Mobes

jaclaz, Ponch - Just finished testing and worked perfectly. Added the menu.lst per Ponch, tested and worked perfectly again! So, did this have to do with me changing out the HDD? The BIOS recognized the DVD/CD previously... Also, thanks again for your help. This is a great forum for anyone trying to resolve an issue and/or wanting to learn more about their OS. Ponch, you may remember, or not from a few months ago you helped me to complete my USB for installing WinXP and Office. Should I edit this to Resolved?? Mobes

Ok. I just tried a reboot and entered into Grub4Dos, after entering map --hook (no feedback), then input chainloader (cd0) and received a Error 25, Disk Read Error.

@jaclaz - Sorry, I just realized my last reply didn't post. I'm sure it was a SUE! Anyway, I tried the map --hook and got the following error: Error 61: Refuse to hook int13 because of empty drive map table Please let me know what I need to do. Mobes

Ok. I just completed the cdrom --init. I got the following: ATAPI device found Data =170, CTRL =376, Device =0(Note: 0 =Master, 1=Slave. CDROM Device found Data =170, CTRL =376, Device =0(Note: 0 =Master, 1=Slave Found 1 CDROM (Note: Further read could fail if hardware does not fully support ATAPI) I take it this good When I go to the next step the cdrom --init does not need to be done again, right? I will just type in map --hook??

Ok. Got boot.ini modified I rebooted and selected Grub4Dos and at Command, typed Find ( and pressed Tab and got the following: Possible Disks hd0 rd. Only the HDD was listed.

Thanks Guys, I had downloaded Grub4DOS from Sourceforge. I knew I should have asked! Anyway, I've downloaded Grub4dos 4.5b from the link provided. Just to clarify, I also copied grldr to C:\ correct? Also, I copiedC:\grldr="Grub4Dos"to the boot.ini. I assume when I reboot it should give the option of booting to Win XP or to Grub4Dos, right? When I try to save boot.ini I get an error "cannot create boot ini". I've made changes before to boot.ini previously and have not seen this come up. I'm sure it's just something I'm missing. Pls advise. If everything else looks good, I'll give it a go!

I'll definitely give it a try. I just downloaded Grub4DOS to my desktop. Can you direct me from here? I also gained access to the Boot.ini. Thanks!

@ Ponch - You're right. I removed the HDD from the boot order and the OS reads the optical disk fine. I've heard of Grub4dos but not familiar. Also, I verified a while back that my Compaq laptop does not boot from USB. I actually bought in July/04. I did find at the same time that my HP Desktop bought in 2005 does boot from USB. Am I pretty much left with removing the HDD from the boot order when I need to boot from the CD/DVD? If so, I'm sure I can live with that. Mobes

Yeh, I've also tried from the Boot Menu and same result, goes to black screen, blinking cursor for a couple of seconds and then boots the HDD. I guess it may be an inconvenience I'll live with. At least my almost 7yr old laptop is still working fine and I now have a 250g HDD vs. the original 60g!

When I attempt to boot with a bootable CD/DVD in the tray, I can hear the CD/DVD attempting to start (I assume being recognized). It then goes to a black screen with a blinking cursor for just a couple of seconds and then begins to boot Windows from the HDD. So, it seems as if it tries to boot the CD/DVD...

Hey Ponch, How can I check that on my laptop? Also, I will not be able to get right back to you as I will be out for a while. Thanks for everyone's help! Mobes

Thanks Dencorso- I'm not exactly sure what you mean by keeping the HDD enabled in the first BIOS screen but removing it from the BIOS boot?? What I did do sounds like your next suggestion; I entered into BIOS at startup by hitting ESC and went to the Advanced Tab into Boot Order. I then used the option to disable the HDD, saved settings and the CD/DVD disk booted. A few months ago when I was working on an install from USB, I had the chance to use PloP and it worked great! I successfully installed XP Pro and Office from my USB. Sounds like your second solution if I can figure out how to do it would be the best solution. Mobes

Thanks guys. I just disabled the HDD in the BIOS and my XP/Office disk booted up just fine. So, is it something that my BIOS does not fully support this HDD? Is there anything I can do other than disable the HDD when needing to boot from the CD/DVD reader? Thanks again. Mobes

Thanks X. I believe you're right about the disk management and Win 7 setup. I guess I've just gotten into the habit of using Gparted before installing. I really want to fix my issue with the bootable disks before I do anything else. I've never ran into this before. Mobes

Hi X It does read the drives correctly. Although, I just noticed that I show a Drive D: DVD/CD-RW and a Drive E: CD Drive. I don't recall having the 2nd optical Drive. I understand about installing Win 7 within XP. I didn't even try my Win 7 disk. I figure none of the other disks are booting including the XP disk I used to reinstall my Win XP. I'm really trying to figure out why these disks will not boot in case I should need to be able to use Gpart or UBCD4WIN....

