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I set up a workgroup in xp a while ago and shared one folder, but currently, xp (the 1st pc with xp) sees all shares, but ubuntu (the 2nd pc with ubuntu) doesn't see xp's shares. I've been trying to resolve this issue for a long time, and all the interactions with people trying to help me resolve it from ubuntu's side are documented at http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1902537 (by l07). It was in this thread that I received the most feedback, so you could look into it concerning the details of my issue. Although varying degrees of connectivity have been achieved during this process, complete connectivity is still not sustained. It was indicated (in this thread, where I posted the results of multiple tests that were requested) that seeking a solution from ubuntu's end will yield no results: "You've pretty much exhausted everything you can do on the Linux end so until you figure out what's wrong with your XP install I'd stick with Dukto." (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1902537&page=7) However, it's possible that since that conclusion was reached, some setting has been changed somewhere and indeed it is ubuntu's config that needs to be looked into. Of course, it would be best if a solution suggested could simultaneously consider both xp and ubuntu, to ensure compatible config's, and because simply looking into ubuntu's config hasn't yielded results. Although Dukto works, it's rather inconvenient, so I'd like to get the regular samba to work. You could also post the link to a different forum where posting this question would be the most beneficial.

I'd like to clarify that I did so using weave for instance but that simply was very uncomfortable. History is a file.

I'd like to also mention that in the simplest case when I have a sequentially downloaded file I can just find the offset where the file ends and append from that point data from the larger file. Perhaps this can be done with commands available on vista.

I have several portable firefoxes and I'd like to merge all of their histories into another portable install, without affecting their own histories. I tried using weave but it's not made for that and I constantly have to change whether it uploads or merges data since apparently it uses system wide settings which doesn't help when I have multiple firefoxes open.

I'm looking for a command line tool that works on Windows to merge large binary files. I would use it in a scenario like this: utorrent has created a file on one computer and filled it partially with downloaded segments. The rest is filled with nulls. I have another partial download of the same file, and this file is not necessarily of the same size as the first one, and might have been downloaded either sequentially, from a server, or using utorrent as well. In any case, the files should be considered from beginning to end, byte by byte, so length does not matter. If file a has data where file b has nulls , nulls in b should be replaced. It doesn't matter whether the result is output to one of the original files or to a newly created file.

I don't think it was the NTLDR file that became corrupted, since after I replaced there still was another corrupted file - system. However, it is possible that both of these files for some reason became corrupted. I think it is more probable that a newer version of NTLDR was able to detect a corrupt file necessary for Windows to load.

I would like to report on my experience with the following message appearing on boot up, which I received at one point without doing anything major to the computer, from what I can tell: Windows 2000 could not start because of an error in the software. Please report this problem as Loader Error 3. While searching microsoft.com for loader error 3 windows 2000 yields a lot of results, searching for the exact message yields only one article: 277222 (System may not start when creating a large number of logical units and volumes). Since that article appeared not to be very useful, and relating to the server edition of windows 2000, I did not look into it very carefully. I then have looked into various other online sources and have seen various courses of actions taken. I have chosen to act based on a comment by lcruisader at another forum (this page has a lot of comments for this problem), who said replacing ntldr located in the root with backup resolved the problem, since I had another computer with xp home avaliable, although not the Windows 2000 install cd. I proceeded to replace ntldr after booting live into ubuntu. As a result, when I rebooted, I received another message, saying that winnt\system32\config\system is corrupted, which, I later noticed, was very similar to one of the alternate messages given in the microsoft article, except the file corrupted was not system.ced, but system. I think that a different version of ntldr was able to diagnose a corrupted file, which basically is the "loader error 3". It's important to know which file became corrupted, and trying to replace possibly corrupted files or drivers with backups or newer versions after backing those files up could be helpful. So I booted again with live ubuntu and browsed to winnt\system32\config\ and found the system file, which was 4.9 mb. I looked for a backup file in the same directory, and there was a file also 4.9 mb in size, named SYSTEM.ALT. So I renamed it to system after renaming the system file itself and then rebooted, which solved the problem.

