jaclaz

Just for the record, there is a "cmd.exe" that works under win9x that has almost, but not quite, all the functionalities of 2k/Xp "cmd.exe": http://www.boot-land.net/forums/?showtopic=2392 jaclaz

Well, as specified in the page I referenced before, you need to add the "/unattend" switch, NOT hte "/unattend[num]:[answer_file]" one. But the problem is that your PC does not qualify for an upgrade, and cannot say if the nlite "remove limits" option will work or not in the case of an upgrade. However, as several people already said, installing XP on that machine is more like committing suicide than anything else (even if you succeed you will have a sloow death, you will die during sleep from boredom while waiting for system to boot and later, little by little, by each minimal but significant lag of time between any command you may give and the system response..... ) What I personally find adequate (which does NOT mean minimum, but rather minimum to have acceptable responsiveness): 32 Mb Win95 or lited 98 64 Mb NT 4.00 and Windows 9x 128 Mb for Windows 2000 256 Mb for Windows XP jaclaz

Well, this does not help much in correcting it (if needed ), does it? Can you reply to the original topic on boot-land (as to not clutter this one) and tell me more about the problems you had? I tested it on two separate machines, and it worked, but since both PC's are my own, they have very similar setups so they do not represent a good test. @ilko_t I'll try and see what I can come out with. About the "already" present lines, it should not be a problem since, if I a not mistaken the "new" entry will be by default the "default" one (pardon me the pun ). What I mean is, if on First hard disk there is already a "complex"BOOT.INI like this: The result when modified by the new install, let's say on first hard disk, partition 3, will be: And what the batch has to do is to look at the arcpath specified in "Default=" and change just that entry and the corresponding menu one below with same arcpath as follows: Am I correct? What happens with SATA drives? jaclaz

Well, you missed my post here: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showto...1384&st=218 And the batch I wrote: http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=2362 it does EXACTLY that. Allowed are ANY 8+3 names, so you can leave SETUPLDR.BIN as is without renaming it. (You may notice the amount of feedback I received , I guess that changing loader in bootsectors is an activity that very few people do) About the arcpath, I am still thinking about it, the problem may lay with some "unorthodox" Partition tables, see these: http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/editbini.htm http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/notes.htm#10 Easiest would probably "assume" that one would use USB install just for installing XP on FIRST PRIMARY partition of FIRST harddisk, as it happens, say, in 99% of cases and operate a manual adjustement for the remaining 1% (like myself) that install to Logical Volumes inside Extended Partition or that install to a non first hard disk. In this case the batch could ask user if he installed it to first active partition of first disk, and if answered yes write on BOOT.INI a line referencing multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS or otherwise write several lines like: multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(4)\WINDOWS multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(5)\WINDOWS multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(2)\WINDOWS multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(3)\WINDOWS multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(4)\WINDOWS multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(5)\WINDOWS Another idea would be to parse the existing boot.ini lines with: multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(z)partition(w)\windir get the rdisk(z) value and just subtract 1 from it, leaving al the rest as is. What do you think of this last idea, it came to me just as I was writing this post, could it work? If yes, I think I can jolt it down in batch quite easily..... jaclaz

Yep, FIRST you run: C:\I386\winnt32 /checkupgradeonly If no "strange" errors are reported, you LATER run: C:\I386\winnt32 (with NO parameters) The /noreboot is an optional parameter, it is only needed if you need to do some work on the files in the \$WIN_NT$.~BT or \$WIN_NT$.~LS directory or to the boot files (NTLDR, NTDETECT.COM and BOOT.INI) from your currently running Windows 9x/Me. However, here is a complete list of WINNT32 parameters, in an easy to read format: http://www.quepublishing.com/articles/arti...qNum=6&rl=1 Be VERY AWARE of Murphy's Law, it is not recommended to have NO way out if something goes wrong, for any reason... jaclaz

Hey, porear, glad to see you are still around. Congratulations to you and Mrs. porear, for the contribution to the world population (much more important than your however notable contributions to finding a way to install XP from USB). jaclaz

And, if I may add a further reason to prathapml's post, simply to prove that it CAN be done when Official docs say that it can't. jaclaz

Just a small correction : Next time touch a metallic part of the computer case first, if it is a desktop PC (and thus it is grounded), if it is a laptop (which is NOT grounded) touch any metallic part that is grounded you find around you, such as a handrail or a radiator or a massive metal object, such as a steel file cabinet. jaclaz

Well, actually Methyl detailed step by step tutorial is nice because adding to the stick the grub4dos files you can have a multiboot stick that can, besides installing Vista, do other things. Nothing really new (no offence intended to Methyl ) for expert grub4dos users, but still a really very good thing for less experienced ones. jaclaz

What I would do is to simply run WINNT32 from C:, without the Syspart command. Before that I would prepare, through the use of bootpart.exe, a dual-boot system, so that if anything goes wrong you should be able to boot in your old Win9x allright. And of course DO run the winnt32 /checkupgradeonly ! Details are here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/316639/en-us DO NOT convert the filesystem to NTFS during install. The only drawback I can see is that you won't probably be able to install XP to the \Windows partition as that one is already taken by your Win98, you'll have to install to \WinXP or some other name. jaclaz

Here: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070131/073609.shtml jaclaz

Yes, spacesurfer, you are perfectly correct, the =FLOOR(F3/10,1) function would work, as well as these other (simpler) two : =ROUNDDOWN(F3/10,0) =INT(F3/10) but only in this particular case, (where a numeric value is requested as end result). I tried to give a more "general" solution, including the ability to output text or whatever is in the lookup table, i.e. to possibly replicate the behaviour of the I-ching calculator found by Douglas Adams' character Dirk Gently: The calculator is now available on-line as a java script: http://www.thateden.co.uk/dirk/ And, just for the record , I was a math wiz too. jaclaz