One thing I forgot was after my install, I was unable to find an SM BUS controller driver. So that is still showing as a ? in my device manager. I have the NVIDIA Geforce 440 go 64m chipset.

Hello - Looking to get some help regarding a problem just encountered. Background - I just recently replaced my HDD on a Compaq R3240 from a 60gb ATA to WD 250gb ATA. I used the DVD I created which installed Win XP Pro and Office 2003. I also used it to partition the HDD to 125gb and left the remaining space unformatted. BTW, the DVD I created was with great assistance from people on this website! I had decided I wanted to utilize the remaining space on the disk to install Win 7, but wanted to format the HDD using a Gparted disk I have. I was unable to boot from that CD as well as attempting to try my UBCD4WIN cd and also trying my original XP DVD. In all cases, the BIOS seemed to ignore the CD/DVD drive and continued to boot to Windows. I entered setup and selected boot from the CD/DVD and the same thing happened. Also, the CD/DVD drive worked fine prior to all of this and also had no problem installing Win XP. When attempting each CD/DVD I could hear the disk spinning and I would get a black screen with a blinking cursor, but then it would just continue to Windows. The BIOS is up to date according to the Compaq website as well as the CD/DVD drive. I'm not sure where to go from here?? Can anyone give me additional direction? SOLVED: Summary Thanks to Ponch and jaclazz for their help! My laptop now is able to recognize bootable disks at startup by using Grub4DOS. I used the following menu.lst Thanks Mobes

SUCCESS!! Just finished installing WinXP and Office 2003 from my USB!! Thanks to everyone on this thread for your help and information. I'm really doing this to continue to help me with my technical knowledge and to just to know I can do it! Will also be much helpful since my Desktop PC will not install from the CD/DVD reader. So, am I right in understanding that we first had to determine that the Batch.cmd had been modified by USB multiboot to nlite.cmd. And then, since we are installing from a hard drive, we had to modify the nlite.cmd to point to the U: drive for the USB in order to kick off the nlite.cmd and install Office?? I'm sure I'm probably not right in what I'm saying.... Thanks cdob for sticking with me the last few days. I did not find a source.log at C:\. Is there anything else you want me to try to do? mobes

Thanks for the info submix8c! I definitely like to learn some of the details as to how/why things work.

ok! I will be back in a few minutes! I think I messed up my file "playing around" with it! I'm going back to USB multiboot. I will make the edits and then do an install and hopefully post some results! Thanks again! mobes

Thanks submix8c! I know cdob wants me to "edit" the nlite.cmd and run the install. Question is after extracting the nlite.cmd, do I have to "recompress" it back to nlite_cm? If so, I'm using 7zip to extract. I am a bit of a newbie at this. How would I recompress? Or, if I don't need to do any of that can the nlite.cmd with the new code provided just be at the root of my USB? Thanks again, guys!

Ok! I think I have it!! I copied the nlite.cm_ to desktop and extracted the file and I appear to have the nlite.cmd!! Do I also need to use the nlite_in?

Hi submix8c! Thanks! Do I need to copy them to desktop and rename them as .txt? Yesterday, per previous post #23 I searched and found a nlite.cmd file and posted contents. I'm looking to edit the nlite.cmd file with code from post #26. If I can use those two files, please let me know what I need to do. Thanks again.

The only two nlite files I'm finding are: nlite.cm_ and nlite.in_, both at \$WIN_NT$.~LS\I386\. I can't believe this. I seemed to have found this nlite.cmd before?? I did find nlite.cmd = 1,,,,,,,2,0,0 and nlite.cmd = 16 in the txtsetup.sif

cdob - I am having trouble locating nlite.cmd on my USB. I know I found it yesterday, post #23?? I just finished USB multiboot again and tried to search nlite.cmd and still cannot find. I believe you want me to find and edit nlite.cmd with the code from post #26, not create a new nlite.cmd with that code, right??