wimb

When in GUI mode the Windows folder is NOT found on the default location, it can be handy to use a boot.ini with Multiple Entries for the GUI Mode. For USB_MultiBoot_10 it would be like this: [Boot Loader] Timeout=20 Default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS [Operating Systems] C:\btsec\XPSTP.bs="1. Begin TXT Mode Setup Windows XP, Never unplug USB-Drive Until Logon" multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Continue GUI Mode Setup XP + Start XP from HD 0 - Part 1" /FASTDETECT multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Continue GUI Mode Setup XP + Start XP from HD 0 - Part 2" /FASTDETECT multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Continue GUI Mode Setup XP + Start XP from HD 1 - Part 1" /FASTDETECT multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Continue GUI Mode Setup XP + Start XP from HD 1 - Part 2" /FASTDETECT where you can Manually Select the GUI mode Entry that is working for you. Also it is important to remove before XP Setup from USB-stick all other USB-drives like External Backup Harddisks and Cardreaders, which could give unwanted shift in drive numbering.

You can try my NEW technique using USB_XP_Setup package Install XP from USB AFTER Booting with PE from HDD or USB http://www.boot-land.net/forums/?showtopic=5306 In this way you are first booting in 30 seconds with LiveXP from RAMDISK, which is loaded in few seconds with LiveXP BootSDI.img file on Harddisk Drive C: or in about 5 minutes from bootable USB-stick made with Make_USB.cmd For Install of XP you all the time Boot as normal from your Local Harddisk Drive C: so that you don't have these BIOS problems. So there is no booting from USB-stick involved when actually installing XP. The XP Source Folder must be on USB-stick or on Partition 1 of ANY Harddisk. If this is NOT the case, then the program will propose to Copy the XP Source folder to the Install Target Drive, usually C: (being usually partition 1).

I assume you are using a removable USB-stick which will be seen by BIOS as Harddisk (NOT as USB-HDD) When you boot from USB-stick then normally USB-stick is HDD-0 and Local Harddisk is HDD-1 You have to Change for GUI Setup your BIOS Setting so that First Boot Device is HDD-0 (instead of USB-HDD) which is in GUI mode your USB-stick, so that you boot via USB and Windows folder will be found at HDD-1 by the setting of rdisk(1) in boot.ini on USB-stick With your present BIOS Setting you are booting in GUI mode directly from HDD-1 which is then your Local Harddisk. That does NOT work. You have to Boot via USB-stick which is HDD-0

The message system32\hal.dll missing means only that the WINDOWS folder cannot be found, and is NOT on the drive where it was expected. There is no missing file in this case. It is necessary to Boot all the time from the USB-drive and keep it connected until Logon. Change your BIOS Boot Priority such that USB-stick is seen as First Harddisk. Read Also FAQ-4 http://www.msfn.org/board/FAQs-t116766.html

Nice presentation Thanks for this HANDY Program wimb

See Post #1

Hi ilko, Very good idea Thanks for providing the AutoIt3 Source code. It is quite an impressive peace of work. I have just finished and Uploaded my first AutoIt3 GUI module for USB_XP_Setup. It is a GUI for Display and Edit of the winnt.sif file for providing the XP Setup parameters to be used in $WIN_NT$.~BT folder. It makes live again easier I am sure your source code will help me a lot in programming USB_XP_Setup completely with AutoIt3. wimb

It seems to me that Visual Basic Scripting has NOT been installed in your XP OS. See http://www.msfn.org/board/fixed-USB-Multib...ep-t123215.html Solution download and install VBS http://support.microsoft.com/kb/952830

Hi ilko, Might it be that this problem is solved with [Data] AutoPartition=0 This works for me in USB_XP_Setup, where [unattended] Section can be used as normal.

