can see my hard drive? My laptop won't boot all the way. Right when I should see three account icons I get an spinning circle and a "please wait" message. Circle and message eventually go away and I am stuck. Toshiba Satellite with Vista Home Premium 32 bit. I have tried booting from Knoppix CD (on USB) and Windows X-PE (on CD) but neither can see my hard drive. Laptop is just over a year old.

Thanks! (The Recovery Disks that Toshiba supplied with my computer are not compatible with it.)

These Boots Were Made for Walkin' and Light Carpentry

Commander Rachek — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 17:11:22 -0800

I need to buy a pair of steel-toe work boots. The problem: I am a woman with large-ish feet -- large enough that I have some trouble buying sneakers. Depending on the manufacturer, I wear a women's size 10 - 11, inclusive, with a medium width. Any tips on finding a pair that fits well? If I can't find well-fitting women's boots, are narrow men's boots a viable alternative? I'll be doing the purchasing in Northern Virginia. I've heard from multiple sources that Red Wing is a good brand for work boots, so I was going to head down to the Red Wing store in the Springfield Mall. Can I expect to find large enough women's sizes there?

I'll be using them for carpentry and occasional welding in a scenery shop.

Hello, I must be going.

4ster — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 10:39:52 -0800

While attempting to remove a virus from my in-laws Windows XP Home machine, I have now made it so that it boots to the login screen, and when you click on a username, it logs in and immediately logs my back out, leaving me at the login screen. Oh noes. A few more relevant details:

- It does this in Safe Mode as well.
- They don't back this system up at all.
- I tried to do a repair of Windows using an XP install disk, but it kept asking for an Administrator password. To my knowledge, there isn't an admin password, but I still can't get this to work.
- The file I deleted is still in the Recycle Bin.
- Less than a year ago, my wife and I provided the owners of this computer with a brand new, beautiful grandchild, but at this moment, I don't think that will help me much.

How can I get this thing to boot properly again? Thanks for your help.

WinXP Corrupt (this is news?) ...Desktop Disaster in Process

FauxScot — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 06:42:02 -0800

Win XP corrupted system and SAM files... disaster in process, need expert input and recommendation for a data recovery service I can trust. My backup strategy is to clone my hard drive periodically. Last time I did it in April, Windows told me I had changed hardware configurations too often and made me 'reauthorize' my installation, which I did, but with some trepidation.

This month, prior to installing some new development software, I went to do my normal tricks and while I am not sure what happened, after Windows asked me to reauthorize, apparently the operation did not complete.

Now, my backup is a broken and faithful version of my hard drive, and neither boot. Windows reports that the file \windows\system32\config\system is corrupt.

If I replace the system and SAM files with the last version I had, I have a computer that is a snapshot of my 4/2009 computer, with all the recent info that I stored on the desktop gone. If I were not in a quite literal frenzy of activity, I would simply tolerate this and go on, but the last four months have been a blizzard of work, and I am thinking that my only hope of recovering a lot of creative work is to send the drive out to a data recovery service.

I've only been experimenting with one of the two drives, so I do have one that has not been tampered with. I don't use restore points, and usually do this backup thing monthly, as it requires disassembly of my desktop machine, and I know I've been living on borrowed time, but that's life. The issue for today is recovery; punishment will come later!

The questions are:

Has anyone else here ever done this and how did you recover?

Who has the best (not cheapest, BEST) recovery service (with bonus points for Boston or NYC),

Secondary question:

In WinXP, where does the 'desktop' live... in the system file or SAM file? (It is there where a bunch of my most valuable files live.) XP needs both the SAM and system files to boot. Any way to extract its content if the OS won't boot?

Thanks in advance for uber tech advice....

Stinkfoot (Duhn duh-duh-duhhn)

Evstar — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 10:39:19 -0800

After working in the rain for 3 days straight and never having enough time to dry all the way out during those 3 days, one of my work boots smells punguntly of mildew. There's no footy smell, only mildew. Is there any way to get rid of it and save the boot? I imagine the mildew isn't doing any favours for the binding or the fabrics either.

Powerbook: No Logo

DiscourseMarker — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 09:41:28 -0800

Powerbook G4 won't boot up. I hear the chime, get a gray screen, but NO apple logo or spinning wheel. This is a circa- late 2003 1.25GHz PB running OS 10.5. something. Yesterday, my husband was trying to open some Word 2008 docs he had saved on this laptop. Word would not open, it just kept bouncing in the dock, and we could not get it to force quit, so he did a forced shut down of the computer. Ever since then I cannot get the computer to boot past the gray screen.

I have tried resetting the PRAM, but it still sticks at the gray screen, same with resetting the PMU and trying a safe boot. It never progresses to the Apple Logo, just stays on the gray screen. When I pressed my ear to the keyboard I heard a few clicks from the HD after trying to start up, but now there's no sound.

