THE USERMRUSER

Windows 7 review: looks like Vista, but 10x more good!

2009-11-21T13:11:00.000-08:00

Windows 7's many small changes add up to a much better product – the best version of Windows you can get, in fact

Windows 7

The first thing you'll notice about Windows 7 is that it looks like Vista. It also works like Vista, in the sense that it has the same plumbing underneath, except for a very welcome graphics upgrade to DX11. However, it works much better than Vista, and most of Vista's annoyances have either been removed, or (mostly) can be changed so the system works the way you like. It takes personalisation to extremes.

Microsoft has analysed the data from millions of user computing sessions to find out exactly what people do with their computers, then attacked the "pain points" to make Windows 7 quicker and smoother. (About 15 million people used the Windows 7 beta.)

The most obvious difference is that Windows 7 doesn't keep annoying you with prompts — though it's also true that the latest version of Vista is much less annoying than the original. In fact, you can set the degree of annoyance on a sliding scale, though reducing it increases the risk of security breaches. However, Windows 7 is vastly more secure than XP and, in any case, the threat landscape has changed since XP was trashed by worms such as Blaster and Slammer. Today, the more important security changes are in the Internet Explorer 8 browser which, uniquely, defends against cross-site scripting.

Another obvious difference is that Windows 7 uses fewer resources.

Where Vista really needed 2GB of memory, Windows 7 will run quite happily in 1GB on a slow dual-core Intel processor, though I'd still recommend 2GB or, for preference, 4GB with the speedy 64-bit version of Windows 7.

The reduced footprint and some optimisation means Windows 7 sleeps and wakes up faster (though it's still not in the same class as Mac OS X).

And laptop batteries should last longer. I've been running Windows 7 on an Asus UL30 laptop with a claimed battery life of around 11 hours with Vista: it now does more than 12 hours.

Any PC that currently runs Vista will be better at running Windows 7 – a first for Microsoft – and it should also run on most PCs that will run XP SP2. (Search YouTube and you will find users showing off by loading it on unsuitable systems, including antiques with Pentium III chips.) The catch is that upgrading a PC running Windows XP requires a clean installation of Windows 7: you can't do an in-place upgrade. This has been a source of complaints, because it means reinstalling all your applications as well.

However, we've known for a dozen years that a clean installation of Windows usually works better, and geeks have generally recommended it.

Indeed, people used to reinstall Windows 95, 98 or Me just to clean up their systems, so it's silly to get hysterical about it now.

The Windows 7 interface has a few noticeable changes. First, the Vista sidebar has gone, but you can still use the clock and other gadgets, and you can position them wherever you like. Second, the QuickLaunch area and the TaskBar have been replaced by a sort of combo-pack.

Instead of putting applications in the QuickLaunch area, you can now right-click and pin them to the new-style Taskbar, alongside running applications.

As in Vista, hovering over a Taskbar icon shows one or more mini-previews, depending on how many windows you're using, except now they're interactive. Hovering over a mini-preview shows it full size on the desktop, while right-clicking provides a Jump List of options.

It makes it dramatically easier to see what you are doing. However, if you are an inveterate Alt-Tabber, that shows the same mini-previews. And if you liked Vista's Flip 3D feature, that's still an option.

Incidentally, you can now move TaskBar icons around to change the order, like browser tabs. As I always try to keep XP TaskBar items in the same order, I find this useful. It's a small point, but Windows 7 has lots of small points, and they add up.

There are a few party tricks that Windows 7 users can show their friends, such as Aero Snaps, Aero Peek and Aero Shake. Aero Snaps lets you put two applications side by side for easy comparison and copy-and-paste. Aero Peek makes open windows temporarily transparent so you can see what's on your desktop. Aero Shake means that if you shake a window, all the other windows will disappear. All are both useful and fun.

The My Documents section has been reorganised under one heading, Libraries. This includes Documents, Music, Pictures, and Videos, with Windows 7 sorting things into these "shell folders". Each of these has two subfolders, such as My Music and Public Music. This makes it easier to keep stuff you want to share away from stuff you want to keep to yourself.

Sharing is an important part of Windows 7. It has a HomeGroup feature that makes it very easy to set up a home network and share things. It only works with Windows 7 machines, which I expect will sell a few family packs of Windows 7 (three copies of Home Premium for £149.99).

Right-click a photo, for example, select Share, and this gives you four options: Nobody, HomeGroup (Read), HomeGroup (Read/Write) and Specific People. "Plays to" lets you display a video, for example, on a different PC.

