spacesurfer

No way! Well... maybe. I still use floppy IMAGES though. I can boot floppy images using Grub4Dos. Much faster.

It's great that you found the answer. But instead of deleting, can you post where you found the answer, may be someone else has a similar question and will benefit as well.

Those are your contacts - or entries in your address book. Outlook Express in XP does not use this but I know for sure that Windows Mail from vista does use it as does Windows Live Mail Desktop. Maybe Live Messenger also stores your contacts in this manner. If you log in as someone else, those file names are like encrypted or something - nonsense filenames. If you log in to your own profile, then you should be able to see the names of all your contacts.

What folder is it? Where is it located? Did you create it or was it already there? Are you sure it's 0 bytes? Are you viewing hidden files? hidden system files?

@FireGeier. Thanks for setx. I got it working now But I had to use both set and setx. Reason is setx didn't seem to update the variables in the menu (so I wasn't sure if they were being assigned in real time). If I closed and restarted, then I saw the variables. Also if I changed an already assigned variable with setx, then I had to restart the script to see the change. I got around it by using both commands and it works fine. Thanks for tip.

I tried running BCDEdit in Windows XP and got an error regarding ntdll.dll. I found file in Vista and registered in XP and still same error. Curious though, after I clicked OK on error dialog, BCDEdit displayed the content of my bcd. Anyone tried using it to edit bcd from XP? Is there a way to make it run without errors?

The first rule is to search... How to partition in Vista

IcemanND, your script does check for the folder, but it will accept a folder without a filename specified whether it exists or not. For example, if I input F:\windows\myimage, it will tell me F:\windows does not exist (in case it really doesn't exist). On the other hand, if I input F:\windows\, it will take it (even though F:\windows\ does not exist). I thought that was strange. Addendum: I got it working IcemanND. But now the question is, is there a way to save the variables (to the paths) you entered and recall them next time you run the script after closing the command prompt?

Here's another solution to booting independently: Boot Vista and XP Independently

Yes. As a matter of fact, you can do it with any system configuration type. You just need to know where your Vista/XP boot files are. Your boot files will be on your active partition. Just go to your active partition and copy the boot files mentioned to your recovery partition. For those who know what we're talking about, there is no need to modify BCD. As a matter of fact, you should NOT modify BCD with bcdedit. Reason is, it doesn't matter where you put BCD, it will know where your Vista is installed. Thus, copying it from active partition to recovery partition won't make a difference to the way BCD finds your Vista partition, since it relies on GUID.