Any suggestions?

Am I insane?: Dual Boot/XP Pro (both)/ move to a smaller drive/ FREE!?

CodeMonkey — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 17:59:59 -0800

Am I insane?: Dual Boot/XP Pro (both)/ move to a smaller drive/ FREE!? What I would like to do is this:
I have a drive that has two partitions. First partition is already formatted, runs XP Pro, is full of all kinds of stuff I do, and is all set up correctly. I also have another XP Pro image (driveXML) which I want to use for games. It only has the OS and the games installed so its lean and mean. What I want to do is:
1) on startup have a prompt to pick which system to use (defaulting to the first partition)
2) whichever one I choose, have that become the c: drive

Yes, I know about the boot.ini file but every example I see has it working with two different OSs. I also read something about doing this will cause the system to work very slowly if at all so let me know if this is the case. Will it not work with defragging anymore? Also, I don't care if I see the unused partition in My Computer or not.

To further complicate matters, the driveXML image came from an 80 gb drive but it didn't use anywhere near that ammount of space. How can I transfer that image to a smaller space (like 36 gb) ?

Oh yes, FREE utilities would be GREAT.

What would cause computer to not finish booting after power surge?

HenryGale — Thu, 21 May 2009 14:53:36 -0800

What would cause computer to not finish booting after power surge? We had a fuse blow while my PC was booting up. Afterwards, when I turned the computer on, I received the normal initial screen that detects each of my hard drives and I got the pop up to either boot in safe mode or normal. Either option I pick Windows won't boot. I just get a blank black screen.

How can I triple-boot OS X, Windows XP and Ubuntu on my Macbook?

ilumos — Sat, 02 May 2009 07:38:54 -0800

How can I triple-boot OS X, Windows XP and Ubuntu on my Macbook? I already have OS X and Windows XP running great with bootcamp, how can I add Ubuntu to my arsenal without fudging the bootloader?

I have borked my computer. Help me save my nerd cred!

sah — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 15:47:46 -0800

Help me install Windows XP with a (non-bootable) installation CD! I decided yesterday that my computer needed a good old reformat. I dutifully backed up my data and then proceeded to wipe and repartition the drive. The problem? My XP pro install CD (which is legitimate) isn't bootable.

All I really want is a plain old DOS prompt so that I can run the stupid installer from the XP Pro CD (which is just a burned copy of the installation files). I have tried all kinds of boot CDs claiming to do this to no avail. The nearest I have come is using FreeDOS to give me a DOS prompt...sans CD-ROM support.

I have tried using the recovery console on a separate (and bootable) XP home CD. But once I get into the console it won't let me eject the CD and swap them out.

What is the best and easiest way to do this? Thank you in advance!

Dual boot, single drive, encryption

yoyoceramic — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 12:33:43 -0800

Dual booting Win XP and Win 7 off the same disk... I have already used TrueCrypt to encrypt the primary Win XP Partition. Anything I should know before attempting to do the Win 7 partition? I don't want to mess up any boot loaders. I want to proceed carefully here. I have already encrypted my Windows XP partition (the same partition that has Windows Boot Manager on it), and now I need to encrypt my other partition which contains Windows 7.

Is there anything I need to know before I proceed with this? I am assuming when I am booted into Win7 I just choose the "encrypt partition" option from TC.... I just dont want to mess up the TC boot loader that is already on my system due to the encryption job I made on Win XP.

Installing Windows 7 on a MBP with a non-working DVD drive

N2O1138 — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 23:22:32 -0800

How can I install Windows 7 (via Boot Camp or rEFIt) from an ISO? I think the Superdrive on my Macbook Pro (10.5.6) is on its last legs, because it ejects almost anything I put in it. (Meaning blank DVDs, and the DVD I burned of the ISO on my Windows XP desktop with ImgBurn). It's not extremely old (I got it refurbished on Christmas 2007), but still old enough to be out of warranty (at least I would think so). What I have available: 1tb My Book Firewire External Hard Drive 4gb 1st gen iPod Nano, that isn't even formatted as an iPod right now, so it's basically just a 4gb USB flash drive. I know I can boot from it if it's set up right, because I've been using it with this What I've tried so far:
I can't restore the iPod to the ISO in Disk Utility, so I tried to convert the ISO to a DMG (in Disk Utility and using a program called Converso), getting errors both times.

I tried mounting the ISO, erasing everything on the iPod, and copying everything straight out of the ISO to the iPod, but it doesn't appear as anything bootable.

Please help if you can

Ski boot stiffness index

bsdfish — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 22:54:06 -0800

How does the ski boot stiffness index get determined, and how does it vary between manufacturers? I usually see stiffness indexes between 50 and 150, and I wonder if some manufacturers inflate them, or if there even is anything like a standard. I have Head Edge 9.5 boots that are labeled with 5.0/6.0 (adjustable) stiffness index ... are they 50/60, or is Head's own weird system? How do you navigate the whole mess of marketing?

