cquirke

Yes, I've seen that with Bart PE: - Bart CDR boots off CDR OK - but stops on that screen before the bottom progress strip What is happening is that Bart (or rather, the underlying OS the Bart CDR was built from) detects cues on the HD that indicate an installation is in progress. In the context of malware cleanup, it looks like a successful attempt to DoS Bart as mOS, but if you press F10 to ignore the installation in progress, ir will carry on just fine (without messing anything up). In your context, which is setting up a new PC and rebooting to continue HD-based setup, the problem is that Bart CDR boot is not falling through to HD boot as (say) an XP OS CD would do. With the above mileage as "Fail" and successful Bart boot as "OK", state chart: Fail As-is Fail Set primary partition as inactive Fail Spoof primary partition type to CP/M OK Zero out HD's MBR (physical sector 0, CHS 0,0,1) OK Zero out primary's PBR (logical sector 0, CHS 0,1,1) Fail Rename away C:\$LDR$ Fail Rename away C:\$WIN_NT$.~LS subtree OK Rename away C:\$WIN_NT$.~BT subtree The mechanism appears to be MBR -> PBR -> C:\$WIN_NT$.~BT or some particular file within C:\$WIN_NT$.~BT, so that knocking out any one of these items fixes the problem. Whether the installation process writes non-standard changes to PBR or (less likely) MBR is another matter; chances are the standard logic seeks C:\$WIN_NT$.~BT, just as standard Win9x boot logic seeks C:\WINBOOT.SYS (which will be copied over C:\IO.SYS if found, BTW) In the context of malware cleanup, etc. you'd press F10 and carry on, then rename away the old C:\$WIN_NT$.~BT subtree. In your context (where there really is an installation in progress!) you'd do one of: - remove Bart CDR to facilitate HD boot and continuation - build Bart to enable the fall-through to HD boot Normally, I'd not want a mOS (maintenance OS) to accidentally boot the sick/infected/at-risk HD, so I'd turn off that fall-through behavior. But in this context, you may prefer it. Bart handles that through a standard plug-in, but I can't remember what it's called (sorry!) - have a look through Bart's site and documentation. Something similar can do the same control for MS WinPE <-{Obligatory on-topic bit} :-)