jaclaz

Sure , but the ultimate sophistication is simplicity. Please try the attached, the only (meaningful) change/new "limitation" is that the NTFS volume will be assigned a Label of either Data_4kb or Data_512, something that could be actually called a "feature". Test it and let me know what you think ... jaclaz SwitcherQE001.zip

@NoelC We are in the usual disagreement. It is not about what can be done, but on what is actually done by most people, and which part of that is actually productive. Not everyone develops software. Not everyone has a multi-monitor setup. Not everyone writes programs while video-conferencing with someone at the other end of the planet. Most people in their work hours or when using a computer for their business write letters, or input data in a vertical app, or makes a few calculations on a (usually lousy and half-@§§ed) spreadsheet. Anyway back in the old days we had a specific device, called telephone, to talk two-way (optionally hands-free) with other people, another specific device, called radio or tape player to have music (usually not when working), if you think about it a little bit, the new integration of these devices/functions into the PC has been possible only partially due to the evolution of the operating systems, and much more by the evolution of the hardware (but even more than that by the increased bandwidth of our connections, which again is hardware) and the decreasing of costs. But if you think only at the OS, sure Windows 3.1x sucked (and sometimes sucked big), but if you think of it (circa 1992/93) as an evolution over what was available (say) 3 years before it was great. And if you go back to good ol' NT3.51/4.00 times, 3 years later (1995/96), it was actually really years ahead. (and the whole system used 8 to 16 W311FAHR) But roughly 3 years later, Windows 2000 (which was an improvement over NT 4.00 in many ways) brought not that many changes. (and the whole system used 16 to 64 W311FAHR) And 2 years later XP didn't bring much (meaningful) ones. (while using at least, but still for the whole system, 64 to 128 W311FAHR) Another 6 years later (double that period) Vista didn't bring any. (and really-really needed 256 W311FAHR) And another 3 years later Vista SP3 rectius Windows 7 brought only marginal enhancements/additions (and everyone started bickering about the need of using 64 bits to have more than 512 W311FAHR) And another 3 years later 8 didn't bring any. Now look at Windows 10 and compare it with what was available 3 years ago. It is sad, and as said sadder if you put it in a wider perspective. jaclaz

Not at all, we are currently hung up on a partition/volume that is not "seen" by the Windows XP setup and in the meantime (until that issue is - hopefully - solved) we are playing the drive letter game. You are actually rowing on a huge hole with some remnants of the boat around it. To sum up: most people like (or are forced by ignorance - no offence whatever intended ) to have their Windows (be it XP or 7 or *whatever*) installed to the C:\ drive letter even those that know how (and like or want ) to install to a different drive letter, when dual booting choose (wrongly [1] BTW) to have SAME volumes have DIFFERENT drive letters assigned to them according to the actual OS booted a few people (rightly[1] BTW) set up their system in such a way that NO MATTER WHICH OS is booted all accessible/mounted volumes have the SAME drive letters assigned to the SAME volume (this as an example allows - without checking in which OS you are currently booted into - that a batch, or a setting in a program, etc, will always "land" on the SAME, INTENDED volume) STILL a number of programs (because of ignorance, stupidity or both of the people who wrote them - this time with some offence intended ) will only work when hosted on drive letter C:\ (or write their settings or their output only on drive C:\ ) so these aspects need to be taken into account when setting up a system Ultimately, assigning the drive letter can be either a mere "preference" of the user or a NEED, but in both cases, if we can have the freedom to choose, we have the right to choose, and everyone can choose (hopefully wisely): http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097576/quotes?item=qt0357926 jaclaz [1]Compare with: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/169320-dual-booting-dos-and-win7/

And you get right here : http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/172826-windows-10-first-impressions/page-8#entry1093084 jaclaz

Been extremely dinosaurish I would like to point out a different unit of measure, the W311FAHR (only to put things into perspective ) A W311R equates to 4 Mb of RAM, i.e. to the amount of RAM present in a PC the hardware on which a WHOLE Windows 3.11 Operating system ran normally (and on which you could at the time - say - write a letter, or create a spreadsheet, etc. fine, though slowly). A W311FAHR equates to 8 Mb of RAM, i.e. to the amount of RAM present in a PC the hardware on which a WHOLE Windows 3.11 Operating system ran "Fast As Hell". So, we are now at the point where Winamp uses by itself roughly 1 (one) W311FAHR to play some music (which BTW all in all is fine, as at least it is doing "something" ), and the stupid Windows Search uses by itself roughly 2 (two) W311FAHR to do absolutely NOTHING (not "nothing useful", actually "nothing"). Put this way it is even sadder. jaclaz

