jaclaz

From what you write it seems like you have a problem in a not-so-initial phase of booting. It could be a corrupted driver and/or a corrupted entry in the Registry. Is your boot drive FAT32 or NTFS?, if the latter the procedure is slighty more complex. Basically you should get a DOS boot disk (either a "real" floppy or a floppy image to be burned to CD or USB stick if your machine has no floppy and you can't get your hands on a USB one) capable of accessing the filesystem on your disk, if NTFS you need to use NTFS4DOS: http://www.free-av.com/antivirclassic/avira_ntfs4dos.html or a PE based disk, like the UBCD4WIN. Then you can backup all hives of your current Registry and replace them with the original ones. The procedure is sketched here: http://www.willingsoftware.com/service/registry.shtml for just the SOFTWARE hive, repeat steps for ALL registry hives, this can be done in Recovery Console as well: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545/en-us see also this for reference: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=71807 If the PC does not start, you can edit boot.ini to add to your existing entry /BASEVIDEO /SOS /BOOTLOG parameter, reference here: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysintern...on/bootini.mspx Boot.ini can be modified from DOS, even on NTFS, and without the NTFS4DOS driver, with this nifty utility: EditBINI™ http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/utilities.html If you have a way to access the Registry of that machine, you should edit it to disable "Automatically restart", reference here for XP , but Win2k is just the same: http://www.theeldergeek.com/auto_reboot_on_system_crash.htm so that you can actually read the BSOD error. It should be possible to do the above from recovery console, but a PE based boot Cd would be more convenient. (I haven't touched Recovery Console in years) Three small lessons you and everyone reading this should learn from this experience are: 1) First thing ALWAYS disable "Automatically restart" option after install 2) ALWAYS use ERUNT: http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/ 3) Whenever it is possible (read ALWAYS ) install a second basic instance of win2k/XP on the machine, or make (if you have an XP or later license) a PE bootable CD it is VERY convenient jaclaz

jaclaz

Just a guess on my part, but the only "media descriptor" that "should" or maybe "could" be changed on a physical sector, is byte 64 of FAT32 bootsector or byte 36 of FAT16 bootsector, i.e. the "BIOS HD" which is 80h (128 dec) for FIRST hard disk, 81h (129 dec) for second hard disk, and so on. DOS and Win9x will NOT boot from a drive identified by anything but 80h, this, as the MS guys like to put it is "by design", hence the need to use grub4dos or other bootmanagers capable of changing this byte and or trick the BIOS into thinking that the drive whence you are booting from is First drive. The byte usually called "media descriptor" is byte 21 of both type of sectors, and that is F8 for hard disks and F0 for floppy. However, it is nearly impossible to determine WHAT actually caused the problem, a defective connection (read cable and/or connectir on either MB or HD still appears as a probable cause), but it could also be that part of the corruption (not related to first/second hard disk) was pre-existing amd would have been found by Testdisk if run before the disk switching. jaclaz

Basically, you need to have (of course) an original XP CD. The files you are interested in are NTPRINT.inf and DRIVER.cab, they are both in the \I386 directory. Use the Add printer dialog, click "Have disk" or Driver disk", cannot remember the English caption right now, and point it to the %CD%\I386\NTPRINT.inf and install the printer normally. Alternatively, you can copy the NTPRINT.INF file to hard disk, make a second copy of it renaming it to, say, HP880C.INF, open it in notepad, search for the relevant info and edit it accordingly: in the "Manufacturer Section": delete all manufacturers but HP in "Models section": delete all other manufacturers and all HP models but "HP DeskJet 880C" in the [HP] subsection Delete "Previous Names" section in "OEM URLS" delete all but hp one in "Installer Sections" delete everything but the entry referenced in "Models section" if the entry in "Installer sections" begins with Copyfile=@ you can delete the entire "Copy files" section. in the "Source Disk Section", in subsection [sourceDisksFiles] delete all entries but those found in "Installer sections". With some "logical" trial and error, you should be able to delete some more unneeded entries. Now use a program capable of opening .CAB files (7-zip is the one I use) and extract from DRIVER.CAB to hard disk, in the same folder where HP880C.INF is, the files referenced in the entries you kept in HP880C.inf. You might need some trial and error before having it fully functional, but with a little patience you should be able to get it working. Once you have everything working, you should be able to make a new .CAB files with all files but HP880C.INF and, correcting the info in [sourceDisksNames.x86], have it compressed and functional. jaclaz P.S.: rather obviously, if you stripped "too much" from your install, i.e. as an example the "Add printer" capability, the above might not work.

