aicjofs

I've had a hard go at it. My plan was XP Home/PRO RETAIL/OEM MCE VISTA x86/X64 W7 x86 X64 Server 2008 on one DL DVD. This was of course quite too large. I took off MCE, 2008, and all non US versions that I'm not likely to encounter(i.e Vista Starter, W7 Home Basic, N versions, etc). Probably room for something else(except 2008) if I dropped the XP stuff(~1.3GB) For XP I used XP powerpacker and made ISO copied contents to the root of the All in ONE ISO. Edited the BCD to point to the LOADER.BIN of the XP disc loader. Exported the WIM's from the thier source disc, to an install.wim. Used imagex /split wim to 2GB swm files since I couldnt use UDF file system as XP setup just loads way to slow. Then for ocsdimg made a bootorder.txt and used -yo switch, and -m and -o. File size came in just under a DL DVD. The issue I have ran into for what I was trying to do were: If i used W7 disc as source, the bootmgr couldnt find loader.bin. If I used Vista as source all was fine. Really more just the boot folder and bootmgr difference I guess, as i copied those from Vista onto W7. I'd rather use the W7 as source and use the boot.wim from that. Another issue I seem to be battling is if I use W7 source with my "all in one" wim, all W7 images load and complete install, but Vista ones fail after image installs and decompress, and setup starts I get the windows can not start the installation. Conversely if I use Vista source, then the W7 install errors out at same place. I cant be sure but it seems like I had it working fine when I just exported say vista wim into already present W7, but if I exported from both to a brand new wim I got this error. I think I read that the wims are of a different structure and this is apparent when just using the /info switch. Maybe have to use the reverse proceedure for vista inside a w7 VM like for adding a service pack, capture the .vhd to .wim that way the Vista image is built with W7? Either way i believe it is possible to do if you pick and choose your OSes you want, but definetly no way to have them all for DVD, USB and Bluray I think it would work fine. I actually came here looking to what I might be doing wrong with my setup, when I saw your question, I know some people have claimed to have done it so I'm sure it works but I'm not 100% sure on the how.

Oh I totally agree, you are absolutely right. I always reinstall those programs on the dynamic drive again anyway after a fresh install. The apps that I do put on the dynamic drive are many small programs, it would be nice to have this done "automatically". I'm not stuck on doing this, just wonderng if anyone has even tried it. It has some drawbacks and advantages, so I would expect it to be a somewhat unique system configuration. It has worked for me for a few years, and 4-5 installs just fine, always looking for a way to make things easier. Thanks for the reply

Windows XP, I can't remember if right after the intstall of windows, if previous dynamic disks show up as logical drives, or if they just show up as dynamic and you have to activate it in Disk Management. I ask this because I have 3 HD's. Normally I have each with a 4GB Partition acting as a Basic disk on each. One is OS drive, One is swap file, and one is a "ghosted" mirror of the OS drive. The rest of each drive is dynamic stripe for stuff I don't mind losing, like working with video, loading a game or 2, or programs I don't mind reinstalling from time to time. When I normally do a clean install I format the OS drive, install windows and then I think I reinitialize the Dynamic disks(see above question) and install apps. So what I would like to accomplish is doing an unattended install that finds the dynamic disk and can install programs to a dynamic disk logical drive. Obviously this would be an WinXp disk very specialized to 1 computer, but hey CDR/DVDR are cheap right? Is this possible, what could I put in a batch file to find and reinit the dynamic disks if I indeed need to do that? Can't find much info on this topic. Thanks in advance ~aic