SteveOC

Thanks to both of you for posting, Ilko_t and Jaclaz. I haven't gone away or given up - just fighting problem after problem (mainly with unreadable SD cards). I now have some further inkling about where the problem lies - it appears to be in the first part of the Windows Install phase, during Setup, immediately after the message about Windows Starting. I think that there is a default setting somewhere along the lines of reboot-on-error and I think that this is what happens when Windows fails to start - it just reboots and goes back to the (GRUB?) menu. The messages that flashed up during Setup about 'copying' files actually said 'loading' and not 'copying' - which I presume means loading into memory, hence nothing found on disk - as I discovered after trying again and again. I don't know if this is a disk/controllerdriver issue - I have tried downloading the Intel F6Floppy driver package for my controller, creating an IMA file from it, and including it in the build (I see it under WINSETUP directory) but when I try to use it during the install it still fails. It is an AHCI driver - My BIOS says it will AUTO detect XP and not use AHCI, and I even tried disabling it long back but it makes no difference. I am still trying to digest all your recommendations for the best way forward - it may take me a while. As this is my only working machine, I would like to be able to adopt an approach whereby I was able to boot x number of OS'es without compromisng the ability to recover the W7Starter system using the standard Samsung build so I would prefer to leave the *SYSTEM and *RECOVERY partitions untouched even if that means manually setting things up. Thanks for all the help to date - interesting stuff. Steve O.

Sorry - I tried in vain to find a way to redirect the output from the commands to a file but to no avail so I made some rough notes and paraphrased as I have to reboot the only working PC to post back. I have booted back into Grub and tried to write everything down, so here goes............................ Geometry (hd0) drive 0x81 (LBA) C/H/S=993/2/255/63, Sector Count/Size=15952543/512 Partition Num 0, Active, Filesystem Type is NTFS Partition Type 0x07 Partition Num 1, Filesystem Type is Unknown Type 0x21 Geometry (hd1) drive 0x81 (LBA) C/H/S=19457/255/63, Sector Count/Size=312576705/512 Partition Num 0, Filesystem Type is NTFS Partition Type 0x27 Partition Num 1, Active, Filesystem Type is NTFS Partition Type 0x07 Partition Num 2, Filesystem Type is NTFS Partition Type 0x07 Partition Num 3, Filesystem Type is NTFS Partition Type 0x07 Partition Num 4, Filesystem Type is NTFS Partition Type 0x07 root (hd1,1) Filesystem type is NTFS, partition type 0x07 ls $Attrdef $Badclus $Bitmap $Boot $Extend $Logfile $Mft $Mftmirr $Secure $Upcase $Volume Boot bootmgr System \ Volume \ Information So the above is the *System partition on the internal hard drive and as you can see no ntldr, boot.ini or ntdetect.com root (hd1,2) Filesystem type is NTFS, partition type 0x07 ls I recognise the files listed as being from my c: drive so haven't written them down, but again there se no ntldr, boot.ini or ntdetect.com there Thanks Steve O.

Well I tried another boot and here is what happens.......... Booted from USB - Grub Menu appears - took option "First part of Windows XP Home SP3 Setup from partitiion 0" Agree to EULA Blue screen with Windows Setup runs and copies a bunch of files Message appears briefly along the lines of "Booting Windows" PC reboots and back to Grub Menu again This time option is highlighted "Second part of Windows XP Home SP3 Setup.Boot first internal disk" I press C to enter commands Commands show that hd(0) is USB and hd(1) is FDD hd(0,0) is Active NTFS partition - hd(0.1) is unknown type(0x21) occupying last 63 sectors of the USB drive (I don't know where this came from) Using LS to scan the root of the hd(0) and hd(1) shows no files having been copied and cat won't open boot.ini as it doesn't exist. Steve O,

jaclaz - I can actually browse the hidden partitions from EASEUS and nothing has been added to *SYSTEM, *RECOVERY or C: I had a recollection that I saw messages that I interpreted as relating to a virtual or ram drive during copying - although I don't know how that would persist across reboots. I need to write the rest of the commands down before I retry the boot. Steve O.

After reading through those links, and trying to interpret winsetup.lst I am starting to think that the last step is actually working but not having the required effect since the previous step maybe didn't complete successfully. At no point do I get asked where to install XP to, but a few files are getting copied somewhere in the first step. I did press Insert to enter Grub debug mode but nothing obvious came out, Steve O.

OK, I'm still here for a bit - her indoors isn't ready for Dinner yet. I downloaded and ran PTEDIT32 and it returned an error - Error #5 starting the PowerQuest Engine. - and wouldn't start I downloaded and ran PartInNT - Physical Drive dropdown box is empty and it says 2437.3MB Total Size Boot Record button is Greyed out. Preview returned a bunch of info which I saved to a txt file and have attempted to attach to this post. Partint.txt Steve O.

@ Ilko_t and jaclaz thanks for taking the time to type all that out - I appreciate it. @ jaclaz, I'll take a read through the links you posted when I get back with my Chinese takeaway - I do like to understand how things work. I am happy to split/prune the posts to a separate thread but don't believe it is something I can do myself - unless you mean for me to just copy/paste them? If you have access on the forum to do it any easier way, please feel free. Thanks again. Steve O.