VISTA98, from what you write, I wouldn't be so sure it is a bootrecord problem, it looks more like a file corrupted. However, to restore the COPY of the boot record read this: http://forum.winimage.com/viewtopic.php?t=200 and given links therein For a more general "in situ" repair, this: http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm DO NOT use the MaxBlast utility. jaclaz

@MOONLIGHT SONATA No, the bootsect.dat carries GEOMETRY information of the specific partition/disk, so it has to be generated "on the spot" of course if you have a number of systems partitioned EXACTLY in the same manner you can use a single bootsect.dat. As os2fan3 pointed out the freeware bootpart utility is much more convenient, and by using it there is no need whatsoever to boot from floppy. Besides, UNLIKE MS-DOS 6.22, in which IO.SYS needed to be FIRST file on partition, and thus the need for either SYS.COM or BOOTPART REWRITEROOT:C:, MS-DOS 7.x, i.e. WIn9x one, has NOT this limitation. All you need to do is to copy the files to the root of the partition and create the bootsector with bootpart, which will also graciously update BOOT.INI. Cannot say if it can be done during first part of unattended, but definitely it can be done thorugh a .cmd file once 2K/XP is installed, possibly with a Runonce or RunonceEx entry. jaclaz

[wiped by moderator] @Cyril Most probably you accidentally "fdisked" the partition table. The simplest way out is to use this program: http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk to try and rebuild it, of course IF data has not been overwritten. Do take your time understanding how to use it. jaclaz

My personal opinion is to make a small FAT16 partition, First, Primary, Active, size a little smaller than 1 Gb (it will get letter C:\), than an extended partition with inside it two logical volumes, either both NTFS or first one NTFS, second one FAT32 (remember you won't normally be able to access FAT32 volume from within NT 4.00, but see below) and have TWO instances of NT installed and one of Win98. To recap: First instance of NT installed on C:\ (C:\WINNT) - failsafe, to be used for recovery/managing, can be greatly slimmed down, if I remember correctly, once slimmed by taking out unneeded files (help files, networking related, unneeded drivers) it should take something less than 50 Mb First and (and only) instance of Win98 on C:\ (C:\WINDOWS) Second instance of NT installed on D: (D:\WINNT) - regular full install About FAT32 access under NT4.00 there are two solutions, both FREEWARE: http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/Fat32.html http://ashedel.chat.ru/fat32/ http://www.chat.ru/~ashedel/fat32/fastfat32.rar Viceversa, to access (READ ONLY) the NTFS volume inder W98 you can use: http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/NtfsWindows98.html or if you need read/write access (from DOS window) get this: http://www.free-av.com/antivirclassic/avira_ntfs4dos.html Also you better get the FREEWARE bootpart: http://www.winimage.com/bootpart.htm make yourself a boot floppy as described here: http://www.xxcopy.com/xxcopy33.htm and learn how to use them to setup a multiboot system, and (just in case) be prepared to troible shoot it. Updating NT 4.00 AT LEAST to SP4, but of course SP6a is better, is, in my view, MANDATORY. jaclaz

THAT is preoccupying. Did you try with another good cable? How does the BIOS sees the drive? Since Win98 and NT based systems behave differently, the first one uniquely relying on info gathered from the BIOS, the latter by re-scanning buses with it's own drivers, I guess it is possible what you describe if the BIOS does not recognize it properly. Do have a look at the drive with this program: http://hddguru.com/content/en/software/ http://hddguru.com/content/en/software/2005.10.02-MHDD/ jaclaz

OT: [begin joking] No one noticed the irony underlying a question from a member that is called VISTA98 having problems with ME? [/end joking] jaclaz

Try to see a variable in a FOR loop INSTEAD of "two percentage signs followed by a letter", as "two percentage signs followed by an ASCII character that is not ALREADY a special character, NOT necessarily limited to range a-z and A-Z" and it should make much more sense. Just for the record, I find out the problem I had before with the /v switch, the reg.exe version (optional) with Win2K does NOT support the switch, you need an XP or later version. So, my "alterenate" syntax is valid with Win2K and the /v one with XP and later. jaclaz

