pwright2

Interesting. Didn't realize it was a warez. Is there a list? Just looked like a useful collection of utilities. Anyhow, on further examination, that one appears to boot but most of its functions fail on activation. Anyhow, I'll follow your links and see what I learn. Thanks. ------Paul------

Hi. I'm back. Been reading and trying things. Maybe you can sort out some of my failures (or even some of the successes). What I would like to achieve is a stick that will boot: 1. Win7Pro; 2. MS System Sweeper; 3.WAREZ; 4: Spinrite; 5. NTPWDCHG; 6.REAtoGO. If I could get it to also boot Kubuntu 11.04, that would be nice too, but not the prime goal. By following the instructions that you linked to at https://sites.google.com/site/rmprepusb/tutorials/multiisoimdiskautounattend I have achieved 1 thru 5. (Well, there have been some modifications, which I will detail in a moment. And I am not sure that NTPWDCHG is fully functioning since I haven't tried it on an XP machine. But it is doing something.) But I am utterly unsuccessful with REAtoGO and it causes some effects I don't understand. So I am going to detail what I have done. Perhaps you can point out something obvious. Below are the instructions at the bottom of the linked page, modified where it referred to previous instructions, plus my notes. ------------------------- How to make a universal Windows ISO USB flash drive The instructions below uses a similar method as in the tutorial above, but it prompts you to enter in the name of the ISO file that you want to load. Once you set up your flash drive, just drop all your Windows Vista or later Windows install ISO files onto the Flash drive or any hard drive (in the \ISO folder) and you will be able to run any of them without needing to alter any menus at all! This will NOT work with XP ISOs! (Probably explains why REAtoGO doesn't work.) Instructions 1. Download the file WINISO_IMDISK_32a.ZIP (new as of 2011-6-23 !!!) from the Beta Downloads - Tutorials section and extract the contents to a folder on your office system hard disk - say C:\WINDOWS_ISOS. WINISO_IMDISK.ZIP contains: \AutoUnattend.xml (must be in root of a REMOVABLE drive - i.e. a drive that appears as 'Devices with Removable Storage' and not under 'Hard Disk Drive' disk under Windows 7 Explorer) \menu.lst (also must be in root of USB drive) \ImDisk folder (folder located in root of USB drive) 2. Remove the first two menus in menu.lst as those are for the method above and not required here (optional). Actually, you replace the entire menu.lst with the one he provides. 3. Prepare the USB drive using RMPrepUSB (if you don't already have one - if you do then you need to have the grub4dos bootloader installed - RMPrepUSB can just add the grub4dos bootloader for you): (Copy grldr into the RMPrepUSB folder before running.) Run RMPrepUSB To wipe and format the USB drive (optional) - set the following options in RMPrepUSB: 1. MAX 2. (any volume name you like!) 3. WinPE v2/v3 (or DOS or FreeDOS or XP) 4. FAT32 or NTFS (or FAT16 but it has a 2GB limit) and also select the Boot as HDD option 5. Tick Copy OS Files box and set the Copy Folder to C:\WINDOWS_ISOS 6. Click Prepare Drive to format the drive and copy the files over NOTE: Whether you already have an existing grub4dos USB drive or have just formatted one as detailed above, you need to install the latest version of grub4dos as follows: 4. Now click on Install grub4dos and choose for PBR (answer no to the first query and yes to the next) and hit Enter to copy across the grldr file. You need the correct grub4dos grldr file as this supports some newer grub4dos commands. 5. On the flash drive create a folder named \ISO. 6. In the \ISO folder, create a new file called marker.txt - it can be empty if you like but it must be there! 7. Add any Windows install ISO files you like to the same \ISO folder that contains the marker.txt file ----------------------------------- I am using an 8GB SD card in an adapter which makes it into a thumbdrive. Perhaps important later. My initial attempts used the thumbdrive formatted as FAT32. WAREZ and Win7Pro and Spinrite worked fine. Others, not so much. Several articles on System Sweeper said NTFS was necessary, so I tried that. It would boot partially and then crash. For whatever reason (late nights, things get hazy) I tried copying the files from the .iso into the boot folder of the thumbdrive. I had thought to delete the System_Sweeper iso but forgot to. So I booted the thing and selected the System Sweeper iso and it booted successfully. Then I tried REAtoGO and it failed, as usual. And I tried System_Sweeper again - and it wouldn't even try to boot. The baseline GRUB4DOS menu would come up and I would select INSTALL (vice BOOT or REPAIR) and it would show me the list of available isos but then it would say Error 15: File not found). Anyhow, the menu was non-functional. I unplugged the thumbdrive and replugged and the menu came up properly. And I tried REAtoGO again and again it failed. But now the GRUB4DOS menu would not come up. I would get a 2 on the screen and nothing else. In my readings I had noted people complaining about programs that would boot a few times but then stop and postulating that something was being written back to the thumbdrive. One of the neat things about an SD card is that it has a write protect switch. So I recreated my thumbdrive, including the System_Sweeper files. And then I added the REAtoGO files, thinking this might work also. Then I switched the SD card to write protect and booted it. I've tested it several times. I can continually boot System_Sweeper or any of the others. REAtoGO, however, still fails. My assumption is that System_Sweeper begins its boot using the iso file and then something happens and it goes looking for the regular files. And now they are there and it continues to boot. When I call up REAtoGo, it begins the boot process. Commands scroll up the screen faster than I can read them. Then the screen blanks and then writes begin and then stop. The final screen reads: (hd0,0) chainloader (0xff) Error 13: Invalid or unsupported executable format Press any key to continue .l.. When a key is pressed you get the GRUB4DOS menu and choosing INSTALL gets you the list of isos and then Error 15: File not found. Press any key to continue ... And so, here I stand. Any ideas on getting REAtoGO to work? BTW, I have tried the Kubuntu iso. It gets started booting and then reports that initramfs unable to find a medium containing a live file system I suspect this means it has realized that it is trying to read from NTFS and doesn't know how. I wonder how many more times I can reformat this SD card and still have it work? -----Paul-----

Ummm ... "WOW! So many possibilities. Thank you. I need to go digest this. -----Paul------

Many many communications issues here. All of you are to be commended for making this amazing piece of software and helping people who are trying to use it. But there are some things that could (I think) reduce your workload. 1. People who first encounter this software as 1.0 beta 7 and come here for help are quite likely to assume that version 0-2-3 is ancient history and inapplicable. It is easy to miss the reference to 0-2-3 as the stable version, and when you go to download it,. you have to scroll past a lot of 1 betas to find it. 2. The concept that the documentation is only available in the stable is ... bizarre. And the stable is an exe, which means I have to install it to get to the documents. At least make the documentation a separate download. Ah, well. In the meantime I had made some progress. I started out misled by experience with other multboot programs which uses ISOs as their install basis. Finally figured out that WinSet wanted to work from the actual CDs. Successfully created a USB with Win7 install and REAtoGo. Then tried to add the new MS System Sweeper. Ended up with two identical entries, each of which started the Win7 Install. I presume this means I need to figure out the second partition install, as if I was installing a second version of Win7? Assuming that is true, is there a way to remove the non functional installation or should I start all over again? Well, I'm off to read the instructions, hoping some things come clear. -----Paul-----

Options. Yeah. That's much of the problem for newbies like me. I am newly come to this program. And 70 pages of sometimes contradictory direction (or, at least, obsolete direction) are hard to sort out. The pop-up info on the program itself is interesting but often incomplete and won't stay visible long enough to contemplate. Is there anywhere a walk-thru or FAQ or long form set of instructions that address 1.0 Beta 7 (or at least something similar)? -----Paul-----