Help me feel better about buying a new laptop.

logicpunk — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 20:44:59 -0800

My computer is having a hardware issue when booting... I think. Started getting BSODs when booting (Windows XP, SP2). I can't say for certain what the error is since the computer restarts immediately on throwing the error (even with the automatic restart disabled). The error isn't consistent: sometimes windows will boot up fine, and I'll be able to use it normally (I'm typing on it Right! Now!).

Ran memcheck on it, and it passed. Downloaded "The Ultimate Boot CD" and booted from that - I was able to run the basic utilities, but any attempt to boot a disk image that came along with the cd either hung or threw an error.

Furthermore, the system is dual-boot, and I tried booting into the secondary OS (not booted for a couple weeks, no additional software installed for > 1 year) and it also BSODs.

So I'm thinking it's a hardware issue...somewhere. I've ruled out the memory, and the hard drive doesn't seem to have anything to do with it (else why would it hang on booting from cd), so it's probably something on the motherboard, i.e., I need a new laptop. Still, I have this nagging feeling that it *might* be software, somehow, so I'm wondering if there are any other diagnostic steps I should take to convince myself the laptop is (soon to be) toast.

Mac busted?

djgh — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 07:12:21 -0800

Is my Macbook's HD broken? Unable to boot, more details inside. I can't get my Macbook (black, OSX Tiger) to boot. I got the flashing question mark. Booted from the install disk, and Disk Utility and Startup Diak apps were unable to see my internal drive. Reset PRAM, following Apple's online troubleshooting guide, then went back to Disk Utility, which was still unable to see my drive. HD is making funny noises - am I right to assume that this is a hardware failure?

Other relevant info - I recently installed a new battery.

Kicking out a roommate not a lease in San Francisco.

hobbes — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 08:02:28 -0800

Giving ye olde boot to a roommate not a lease in San Francisco.. One lease holder, and three people not on the lease. The lease holder wants a bad roommate to leave, but doesn't want to tell him herself, so I volunteered.

Besides verbally notifying him that he's got 30-days to get out, should I have a letter written and notarized? And do I need to have that letter written/signed by the lease holder? Anything else I prepare/ be prepared for?

Thanks MeFi.

I can't read my book.

tylerfulltilt — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 12:44:08 -0800

Is my g4 iBook forked? I've had this machine for awhile now. It's a g4 iBook, 1ghz processor, 1gig of ram, bluetooth, wifi. And today it started acting up.

I can power it on. It will go to the dark gray screen, then it will go to the light gray screen with the dark grey apple in the middle. Then the little processing wheel will come up beneath it, the little "Hang on I'm thinking" wheel that pulses in a circle. Then a different screen comes up that tells me my computer needs to be restarted.

I've powered off and back on at least twenty different times to no avail. The computer will never fully boot up because it always thinks it needs to be restarted. I've tried taking out the battery and re inserting it. I've also tried running without the battery solely on ac power. None of that worked. I've tried the aboce in combination with holding the 4 bottom left keys and that didn't work either.

Does anyone have idea how to fix this?
If my Laptop is forked is there anyway I can salvage the data on the hard drive?

Please help this n00b get his Mac OSX back!

war wrath of wraith — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 16:50:05 -0800

Help me get my OSX back! Ubuntu/Mac questions inside. Ok, so I did one of those very stupid things that is probably fairly easily fixable but is still a major pain in the butt, especially to someone who knows nothing about Mac OS.

I was playing around with the Ubuntu LiveCD and wanted to try the USB drive installation. Instead of choosing "Create a USB startup disk" option, I started an "Install", thinking that it would give me that option.

I stopped before any damage was done, but when I tried to boot back into my Mac OS there was no boot disk present. I suspect that the Ubuntu install, even though I aborted it, still repartitioned my Mac HD.

So I booted back into the Ubuntu, and started up GParted. I wanted to check with the experts here before I did anything colossally stupid.

I see:

/dev/sda1  |   fat32   | EFI | 200.00MiB | ... | boot
/dev/sda2  |   hfs+    |     |  74.21GiB | ... |
unallocated|unallocated|     | 125.53MiB | ... |

I'm guessing sda2 is my MacHD, and that I need to set the flag to 'boot'. But I don't recognize the other partitions, and when I untag the 'boot' flag from sda1, it turns into 'msftres', something I also don't recognize.

I am running Ubuntu 8.10, and my Mac OSX was 10.4 (if I remember correctly--it's the OS just before the newest one).

Can someone please help me get my Mac OSX back? While I'm not a complete tech n00b, where partitions and other OSs are concerned I feel rather helpless.