JamesS

I have a lab of machines with 3 NTFS partitions, which dual-boot two different WinXP Pro installations (one on each of the first two partitions) with the third being a shared data partition. I need the boot/system partition to be C:, the data partition to be D: and the other bootable partition to have no drive letter allocated. (I also need the CD drive to move up to become J:, but I've already done that using a Diskpart script.) The problem: Diskpart appears to accept the commands to remove the drive letter from the second partition then allocate it to the third instead - but on reboot, they're back to D and E as before. Any suggestions? It looks like I can win half the battle with a registry hack (just copying \\DosDevices\E's mount entry over \\DosDevice\D's) - but upon reboot, XP will regard the 2nd partition as 'new' and allocate it another letter instead. When the Disk Management tool removes the drive letter, it seems to give the partition a GUID prefixed with a # as a mount point - I though just putting 'UNUSED' would be enough to stop XP thinking it's a new device, but no...

Hm - that one slipstreams SP2, doesn't it? I'm wondering if this is a difference in slipstreaming techniques, then; I was using sp2.exe /integrate to get an SP2 CD, then applying RyanVM's pack. Since the problem occurs with just RyanVM+SP2+XP, while the same SP2+XP works fine without his updates (even with all but 3 of the updates slipstreamed using /integrate) we should be able to narrow down the cause pretty closely? Come to think of it, those 3 updates don't work with /integrate for some reason: is *that* involved somehow? Some trick RyanVM uses to integrate them that doesn't work reliably? I might take a closer look at those three at some point, see if there's something wrong in there...

It doesn't seem to, no - it's an obsolete file which used to ship as part of older versions of IE. I did try copying it (having tracked down an old set of IE install files) but that didn't help; my guess is something is getting confused and trying to "upgrade" XP with the version of the Internet Connection Wizard IE shipped in those days? For now, I'm just staying RyanVM-free - not ideal, but I need winnt32 to work! It's only a minor inconvenience really, except that three hotfixes don't integrate and have to be applied using GuiRunOnceEx instead.

Hmm... Looks like winnt vs winnt32 changes this somehow? I'm using XP Pro; no modifications apart from slipstreaming SP2 itself and RyanVM's update pack, plus copying in the unattend.txt file as winnt.sif. Exactly the same process *without* RyanVM's pack works perfectly (even after slipstreaming each of the hotfixes manually using /integrate), so now I have a fair idea where to look: something RyanVM changes, which affects winnt32 but not winnt or CD boots...

I've been having exactly this problem (icfgnt.dll not being found at T-15). Interestingly, it only happens if I install by running winnt32, as opposed to booting from the CD. I read somewhere this may be related to the wmp.inf file, somehow. I'll see if I can do anything about this tomorrow - in the mean time, does anyone else have any information or suggestions?