It looks as though I misinterpreted what BCDEDIT was manipulating - the tutorial I have references MBR and I assumed that it was the MBR that was used to store the links to bootloaders and that this was what was updated/displayed with BCDEDIT. Now having found and reading through some MS whitepapers it seems (unless I am reading it wrong) that BCDEDIT manipulates entries in something called a BCD store which the MBR looks for on the active partition, and it is this that allows selection of the various bootloaders. I did look for a flowchart of the whole process from BIOS, but didn't find anything that was clear and complete. So it isn't the MBR that I backed up/restored to remove the menu but the BCD store and as such, I do not have a backup of the MBR I'll have a look at the utilites you posted above, but can you explain to me what these instructions mean and what they should do (obviously they don't complete succesfully in my environment)? title Second part of Windows XP Home SP3 setup/Boot first internal disk savedefault ls /shifthd.bat > nul || find --set-root --devices=hf /shifthd.bat /shifthd.bat if "%RDSK%"=="" pause Fatal error while swaping hard disk order, cannot continue! && configfile /menu.lst pause --wait=3 Booting MBR on hd0 ... chainloader (hd0)+1 rootnoverify (hd0) title - root I understand the 'title' lines and I do see the "Booting on hd0" plus additional messages before it boots into W7S from the hard disk. Is it really looking for something on the hard disk (if so what) or from the USB drive? Thanks Steve O.

NO. Meaning that it is NOT possible. Either you are describing incorrectly the way the disk was partitioned before or the way you are describing it as it is now (or BOTH ). You cannot have a "first partition" and a "fourth" partition both as Logical volumes inside Extended. An Extended partition is a contiguous space on a disk that may contain one or more Logical Volumes, and BTW changing (BTW HOW exactly?) a recovery partition from Primary to Logical Volume inside Extended is likely to make it not working anymore. Do you have a copy of the MBR of the disk BEFORE you made changes? If yes, please post it together with a copy of the current MBR (you will need to put it/them inside a .zip) or upload an archive containing it/them *somewhere* and post a link to it. Alternatively, get PTEDIT32 or PartInNT from: ftp://ftp.symantec.c...s/pq/utilities/ and post a few screenshots (a plus would be if you would include those of the EPBR's in the Extended partition). Even a screenshot of Disk Management would probably do. It is possible that your partitioning scheme *somehow* confuses the booting mechanism (grub4dos based) of WinSetupfrom USB..... jaclaz Thanks for the prompt reply Apologies, I did say I was getting confused. I used EASEUS to repartition the drive (I needed to move boundaries around etc) and it was this I used to change drives from Primary to Logical to get around the 4 Primary (or 3 Primary and 1 Extended partition limit. I am fairly sure that I changed *Recovery to Logical - I certainly intended to - I wonder if Repair changed it back. The P: being Primary was a typo. Going back into EASEUS shows that the drive is setup is right now as follows : *Recovery (P) *System (P, Active)) C: (P) D: (L) P: (L) I did take a backup of the MBR before I started - I have recovered that using BCDEDIT and will try again first. *EDIT* - The boot menu is now gone. I boot from USB and now I see the Booting MBR messages from WINSETUP.LST and then W7 Starter automatically boots up. Thanks Steve O.

Hello. I am trying to install Windows/XP on a Samsung Netbook that came with W7 Starter Pre-installed and as the Netbook has no CD drive I was hoping to install from a USB device. The Netbook came with a single Hard drive set up with 4 partitions - all set up as Primary. *Recovery (P) *System (P, Active) C: (P) D: (P) I have created a 5th partition (P:) for XP and changed the Recovery, D: and P: partitions to Logical. As I understand it, the the bootloader is actually on the *System partition as this is the Active partition and the Netbook used to boot straight into Windows 7 Starter using bootmgr. I used BDCEDIT to create an entry for XP (NTLDR) for the P: partition so now I get a menu at boot-up to select,but obviously only the W7S option works. My disk now looks like this *Recovery (L) *System (P, Active)) C: (P) D: (L) P: (P) The USB device I am currently using is an 8GB MIcroSD card in a Duracell Card Reader - this is the second device after the first failed- and it now contains Windows XP Home SP3. Originally I had problems with USBDRIVE.TAG missing, so I created this file manually and then had further problems. I read about issues with not using 7-zip (I didn't) to expand the install package, so I started again, got the USBDRIVE.TAG this time but am back to the same problem. The problem I have is that I get to the stage for the second part of the install (winsetup.lst?), see messages echoed about "booting MBR" etc and then I get the original Menu for booting W7S or XP (from before I tried USB booting) and at this point neither works. I tried changing BIOS entries for the hard disk but it made no difference, and I have not tried adding any drivers to the USB install as I am getting a bit confused now. In fact last time I tried the install I was then afterwards unable to boot back into W7S with USB disconnected, and even startup repair didn't work - I am not sure how I got the Netbook back up but it is for now. Can you give me some insight into getting this working? TIA. Steve O.