Many questions regarding making XP and Vista boot independently of each other arise because users face problems when one partition becomes corrupt or they format their active partition, not knowing they will lose the ability to boot their OS. Having independent boot would avoid this scenario. The reason they are dependent is because the boot files for both are stored on ONE and the SAME partition, which is your ACTIVE partition. Vista setup determines to put the boot files on the active partition, which is usually the XP partition since it's active at the time of install. I have come up with a way to boot the two independently with the use of a third "recovery partition." This recovery partition can be multi-purpose if you use BartPE. You can use it to boot XP and Vista, replace system files with patched ones, use disk management services to repartition, etc. (You can also use Windows PE or VistaPE as your recovery partition. You will have to add them to your BCD with bcdedit using the link in the last post about adding WinPE to HDD.) The benefit of this setup is if you hose your third partition, you can boot XP or Vista by making your XP partition active again with a BartPE CD. Requirements Three partitions. I recommend 600 - 700 MB for your third partition, in case you add other plugins/programs. Grub4Dos file called grldr. PE builder for making BartPE. System Setup There's no recommended system setup, but to give you an idea, here's my system setup. My XP partition on C:\ is the active partition, containing the boot files for Vista (C:\BOOT folder and C:\bootmgr). Vista is on D:\ and was installed from within XP. BartPE on E:\ is my recovery partition. If you haven't installed anything yet, then you may consider this setup. Instructions First, install XP to C:, Vista to D:, then BartPE to E:. Instructions for installing BartPE to a HDD partition can be found here: How to Install BartPE to Another Partition.The order in which you install doesn't matter for now. However, it is recommended to install XP first, then Vista, so you won't have to repair boot. If you are already dual-booting XP and Vista, then just install BartPE and continue. Make note which is your active partition if your setup is different. Check disk management. Remember, I'm assuming C:\ is active. [*]Boot to your recovery partition. [*]Copy Vista boot files from active partition to E:\ - Copy C:\BOOT folder to E:\ and C:\bootmgr to E:\. [*]Rename E:\bootmgr to E:\bootmgrv. (You don't have to do this if you are using BartPE, but doing this allows you to keep this one and C:\bootmgr straight; so when you create your menu.lst you know exactly which one is being used to boot Vista.) [*]Rename E:\ntldr to E:\bartpe. Note that this ntldr file should already be there and is not the same as the XP's ntldr. [*]Copy XP boot files to E:\ - Copy C:\boot.ini and C:\ntldr to E:\. [*]Rename E:\ntldr (the XP one) to E:\ntldrxp. [*]Create your menu.lst entries. See below for example. [*]Make E:\ partition the active partition. Sample menu.lst entries #Boot Vista using E:\bootmgrv title Windows Vista (bootmgrv) find --set-root /bootmgrv chainloader /bootmgrv #Boot Vista using C:\bootmgr title Windows Vista (bootmgr) find --set-root /bootmgr chainloader /bootmgr #Boot XP using E:\ntldrxp title Windows XP (ntldrxp) find --set-root /ntldrxp chainloader /ntldrxp #Boot XP using C:\ntldr title Windows XP (ntldr) find --set-root /ntldr chainloader /ntldr #Boot BartPE using E:\bartpe title BartPE (ntldr) find --set-root /bartpe chainloader /bartpe (NOTE: this is not a complete menu.lst; just the entries for items.) Reboot and grldr should load with your menu. The great thing is you can load XP/Vista with the boot files that you copied to E:\ or the ones on C:\. You can have double entries in menu.lst and both will work. If your XP partition becomes corrupt, then you can use boot files on E:\ to load Vista. You probably won't be able to load XP since its corrupt, right?? Haha. If Vista becomes corrupt, you can still load XP. If your recovery partition (BartPE) becomes corrupt, then you can load BartPE from CD, make C:\ your active and can load XP or Vista. Or you can fix your recovery partition the way it was. There are many possibilities with this. Good luck.

Do you have a floppy drive on your desktop? If so, you need to copy your SATA drives on floppy, press F6 during install, then when asked, browse to floppy to locate your SATA drivers so it can recognize your disks. However, I thought SP2 had the ability to recognize SATA HDD's. I don't have to do this myself for my SATA drives. Also, some laptops that come preinstalled with Vista do not allow downgrading, meaning, there are no XP drivers for the hardware. I'm not sure if this is the same case for desktops that come with Vista. If so, you are out of luck!! Might want to check with compaq to see if they have XP drivers.