Though I never heard about anybody attempting (let alone succeeding) in this, my other experiences in all matter USB related tells me that the problems (if any) might most probably reside on the actual PC/motherboard BIOS than on the card side. jaclaz

Yep, sure, there are a few utilities to that effect: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=49184 http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=49103 http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/nircmd.html http://www.commandline.co.uk/cmdow/ jaclaz

Just make an .iso, delete the bootfix.bin from it and re-burn it: http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=36&st=3 http://bootcd.narod.ru/bcdw_e.htm#bootfix jaclaz

A very small DOS one: http://johnson.tmfc.net/dos/todisk.html Still ALPHA, but after all, that's was testing is about I guess that it could be very useful for a USB device (or even floppy) DISKMAN http://www.diskman.co.uk/ is a great app, but until version 5 comes out, NTFS is not or poorly supported.... jaclaz

Interesting. For the record, the "multi" syntax is a derivative of the "scsi" one or whatever, in any case, multi is ALWAYS multi(0) and disk is ALWAYS disk(0) reference: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...b;en-us;q102873 so THAT is not the problem. However, if we define a "standard" for our install, it can be done in batch, no problem, it is when there are multiple \WINDOWS directories on different partitions that the problem might be tricky to resolve, though I am not yet done with this.... jaclaz

@Rudi1 It would be nice when you want to post an article, to only post the title and one or a few sentences, and post a link to the source and cite the author, the text you posted is integrally taken by this article: which can be found here: http://news.softpedia.com/news/Forget-abou...oft-58752.shtml At least this is the idea of Copyright..... jaclaz

@AlexTitov Good find! Another little step towards perfection. @all About the arcpath thingy, I had a look but it is not an easy thing at all. What we actually need would be the behaviour, under Recovery Console, of the map arc command, which is very fast and has an output which is something like: C: FAT32 500MB multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1) D: FAT32 800MB multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2) E: \Device\CdRom0 I tried a few of the (less known) utilities that come with XP, but could not find any that gave the wanted results in an easily "parsable" form. The only one that gave good results is the dmdiag.exe that comes from the Resource Kit (but that is downloadable) as either "Windows XP Service Pack 2 Support Tools": http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details...61-BA8011FABF38 or as dmdiag.exe (this is the W2K tool, but should work as well): http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927229/en-us that outputs all the symbolic names of various disks and partitions, i.e. info enough to recreate an arcpath. Still there is the need to test it's output, unlike, as I did, on a normal working system, in the possibly "reduced" environment in which it is expected to re-create the arcpath. Another possibility could be some clever working with the output of diskpart, but again one has to check if it works when we need it, and the parsing is definitely not easy. I am still loking for some small nifty third party utility that may be easier to use, so please, if any one has ANY idea, post it to the thread. jaclaz

Another trick, similar to IcemanND's one is the following: ECHO . |someapp.exe again, sometimes it works, sometimes not. jaclaz

OT: @Molecule The idea of imaging forth and back the system is not, in my view, the best way for "kiosk mode". It would be better if you used one of the various ways to boot Win9x from a RAMDISK. Alternatively, and maybe even easier, you can experiment with the grub4dos features of the --mem command. Of course the machine needs to have enough RAM for it. @IcemanND Sorry didn't intend to hijack the thread. jaclaz

Can't say if it applies to Win2003 (but cannot think a reason why it should not) these may be of interest to you: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=85812 http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=92895 jaclaz

@IcemanND You seem to have made a good "harvest" , I didn't check but here there should be a few more: http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=16534 I am cross-linking that thread to yours. jaclaz

Usually a small batch file checkong the existance of a "tag file" (i.e. a file that you know is ONLY on the CD) is used, an example is here: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=38739 A more elaborate example of batch can be found here: http://www.robvanderwoude.com/amb_cdrom.html (that can detect a CD ROM even if no media is in it) And here is a .vbs example: http://www.robvanderwoude.com/files/cdrom_vbs.txt Though I did not understand: could you please better explain the above. jaclaz

Well, it all depends on WHAT you want to do. Basically you should already know how to copy a BartPE install on HD, on it's own partition. Generally this partition is the FIRST one on HD (and Active). Then you customize your BartPE install, with .cmd scripts, third party cloning or imaging utilities (if used). Then you hide that partition and make the second one Active. To this you install normally your XP or whatever. Then you unhide the BartPE one and either copy to it the XP install files or an image of the second partition. This is where you need to provide a "switching" way, like the MBR code proposed, to either: - hide first partition and make second active (normal operation mode) - unhide first partition and make it active (recovery mode) The actions that the Recovery partition will perform are up to you, generally speaking there are four possible choices that you can take when "building" that partition: 1) Use just a Recovery Console 2) Start a (normal or unattended) setup with WINNT32 (and it's various options) 3) Start a setup to use the Repair option 4) Start a third party tool to re-image (restore) the previously saved image of the second partition To which you add that some of them are not mutually exclusive, so that you can combine more than one of the above and choose one on-the-fly. In other words, the object of this thread is to "refine" the way a recovery partition "looks" (or does not look, as it is hidden ) so, you should first thing get it working as "visible", and only once everything works as expected, hide it and provide a way for the "switching". Start from here: http://www.911cd.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=9895 http://www.911cd.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=11150 http://www.911cd.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=11166 http://www.911cd.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=11226 http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=18031 For the record, and to keep things as together as possible, there is another "512 byte only" MBR capable of "switching", PARTITA, referenced here: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=47773 and here are some more elder threads relating to the same matters: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=86662 http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=84411 (and links therein) jaclaz