Well, there is no "in-between" compromise. The partition on hard disk is EITHER FAT16 OR FAT32. It should be viewable from Win98 in various locations, but basically, if it is a single 9 GB partition, or it is however bigger than 2 Gbytes, it is FAT32 (as FAT16 limit is 2 Gb). You might want to have a look at these: http://www.allensmith.net/Storage/HDDlimit/FAT16.htm http://www.allensmith.net/Storage/HDDlimit/NT4FAT16.htm If you cannot find a way to check the format, just download PTINFO: ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_...es/partinfo.zip ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_...es/PartIn9x.zip and have a look at the partition table. About FDISK, the Win98 one can partition a disk allright with FAT16 WITHIN the limit of the 2GB seen above, and actually a FAT16 partition bigger than slightly less than 1GB does not make much sense, as the cluster size will be HUGE. I would suggest you to use, instead of FDISK, Ranish Partition Manager, a freeware that gives you a number of enhanced features: http://www.ranish.com/part/ version 2.40 should be enough. Of course, if you FDISK/FORMAT the drive, you will lose EVERYTHING already on it, including your Windows 98 instal (if it is on that drive) and the /I386 folder with the NT install. jaclaz

Some more migrate.inf related info: http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=19663 jaclaz

Problem is, how will you print the sheet? If you don't have a large format printer you will need an app like these: http://www.posteriza.com/es/index.php?lang=en_US http://www.users.bigpond.net.au/postaganda/ And why do you really need Word? I mean if it is just to print a banner or something like that, there are better apps, more oriented to "vector graphics". You can use one of these freeware ones: http://www.freebyte.com/graphicprograms/#vector or if it's a one time only, you can try this: http://www.signgo.com/products/signgo_lite.html It is also possible that a limit exists in the printer driver, try installing a generic HPGL printer (corresponding to the entire family of HP and compatible plotters) this way you will have no limits in length from the printer driver side (if I recall correctly a limit exists, around 20 meters ) If you connect the driver to FILE, you can save the print file and later take it to a plotting service. jaclaz

No prob, mate. You are not the only one that never took the time to properly read a Software License Agreement, or didn't fully grasped it's concepts, and I am not talking only about the MS EULA, but also about GPL, Open Source and all other kinds of licenses. You might find this an interesting reading: http://www.cyber.com.au/cyber/about/compar...gpl_to_eula.pdf This part is relevant to the topic: In a nut shell, in the case of a "normal" XP license, the money you pay Microsoft or one of it's representatives or OEM's is for acquiring the RIGHT to USE the product, according to the terms specified in §1., which, between other limitations, like the "single device" and "no more than 2 CPU's", explicitly allow you to: (bolding is mine) The above explicitly allows (even if unneeded, as not expressly prohibited anywhere else) that the possibility to use different storage devices as install media is perfectly legal and allowed. Also, note that the entire EULA makes references to the "Product" (identified as "Microsoft Windows XP Professional" in this example) and nowhere is a reference to the specific media on which the product is delivered, on the contrary, the reference is : (bolding is again mine) and thus covers equally software on a physical media as well as downloaded one. And of course, if the point was "you cannot copy the files from CD to another media", BartPE and all similar projects, including the various unattended and Multiboot CD/DVD's, nlite, Ryan Integrator, and more generally, say, 80% of the projects and activities on this board would have been illegal. jaclaz

If you are talking about USB Mass Storage Devices, check here: http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbdlm_e.html More generally, USBdeview can disconnect USB devices: http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/usb_devices_view.html Following is just a guess on my part, but manually running the "New Hardware Wizard" should re-connect it, or maybe one could try manually starting the relevant services with "NET START". jaclaz

