Compstuff2

Thanks very much guys... needless to say I will hold off any further testing until you have a chance to make some sense of this... plus I have a lot to learn about this

I don't run a full DBAN since a few minutes are more than enough to wipe out a MBR Yes my installations are heavily (integrated/added/modified), I run completely unattended installations... I use RyanVM to slipstream the monthly update packs plus about a dozen additional items, I use Driverpacks to integrate all drivers, I install software and other items from the DVD via RunOnceEX as well as many many custom tweaks and mods... just for clarification: give or take some driver issues I have been doing this with complete success for years on literally thousands of systems so all the general aspects work and it would be my goal to get this same level of custom installation on a USB if possible Yes I can try a "vanilla" setup and report back...

In my normal DVD install I use quite a few RunOnceEX items such as: IF EXIST %CDROM%\Software\O2K3SP3\O2K3SP3.cmd REG ADD %KEY%\600 /VE /D "Office_2003" /f IF EXIST %CDROM%\Software\O2K3SP3\O2K3SP3.cmd REG ADD %KEY%\600 /V 1 /D "%CDROM%\Software\O2K3SP3\O2K3SP3.cmd" /f How do I handle this with a USB? Is there an environment variable I can use or another way to do this?

Thanks for the reply jaclaz... I waited to perform quite a bit of testing before I responded back so here goes: First off let me say I am new to this tool and forum but very much looking forward to working with it. I am an active participant in other tech forums and now hoping to develop this into my bag of tricks I have lots of systems I do my installs on so I never really only test on a single unit and from this point on I will provide greater details in my posts. The current systems I have been testing on are all late model Dell laptops. Specifically: Latitude E6400 Latitude E5410 Vostro 3700 Vostro a860 Vostro 1015 Additionally I always make sure I have the latest BIOS update on every system before I start testing. Currently I am getting mixed results: Latitude E6400 - FAILS Latitude E5410 - FAILS Vostro 3700 - OK Vostro a860 - OK Vostro 1015 - FAILS I am still testing and each drive has DBAN run on it before each test....I will report further... thanks

I will blow out the MBR from the drive and try this but I'm not really understanding why this would be the issue... I can use the actual DVD and re-install this to the same system time after time after time with no errors so why would the USB made from that same DVD see a MBR problem?

Windows XP setup dosn't like strange MBR. Read some Linux or manufacturer recovery partition may interfere. Clean internal hard disk. Not sure I understand... are you saying to wipe the hard drive before the USB install?

Does that mean that first part of Setup, the text mode/file copy stage works alright, but for the second part, the GUI mode it hangs at some point? When exactly? What do you see on the screen? What did you see right before that? Please be as detailed as possible in order to understand your issue. Correct me if I am wrong but the install stages should be: Textmode/txtsetup (blue screen) inspect hardware setup - load files "starting windows message" - format drive - copy files Restart #1 DriverPacks extraction PE mode (colorful screen, displays T-39 countdown timer {ie "36 minutes remaining"} Restart #2 GUI mode (GUIRunOnce, RunOnceEx, first-user load, desktop load) What I get is your load screen with the setup options 1 or 2 choices, then it starts the load files, then "setup is starting windows", then a black screen with nothing and just hanging not reading USB or anything WinSetupFromUSB.7z

Using what program when formatting? What options?Using 1.0 beta6 with a corsair 16g USB: RMPrepUSB: Run CLEAN, then XP,NTFS,Boot as HDD, prep drive, all OK Select USB, Select XP source files, GO = grubinst.exe could not find a Master Boot Record and partition table on the selected disk disk #1 I have attached the log WinSetupFromUSBerror.7z

OK... I have a read as much as I could and I have spend hrs trying to get this to work but no luck so its time to ask for help lol... I have a a working DVD structure created with RyanVM and Driverpacks. I used a 16G USB and formatted it with a single NTFS partition (using the HDD option gives me a grub error when adding files). Laptop boots, loads initial files, reboots to start windows, then just hangs... what am I doing wrong? Thanks in advance for your help... WinSetupFromUSB.7z