@IcemanND, I couldn't get it to work. I even replaced %A to %%A (for some reason I've seen that before). The %~dpA expands to a 0. Anyway, here are my working scripts for image capture and image apply. These have to be in the same folder as imagex.exe. It just won't check your path to see whether it is correct or not since I couldn't get it to work. (I understand someone is working on or has made a GUI but this fits my purposes.) imagex_apply.cmd imagex_capture.cmd imagex_apply.cmd @echo off cd /d %~dp0 set imgx=%cd% if not exist "%cd%\imagex.exe" goto _notexist goto _main :_notexist echo. echo IMAGEX.EXE executable not found. Please ensure that IMAGEX_APPLY.CMD echo is in the same folder as IMAGEX.EXE before executing this script. echo This script will now exit. echo. pause exit :_main echo. echo. echo. echo [I M A G E X A P P L Y M A I N M E N U] echo. echo 1) Specify or change source path (the path to you .wim image file) echo Source: [%_asource%] echo. echo 2) Specify or change target path, where your image will be restored echo Target: [%_atarget%] echo. echo 3) Specify or change index you want to restore (a number, such as 2) echo Index: [%_index%] echo. if "%_asource%" == "" goto _menu1 if "%_atarget%" == "" goto _menu1 if "%_index%" == "" goto _menu1 echo 4) Apply your image now where ready echo From [%_asource%] To [%_atarget%] echo. :_menu1 echo Q) Quit. R) Reset all variables. echo. :_mainch set _ok= set /p _ok=Enter your choice: if "%_ok%" == "1" goto _getsrc if "%_ok%" == "2" goto _gettarget if "%_ok%" == "3" goto _getindex if "%_ok%" == "4" goto _apply if /I "%_ok%" == "q" goto _end if /I "%_ok%" == "r" goto _reset goto _mainch :_getsrc set _ok= echo. echo Specify location of source image to restore with full path. set /p _ok=Enter Source path: for %%A in (%_ok%) do set _ext=%%~xA if not exist %_ok% ( echo. echo --------------------------------------------------------- echo Path does not exist. Please input a valid location again. echo --------------------------------------------------------- goto _getsrc ) else ( if /I "%_ext%"==".wim" ( set _asource=%_ok% setx _asource %_ok% goto _main ) else ( echo. echo --------------------------------------------------------------- echo Error: The path "%_ok%" does not seem to be a valid .wim image file. echo --------------------------------------------------------------- goto _getsrc pause ) ) :_gettarget set _ok= echo. echo Specify target to install source image with full path. set /p _ok=Enter Target path: if exist "%_ok%" ( set _atarget=%_ok% setx _atarget %_ok% ) else ( echo. echo --------------------------------------------------------------- echo Error: The path "%_ok%" is not a correct location. echo --------------------------------------------------------------- goto _gettarget pause ) goto _main :_getindex set _ok= echo. echo Specify image index with number set /p _ok=Enter Index number: set _index=%_ok% setx _index %_ok% goto _main :_apply echo. echo. "%imgx%\imagex.exe" /apply "%_asource%" %_index% "%_atarget%" echo. pause goto _end :_reset set _asource= set _index= set _atarget= goto _main :_end imagex_captureappend.cmd @echo off cd /d %~dp0 set imgx=%cd% if not exist "%cd%\imagex.exe" goto _notexist goto _main :_notexist echo. echo IMAGEX.EXE executable not found. Please ensure that imagex_capture.cmd echo is in the same folder as IMAGEX.EXE before executing this script. echo This script will now exit. echo. pause exit :_main echo. echo. echo. echo [I M A G E X C A P T U R E / A P P E N D M A I N M E N U] echo. echo 1) Specify or change source path, the path you want to capture (e.g. C:\) echo Source: [%_csource%] echo. echo 2) Specify or change target image to create/append (e.g. d:\myimage.wim) if "%_append%"=="yes" echo *Image will be appended unless you specify a non-existing image file.