Support for the consumer electronics industry's DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) standard should help Windows 7 PCs work with other devices, though I've yet to see an example.

There are also some "location awareness" features where Windows 7 figures out where you are — on a home network or an office network, for example — and selects the appropriate printer. There's a section of the control panel, Location and Other Sensors, where sensors can be installed and controlled. One example is "adaptive brightness": if your PC has a light sensor, Windows 7 will adjust the screen brightness to match.

Multi-touch is also supported, if you have the hardware to take advantage of it. There is an emerging flood of laptops with multi-touch pads and new all-in-ones with multi-touch screens, but it remains to be seen whether these will be successful.

When it comes to Windows applications, the very old ones have been dramatically improved. Paint and WordPad now have "ribbon interfaces" like Office 2007, and both the Calculator and command shell (PowerShell) are much more powerful than before. Technically, several standard applications have also been removed from the operating system, though I expect most PC manufacturers will install them.

What Microsoft has done is decouple the Windows Live Essentials suite of applications – Mail, Messenger, Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, etc – from the operating system. It means the Live programs can be updated from the web every six or nine months, or whatever, instead of on a three-year operating system development cycle. It also reduces the attack area for anti-trust complaints.

But one thing that's missing from Windows 7 is the Microsoft Security Essentials anti-virus program, formerly codenamed Morro. You get Windows Defender and an improved firewall, but Microsoft appears to be too scared of the European Commission to do what would be best for users and include anti-virus software as well. As it is, specialist anti-virus companies install trial versions on new PCs, and pay PC manufacturers very handsomely for the distribution. If Microsoft did the right thing and defended users for nothing, it would upset the financial applecart.

All round, then, Windows 7 is generally good, and some Windows fans reckon it's better than Apple's Mac OS X. It's certainly easier to use than Mac OS X if you are already familiar with the Windows way of doing things. Also, Windows 7 – released to companies on August 6 – has so far proved to be a lot less buggy than Apple's Snow Leopard, which has even lost users' data.

If you dig into Windows 7 you will, of course, find numerous relics from the past, going right back through Windows 95 to DOS.

There are lots of inconsistencies that still need cleaning up.

However, Microsoft's business depends on running millions of programs that stretch back decades, supporting vast numbers of peripherals, and providing a platform for thousands of competing manufacturers who make everything from handhelds and tablet PCs to racks of data-centre mainframes. That's just the baggage Windows carries.

But with luck you will not see too many of these relics, and on the surface, Windows 7 is impressively smooth.

I'm a full-time Windows XP user who didn't upgrade to Vista on my two main PCs, but I can't see a good reason for sticking with XP now that it looks doomed. I've bought a cut-price Amazon Windows 7 Pro upgrade for my desktop, and I'm planning to buy a new Windows 7 laptop to replace my very old ThinkPad X31.

Windows 7 is a long way from being perfect, and it's not an essential upgrade if you're happy with XP. But nor is there a real reason to avoid it. Windows 7 is simply the best version of Windows you can get.

news from
(www.guardian.co.uk)

Hackers bypass Windows 7 activation

2009-11-21T13:03:00.000-08:00

Hackers have managed to find a way around one of the key antipiracy protections built into Windows 7.

Hackers have managed to find a way around one of the key antipiracy protections built into Windows 7.

Ordinarily, the operating system requires users to activate their copy of Windows 7 within 30 days. However, a recently outlined method allows the normal notifications to be turned off.

The software doesn't actually get confirmed as legitimate, but users are able to keep using the product indefinitely.

Microsoft confirmed on Friday it is aware of the technique, but said that it is working to shore up the activation procedure.

"We're aware of this workaround and are already working to address it," a Microsoft representative said in a statement, which also urged customers to only use genuine software, noting the fake stuff can contain malware and other bad things.

It's the latest in a long history of cat-and-mouse moves between the makers of Windows and those who would rather not have to pay for the privilege.

long live hacker!!!

(news from cnet)

Hackers target leading climate research unit !

2009-11-21T12:55:00.000-08:00

Experts warn that universities' e-mail systems are vulnerable to attacks

The e-mail system of one of the world's leading climate research units has been breached by hackers.

E-mails reportedly from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU), including personal exchanges, appeared on the internet on Thursday.

A university spokesman confirmed the email system had been hacked and that information was taken and published without permission.

An investigation was underway and the police had been informed, he added.