Yep . WinsetupFromUSB is just one of the methods developed here. However so that you know WinsetupFromUSB uses grub4dos (but also BootICE can use it and as well RMPREPUSB, as a matter of fact the "companion" to RMPREPUSB "Easy2boot" makes use of grub4dos through a set of batches/scripts). jaclaz

Sure they won't work. It is not like you run any tool that you find without having understood the basics and hope that by sheer luck they will fix your problem. Read this: http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=22984 Once you will have digested the contents, you may want to read this one: http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=23408 (a DriveImageXML backup, besides more generally the bootsector of a volume image, holds enough info to rebuild the MBR DATA) jaclaz

You mean you know ONLY 3 of them? However you are still not providing enough info, happy you solved the issue anyway (one way or the other). jaclaz

I was rethinking on the long delay that the diskpart rescan creates, and I tried again not using it but doing instead a "plainer" Mountvol removing/reassigning of drive letter after the switching. Obviously it is rather "immediate". The consequences are seemingly ONLY that the (rightly "switched") volume: does not show in Explorer "root" view it's label (i.e. it remains "Local disk" even if the volume has a label BUT it shows used/free space if you right click on it in Explorer and choose properties it is shown as "RAW", and has NO label (BUT the usage/free space is correct)Apart from those, everything else seems to work "normally". And if I "force" the writing of a label to it it seems like the situation is instantly updated. I have to do a few more tests, but I believe that re-assigning a label to the volume would assure a much faster update and we could get rid of most of the diskpart commands. jaclaz

You have grub (legacy) or grub2 or grub4dos? How (EXACTLY) did you create your stick? Are you using a "flat" BartPE (and using "i386" or "minint") or a .iso/img? Standard Litany, please: http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/problem-report-standard-litany.html jaclaz

Another idea (to be tested). Let's set explicitly (and as *recommended*): https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd799232(WS.10).aspx#PartitionStructures the 100 mb partition as ID 0x27, keeping it Active, there would be NO practical difference for Windows 7: http://www.sevenforums.com/installation-setup/182645-system-reserved-changing-partition-type-id-0x27.html What would do Windows XP setup? It won't see it, but would it "force" or "require" the "W: thing" to be active? (or refuse to install if not, not knowing where to put NTLDR, etc.?) And how would it behave for the partition "in the middle" (the largish one hosting Windows 7)? Most probably it will assign to that partition the C:\ drive letter, so a migrate.inf would be needed anyway. If we pre-add to the "W:\ thing" a BOOT.INI with a grldr entry, grldr and a menu.lst pointing to the BOOTMGR on the Windows 7 "system" partition, the XP setup should "keep it", adding to it the actual arcpath to the new install, and you could (once) boot through grub4dos to the Windows 7 and from it "fix the booting" (without needing booting form "external", i.e. (this might be interesting as a side note), what if the 100 Mb partition, set as either 0x07 or 0x27, is made active after (and a copy of NTLDR/NTDETECT.COM and BOOT.INI is made from the ones the setup placed on the (at the time of install) active "W: thing" (which should have gotten according to your experiment the C:\ because it was active at the time of install)? Would the Windows 7 bcdboot (or similar) command add *automagically* the XP as dual boot to the \boot\BCD? Or we still need to edit it manually with BCDedit or similar? jaclaz

Well, maybe there is another aspect to be taken into account. IF I was (which I am not, thank goodness) a Windows 8.x user I would be so terrified by the risk of getting by mistake some malware/virus rectius latish Windows Update file that I would anyway browse the Internet on XP ... , or, given the recent issue with update messing with fonts in XP, possibly Windows 2k . jaclaz

You mean you haven't seen many Windows 8 machines or that you have seen many of them completely idle and only a few of them in action (i.e. actually producing something) ? jaclaz

@bphlpt @submix8c Hey peeps, if you can be temporarily distracted , egrabrych already posted (post #8 of this thread) where to find: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc188782.aspx (same link submix8c just posted) which contain the executables allright. WHAT is the problem? The original code, originally linked to on the March 2001 article: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc301756.aspx see the wayback machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20081211013508/http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc301756.aspx was removed and posted (presumably in an updated form) attached to the new January 2003 article. Or the issue is a "collector approach" to get the (possibly outdated) version that was attached to the March 2001 article? If this is the case, it can be found here : https://web.archive.org/web/20010421023355/http://msdn.microsoft.com/code/default.asp?URL=/code/sample.asp?url=/msdn-files/026/002/215/msdncompositedoc.xml https://web.archive.org/web/20020416170116/http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/01/03/code/Leaks.exe BUT it contains ONLY the code (SOURCE) and needs to be compiled. More generally the scheme for code attached to MSDN magazine is: hxxp://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/<two-digit-year>/<month>/code/ like : https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/01/03/code/* jaclaz