Copy your XP CD to XPSOURCE folder on harddisk. First use RyanVM Integrator and then use DPsBase to Improve your XPSOURCE Folder. Then Run USB_MultiBoot_10.cmd to make your USB-stick

You might be missing SATA Drivers. Look here http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=4900 2. XP-Source Preparation - *** BEFORE YOU START *** http://driverpacks.net/DriverPacks/ As alternative I advise you to use the NEW technique, which in my view is the Preferred approach. Install XP from USB AFTER Booting with PE from HDD or USB using USB_XP_Setup.cmd http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=5306 The advantage of the NEW technique is that there are no changes needed in the BIOS Setting. Booting for XP Setup occurs all the time as normal from the C-Install Drive if you Install on C-Drive. Thus the USB-stick does not need to be bootable and it is not needed that the motherboard supports booting from USB. So this is Install XP from USB without booting from USB

Open Windows Explorer If you see boot.ini on your C-drive, you can double-click boot.ini file and Edit the way you like it (remove the unwanted entries, but keep the default and multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect ) Before you Edit boot.ini, Remove first via Right-click and Properties the Read Only property, if chequed. If you cannot see boot.ini, you have first to make Hidden and System files visble, using Menu Extra > Folder Options ...

Install XP from USB AFTER Booting with PE from HDD or USB does NOT make use of winnt32.exe http://www.boot-land.net/forums/?showtopic=5306 First use RyanVM Integrator and then use DPsBase to Improve your XP-Source. When you don't use nLite, you can Copy the supplied $OEM$ folder to your XP Source folder. The $OEM$ folder must be located in your XP Source folder, so it is located next to I386 and NOT inside I386 The svcpack folder is inside I386 as produced by RyanVM integrator. Then everything works very well

Repair Option See: http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?...=4900&st=15 Therefore a rule in boot.ini on Harddisk was made by Install XP from USB. If not present you have to add this rule to your C:\boot.ini file prior to booting from stick. multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="USB Repair NOT to Start Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

you must first determine the harddisk nr of your %homedrive% using diskpart. But that is not sufficient, in fact all local harddisks are involved in rearranging drive letters.

The idea to use mountvol for rearranging the Drive Letters is interesting. I have not yet used your batch files, but it seems to me that using disk 0 can be incorrect in case your computer has e.g. two internal harddisks and you are installing on harrdisk 1 But in any way it will be interesting to implement and further improve the idea.

Unfortunatedly migrate.inf for does not work for USB-Harddisk to make it Drive U: So we have to live until now with USB-Hardisk getting Drive Letter D which results in unwanted Drive Letter Shift of other Internal HD Partitions. May be you find a solution .... When Option 0) is set to USB-Harddisk then rdummy.sys is used to make it seen as Removable during Setup, so that we can Install from USB-Harddisk, but at the same time the question for migrate.inf is NOT occurring anymore, since it has NOT the desired effect of making USB-Harddisk drive U: In my Opinion it is better to avoid Install from USB-Harddisk and to use Fast USB-stick of large capacity (4-8 GB) which is currently cheap as well. In that case I advise to use migrate.inf for making the stick BootDrive U: Then everything works very well and there is NO DriveLetter Shift issue. An even better method is to use the NEW technique: Install XP from USB AFTER Booting with PE from HDD or USB Boot in 30 sec with LiveXP from RAMDISK loaded with BootSDI.img file from C-Harddisk. http://www.boot-land.net/forums/?showtopic=5306 You can Install XP from NTFS Formatted USB-stick in about 16 minutes without Booting from the USB-stick And it has NO issues with corrections and workarounds. And there is NO drive letter Shift for the Internal Harddisk partitions when installing from USB-Harddisk. Booting is all the time as normal from your C-harddisk. XP Setup Source Folder must always be on USB-stick or on partition 1 of ANY Harddisk. The NEW technique has so many advantages, that you should certainly try this way of Install of XP from USB.

The 15 MB/sec is the Nominal value. Measured Benchmarks of my NTFS Format USB-sticks are for Write=5-7 MB/s and Read=9-12 MB/s which are acceptable for preparing USB-stick and for Install of XP from USB. Writing XP Source to USB-stick occurs in about 10 minutes and Install of XP from USB takes about 16 minutes. In your case the Read performance is very good (2x faster as mine), but Writing to the stick varies and is rather slow as compared to my values (2-5x slower as mine for 32 kB). This means you must just use your stick and be patient to write the XP Source to the stick. Your patience will be rewarded once you are going to Install XP from USB-stick The most important thing is to use NTFS Format for sticks greater than 2 GB and NOT FAT32 which is extremely SLOW for Install of XP from USB (it will take hours) because FAT32 FileSystem is very inefficient in finding files in the about 7000 files of the I386 folder on USB-stick. You should also try FAT format for your 2GB stick and make a Benchmark. It might be that this is more efficient for you to Write the XP Source to the stick.