"We are aware that information from a server used for research information in one area of the university has been made available on public websites," the spokesman stated.

"Because of the volume of this information we cannot currently confirm that all of this material is genuine.

"This information has been obtained and published without our permission and we took immediate action to remove the server in question from operation.

"We are undertaking a thorough internal investigation and we have involved the police in this enquiry."

Researchers at CRU, one of the world's leading research bodies on natural and human-induced climate change, played a key role in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report, which is considered to be the most authoritative report of its kind.

'Inside information'

Graham Cluley, a computer security expert, suggested that December's key climate summit in Copenhagen, which has made headlines around the world, could have increased the university's profile as a possible target among hackers.

"There are passionate opinions on both sides of the climate debate and there will be people trying to knock down the other side," Mr Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos, told BBC News.

"If they feel that they can gather inside information on what the other side is up to, then they may feel that is ammunition for their counterargument."

Mr Cluley added that universities were vulnerable to attacks by hackers because so many people required access to IT systems.

"You do need proper security in place; you need to be careful regarding communications and make sure your systems are secure.

"I trust that they will now be looking at the systems, and investigating how this happened and ensuring that something like this does not happen again."

(BBc news.co.uk)

The Ten Biggest Legends of the Hacker Universe !

2009-09-30T09:54:00.000-07:00

The Ten Biggest Legends of the Hacker Universe

The culture started from the, The hackers culture. Now I am an ethical hacker and many more people like me either interested in or wanted to be hacker , DO you know why is that so ? Answer is these guys made term hacking popular worldwide.
I know they were bad boys , but as an ethical hacker I salute their intelligence , their dedication , and everything they did.

For the users of this blog I am specially posting the names of top 10 hackers of the world who sometime in the past really rocked the news of the world.

Kevin Mitnick: Known worldwide as the “most famous hacker” and for having been the first to serve a prison sentence for infiltrating computer systems. He started dabbling when he was a minor, using the practice known as phone phreaking. Although he has never worked in programming, Mitnick is totally convinced that you can cause severe damage with a telephone and some calls. These days, totally distanced from his old hobbies and after passing many years behind bars, he works as a security consultant for multinational companies through his company “Mitnick Security.”

Gary McKinnon: This 41-year-old Scotsman, also known as Solo, is the perpetrator of what’s considered the biggest hack in the history of computer science – into a military system. Not satisfied with this, in the years 2001 and 2002, he made a mockery of the information security of NASA itself and the Pentagon. Currently he is at liberty awarding his extradition to the U.S. and prohibited access to a computer with Internet connection.

Vladimir Levin: This Russian biochemist and mathematician was accused of having committed one of the biggest bank robberies of all times by means of the cracking technique. From Saint Petersburg, Levin managed to transfer funds estimated at approximately 10 million dollars from Citibank in New York to accounts he had opened in distant parts of the world. He was arrested by INTERPOL in 1995 at Heathrow airport (England). Although he managed to rob more than 10 million dollars, he was only sentenced to three years in prison. Currently he is free.

Kevin Poulsen: Today he may be a journalist and collaborates with authorities to track paedophiles on the Internet, but Poulsen has a dark past as a cracker and phreaker. The event that brought him the most notoriety was taking over Los Angeles phone lines in 1990. A radio station was offering a Porsche as a prize for whoever managed to be caller number 102. It goes without saying that Poulsen was the winner of the contest.

Timothy Lloyd: In 1996, information services company Omega, provider of NASA and the United States Navy, suffered losses of around 10 million dollars. And it was none other than Tim Lloyd, an x-employee fired some weeks earlier, who was the cause of this financial disaster. Lloyd left a virtually activated information bomb in the company’s codes, which finally detonated July 31 of that same year.

Robert Morris: Son of one of the forerunners in the creation of the virus, in 1988 Morris managed to infect no fewer than 6,000 computers connected to the ArpaNet network (one of the precursors to the internet) He did it from the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and for his criminal activities he earned a four year prison sentence, which was finally reduced to community service.

David Smith: Not all hackers can boast of creating the virus that spread the fastest to computers the width and breadth of the globe – David Smith can. In 1999, the father of the Melissa virus managed to infect and crash 100,000 email accounts with his malicious creation. Smith, who was thirty years old at the time, was sentenced and freed on bail.