Hmmm, is by any chance the hard disk formatted with a partition FAT32? That would explain how the files were properly written (from within Win98) to the hard disk, but later the files were not found. WINNT is ONLY compatible with FAT16 and NTFS (an early version, NOT compatible, unless you have SP4, with later Win2K/XP NTFS). WINNT 4.00 was released BEFORE Windows 95 OSR2, the OS that introduced FAT32. Also, I don't get it. Is the hard drive an IDE one or not? The ST310212A is an IDE/ATA/ATAPI one: http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/ata/st310212a.html What is the SCSI controller used for, then? If I guessed right about the FAT32, you are stuck, the only way out would be to recreate an install CD, format with a PROPER filesystem the HD and install from CD: http://www.nu2.nu/bootcd/#nt4 Finally, take a deep breath before answering to this: DO YOU OWN A PROPER LICENSE FOR NT 4.00? If not, even if someone would consider NT 4.00 "Abandonware", this is NOT the right place to talk about this, see Rule #1: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=18408 jaclaz

Well actually it is a bit tiring : http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=97137&hl= ...but the (almost) "final" method for #4 is just a few days old, and generally new members take the board more like a "question time" rather than a searchable database of knowledge.... jaclaz

Does the sentence "Search before asking" ring any bell? Here: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=97055&hl= and links therein. jaclaz

Though a bit difficult to find, there are 800 and even 900 Mb CD's: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=91905 http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=16068 jaclaz

From what you report, it seems to me like you do not need an utility to "format" anything. All you need is an utility to write the correct MBR to the disk, this has nothing to do with "formatting" but rather with "fdisking". You see, a partition image, being an image, ALREADY has (its own) format, including it's bootsector. What you are missing is the MBR and the partition tables within it. If I am not mistaken, GHOST has provisions for this, but not being really familiar with it, I'll suggest you an alternate program (but there are several other ones) to remain on Symantec/Powerquest products : ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_...lities/head.zip You want to use the "MBRUTILD.EXE" program, (there is also a MBRUTIL.EXE for NT/2K/XP): MBRUtil Copyright (c) 2002 PowerQuest Corporation Invalid arguments Usage: MBRutil.exe [/?] [/S[H]=<fileName>] [/R[H]=<fileName>] /S Save MBR (sector 1 only) to <fileName> /SH Save entire first head to <fileName> /R Restore MBR (sector 1 only) from <fileName> /RH Restore entire first head from <fileName> all you have to do is run mbrutild.exe /S PCname.bin to save the MBR when imaging and mbrutild.exe /R PCname.bin when restoring. You can find here: http://thestarman.pcministry.com/asm/mbr/index.html an extensive reference on MBR and bootsectors and links to various freeware tools. jaclaz

@ilko_t Newish release of grub4dos has introduced a couple new commands: This could be the way to introduce "automatic" selection of the grub4dos menu.lst entry during first and second boot. jaclaz

Ambassador, don't take this the wrong way, we are trying to help you, but you must realize that in the sentence: the attributes "wrong", "clearly" and "needed" are just your own opinion on something that you do not actually properly and fully understand (otherwise you won't be here asking for help). There is no way, unless someone here has a properly tuned crystal ball (mine is, alas, in the workshop for maintenance ) to give you an answer without knowing more details. Please do post: A description of your hardware, including make/model of SCSI controller and of hard disks, including their size, etc. The exact steps you took to trying installing NT 4.00. The media you are trying to install from. As a general rule, you can try to install NT 4.00 from DOS usig winnt.exe, rather than from CD, this sometimes help. Also you might want to re-check the limits of NT 4.00 hard disk and partition sizes, maybe something "hides" there: http://www.computing.net/windowsnt/wwwboard/forum/22999.html http://www.ntfaq.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=13922 jaclaz

@Idontwantspam If I may, it's a bit aggressive as a reply, as long as you have a proper license, it is PERFECTLY legal to install Windows XP or ANY other software from ANY media. @originalconcept There are several possible ways to install from USB stick. See here the possibilities: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=81788&st=6 Method 1) is FULLY documented and working in the link in the above post. Method 2) can be easily adapted to USB stick from the one described here: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=68252 and customized at will, i.e. using Winbuilder instead of BartPE, etc., FULLY working. Method 3) is "on hold", nothing definitive about it. Method 4) has recently been developed to a state where it is working for IDE/ATA equipped PC's, SATA ones appear to be trickier: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showto...t=0&start=0 with the vital contributions of porear, cdob and ilko_t, here is the FULLY working guide: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showto...1384&st=128 Method 5) has not yet been tested/developed, due to "hardware requirements" (at least 1 Gb of RAM) jaclaz

Well, then let's make it TWO defective hard drives : jaclaz