This means that when preparing your USB-stick using Make_USB.cmd you can at the same time Install your BootSDI.img file as Boot Option in boot.ini Menu on your USB-stick as well as on your C-Drive. But the general way to Install your LiveXP BootSDI.img file as Boot Option in your boot.ini Menu on Harddisk, is to use BOOT_IMG.cmd The maximum size of BootSDI.img file is determined by the amount of RAM in your system. As a good thumbrule one can say it is RAM-64 MB with a maximum of 500 MB (MS limited). For Compaq machine of 2002 with 256 MB RAM I can boot with a BootSDI.img file of 102 MB which contains Acronis Disk Director 10, Ghost, Small CD-Writer, Opera and PENetwork Support, and Smart Driver Backup, FreeFSCapture53, MMC and ProduKey. Therefore you have to limit the Basic > Shells > Addons > ImDisk RAM Drive to 15 MB and the Finish > Create Image > BootSDI Free Space was Set to 10 MB

For a brand new hdd it is still useful to boot with LiveXP PE from USB-stick, and then use Acronis Disk Director 10 for the Partitioning and after Quick NTFS Format of the Install Partition you can use USB_XP_Setup.cmd from USB-stick and proceed with XP Setup as described in the Tutorial. But for the other more usual cases, booting with LiveXP from HDD is more interesting, because of the very fast way of Booting into Live XP PE Environment. Install of the BootSDI.img File as boot option in boot.ini Menu on HDD can be accomplished by using BOOT_IMG.cmd or you can use Option C in Make_USB.cmd when you prepare your USB-stick. It is not the difference BartPE versus LiveXP which determines the boottime, but it is the difference in Boottechnique. For Live XP we make use of a BootSDI.img Harddisk Image file which is loaded into RAMDISK and when you do this from USB-stick it will take some 5-10 minutes in time but from HDD it is a few seconds. The advantage is that when the LiveXP PE is booting from RAMDISK, you are allowed to make Changes and are FREE from the source disk, so that you are even allowed to Format the Disk from which you just loaded the Image File into RAMDISK After loading the Image from DVD or USB-stick, you can remove the DVD or USB-stick, which is NOT the case for your way of booting BartPE. On every Harddisk it is interesting to add LiveXP PE booting from RAMDISK standard as Extra Boot Option to your XP boot.ini or Vista BootManager Menu, so that you have a FAST 30 sec Boot Escape and are able to perform any Task like making or Restoring a Ghost Image of the Operating System Partition, or Remove Viruses or do ANY other interesting task, which would be forbidden in the Running XP or Vista OS Environment

Siginet's Windows XP PowerPacker is a very handy tool to make your MultiBoot DVD's It automatically makes only one copy of a particular file on DVD, which gives a nice reduction of space. http://www.siginetsoftware.com/forum/showthread.php?t=151 see my post #14 When using LiveXP PE you should NOT Boot from USB-stick. It will take about 5-10 minutes. Follow the described procedure for USB_XP_Setup http://www.boot-land.net/forums/?showtopic=5306 and boot in 30 sec with LiveXP from HDD via BootSDI.img file loaded in RAMDISK. When using USB_XP_Setup.cmd the XP Setup Source Folder must always be on USB-stick or on partition 1 of ANY Harddisk. The output of USB_XP_Setup\makebt\MBRWiz.exe /list is file USB_XP_Setup\makebt\dplist.txt and is used to relate XP Source Drive Letter to harddisk number and so to determine e.g. SetupSourceDevice = \device\harddisk2\partition1 @ilko_t Thanks for the nice overview. It will certainly help a lot of people to understand Install of XP from USB

