fdv

http://www.vorck.com/data/msoe50.inf Download and install. Have your Windows CD in the drive. Background for other folks viewing this thread: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showto...l=outlook&st=20

sorry if these have been suggested already!! 1. install another copy of windows nt. boot into the second install and recover your data. 2. this issue is sometimes caused by root files migrating too far away from the initial bytes of the drive. if you have a defrag program that can specifically place the system files first, the problem might be resolved. one i know of is included in norton utilities, it lets you specify files to put at the beginning of the drive. 3. just so you know, upgrading to windows 2000, 2003, or xp will change the version of NTFS from 4 to 5 and you will have to reformat the drive* after you recover the data if you want to continue to use NT 4. (*with nt 4 boot disks, for example. the key is that although nt can read and write to ntfs version 5, only SP6a gives nt 4 this ability, and since you can't slipstream SP6a, you'll need to install on ntfs version 4). okay, so you can create a version of nt 4 with SOME SP6a files manually replaced, but it might take a while to determine how many you can get away with replacing...

this exact SAME issue happened to me. What i traced it back to was that i installed my video drivers BEFORE installing directX9 and that was the problem. i didn't really research too deeply into exactly why after I found out. but what cured it was reinstalling windows, then installing DirectX9c *right away before anything else*, then rebooting and installing my video drivers.

you do NOT have to install in a certain sequence. install them in ANY order you want, and then run QCHAIN.EXE from Microsoft. the operating system will figure out the most recent file dates to use. so if one hotfix replaces a file, and another one replaces the same file again, Windows will use the one with the higher version / date stamp.

my own list http://www.vorck.com/wu.html you'll have to paste some of the numbers because some links are not active. the page is based on creating a win2k cd using my files that installs without: Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, Internet Information Server, Internet Information Server Debugger, Imageviewer, MS FrontPage, Fax, Indexing Service, all games, Windows Scripting Host, COM, Distributed Transaction Coordinator, Web-Based Enterprise Management, Internet Connection Wizard, Task Scheduler, ActiveMovie for IE, MS Fake Java for IE, Windows Address Book, NetMeeting, Media Player 2.0 (the Codecs WILL STILL be installed, though), Application Compatability, Remote Storage Recall Notification, Windows Automatic Updates (use Daisy), and Color Profile. AFAIK it is comprehensive. (i have created a win2k cd that has post sp4 hotfixes in it already and uses one central INF file for ALL of the reg entries, but it is tailored for my IE-free win2k. anyway, i just add that to tell you that if you hack the right DLL files, you can replace the files in i386 with the hotfixed ones after extracting them and it will work.) FDV, keeper of the remove IE from win2k project

half asleep here, so sorry if something needs clarifying, sorry, it's only to give a general reminder about how we used to do it (it works the same way, just do it the old-school, "classic" way from NT 4 days, you just need a "fixed" sfc.dll file from my site here. You can use xpcreate of course but I just did this manually to see if the NT4 method works. BTW I made a win2k cd that has sp4 and all post sp4 hotfixes so I know this works. I can send the INF files in question to you if you are fuzzy on the details. Copy the CD to your HD. We're going to be working in the i386 directory. Download every single hotfix. Expand them all into their own folders. Create a new folder called, say, POSTSP4 or something. Copy the new files into it, but only the new files that exist in Win2k. In other words, if a hotfix has 5 files in it but only one of them is the fixed file, move only that file, not all 5. Once your folder is full you will need to grab the registry entries from the fixes and add them to, say, one of the HIV*.* files. Rename all of the hotfixed files as appropriate. If NTOSKRNL.EXE ends in an "E" in the i386 directory, drag and drop it and replace the one already in the distribution share directory. If a file ends in an underscore, rename the hotfix to end in one also, drag and drop and replace the original. No, you don't HAVE to recompress it in order to do so, Windows just thinks it's 0% compressed. Some files will not appear to be in i386. That means they're in sp4.cab or driver.cab which is the case for the HAL files. Which are of course technically drivers, but putting these files in a CAB is kinda dumb IMO, but who knows, MS wanted it that way, BTW, if you use driver integration in nLite this is even easier... So anyway you make adjustments to the installing INF files (again I can email them, I have the CD in my drive right now) to redirect windows to look on the CD and NOT in the CAB files, and now you can add those files that don't appear to be in sp4.cab or driver.cab, etc. Once every file is moved over and renamed appropriately and you've added the new registry entries from every hotfix (I have that too if you wanted to do it this way) you make a boot CD and viola you have Win2kSp4PreSP5. Like I said I'm tired. If you want my INF files for guidance just ask, but you'll have to download the hotfixes and uncompress them all, etc. Shouldnt be too hard... To make my install go faster I uncompressed sp4.cab and driver.cab and put those into i386 also and directed TXTSETUP.INF et all to look into the root and not the CABs so the files were only uncompressed once instead of pulled out of cabs, etc. i did gain some speed increase during install, but it made my i386 folder HUGE. driver integration would solve this somewhat, and this is an independant step from integration pre-sp5 hotfixes that I note above. Sorry if you're left going "I already know all that, what are the INF edits?!?"