MafiaBoy: In February of 2000, many of the most important online companies in the US, such as eBay, Yahoo and Amazon, suffered a technical glitch called Denial of Service, which caused a total of 1700 million dollars in losses. But did these sites know that the perpetrator of the attack was a 16 year-old Canadian who responded to the alias MafiaBoy? Surely not, although it didn’t take them long to find out, thanks to his bragging about his bad deed to his classmates at school.

Masters of Deception (MoD): MoD was a New York cyber-gang that reached its apogee in the early 90s. Under the cover of different aliases, its biggest attacks involved taking over telephone lines and centres of the Internet, then still in its infancy. During this time McD starred in the historic “battles of the hackers,” along with other groups like the Legion of Doom (LoD), as they sought to destroy each other until the computers couldn’t take it anymore.

Richard Stallman: Since the early 80s when he was a hacker specializing in artificial intelligence, this hippie-looking New Yorker has been one of the most active militants in favor of free software. At MIT he firmly opposed the privatization of the software used by the institute’s laboratory, so much so they he created what today is known as GNU and the concept of CopyLeft. Popular systems like Linux utilize the GNU mode and Stallman is currently one of the gurus of software democratization.

Make money with neobux! the best PTC website!

2009-09-28T09:33:00.000-07:00

click here to register :D

I believe that NeoBux is still one of the best paid to click programs out there. They do one thing consistently and that is they pay instantly. They seem to have a clear business model and show a level of sustainability that you normally do not see. Some people complain that it is not easy to make a lot of money with NeoBux and they are right. But with the right strategy it is not hard to make a good amount of money consistently without the worry of the company disappearing tomorrow. You need to pick a strategy and stay with it for the long haul with Neobux. With a few minutes a day you can really generate a nice income stream with NeoBux. Below, I have my strategy for those that are just starting out with NeoBux.

click here to register :D
Hello everyone,

I believe that NeoBux is still one of the best paid to click programs out there. They do one thing consistently and that is they pay instantly. They seem to have a clear business model and show a level of sustainability that you normally do not see. Some people complain that it is not easy to make a lot of money with NeoBux and they are right. But with the right strategy it is not hard to make a good amount of money consistently without the worry of the company disappearing tomorrow. You need to pick a strategy and stay with it for the long haul with Neobux. With a few minutes a day you can really generate a nice income stream with NeoBux. Below, I have my strategy for those that are just starting out with NeoBux.

1. Choose a time of day that you can click ads and eventually manage your referrals at the same time everyday.

2. Click all available ads everyday (when you get referrals this is necessary to earn from referral clicks).

3. Utilize all free methods of advertising to gain any direct referrals. Talk it up with your friends and relatives. Put a tagline on your e-mail signature. Post in forums. Use free traffic exchanges.

4. Once your account balance reaches $2. Transfer this money to your rental balance and rent 3 referrals. It is only $0.90 to rent the referrals but you will need the remainder to properly manage the referrals.

5. Put the autopay function on.

6. If a referral of yours has not clicked today or yesterday and has click average of less than 2.0 then recycle it ($0.08) and get a new referral. If they have a click average of between 2.0 and 4.0, I will give them 4 days before I recycle them. I will give those with an average of over 4.0 seven days to return and click just because I would hate to recycle a great referral just because they were on vacation for a week.

7. Whenever, one of your referrals goes below 20 days before next payment pay to add another 30 days. Below 20 days, the autopay function does not work and you will not get the savings for that referral.

8. Every time your account balance reaches $1 transfer the money to your rental balance. At first when you are only making a couple of cents per day it is important to keep enough in your rental balance to maintain your recycling activity because you can only transfer in $1 increments. Once you can complete this transfer and have at least $2.40 in your rental balance rent another 3 referrals.

9. Continue this process until you are making a $1 a day in your account balance. At this point you can begin renting in bigger chunks of referrals every 7 days. Never rent a number of referrals that is greater than 33% of your existing totals as these will become difficult to manage through recycling with your earnings.

10. It will take a while but continue the above listed process until you reach 500 referrals. At this point stop renting and just maintain your referrals. Accumulate the earnings until you can pay for the upgrade to golden.

11. Once golden, maintain your referrals as before. Every week continue to rent referrals until you hit the 2000 refs mark. Any money that you are not sinking into referral maintenance or renting is profit for you.