Links on Install of XP from USB using USB_MultiBoot_10.cmd Tutorial on Install of XP from USB at BootLand Forum - Tutorial ScreenShots of USB_MultiBoot.cmd - ScreenShots List of FAQs at MSFN Forum - FAQs Install XP from USB - Support and Changes USB_MultiBoot.cmd - Support and Changes Guide for MultiBoot USB-stick with boot.ini Menu - Guide More Help with Bookmarks is available in the Help_Info Folder in USB_MultiBoot.zip Section C of the Guide can be helpful for you to get a better understanding of the booting mechanism. SETUPLDR.BIN was Renamed to XPSTP according to the 5-letter limit requirement in NTFS BootSector File XPSTP.bs The usbflash file has NO meaning for the booting process, it is just a marker file. The btsec folder contain all the BootSector Files and is the USB-Drive Specific part, which is renewed together with $WIN_NT$.~BT\migrate.inf if one uses the USB Content of one stick as Source to make another one. Booting from USB-stick is as follows: MBR > Drive BootSector > NTLDR > boot.ini > C:\btsec\XPSTP.bs > XPSTP > txtsetup.sif and $WIN_NT$.~BT\winnt.sif XPSTP is just the renamed SETUPLDR.BIN (no hex editing). Default is Unattended Setup using XPSTP as SetupLoader And for Attended Setup we use XATSP as SetupLoader, where all winnt.sif are replaced by winat.sif grldr has no function for booting into TXT-mode Setup XP, but it is used for other boot options DOS + Linux + Vista For the USB-stick to boot as Harddisk it must have MBR and partition with NTLDR Type Drive BootSector as made with HP Format Tool and XP as OS. On the stick there are four files required: NTLDR + NTDETECT.COM + BOOTFONT.BIN and boot.ini of which BOOTFONT.BIN is NOT essential, but NTLDR is looking for it. I prefer to format USB-stick with HP tool and NTFS FileSystem so that Files in I386 folder are easily found in the about 7000 files of I386, so that XP Setup is much faster When you boot from this USB-stick then it is at that moment harddisk 0 and will get drive letter C: for evaluating boot.ini Menu. When you Select TXT-mode Setup XP then the USB-stick will appear in the DriveList of TXT-mode as U: and your computer harddisk Install Drive will appear as C: Use Notepad to study boot.ini and winnt.sif and more complicated to study USB_MultiBoot_10.cmd Use TinyHexer to study MBR(=Sector 0), Drive BootSector and BootSector File XPSTP.bs The Drive Bootsector is usually for FAT at Sector 63 and for NTFS 16 sectors at Sector 63. For NTFS especially sector 64 is the interesting part, where in the BootSector File Copy XPSTP.bs N T L D R has been replaced by X P S T P The XP BootFolder $WIN_NT$.~BT is made by parsing I386\DOSNET.INF Alternatively you can also try to use USB_XP_Setup.cmd which is in my opinion an even better approach. There are no corrections or workarounds needed and it corresponds very well to Install of XP from CD. http://www.boot-land.net/forums/?showtopic=5306 Regards, wimb

Your problem is clearly the VBS Scripts, but luckily for you the Program can run without using these scripts. Therefore you have to disable individual scripts by Renaming e.g. USB_MultiBoot_10\u_script\MSg_DriveReady.vbs as NO_MSg_DriveReady.vbs For DriveReady script we use in fact the ASP Drive script http://www.w3schools.com/asp/asp_ref_drive.asp So it might be that only the ASP scripts are giving the trouble. If you have may VBS problems then you can knock-out all VBS scripts by e.g. Renaming USB_MultiBoot_10\u_script folder as USB_MultiBoot_10\NO_u_script Edit: I see you have downloaded already Windows Script Host to solve the problem, OK.

May be it is possible to place OemPnPDriversPath entry in the [Data] Section Instead of in the [unattended] section. Such solution works for a lot of entries in [unattended] section like [Data] UnattendSwitch = "Yes" DriverSigningPolicy=Ignore NonDriverSigningPolicy=Ignore

ScreenShots mentioned in my signature http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?sho...20089&st=11 For the XP Setup User Data dialoque you can Select Cancel for No Changes (you stay in the Program). To prevent Copy of Unwanted folders Select with C the empty folder XX_CONTENT Booting with LiveXP PE in the New technique occurs from Harddisk in less than 1 minute It is quite different from what you think.