htc

In my prev. post I've pointed out the Norton AutoInstall sould be a good one. I've got it from the Symantec Ghost 8.0 Corp. Ed. Another utility(freeware) is InstallWatch/InstallRite the working of that stuff ->(see my prev. post) rebuild the changes during the regular installtion made

You can improve the usage of your "bios flash boot cd" by adding the ability to "import" a newer bios file from the regular floppy drive or usb stick(if you find a dos drive of usb for your MB), so you do not need to build and burn a new cd every time a new bios version come out...

I think you know Microsoft and Adobe/MacroMedia are different companies - thus they follow diff. pholosophy sould be also clear for you. The fact is, the chefs of develop-department in allmost all companies except M$ do not have such intentions like those in M$. The solution of your problem is to use a installation-capture utility to rebuild the changes during the regular installtion made. I personallly prefer the Symantec Norton AutoInstall (v8.0).

sure, but another advantage of bcdw, I think no one else mentioned it before(it could be world premiere here), is the possiblity to use the truncated image. For example, a 2.88mb floppy image have only 1.5mb data, the "truncated image" will be just 1.5mb in size - you save 1.38mb in cd space. This is special useful for the case if you want to integrate UBCD (The Ultimate boot CD v2.4) into your multiboot CD, which has hundreds of floppy images on it. I have reduced the size of that by 60%-80%(additionally by deleting some unfunctional util. and docs)!

not enough info fr. your cd structure...

for MS-DOS you donot need to create any hdd-image nor to run setup.exe/install.exe etc. The prerequisite for a MS DOS version < v7.1(v7.1 with FAT32-support): 1. a formated FAT12/FAT16 partition 2. a valid DOS boot sector 3. files for booting: io.sys. msdos.sys. command.com 4. files ptional: config.sys, autoexec.bat, himen.sys...... the simplest way to do that is: 1. putt a bootable dos floppy image on cs and make boot link to it 2. boot cd from the floppy image 3. type command: sys c: (optional command for better compatibility: format c: /q/u/s ) 4. type command: xcopy /h /s a:\*.* c:\ you can, of course, put step 3 and 4 in a batch file(i.e. autoexec.bat)

" exact byte-granular size" = " exact size of you .iso file in byte" "granular" here means that you should not take the kb or mb size of reported by windows explorer and caculate it by yourself... it should be size in bytes(under context menu "properties")

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bcdw is applicatable for almost any type of image files, is more intelligent and tolerant . Memdisk/diskemu do many internal checks before excution, is unflexible and much untolerant. By using bcdw you avoid many potential problems in advance.

I dont think the setup check the checksums during this phase... How did you created the CD?

do not use memdisk or diskemu if not 100% neccessary, use bcdw(plugin) instead.

@theloneiguana the step of deleting the folders \I386\LANG, \CMPNENTS and \TABLETPC is 100% supperflous if you use the nLite tool to shrink it anyway... In nLite you can remove such components at one stroke and reach your goal at easy. So no need for such supperflous works. By the way, nLite is not very easy for most beginners.

Burn then on 2 cd-r is the fast solution... Otherwise you have to edit the hives of BartPE to change the setting of programs dir. I will try to test it if I have time for it - but not in near future.

Why do you need multiple "Programs"-folder?

As hardware professionals(Sorry, I must repeate it!) I would say your problem is your A07 DVD writer. This writer can work very well with DVD+R medien(all brand), but for DVD-R it is VERY SELECTIVE!!! So only Verbatim, TDK and a few othe branmds of DVD-R can be used with the A07 writer. Your problem was not the Princo DVD-R 4x, because it works very well with NEC 1300A, NEC 2500/2510, LG 4040B, LG 4081B/4082B... If you have the Plextor 16x DVD-ROM drive, or a LG-816x drive, I think you can read the disk(burned with the POOR A07 on Princo 4x DVD-R) without any problem. So the right read drive is also very important.

in my recent post: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=30438 I've pointed out hwo to create the boot image of this baby. Why did you not create it directly on a 2.88MB floppy? If you do not have it, many Ramdisk programm can simulate it... thus much easier. You can even create a 8mb super floppy image....

@XPC-001 very well explained! glad to hear that it works acturally!

as it was said in ALL guides, it must be 4 leter/digit/etc... to REPLACE the i386. As Hexeditor I recommand the Hexworkshop, which in default mode you cannot make beginner's misteke(like using backspace/delete key describt in earlier of this thread).

but I do not have the babie(MS MCE), my suggestion is only theoretical, to show you how to integrate multipul CDs(with the first cd bootable) into a bootable DVD, and the fastest, even the safest way(at least for beginner).

My method is the fastest way to create the final iso file, it require the least hdd & cd-drive operation. My method is not only the fastest, but also the safest way. Reading the iso image of CD1, you keep all the information/structure of the bootable cd, you donnt need to care about boot sectors etc., even newbie cannot make mistakes.

nd more important, when the installacion crash using multi-boot CD's, if I use a common Windows XP disc (without multiboot), the installation works perfectly. So the problem is caused by the multi boot, not by the computer or the DVD-CD Drive. Que question is ¿What is the error or the multi-boot process? As hardware professionals I can say the problem is NOT caused by multiboot, but by the combination of your dvd-writer and dvd+/-R/W. If you can reduce the size to fit it on cd(multiboot), then you will find it works fine like all other you windows xp cds. So go out and buy a qulity DVD-R like Verbatium and a quqlity dvd-writer like NEC 1300A, burn it at 4x, never 8x or higher!

concretely, the following steps: 1. create an ISO-image of the CD1, save it with UltraISO 2. start UltraISO again, open the image 3. insert CD2 to cd drive, open windows eplorer, select all the files/folders on cd2 4. drug and drop them to UltraISO, which with the image of CD1 (root over root) 5a. overwrite everything, save as image, burn it on a dvd, testing, if no fortune, then try step 5b instead of step 5a. 5b. no overwriting, all skip for the same file name, save as image, burn it on a dvd, testing, if no fortune, then try step 5c instead of step 5a/5b. 5c. you have to hacking the setup config files to achieve you destination, no luck for easy job, sorry. .

Too many (superfluous) work! by suing the util "RamdiskNT" and "WinImage" you cam create one 8mb supper floppy image, load it with bcdw plugin for CD Shell or load it with bcdw as shell directly. Use the WinImage to open the floppy image, you can see what it is on disk. Nothing else.

what is MCE 2k5?

By the way, you can use the floppy image of that: 1. safemode boot disk: standard 2.88MB floppy image(bootable under all shell) or 2. fulversion with usb support: 8MB-Superfloppy image (bootable only under bcdw/plugin)