* echo Target: [%_ctarget%] echo. echo 3) Specify or change unique description of your image (e.g. Vista Backup) echo Description: [%_descript%] echo. echo 4) Specify or change FLAG of your image (e.g. ULTIMATE) echo FLAG: [%_FLAG%] echo. echo 5) Specify or change compression type (maximum, fast, none) echo Compression: [%_compr%] echo. if "%_csource%" == "" goto _menu1 if "%_ctarget%" == "" goto _menu1 if "%_descript%" == "" goto _menu1 if "%_append%" == "yes" goto _skip if "%_FLAG%" == "" goto _menu1 if "%_compr%" == "" goto _menu1 :_skip echo 6) Capture or append your image now when ready echo From [%_csource%] To [%_ctarget%] echo. :_menu1 echo Q) Quit. R) Reset all variables echo. :_mainch set _ok= set /p _ok=Enter your choice: if "%_ok%" == "1" goto _getsrc if "%_ok%" == "2" goto _gettarget if "%_ok%" == "3" goto _getdescript if "%_ok%" == "4" goto _getFLAG if "%_ok%" == "5" goto _getcompr if "%_ok%" == "6" goto _capture if /I "%_ok%" == "q" goto _end if /I "%_ok%" == "r" goto _reset goto _mainch :_getsrc set _ok= echo. echo Specify location of source to capture as a .wim image. echo Usually, this would be the root of a drive, such as C:\. echo. set /p _ok=Enter Source path: if exist "%_ok%" ( setx _csource %_ok% set _csource=%_ok% ) else ( echo. echo --------------------------------------- echo Error: The path "%_ok%" does not exist. echo --------------------------------------- goto _getsrc pause ) goto _main :_gettarget set targ= echo. echo Specify path and filename to store the target image, such as D:\image.wim. echo. set /p _ok=Enter Target image path: for %%A in (%_ok%) do set _ext=%%~xA && set _path=%%~dpA if /I "%_ext%"==" " ( echo. echo ----------------------------------------------------- echo Error: The filename entered is not a valid .wim file. echo ----------------------------------------------------- goto _gettarget ) else ( if exist %_ok% ( set _ctarget=%_ok% setx _ctarget %_ok% set _append=yes setx _append yes goto _main ) else ( if not exist %_path% ( echo. echo ----------------------------------------------------- echo Path does not exist. Please input a valid path again. echo ----------------------------------------------------- goto _gettarget ) else ( setx _ctarget %_ok% set _ctarget=%_ok% set _append=no setx _append no goto _main ) ) ) :_getcompr set comp = echo. echo Please select compression type. echo. echo 1 for maximum echo 2 for fast echo 3 for none echo. set /p type=Enter compression type: if %type%==1 set _compr=MAXIMUM&& setx _compr MAXIMUM if %type%==2 set _compr=FAST&& setx _compr FAST if %type%==3 set _compr=NONE&& setx _compr NONE goto _main :_getFLAG set _ok= echo. echo Specify image FLAG. echo. set /p _ok=Enter FLAG: set _FLAG=%_ok% setx _FLAG %_ok% goto _main :_getdescript set _ok= echo. echo Type description of image echo. set /p _ok=Enter description: set _descript=%_ok% setx _descript "%_ok%" goto _main :_capture echo. if "%_append%"=="yes" goto _appendimage echo Ready to capture image from source %_csource% and store image to echo %_ctarget% using compression type %_compr%. echo. pause echo. echo on "%imgx%\imagex.exe" /capture %_csource% "%_ctarget%" "%_FLAG%" "%_descript%" /COMPRESS %_compr% echo off pause goto _end :_appendimage echo. echo Ready to append image from source %_csource% and store image to echo %_ctarget%. echo. pause echo. echo on "%imgx%\imagex.exe" /append %_csource% "%_ctarget%" "%_descript%" echo off pause echo. goto _end :_reset @echo off set _csource= set _ctarget= set _descript= set _compr= set _FLAG= set _append= goto _main :_end Edit: If you don't have setx, download from link provided by FireGeier in one of the following post. setx is not necessary. If you don't have it, you can delete the lines that point to setx and script will still work, but it won't remember your paths when you restart the script. Edit2: Corrected some bugs. Added append if you point to an existing .wim file.