Good to know, particularly the fact that SP3 NTLDR and NTDETECT.COM can "live" above the 48bit LBA limit , but you seemingly cheated in the sense that you made a test on a different setup. In oldtiger64's situation the 100 Mb partition would be the active one, and thus it would most probably get the C:\ drive letter and hold the NTLDR/NTDETECT.COM/BOOT:INI, I presume that a migrate.inf will be needed to avoid this. I mean, making (once it has been made sure that it is "seen" by the setup) the "W: thing" the active partition may be a good thing if the scope is to get the C:\ drive letter assigned to it, but not if one wants to keep the "W:" (or some other drive letter). To be on the safe side I would however add the usual BOOT.INI with a C:\grldr entry and grldr to both the "system" partition and to the "W:" thing, this way there should be a way out should any booting issue arise. jaclaz

Well, no. If you modify the BOOT.INI as submix8c suggested and DO NOT have a menu.lst you will get to a grub> prompt. If in it you type: map (hd0) (hd1) [ENTER] map (hd1) (hd0) [ENTER] when you enter: map --hook [ENTER] the mapping will succeed alright as you will have specified the drive map table. BUT, in your case, there is no need for the Windows 7 to be "first disk", so you need not to remap nor hook anything, and as posted the: title boot 7 from second diskroot (hd1,1)chainloader /bootmgrshould do nicely. Please consider how the (hd1,1) in the above comes from your previous report, the first partition on second disk should be (hd1,0), and normally the BOOTMGR is on the first (active) partition. jaclaz

Well, there are several ways to obtain in the end the result, but what is the problem with adding a menu.lst to the root of first disk (where grldr is)? jaclaz

Thanks . jaclaz

Sure it won*t. If the device (like it is normal) is seen as "Removable" Windows will only allow a single partition on it. You can install a Filter driver" such as cfadisk.sys dummydisk.sys or diskmod.sys in order to have the device seen as "fixed", but of course this will work only on the system(s) where you installed the filter driver. Alternatively you may want to try "flipping the removable bit", there are specific manufacturer tools for this BUT it is complex and potentially risky, as you may end up with a "broken" stick. Maybe we could better try to understand the reason why a single partition, the full size of the stick, doesn't work for you and fix that problem. jaclaz

That is a "green" or "LP" drive, isn't it? We have unfortunately little info on that drive, WHICH IS NOT a Barracuda 7200.11 as the models for which the "main" thread was started, all we have is here (it is a sticky and you should have already found it): http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/150475-st2000dl003-seagate-barracuda-lp-green-2000gb-suddenly-ceases/ jaclaz

Yep , it is needed to review what EXACTLY is shown at that point of the install, the issue is whether the disk is seen (and HOW it is seen and some of the partitions on it are seen - and HOW exactly, but not those starting beyond 128/137 Gb or crossing that boundary) then the SATA drive probably is the "right" one and the issue is somehow connected with LBA48, if the disk is not seen it is possible that the SATA driver is not the "right" one. But even if it is the "right" driver AND the Registry key for LBA48 is enabled, it is still possible that the issue is connected, as hinted in my previous note directed at cdob, with the need of a "boot" partition (what the good MS guys call "system") to host the NTLDR and related files below the LBA48 limit. jaclaz

Good catch See also if you find anything else not easily understandable or that could be however explained better (or in better English), please. jaclaz

Good , then I would call it a day and call the 011 version "RTM" . What about the Readme.txt? Any ideas/suggestions for it? Find attached the tentative "release" version. jaclaz ReadMe.zip

Maybe it is due to the USB connected disk (or to some other disk connected with a "slowish" BUS/interface) , I am using a Virtual Disk, so it is probably as fast as the (SATA) drive on which the image is hosted. I can do nothing to speed up that, I believe. Try the attached (no version number change), at least it provides a more meaningful message. jaclaz Switcher011.zip

Sure XP is 2K (with mainly some bells and whistles added to it), but the method/approach is the same possibly since NT 3.5 and however hasn't changed in up to 8.x (and possibly even the stupid 10 won't be different). jaclaz