jaclaz

No, sorry, according to the provided links "should" work like this when there are no already assigned letters (i.e. an upgrade): http://www.dewassoc.com/support/win2000/driveletters.htm If your disks are set like in your last post: FIRST ACTIVE PRIMARY ON FIRST hard disk:Disk 1 The 18 Gb gets C: The FIRST LOGICAL VOLUME ON NEXT hard disk: Disk 2 The 12 Gb gets D: The NEXT LOGICAL VOLUME ON SAME hard disk:Disk 2 The 24 Gb gets E: The FIRST LOGICAL VOLUME ON NEXT hard disk: Disk 3 The 148 Gb gets F: The remaining PRIMARY PARTITION on FIRST hard disk:Disk 1 The 54 Gb gets G: If you have ALL PRIMARY PARTITIONS: FIRST ACTIVE PRIMARY ON FIRST hard disk: Disk 1 The 18 Gb gets C: FIRST PRIMARY ON NEXT hard disk:Disk 2 The 12 Gb gets D: FIRST PRIMARY ON NEXT hard disk: Disk 3 The 148 Gb gets E: NEXT PRIMARY ON FIRST hard disk:Disk 1 The 54GB gets F: NEXT PRIMARY ON NEXT hard disk: Disk 2 The 24GB gets G: And all of the above can even be worsened if you have other devices, like CD-Roms, burners, or ZIP/Jazz drives connected. You can try the following (NO warranties implied): Disk 1 18GB Active Primary => C 54GB Logical = D Disk 2 12GB Logical = E 24GB Logical = F Disk 3 148GB Logical = G Maybe, if possible, it would be easier to simply disable the 2nd and 3rd hard disks from BIOS when installing the first time? jaclaz

From the picture, the BIOS is made by "dzine Belgium": http://www.dzine.be/ This could be your "thingy": http://www.dzine.be/products/dsr/dsr2002.htm maybe contacting their support would help. (it is also possible that to access the BIOS setup you need to put on a jumper or something) jaclaz

Yep, that is perfectly normal. It depends on Primary/Logical Volumes inside Extended partitions and hoow windows assigns letters. Read these: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=35329 http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=28939 http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=23484 jaclaz

You don't find it, as it is not there. It is generated at install time, as it embeds the geometry of your Hard Disk. Read this: http://www.xxcopy.com/xxcopy33.htm and this: http://forum.winimage.com/viewtopic.php?p=541 (and following links) jaclaz

Read here: http://www.ss64.com/nt/schtasks.html and here: http://www.ss64.com/nt/shutdown.html (the use of NET STOP could mean very fast shutdown time) jaclaz P.S.: have a look here also: http://www.robvanderwoude.com/shutdown.html for more hints and alternate utils

(responding to hakeem5454 PM): A detailed whitepaper is here: http://oem.microsoft.com/static/worldwide/...ons_for_SBs.doc As already mentioned in the posts I previously linked to you will need a Partition Manager to be able to hide/unhide the recovery partition, unless you want to use the technique detailed here: http://www.tech-forums.net/computer_articl...estore-disk.php (it is a simple guide to make a hidden recovery partition + recovery boot disk with Ghost) Here you can find almost the same using "Partition Saving" which is Freeware unlike GHOST or ACRONIS: http://www.optimizingpc.com/howtouse/imagebootdisk.html http://www.optimizingpc.com/howtouse/imagingpartition.html I already suggested some freeware partition managers in the threads I previously linked to, here are some more hints: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=47773 ("partita" actually works, the only downside is that you see at boot time the "hidden" partition boot entry in the menu) Of course there are many more, both commercial and freeware. If the "recovery partition" is DOS based (or to be more exact the Operating System hooks on int13h) you can use ISOEMU: http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=8955 (scroll down the page for a working link) to add an entry to boot.ini that boots from an .iso image (yeah, ok, it is not a recovery partition, but it's similar enough) or vfloppy: http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=10878 to add an entry to boot.ini that boots from an .ima image (yeah, ok, it is not a recovery partition, but it's similar enough) jaclaz

Here are a couple of threads on the making of recovery partitions: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=26185 http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=37939 jaclaz

Yes, you are right. I tested it saving it as lb.cmd, just to save some typing, without thinking about it! jaclaz

It works normally on my system, I would make echo off, like this: ::========label.cmd============= @echo OFF title the partition is being labeled color 0b label %systemdrive% SYSTEM exit ::========================== as I cannot see why you should put a title, change the colour of the window and echo commands, as it is going to run in a fraction of a second. Maybe you have a problem with the %systemdrive% variable? Try the following: ::========label.cmd============= @echo OFF title the partition is being labeled color 0b Set systemdrive echo Currrent value of systemdrive variable is %systemdrive% pause label %systemdrive% pause exit ::========================== This shows the value of %systemdrive% before trying to change label, (Press ctrl-C to abort the batch if value is incorrect) then lets you interactively supply the new name. jaclaz

Ok, that's BartPE, which is NOT windows PE! Read here what is Windows PE: http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/program...port/winpe.mspx http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/winpreinst/default.mspx jaclaz

happy it worked! jaclaz

You can try what I suggested here: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=52572&hl= NOT guaranteed to work! jaclaz

