Pyrox

Muchos Thankos hehe, will have a good poke round...

Hi, I've had a look and cant seem to find anything, i recently failed to get the serial number from a genuine Dell base unit to work with my Windows XP disk. I tried changing the PID from OEM/RETAIL/VL and all three didn't work, is this because the OEMBIOS files were wrong for the manufacturer? Do i need the right OEMBIOS files for each company to match the key (Dell, HP, Asus, Acer, Compaq etc) ? Would it not be possible to make all keys from each manufacturer work with one OEM disk? Trying to get my head round this so i can make installs quick and painless... If anyone can point me in the right direction i'm not afraid of reading up myself, i just can't find where the topics are located... If at all? Many Thanks, Mike Glenn

Oh, i must not have pressed upload on the screenshot, nevermind. I've attached 2 MBR's, the one after i formatted with swissnife, the other after i converted to ntfs. I ran format and tried to format as ntfs, but it failed becuase it's removable. so i formatted it as FAT, which worked I then ran convert.exe converted it to NTFS which i will try and boot now. EDIT: suprise! it didn't boot :/ 2_MBR_S.zip

D'oh, i changed the hardware id for cfadisk.inf to my corsair usb drive, ( i took the first one from the list, i even added all the hardware id's) but it did not install when i did update drivers. i've attached a screenshot, it i did as was instructed by dietmar's post. Swissknife will only format the drive as fat32, even when using dummydisk (maybe theres different results with the hitachi one? ) p.s also yeah i did think you changed the MBR again haha i mis understood sorry.

You fixed my MBR was that? Did you re-upload it to the last post? I've had a read through the FAQ#10, i've tried all of them things, except the superfloppy and zip format. As they would probably boot up. haha i've tried endlessly messing with the BIOS configuration. but nothing i dont even know what the motherboard is, i've tried SiS Sandra, but thats only able to get generic data including my dell service tag as a serial number (**** you dell!) i'm currently sarching for the motherboard on the internet and maybe on the dell site (but dell being so great, i can't access their site.) Mike sandra.txt

God damnit! ha still no joy. Still ends up with a flashing underscore. im beginning to think it's this peice of s*** chipset/bios setup i've got in the badly made Dell M1330. I did do everything properly, just doesn't wan't to work. ill have to just use FAT or FAT32, tried FAT and it is pretty slow installing xp. Thanks for all your help jaclaz it's much appreciated. it was kind of fun trying to get it to work. i learnt some new stuff. i'll keep looking the net to see if theres any specific links to why it doesn't. ill also try on another computer if i can. Many thanks, Mike

mbrbatch method did not work neither. maybe i did something wrong so ill try again. attached the bootsector and the mbr of my usb flash drive after being formatted 3 times by hp util. oh yeah also, i've tried the dummydisk method, that gets rid of the "A disk read error occurred; Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart" problem and turns it into and annoying blinking underscore! ha bootsecandmbr.zip

Excellent i think i've got the exact amount. I looked in the volume information for my usb drive and it listed I multipied the sector size by the total sectors to get a result of 4145541120 (Bytes?) Ok now to follow the rest of the guide with mbrbatch. Cheers duude Mike

I'm beginning to think that something is certainly not right when i run the command dsfo \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE1 0 0 NUL which is correct for my 4gb usb drive.. that it's up to 89182MB...? 0 is definatly my main hard drive, because when i take out the usb drive, 1 is not available...

OK, i'v tried the wiping the first 100 sectors which was demonstrated with the following:- fsz 51200 0file100sectors.dat dsfi \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE1 0 0 0file100sectors.dat afterwards i formatted with the HP utility, i tried formatting once, and also another time doing it three times. still ends up with a flashing underscore Will the MBRBATCH script have different results? thanks Mike

How would i zero the first 200 sectors? isn't that what formatting does?

awsome! thanks for the help. I am just experimenting with cluster sizes, using windows disk managment. i will get back with results again, many thanks. Mike ############### UPDATE ################## I managed to get rid of the disk read error occurred, but now it's continued with just a blinking underscore! haha, typical. i used the HP format tool (3 times) and also i've tried every cluster size with NTFS, thats 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16k, 32k, and 64k. is the flashing underscore something i've done wrong? thanks Mike

Hello, I've been playing with the program for a few days now and i eventually mananged to get it working - i have a Corsair Flash Voyager Mini 4GB. When i tried to use the HP format tool (using H) to format to NTFS it worked fine with the batch script. As soon as it was complete though i tried booting the drive and all i got was "A disk read error occurred; Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart" I tried redoing it with different settings but no joy. I then formatted using the PetoUSB with FAT (which states 2GB maximum) and it seems to work fine? Although it does have a cluster size of 32kb (which is a waste of space if theres lots of files under 32k). Does anyone know how i can get my usb drive to work with NTFS? I'm baffled - in the guide the example usb drive was a corsair flash voyager 4gb? the only difference is mines the mini... Also is it actually possible to get the Windows Repair to work in the txtmode setup? (where it normally gives you a list of the Windows versions installed and says "esc to not repair or R to repair") I've tried playing with the winnt.sif's and can't seem to get it going. Also both of the questions i have searched for in the forums and on google but can't seem to find anything that's relevant. Many thanks Mike