Solution I have finally gotten to post the results, written quite a while ago. Thanks for all the suggestions. The problem now is resolved. In fact the solution had been explicitly suggested on this forum, it was to use the fixboot command, which fixed it completely. I couldn't be sure of anything and had to make sense of things myself, which took somewhat longer, but in the end I could be confident I wouldn't damage anything else by trying to fix the problem. I wrote down some of my resolving steps below. Freedos sys command seems to have replaced boot sector of the primary partition with other code. Now, absolute sector 63 had the following code, as copied down manually from the output of PTS disk editor available on the UBCD, since I couldn't save it to a file (no such option in the program): 0000 EB4C9000000000000000000002080000 0010 0000000000F800003F00FF003F000000 0020 0000000080008000ED1EBF0100000000 0030 000004000000000047CB080000006000 0040 00003F0000003F0000003F000000FAFC 0050 31CO8ED08EDBBDOO7C8D66EOFBB8ED01 0060 B106D3ED2DEDO78ECO89EE89EFB90001 0070 F3A506BB787C53CB8ED88ED0885624E8 0080 DD004C6F6164696E672046726565444F 0090 532E2E2E0D0A524F4F54DO8B46468B56 00A0 488B7E4031DB8E463EE8CF00723831FF 00B0 B90B00BEC77D57F3A65F268B451A740B 00C0 B3C72026803D0075E7726FE891002046 00D0 415400508E463E31DB8B7E168B46428B 00E0 5644E896005872521E061F07BF0040AD 00F0 89C601F601C6D1EEAD7304B104D3E880 0100 E40F3DFF0F72E831COAB0E1FE8500020 0110 4B45524E454C008E463E31DBBE0040AD 0120 09C0742948488B7E0D81E7FF00F7E703 0130 464A13564CE8430073E5E8FF00F7E703 0140 4F4F54206572726F722100EBFEE80F00 0150 20474F210D0A008A5E24EA0000600089 0160 76035E50535731DBB40EAC3C007404CD 0170 10EBF75F5B58568B7603C3565250F776 0180 1889D131D2F7761A88D6D0CCDOCC86C4 0190 8A561828CAFEC109C188D0B801028A56 01A0 24CD13730830E4CD13585AEBCF035E0B 01B0 73078CC080C4108EC0585A05010083D2 01C0 004F75B8F85ECB4345524E454C202053 01D0 59530000000000000000000000000000 01E0 00000000000000000000000000000000 01F0 000000000000000000000000000055AA PTS disk editor allowed me to see that the message I was getting, "freedos root", was located in that sector, which can be seen by converting the above hex (unspaced ** values, for example EB4C9000 in the beginning, would look like EB 4C 90 00 in a hex editor) into ASCII. If spaced and without the offset markings, it should look like this: EB 4C 90 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 08 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 F8 00 00 3F 00 FF 00 3F 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 80 00 80 00 ED 1E BF 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 04 00 00 00 00 00 47 CB 08 00 00 00 60 00 00 00 3F 00 00 00 3F 00 00 00 3F 00 00 00 FA FC 31 CO 8E D0 8E DB BD OO 7C 8D 66 EO FB B8 ED 01 B1 06 D3 ED 2D ED O7 8E CO 89 EE 89 EF B9 00 01 F3 A5 06 BB 78 7C 53 CB 8E D8 8E D0 88 56 24 E8 DD 00 4C 6F 61 64 69 6E 67 20 46 72 65 65 44 4F 53 2E 2E 2E 0D 0A 52 4F 4F 54 DO 8B 46 46 8B 56 48 8B 7E 40 31 DB 8E 46 3E E8 CF 00 72 38 31 FF B9 0B 00 BE C7 7D 57 F3 A6 5F 26 8B 45 1A 74 0B B3 C7 20 26 80 3D 00 75 E7 72 6F E8 91 00 20 46 41 54 00 50 8E 46 3E 31 DB 8B 7E 16 8B 46 42 8B 56 44 E8 96 00 58 72 52 1E 06 1F 07 BF 00 40 AD 89 C6 01 F6 01 C6 D1 EE AD 73 04 B1 04 D3 E8 80 E4 0F 3D FF 0F 72 E8 31 CO AB 0E 1F E8 50 00 20 4B 45 52 4E 45 4C 00 8E 46 3E 31 DB BE 00 40 AD 09 C0 74 29 48 48 8B 7E 0D 81 E7 FF 00 F7 E7 03 46 4A 13 56 4C E8 43 00 73 E5 E8 FF 00 F7 E7 03 4F 4F 54 20 65 72 72 6F 72 21 00 EB FE E8 0F 00 20 47 4F 21 0D 0A 00 8A 5E 24 EA 00 00 60 00 89 76 03 5E 50 53 57 31 DB B4 0E AC 3C 00 74 04 CD 10 EB F7 5F 5B 58 56 8B 76 03 C3 56 52 50 F7 76 18 89 D1 31 D2 F7 76 1A 88 D6 D0 CC DO CC 86 C4 8A 56 18 28 CA FE C1 09 C1 88 D0 B8 01 02 8A 56 24 CD 13 73 08 30 E4 CD 13 58 5A EB CF 03 5E 0B 73 07 8C C0 80 C4 10 8E C0 58 5A 05 01 00 83 D2 00 4F 75 B8 F8 5E CB 43 45 52 4E 45 4C 20 20 53 59 53 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 55 AA I didn't want to further damage the computer this had occurred on, which has Windows XP as its os, so I tried to replicate the error on a Windows 98 computer. I inserted the floppy and used the "sys c:" command and almost as soon as it started I ejected the floppy, because that was how I remembered I did it, fearing the command would do something unwanted. This generated the same error message I was getting on the Windows XP computer, as expected and so I was now doing further testing on the Windows 98 computer. Booting into the the recovery console (rc.iso) I used some command, prior to writing this, so I can't be sure which one of those offered in the post, (maybe fixboot) and it seems that command did just what I would've liked it to: booting into UBCD and using PTS disk editor I could now see different code in the primary partition boot sector(63). However this did not solve the problem as now instead of the "freedos root" message when booting from the hard drive I was getting a "Disk error Press any key to restart" message. This message as well could be found in the boot sector (63) just as the previous. Pressing any key did not cause the computer to restart but instead it made some noise (I suppose the computer tried interpreting the boot sector code but couldn't do that properly and instead of restarting read the boot sector again) and displayed the same message again. Pressing the key again would keep doing the same thing. But it could be that freedos sys command did not yet do anything besides writing the boot sector code. Maybe and probably the code I replaced it with using some command from the recovery console, was meant for Windows XP and therefore would not work for Windows 98. To check that I would have to try and find something that would put Windows 98 boot sector code back. If that solved the problem I could then simply use recovery console to replace the boot sector on the Windows XP computer. I then found out where there is a copy of the boot sector code (Windows 98SE Boot Sector), and after verifying that only sector 63 was different from what was supposed to be there, I copied the backup sector (69) using PTS disk editor after booting with UBCD, and pasted it into sector 63. The computer could now boot.