[ros-general] Questions about ReactOS 0.4.0

[w***@waltdnes.org]

I hope this doesn't come across as a rant, but at times ReactOS seems
to be the perfect cure for low blood pressure...

1) Does it have a working partition/format program once installed? I'm
running it as a QEMU VM. *THE INSTALL PROCESS* can take a raw virtual
drive, and create a primary partition and format it. I can't seem to
find that functionality inside the installed ReactOS. The only way I
could figure out to partition and format virtual "drive D:" was to
attach it to a linux VM boot, and run fdisk and mkfs.fat from linux
to prepare it, and exit. Then boot under ReactOS, which now sees a
partitioned and FAT-formatted drive.

2) *WHERE* is the Wine IE executable located? This is as a last resort,
but it's nice to know.

3) *WHERE* does Wine IE stash files that it downloads? There is no
indication anywhere on its menus. I can't find anything resembling
"Edit->Preferences". And while we're at it, could the people who do
ReactOS docs *PLEASE* specify that "debug.log" default directory is
C:\ReactOS. It took me a while to find it. Merely saying that there's
a "debug.log" file somewhere, in some directory on the system, is *NOT*
good enough.

4) I finally managed to turn off nagging at bootup for, "New Hardware
Wizard" has found a Bus Controller. It can't find the driver locally,
and, no I don't have a driver for it. I had to click "Cancel" on the
dialogue 3 times, because it came back after the first 2 cancels...
*EVERY TIME I BOOTED UP***.

Out of sheer desparation...
* I told it to install
* It failed and came back with the same dialogue, but with a "Don't ask
me again" checkbox, which I eagerly checked off.
* I had to repeat this 3 times. Now no more nagging from the "New
Hardware Wizard about the Bus Controller driver.

[Swyter]

1) Nope. There's just a a little partition helper at install time. No
diskmgmt.msc here. Hell, there isn't an actual Management Console in
ReactOS yet.

2) C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe

3) I don't think it can download things to places yet. I usually use
the built-in `dwnl <url> <target>` command line program, which is
pretty useful now that we have HTTPS support with cert validation.

4) Normally there are various driverless devices that nag, each of
them has its own don't-nag-me-please checkbox. That's why you have to
tell them to go away individually. Ensure you are shutting down the
virtual machine correctly so that everything gets flushed down to the
Registry.

Hope that helps! Have fun!

Post by w***@waltdnes.org
I hope this doesn't come across as a rant, but at times ReactOS seems
to be the perfect cure for low blood pressure...
1) Does it have a working partition/format program once installed? I'm
running it as a QEMU VM. *THE INSTALL PROCESS* can take a raw virtual
drive, and create a primary partition and format it. I can't seem to
find that functionality inside the installed ReactOS. The only way I
could figure out to partition and format virtual "drive D:" was to
attach it to a linux VM boot, and run fdisk and mkfs.fat from linux
to prepare it, and exit. Then boot under ReactOS, which now sees a
partitioned and FAT-formatted drive.
2) *WHERE* is the Wine IE executable located? This is as a last resort,
but it's nice to know.
3) *WHERE* does Wine IE stash files that it downloads? There is no
indication anywhere on its menus. I can't find anything resembling
"Edit->Preferences". And while we're at it, could the people who do
ReactOS docs *PLEASE* specify that "debug.log" default directory is
C:\ReactOS. It took me a while to find it. Merely saying that there's
a "debug.log" file somewhere, in some directory on the system, is *NOT*
good enough.
4) I finally managed to turn off nagging at bootup for, "New Hardware
Wizard" has found a Bus Controller. It can't find the driver locally,
and, no I don't have a driver for it. I had to click "Cancel" on the
dialogue 3 times, because it came back after the first 2 cancels...
*EVERY TIME I BOOTED UP***.
Out of sheer desparation...
* I told it to install
* It failed and came back with the same dialogue, but with a "Don't ask
me again" checkbox, which I eagerly checked off.
* I had to repeat this 3 times. Now no more nagging from the "New
Hardware Wizard about the Bus Controller driver.
--
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[w***@waltdnes.org]

Post by Swyter
1) Nope. There's just a a little partition helper at install time. No
diskmgmt.msc here. Hell, there isn't an actual Management Console in
ReactOS yet.
2) C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe
3) I don't think it can download things to places yet. I usually use
the built-in `dwnl <url> <target>` command line program, which is
pretty useful now that we have HTTPS support with cert validation.

One of the first things I was considering downloading was GNU wget for
Windows. "dwnl" sounds like it may be what I really need.

Post by Swyter
4) Normally there are various driverless devices that nag, each of
them has its own don't-nag-me-please checkbox. That's why you have to
tell them to go away individually. Ensure you are shutting down the
virtual machine correctly so that everything gets flushed down to the
Registry.

Thanks for the info. I'm running the VM as a Conroe/core2 cpu with 3
gigabytes of ram. That's the physical spec on my oldest desktop, a Dell
Inspiron 530 that I got way back in June of 2008, which is still running
fine. It doesn't have hardware support for virtualization, so it's my
least useful machine under linux. Once I get the hang of things on the
VM on my current desktop, I'll try a real physical ReactOS install on
the old machine.