Got it working. Thanks for help, Geezery. Another question if you can help: I want to check whether the folder where the new image will reside exists or not. For example, I tell my script I want image in D:\Images\Image.wim; how would I get it to check that D:\Images\ exists or not (just in case there was error and so I wouldn't have to repeat the whole process)? It would mean I'd have to delete Images.wim from the variable assigned to the whole D:\Images\Images.wim. Is this possible? Appreciate your help.

Thanks for everyone's help below. I've edited this post. The batch scripts are below. This will allow you to make sure you are entering the paths correctly with all the switches necessary. Links: Imagex_apply.cmd, imagex_captureapply.cmd

Here's the new Windows Live Mail beta. It's supposed to replace OE in XP and Mail in Vista. No Ads in this one. Looks decent so far but it's beta.

Indeed, the steps in first post is for installing Vista, not XP. They have made installing Vista from HDD much easier. Installing XP from USB is a booger though. I never wasted my time trying to get XP to install from USB. Once installed, I create a Ghost image. Thus, I can bring back my original XP state with Ghost in 3-4 minutes max, with all my progs the way they were. No more installing drivers and restarting XP either.

I think Andromeda43 has a radar for all posts about Ghost. ImageX beats Ghost though in terms being able to store multiple images in one file while keeping file size small, since there is no duplication of files.

Has anyone tried to install Windows XP using Vista setup process (which is basically WinPE 2.0)? I figured this would be the process: 1) Install XP using it's setup process.Configure everything the way you want. Install all the apps you want. 2) Capture the image using ImageX. Call it install.wim. Unsure what the label would be but I imagine it can be any one of the Vista labels such as BUSINESS, ULTIMATE, HOMEBASIC, etc. 3) Replace Vista's install.wim with the XP one. 4) Start vista setup to install XP. You could apply the image, but the only advantage of Vista setup is the GUI that allows you to choose, format HDD's, etc. Moreover, you could have both Vista and XP on this one image. Maybe the size would be small too if XP and Vista have similar files. Drawbacks would be, of course, you can't apply the settings that XP setup would want.

I haven't had any issues with Nero 6.6 when running under compatibility mode. It loads much faster than Nero 7. I've created a portable version of 6.6 though, which is what I'm running.

As far as I know, the XP setup process does not require ntldr. I think you may not have made your new slipstreamed CD bootable and your system bypasses (doesn't even see your XP SP2 cd) and is trying to boot from HDD. Since you formatted your HDD, it can't find your ntldr to load XP - hence the error. So, please confirm that you made your new SP2 CD is bootable and tell us what method you used to create the bootable CD. See if your original XP Home CD as the ntldr file in the root (or anywhere for that matter) - I'm doubting that it does. If it doesn't, then that confirms that XP setup does not require ntldr.

There's only one real ghost and that's the 2003 version which runs under DOS. This version doesn't require any HDD drivers - it pretty much recognizes all your HDD's and CD/DVD-ROMS. After this version, I never went to the newer versions. There's hearsay about how 2003 was the most stable ghost using the .gho format and all the newer ones aren't as stable.

Changing your store folder has nothing to do with stability. In event of reinstall, changing your store folder is beneficial since you won't lose all your messages.

If you had installed XP (or recovered the Ghost image) first, then installed Vista to another partition, then Vista would have added your XP to it's boot menu. However, seems you recovered the Ghost image after installing Vista. But since you are able to boot XP, seems your error is not related to the boot process but because XP wants to load from drive C:\ and not drive D:\. Your had Ghosted XP partition when it was on C:\ and then you put Vista in C:\ and XP in D:\. Therefore, XP will expect to load things from C:\, not D:\. Your option is to reinstall XP, then repair Vista boot loader using Vista DVD to get Vista to load as XP will rewrite your MBR.

Thanks, Jaclaz, for clarifying the difference between Grub and Grub4Dos. I have changed my original post to mention Grub4Dos. I just wanted to add on to what you said about adding Grub4Dos to Vista's boot options menu, which is a great tip. I could not use that method, however, because my goal was to obtain Grub4Dos menu first - before Vista's boot options menu. If you add Grub4Dos to Vista's menu and make it the default with a timeout of 0, then you cannot load Vista because of a circular reference - meaning even if you add Vista to your menu.lst, it will keep loading Grub4Dos menu because it is the default! Therefore, I had to rename the files. However, if you don't want Grub4Dos to be your first menu, then Jaclaz's method is a great alternative.