Bishop

Not as long as you did then. I will have a long wait. Mind you, there's no disk activity at that time. I have waited for 10 minutes now and still not screen with anything. There is no disk activity from either the Aspire One or the external optical drive. *Edit: The result.

Idea; Might it possibly have something to do with the XP CD not being able to see my HDD? I might be able to preload my SATA drivers. Although.. it does not explain the black screen after each Windows XP CD says: "Press any key to boot from CD..."

Johnhc, funnily enough I had just downloaded that program. I am looking through it.. but I am not sure as to what I need to set. As Vista is currently running on my Aspire One I am able to change things from there. But it's a temporary solution as the license will run out. I am going to read this part now, let's say I want Vista dualbooted with XP. (In the end, I'll just remove the Vista install and I will end up with a XP only boot.)

You where right, it was not complex at all. However,.. I doublechecked that I had NOT removed "Manual Install and Upgrade" under Operating System Options as I had built this image using nLite. This resulted in seeing the menu where I was able to choose the first or second part of the XP install. When I had let the timer run out, or chose the first (text based) part, it resulted in the same black screen I experienced when booting from the CD. After the "Press any key to boot from CD..." I received a similar black screen doing nothing. It just didn't kick into the Windows XP text bases setup part. I am currently building an image while removing "Manual Install and Upgrade", but I doubt it makes a difference. *edit: That did not work either... I've kind of hit a dead end again. I'm not quite sure what's causing this to happen. For some reason the Aspire seems to not be able to load into the setup part. And I don't get why it does accept the way a Vista DVD boots...

No I have a Sandisk Cruzer Crossfire 4gb. I don't think it has a U3 ability. As stated above, I had given up on the USB thumbdrive approach. As I am home now I will see if I can get it to work using the WinSetupFromUSB method. Jaclaz, it seems I am wrong about a lot of things lately. Thankyou for the information, it's all very interesting to learn. Will take a look at the links you provided later.

A general question; does it make difference that the to be booted CD is booted from an external USB connected DVD-Burner in comparison to an internal IDE drive? As the Acer's Bos supports boots from a USB memorystick aswell as a USB optical drive. My guess is that the awnser is yes, as the external optical drive is basically a readonly memorystick. Correct me if I'm wrong. I have both licences btw; Windows XP Home Edition and Windows Vista Ultimate.

John, If I understand you correctly you are refering to the fact my vLite'd Vista Ultimate DVD was infact able to boot into the Windows install. You are asking if by replacing the SETUPLDR.BIN from my nLite'd XP CD with the same file from my vLite'd Vista Ultimate DVD the CD will actually be able to boot into the Windows XP install? If that would work, I would simply have to replace the SETUPLDR.BIN before I hit 'Burn Image' in nLite. Curious for the awnser to this.

Thankyou for your quick reply. In the first link there is a mention of ‘to much information’, te same has happened to me in my searches through the internet. I’ve seen many guides referencing to ‘ Install XP from USB…’ , never one mentioning WinSetupFromUSB. These guides indeed seem not so complex. I will certainly try these out tomorrow. Thankyou. As I am ‘new’ to this scene I come across a lot of words, phrases and methods I am not familiar with yet. I 'm not sure I understand the last bit, the chainloading of ETUPLDR.BIN. nLite has the ability to burn an image using a different ‘no-emulation bootsector’, so this seems quick and easy enough to try out aswell. Thanks for the input an I will let you know if it worked. The next post is hopefully a ‘success!’ one.

Hello all, I really hope you guys can help me out as I've kind of hit a dead end. System: Acer Aspire One A150-Bk Intel Atom 1.6, 1gb, 160gb harddrive, Windows XP Home. The system is set in such a way that it will check for bootable CD/DVD-roms before using the harddrive's main partition. Problem: I have created a nLite image and burned onto a CD, then using an external USB optical drive I am trying to boot the XP install CD. It gives the 'Press a key to boot from CD...' and when I press a key, it gives a black screen and does not continue. What I have tried already: I have checked if the CD inserted is correctly built, it does boot the windows installation files on another PC, just not on my AOA150. In this forum was a topic that said that you must NOT select: Manual Install and Upgrade when you are using nLite. Now I am not sure if this only counts when trying to boot the install via an USB thumbdrive. This resulted in just a black screen and not even the message saying: 'Press a key to boot from CD...'. I inserted my vLite'd Vista Ultimate CD and that installed just fine, and all was well. So that works. I inserted a Windows XP Home Edition CD with just SP3 slipstreamed (not built by me) and that failed aswell. Because I suspect it's not one with an integrated SP3 in the way Microsoft would do it. Here's what I did with it. I had some succes as I managed to get into the XP installer. I have tried installing Windows XP using a USB thumbdrive. I've used 2 guides, guide 1 & guide 2 both using WinSetupFromUSB I have tried to let the windows setup preload the sata drivers using the method described here. This was very close to the solution but I had made a small mistake. Look below for the solution. I have tried a different version of the Aspire One bios, 3308 instead of the latest 3309. Without luck, I am now using 3309 again. Now I'm not an expert on this however I have succesfully created a vlite'd Vista Ultimate for my PC before and have used nLite quite frequently lately. I am just not able to get the boot going on my Aspire One. THE SOLUTION: And as with a lot of things, the solution was a pretty simple one. It seemed that indeed the SATA drivers where missing and making the installer unable to start. John came with an idea here. With that idea and coupled with this guide and the drivers John had found I did another attempt. I integrated the drivers with nlite, in 'text mode', burned another DVD-RW. Result, the DVD booted into the installer without any problems. Note: The drivers John has found where drivers from Acer, strangely enough these could not be found under the driverssection of the AOA150, but under the AOD150 driverssection. While apparently the AOA150 also has the same SATA HDD. I have attached the drivers in this post. John, Jaclaz, and others, I can't thank you enough for the effort, time and willingless to think with me on this problem. You have been a tremendous help to me in the past few days. Thank you very much. *edit: Small edit to what I have tried already. **edit: Update to what I've tried; USB method, inserting SATA drivers. ***edit: Update to what I've tried; Suspected original slipstreamed Windows XP Home Edition booted into the installer. ****edit: Added the solution. f6flpy32.7z