Third time's a charm. Cripes. Sorry, it's "early" for me... haven't had coffee. Forgot to say aloso that if files are commented out of TXTSETUP and LAYOUT, they should be removed from DOSNET.INF too. Also, I was googling on a "corrupt or missing error" and found: http://gosh.msfnhosting.com/txtsetup.htm Here's hoping I got _something_ right...

Almost forgot, you have to eliminate the "_x" in every line of TXTSETUP.INF also to eliminate checking for modifications. Also, the note about source disks (1, 2, 100) applies here also). Files like mediactr.cab must be commented out in both files to avoid errors. -- FDV

@alanoll, nuhi, others: Open LAYOUT.INF in 2k / xp. Search for "layout" In 2k: layout.inf = 2,,244801,,,,_x,20,0,0 In XP: layout.inf = 100,,408600,,,,_x,20,0,0,,1,20 In either case, that "_x" tells the installation to check the filesize. If there is a mismatch, the install will bomb. If the "_x" is missing, setup will not check. So in other words, layout.inf is checking itself. Either correcting the filesize or removing the "_x" will solve the problem. In fact, just totally removing the "_x" from every line that has it in the entire file is, I found in my own IE removal files for win2k, avoids any nasty surprises. Other notes: first number is what "disk" the installation is told to look on. Since it's all on CD, you can change that 2 or 100 in both cases to a 1. Slipstreaming makes this change (and it's one easy way to see what files got modified.) At the beginning of the file, you'll see that: 100 = %spcdname%,%spcdtagfilei%,,\i386,1 and 1 = %cdname%,%cdtagfilei%,,\i386 But they're really both the same CD, so you can change many 100's to 1's, or you can change the 100 line to: 100 = %cdname%,%cdtagfilei%,,\i386 This way, you can start on a process to eliminate having to have that win51ip.SP2 file in the root of the CD (you have to do a few other things as well in other files too). A 100 also tells the install to look, in some cases (such as drivers that have been fixed by a service pack) to look into SP2.CAB versus DRIVER.CAB. With Nuhi's driver consolidation, I'm sure that this inefficent method by Microsoft will be eliminated at some point. The 20 is obvious, it's the destination directory. The next zero, I'm not sure. The next zero after that (the last one in the 2k line, the second after the 20 in the XP line) means that the filename ends normally; if that number is a three, it means that the file name ends in an underscore. Underscore files do NOT have to be compressed, although it does save space on the CD. I have a 2k CD I made that installs VERY VERY quickly, because (as a test) I expanded and then renamed many large files back to ending in an underscore. Windows just thinks the file(s) are zero percent compressed. The ,,1,20 in the XP line I am not sure about, but there is really no reason to keep it--we need to avoid having this file check itself, so the best thing to do is to change it to: (xp example) layout.inf = 100,,408600,,,,,20,0,0 This way, we can edit this file as we like and setup won't bomb. THEN (we're not done!!!) we remove several garbage entries like: "mediactr.cab = 3,,99770897,,,,_x,,3,3" (notice the _x, that has to be removed, but in our case, we want the whole line out anyway.) either commenting the line with a semicolon first, or deleting it entirely, will prevent XP's setup from copying the file on the CD to the hard drive. That file is HUGE, and if we delete it and other files like it, setup will FLY. No sense in copying files if we're not going to use them anyway. Best, FDV My tutorial on removing IE and a WHOLE LOT of other things from Win2k