This is the way I manage my account and I have had really good results. The aggressive recycling is very key.

hope this help!! happy earning !!
usermruser

140 Amazing Hacks For your PC!(6MB)

2009-09-27T07:29:00.000-07:00

140 Amazing Hacks For your PC!(6MB)

140 Amazing Hacks For your PC!(6MB)

Some of the hacks which this article contains are-

How to call your friends with their own number Extreme Hack
How to Hack a MySpace Account
how Web 2.0 Logos Are Drawn in Photoshop
Photoshop Tips and Tricks
Rapidshare Hack,No waiting for 15 mins
Shutdown Command Via Command Prompt
Talk 2Desktop
VODAFONE HACK FOR FREE GPRS!
Where The Saved Passwords Stores In Windows Xp & Vista - Must for hackers and Beginers
Windows Genuine Hack – 100 percent Works
Wireless Hacking
Call Anywhere in the World From PC to Mobile For Free 100% Working Hack Using Skype and Yahoo Messanger Full Tutorial
Chat with Friends through ms dos Command Prompt
Create Your Own Instant Messenger Bot'
Format A HDD With Notepad
Free Calling to Any US Phone From Your iPhone
Google Hacking

download:
http://rapidshare.com/files/285682742/140_HACKS.rar

The most dangerous computer viruses in history

2009-09-27T07:24:00.000-07:00

some of the most dangerous computer viruses in history

Computer viruses have a relatively short history by the damages caused by some of the most dangerous viruses pushed cyber-experts to open a chapter that includes a huge database on computer viruses and the cost of damages caused along with companies, government and universities highly affected by malware.

Here are some of the most dangerous computer viruses in history:

Jerusalem - 1988

This is one of the first MS-DOS viruses in history that caused enormous destructions, affecting many countries, universities and company worldwide. On Friday 13, 1988 the computer virus managed to infect a number of institutions in Europe, America and the Middle East. The name was given to the virus after one of the first places that got "acquainted" with it - the Jerusalem University.

Along with a number of other computer viruses, including "Cascade", "Stoned", "Vienna" the Jerusalem virus managed to infect thousands of computers while still remaining unnoticed. Back then the anti-virus programs were not as advanced as they are today and a lot of users had little belief of the existence of computer viruses.

-------------------------
Morris (a.k.a. Internet Worm) - November 1988

This computer virus infected over 6,000 computer systems in the United States, including the famous NASA research Institute, which for some time remained completely paralyzed. Due to erratic code, the worm managed to send millions of copies of itself to different network computers, being able to entirely paralyze all network resources. The damages caused by the Morris computer virus were estimated at $96 millions.

To be able to spread the computer virus used errors in such operating systems as Unix for VAX and Sun Microsystems. There were a number of other interesting ideas used by the virus - for example it could pick user passwords.
------------------------
Solar Sunrise - 1998

A decade later the situation didn't change, it might have gotten even got worse. Using a computer virus, hackers, in 1998, penetrated and took control of over 500 computers systems that belonged to the army, government and private sector of the United States. The whole situation was dubbed Solar Sunrise after the popular vulnerabilities in computers that run on the operating system called Sun Solaris. Initially it was believed that the attacks were planed by the operatives in Iraq. It was later revealed that the incidents represented the work of two American teenagers from California. After the attacks, the Defense Department took drastic actions to prevent future incidents of this kind.
---------------------
Melissa - 1999

For the first time computers got acknowledged with Melissa computer virus on March 26, 1999, when the virus shut down Internet mail system, which got blocked with e-mails infected by the worm. It is worth mentioning that at first Melissa was not meant to cause any harm, but after it overloaded servers the virus led to unpredictable problems. For the first time it spread in the Usenet discussion group alt.sex. Melissa was hidden within a file called "List.DiC", which featured passwords that served as keys to unlocking 80 pornographic websites. The original form of the virus was sent through e-mail to different users.

Melissa computer virus was developed by David L. Smith in Aberdeen Township, New Jersey. Its name comes from a lap dancer that the programmer got acknowledged with while in Florida. After being caught, the creator of the virus was sentenced to 20 months in federal prison and ordered to pay a fine of $5,000. The arrest represented a collaboration of FBI, New Jersey State Police and Monmouth Internet.

Melissa had the ability to multiply on Microsoft Word 97 and Word 2000, as well as Microsoft Excel 97, 2000 and 2003. In addition, the virus had the ability to mass-mail itself from Microsoft Outlook 97 or Outlook 98.

Unlock Hidden Partitions double you HDD size

2009-09-27T06:59:00.000-07:00

READER WILEY SILER has sent us a method which he said was discovered by Scott Komblue and documented by himself which they claim can recover unused areas of the hard drive in the form of hidden partitions.