Hey, take it easy, you'll have to "learn" a bit to go on. Press Start button Select programs Select Accessories Select Dos Prompt (or Command Prompt, or something like that, I am not running XP so I don't remember the exact name) A window with black background will pop up (if you cannot find it, do the following): Select Start button Select Run Type in the box "cmd" (without quotes) and press ENTER or click on button The window will have a prompt (something like C:\> and a blinking cursor, possibly an underscore) Click inside the window then type: chkdsk /F and press ENTER If it does not solve proble, re-run it as chkdsk /F /R Note, the above will check the system partition, if you wish to run it on another drive you have to specify the letter for the drive, i.e. chkdsk C: /F chkdsk D: /F etc. etc. Have a look at these for reference: http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/Int...ompt-tut76.html http://www.updatexp.com/windows-xp-chkdsk.html Let us know how it went. jaclaz

ROTFLMAO! jaclaz

There is this procedure, be warned that sometimes works, sometimes does not: 1) Take the HD out of the "not installing" PC and put it on the other one 2) Phisycally unplug (or disable in BIOS) your "normal" HD and install Windows on the "other" HD 3) Select "Standard VGA" as video card 4) Once Windows is installed and running, go to device manager and remove, one by one, EVERYTHING, except: Hard disk Video card (VGA) Keyboard Mouse 5) Switch PC off 6) Put back HD to the "not installing" PC and switch it on 7) You will probably experience some re-boots 8) Do a REPAIR ( R ) install from CD, if needed 9) Let windows re-detect new hardware, give it, if needed, new drivers BE VERY AWARE of the existence of different Hardware Abstraction Layer dll's (HAL.DLL): http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...kb;EN-US;237556 You might want to add various boot.ini lines with the /HAL= switch: http://www.sysinternals.com/Information/bootini.html to cover the event that the HAL.DLL installed on one PC is not the same required by the other. jaclaz

No problem if you don't have a floppy. Get Virtual Floppy from here: http://chitchat.at.infoseek.co.jp/vmware/vfd.html Download ANY 1.44 Mb floppy image, or create an empty one with this tool: http://www.nu2.nu/bfi/ Mount the image with VFD and you can use the DATAPOL install routine. Have a look here for more floppy/disk image related tools: http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=11096 There are some problems/incompatibilities with using freedos and ntfs4dos: http://www.google.com/search?q=ntfs4dos+freedos I cannot be more precise as I never tested them together. jaclaz

Read here: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=30998 NTFSDOS is Winternal/Sysinternal's Commercial (Read/Write) App - Freeware (Read only) NTFS4DOS is Datapol's FREEWARE Read/Write solution MUCH smaller! (under 100 Kb) or you could use the "Captive" way: http://www.jankratochvil.net/project/captive/ with a mini distro of linux http://www.inside-security.de/INSERT_en.html or another mini distro of linux (not using "Captive"): http://www.plop.at/page_en_4.html or use a React-OS bootable LIVE CD ISO image: http://www.reactos.com/ size is 9888 kb, that should just fit in 10Mb (not sure if latest version supports Read/Write NTFS, though) jaclaz

Nice! jaclaz

Here is a thread where I posted reference to some "Unattended 98" reference I could find on MSFN and elsewhere: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=40303 jaclaz

Have a look here: http://www.tacktech.com/software.cfm (CD-compares) http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=101 http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=103 http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=104 jaclaz

Well, it MUST be somewhere, I don't think it is created from thin air! The boot logo is INSIDE the win98 IO.SYS file http://www.easydesksoftware.com/common.htm#logos Not to see it, you must set the value Logo=0 in file MSDOS.SYS (you can edit it with Notepad) http://www.easydesksoftware.com/msdos.htm Reference: http://support.microsoft.com/?id=151667 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/118579/EN-US/ About the main problem, I cannot help you, I quite frankly cannot understand why you won't use a CD-ROM driver in your system, if you have problems with MSCDEX, why don't you use SHSUCDX: http://www.geocities.com/jadoxa/shsucdx/ On the other hand, your approach is very interesting, please post progress/results. If you are on Win2K/XP I suggest you use a HD image instead of an actual HD. You can use the Ken Kato driver: http://chitchat.at.infoseek.co.jp/vmware/vdk.html#top and (optionally) my pseudo GUI: http://home.graffiti.net/jaclaz:graffiti.n...ts/VDM/vdm.html Later, you can (instead of burning on a CD) use qEMU, see this thread: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=48629 to test the .ISO image. Also, you might want to experiment with this: http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=8955 and with the original eltorito.sys by Bart: http://www.nu2.nu/eltorito/ http://www.nu2.nu/bootcd/#cdromsi jaclaz

I don't know much about Vista, but it looks like it is using ANOTHER bootloader, NOT NTLDR. If you ran fixboot/fixmbr, from within XP, you probably overwrote references to the new bootloader BOOTMGR with ones to NTLDR. The fixntfs utility "should" be able to correct this, see here: http://www.pro-networks.org/forum/post-468184.html (I suppose it does, but you'll have to find the correct switch) Also, if it works like elder versions, you may have the option of an ® Repair install. jaclaz

Yes, of course the "real" solution would be a farm of SCSI drives, but prices are way too expensive. Cheers, jaclaz

Not to put you down or anything, but wouldn't be an option to use a dedicated system? Just an idea, bu this is really cheap (less than the price for XP): http://www.rebyte.com/content/view/122/25/ Also, keep an eye on this: NASLITE http://www.serverelements.com/ RAID support is expected in next releases jaclaz

Here you can find the meaning of standard BIOS beep codes: http://www.wimsbios.com/HTML1/faq.html#q18 jaclaz