haggisnneeps

Hi all, uvmain: It cant be corrupt SP2 as i've used this SP2 in the slipstream of all myversions that work and have also independantly used this SP2 (downloaded from Microsoft) on other builds. It is definitely Kosher. LeveL: Yes i got the driverpacks from there. Have also got Ryan's VM Integrator. Have tried various methods like using f6 and original driver from floppy etc as well as slipstreamed version. I know the driverpacks works 100% on all other PCs i've tried (but then again none of them are using this particular RAID driver!!) Zxian, my original post has my chipset etc. Its an onboard (or integrated?) SATA port (1 of 2). I read on the Maxtor site for this particular drive that the Maxtor MAxBlast drivers and utilities will not detect onbaord SATA ports on the KT series motherboards (and they were right for a while til i eventually played with the BIOS and plugged and unplugged it and got it to be seen and formatted) LLXX: I wish i had known about this before i bought the bloomin' SATA drive now. I bought it on the say so of a guy who promised serious performance gains. So far it has only hindered my rebuild by a full month :-( and i might add too, i am getiting loads of lost files and chkdsk starting up all the time and finding orphaned files and i have a "lost+found" folder on every partition indicating chkdsk error fixing Here is what i intend to do. SP2 is basically just a roll up of all the patches from SP1 upwards so i'll start to install these patches "by halfs" (eg if theres 50 patches, i'll install the first 25 and see if it dies - if not then i'll do the next 12 then 6 etc ) until i narrow down what is killing my system. This could take any time from a few days to a couple of decades so wish me luck

Zxian, Yes i tried a vanilla install of XP then upgraded to SP2 and boom it blows up (main PC) i can never see the BSOD as it just flshes up and reboots (even though i have set the options correctly to not do this) In the VPC i get a strange mixture of errors. If i do vanilla to SP2 it BSODs the same as the main PC If i use an unattended disc i created it seems to be a different error every time - from memory: 1st CD i used was Vanilla with SP2 slipstreamed - instant BSOD at t-39 screen and reboots 2nd CD i had SP2 with all patches slipstreamed - does fullinstall then on first reboot complains about the registry hive %systemdrive%/winxp/system32/krnl.dll file is missing - press r to perform repair tried another 2CDs same as above but each time the file was different and repair is not an option on the slipstreamed CD. If i use the original XPCD it will repair it back to pre SP2 anyway so whats the point just really weird stuff - i think i might just put back my IDE drives and use the SATA as spare storage - or (god forbid) buy a brand spanking new PC

I use the Hypergalactic MegaPriv account (it's a hidden account - not many people know about it) which encompasses all of the Administrator and SYSTEM privs and also adds a few handy extra commands that even these accounts cannot provide (listed below) <Make> commands Make Soup Make Tea Make Bed Make bad monster explode Make whoopee <stop> commands Stop Go Stop Start (listed in Start menu - Start>Stop>Start) this command stops start from starting stop and allows start to stop start stopping start - excellent for those long night in yourself when you've nothing better to do! Hope none of the hackers out there find out about this megapriv account or the fact that most people use Administrator or even that some use system account

i recently bought a new hard drive for my PC and decided to go SATA (bad idea in retrospect) instead of IDE My PC has been running IDE since the dawn of time and i have been religiously upgrading it to keep up with whatever game i want to play so right now we're up ot Battlefile 2 and Scarface spec ;-) Anyhoo - i spent the best part of day1 finding out i needed raid drivers at f6 to see my drive and eventually got XP on it. Dutifully i updated immediately to SP2. Reboot. BSOD. Try SP1 etc - no probs. Retry SP2 - BSOD. Ok i accept this and am working on it and am determined to track down why So i have XP SP1 with all updates before SP2 and have installed MS Virtual PC 2004 to test out my latest forays into an Automated build CD. I have built it to install with slipstreamed SP2 and all up to date patches etc. I create 2 partitions C and D and it automates the rest with $Docs on D. Have tested it successfully on no less than 5 PCs (3 of which were laptops) all of which i have installed MS Virtual PC on and installed it on that too. I cannot get it to fail anywhere - except the Virtual PC on my own desktop PC which on first reboot gives me the BSOD (i have slipstreamed the correct SATA Raid drivers not that this should matter since VPC presents the disks and drivers as generic anyway) I have a KT600a chipset, GeForce FX 4500 128MB graphics, 120GB Maxtor SATA drive, all VIA drivers (via RAID too) 512 MB RAM Am i right? is this very strange behaviour for VPC to not be working properly on my PC? Sorry - forgot to mention that i can build the virtual PC on my PC up to XP SP1 with updates but its as soon as i go to SP2 in the virtual PC it crashes - the virtual PC that is Tha main PC does the same

Hi all i'm fed up building pcs and then going through all the updates (as i expect everyone else here is ) so i decided to build an automagical CD to do it for me and here's where i ended up Thanks in advance for any help you give and thanks for all help already gratefully received If i can help i will - ask and ye shall be answered - sign this legal disclaimer though before you implement any of my solutions

Thanks again jaclaz - option1 just fried my brain - too hard to follow option2 gave me the plugin for BartPE - though diskpart was still failing in PE option 3 resolved this issue and therefor also issue 2 my brain, however, is still fried from option 1 ;-) but i have been recommended paracetamol for that Thanks P

I'm using Bart PE just now but diskpart doesn't work (i downloaded the latest version 3 days ago) didn't even know about Microsoft PE - i'll check it out thanks currently my XP disc works if i boot into XP and create2 partitions c and d and then format c and quit before it installs the files then reboot and format d and quit before it installs. Then i just reboot and it is completely automated (except it can nevr read or find els.dll so i have to press escape) Can the diskpart.exe file be "reprogrammed" to do this repartioning task? i'm not a programmer so i don't know.... it is called at T-54 i think to start the partitioning bit - surely if this was re-jigged it could provide this functionality? thanks again

THanks for your swift response sorry i should have posted in the noobies area but i had searched the whole site and gotten nowhere I'll take a look at some of the alternatives but i'm really annoyed that this isn't possible during an unattended install - thanks M$ !! Why do we always end up using 3rd party tools to do the job? Yes i always knew about ghost (thats probably a better way of recovering your c drive too) but i thought it would be more elegant to have a bootable XP cd to do it

I am trying to automate my installation of XP. I have done all the stuff from the unattended.msfn.org site but one thing i cannot find ANYWHERE (including here) is a way to automate partitioning during an unattended install. I want to boot from CD, automagically have a C drive of 8 GB and a D drive of the rest created (possibly in future have more partitions), install the OS onto C drive and have the Docs and Settings created on the D drive (probably the program files too later but we'll see) so that if anything ever goes wrong with my OS i can just reinstall the OS on C and not worry about my Docs and Settings getting overwritten This obviously raises the question too that if my OS was corrupt and i reinstalled OS onto C:\ then it would put the profiles here too and if i used my slipstreamed CD it would overwrite the profiles on the d drive anyway You following this? So basically i am looking to create a SP2 + all patches slipstreamed build disc that puts OS on C and Docs and Settings on D but if something goes wrong will allow me to reinstall automatically but also won't overwrite the profiles on D when it does install (i guess having unique userprofile names will help here) Can anyone tell me if this is possible (even using sysprep instead of winnt.sif) or am i going to have to build XP pro and manually change the registry settings, then get it all working and take an image with ghost or something Thanks