We haven't tried this here at the INQUIRER, and would caution readers that messing with your hard drive is done at your own peril and very likely breaches your warranty. Here is what Wiley and Scott did. µ

* UPDATE Does this work? We're not going to try it on our own machine thank you very much. Instead, we're waiting for a call from ahard drive company so we can get its take on these claims.

** UPDATE II A representative for large hard drive distributor Bell Micro said: "This is NOT undocumented and we have done this in the past to load an image of the original installation of the software. When the client corrupted the o/s we had a boot floppy thatopened the unseen partition and copied it to the active or seen partition. It is a not a new feature or discovery. We use it ourselves without any qualms".

*** UPDATE III See the letters column today, here.

Required items
Ghost 2003 Build 2003.775 (Be sure not to allow patching of this software) 2 X Hard Drives (OS must be installed on both.) For sake of clarity we will call the drive we are trying to expand (T) in this document (means Target for partition recover). The drive you use every day, I assume you have one that you want to keep as mater with your current OS and data, will be the last dive we install in this process and will be called (X) as it is your original drive.

1. Install the HDD you wish to recover the hidden partitions (hard drive T) on as the master drive in your system with a second drive as a slave (you can use Hard Drive X if you want to). Any drive will do as a slave since we will not be writing data to it. However,Ghost must see a second drive in order to complete the following steps. Also, be sure hard drive T has an OS installed on it You must ensure that the file system type is the same on both drive (NTFS to NTFS or FAT32 to FAT32, etc)

2. Install Ghost 2003 build 2003.775 to hard drive T with standard settings. Reboot if required.

3. Open Ghost and select Ghost Basic. Select Backup from the shown list of options. Select C: (this is the drive we want to freepartition on on hard drive T) as our source for the backup. Select our second drive as the target. (no data will be written so worry not). Use any name when requested as it will not matter. Press OK, Continue, or Next until you are asked to reboot.

Critical step
4. Once reboot begins, you must shutdown the PC prior to the loading of DOS or any drivers. The best method is to power down the PC manually the moment you see the BIOS load and your HDDs show as detected.

5. Now that you have shutdown prior to allowing Ghost to do its backup, you must remove the HDD we are attempting to expand (hard drive T which we had installed as master) and replace it with a drive that has an OS installed on it. (This is where having hard drive X is useful. You can use your old hard drive to complete the process.) Place hard drive T as a secondary drive in the system.Hard drive X should now be the master and you should be able to boot into the OS on it. The best method for this assuming you need to keep data from and old drive is:

Once you boot into the OS, you will see that the second drive in the system is the one we are attempting to expand (hard drive T). Go to Computer Management -> Disk Management

You should see an 8 meg partition labeled VPSGHBOOT or similar on the slave HDD (hard drive T) along with a large section of unallocated space that did not show before. DO NOT DELETE VPSGHBOOT yet.

6. Select the unallocated space on our drive T and create a new primary or extended partition. Select the file system type you prefer and format with quick format (if available). Once formatting completes, you can delete the VPSGHBOOT partition from the drive.

7. Here is what you should now see on your T drive.

a. Original partition from when the drive still had hidden partitions
b. New partition of space we just recovered.
c. 8 meg unallocated partitions.

8. Do you want to place drive T back in a PC and run it as the primary HDD? Go to Disk Management and set the original partition on T (not the new one we just formatted) to and Active Partition. It should be bootable again if no data corruption has occurred.

Caution
Do not try to delete both partitions on the drive so you can create one large partition. This will not work. You have to leave the two partitions separate in order to use them. Windows disk management will have erroneous data in that it will say drive size = manus stated drive size and then available size will equal ALL the available space with recovered partitions included.

This process can cause a loss of data on the drive that is having its partitions recovered so it is best to make sure the HDD you use is not your current working HDD that has important data. If you do this on your everyday drive and not a new drive with just junk on it, you do so at your own risk. It has worked completely fine with no loss before and it has also lost the data on the drive before. Since the idea is to yield a huge storage drive, it should not matter.

Supposed Results:

Western Digital 200GB SATA
Yield after recovery: 510GB of space

IBM Deskstar 80GB EIDE
Yield after recovery: 150GB of space

Maxtor 40GB EIDE
Yield after recovery: 80GB

Seagate 20GB EIDE
Yield after recovery: 30GB

Unknown laptop 80GB HDD
Yield: 120GB

welcome hacker!

2009-09-20T07:27:00.000-07:00