Falcon4

The Makeiso program (mkisofs renamed?) is a well-known and stable program... I tend to lean in the direction of that nLite is passing the wrong options (or the wrong order/syntax?) to mkisofs, and resulting in a bad ISO. Yes, most people's computers will boot those CDs, but for the major selling point of nLite (making older computers run XP smoothly), it's a hell of a hit for compatibility. Should be a very simple fix - I'm surprised Nuhi hasn't popped his head in here yet to check it out =P [sarcasm] And I'm a donor, damnit, I demand some respekt around here! [/sarcasm]

Why do I even bother posting these issues? Is anything going to be done to fix it?

First of all, great tool (Finally I can make Windows dis itself! w00t!), thanks for making it! =) But, as with almost everyone posting in this thread, I have a problem. During the textmode portion of Setup, I get an error about winntbbu.dll not being copied properly. To me it seems like an error that everyone using this tool should theoretically be getting without some other patch to trick Setup into believing that's the original file... like a checksum or a last-modified time... Is there a trick I'm missing? Didn't find anything by searching the thread... =\

Or just try it with Nero, which as I said, worked beautifully using No Emulating, loading the BIN as the boot image, and setting Loaded Sectors to 4. Meaning Nero's doing something that Makeiso's not. I'll try removing --duplicates-once... one e-sec. Oh, hell, I already deleted the source... nevermind then. You could try it yourself - the ISO maker is leaving boot.* unhidden, it's as simple as that. Isn't it doing that for everyone? I can't comprehend how it could only be doing it for me... I understand that only my system refuses to boot with this broken structure, but the common thread should be that "boot.bin" file sticking out like a sore thumb in the directory listing of the ISO...

I:\lol>"c:\Program Files\nLite\makeiso.exe" -o c:\WinLite.iso -allow-multidot -n o-iso-translate -relaxed-filenames -allow-leading-dots -N -l -d -D -joliet-long -duplicates-once -no-emul-boot -b boot.bin -hide boot.bin -hide boot.catalog . Warning: creating filesystem that does not conform to ISO-9660. Warning: creating filesystem with (nonstandard) Joliet extensions but without (standard) Rock Ridge extensions. It is highly recommended to add Rock Ridge Size of boot image is 4 sectors -> No emulation 5.08% done, estimate finish Thu Jun 08 13:42:45 2006 10.17% done, estimate finish Thu Jun 08 13:42:45 2006 15.25% done, estimate finish Thu Jun 08 13:42:38 2006 20.32% done, estimate finish Thu Jun 08 13:42:40 2006 25.40% done, estimate finish Thu Jun 08 13:42:37 2006 30.48% done, estimate finish Thu Jun 08 13:42:35 2006 35.57% done, estimate finish Thu Jun 08 13:42:34 2006 40.64% done, estimate finish Thu Jun 08 13:42:35 2006 45.73% done, estimate finish Thu Jun 08 13:42:32 2006 50.81% done, estimate finish Thu Jun 08 13:42:31 2006 55.88% done, estimate finish Thu Jun 08 13:42:31 2006 60.97% done, estimate finish Thu Jun 08 13:42:30 2006 66.04% done, estimate finish Thu Jun 08 13:42:30 2006 71.13% done, estimate finish Thu Jun 08 13:42:29 2006 76.20% done, estimate finish Thu Jun 08 13:42:29 2006 81.28% done, estimate finish Thu Jun 08 13:42:29 2006 86.36% done, estimate finish Thu Jun 08 13:42:29 2006 91.45% done, estimate finish Thu Jun 08 13:42:28 2006 96.53% done, estimate finish Thu Jun 08 13:42:28 2006 Total translation table size: 2048 Total rockridge attributes bytes: 0 Total directory bytes: 321910 Path table size(bytes): 1306 98429 extents written (192 MB) I:\lol> And in the ISO, boot.bin and boot.catalog are still unhidden...

Maybe Nuhi should try cdimage... 'cuz I'm sure all the ISOs it's spitting out have the same problem as well. The only long path Nero complained about before burning (the working CD) was some \asms path that was extremely long... I didn't add any files of my own. I did, however, integrate VIA chipset drivers, nVidia drivers 77.72, and an SMC wireless USB adapter driver... don't think those would cause this kind of problem though. The ISO was about 192mb. Just the fact that it booted perfectly on my desktop but not on the P3 system tells me that there's something that most people won't find (as most people use nLite on newer computers, naturally), and may have been overlooked.

Here's what I've got: This is a default, clean install, too - installed RC8 from scratch on a newly formatted PC. Means no settings were left over from an old install, if applicable. Just fyi. Strange that it seems to ignore the "-hide boot.bin" switch... maybe it's not written properly?

No, no, read in the third paragraph: the boot.bin file is exposed, meaning it's not properly seated in the ISO filesystem (most likely) as a boot-image. And I forgot to mention: I tested it in my desktop (this PC) and it worked fine. Apparently some BIOSes aren't equipped to compensate for awkward layouts like is being done with recent ISOs... I also burned it on a straight CD-R (after 4 successful, verified, and nonworking CD-RW burns), and got the same result, if just a little quicker due to CD-spinup time...

Had a problem today booting an nLite-created CD in a Pentium 3 system... it would spin up the CD then ignore it and try the other boot devices, finally crashing on "DISK BOOT FAILURE". Tried countless things - recreating the ISO and reburning, deleting "boot.bin" and "boot.catalog" from the root and recreating, tried burning on straight CD-R instead of RW, nothing helped. What finally did work was using Nero to create the CD using the old-fashioned method of using the BIN as the boot image and setting Loaded Sectors to 4, with "no emulation". Also used ISO+Joliet filesystem, NO relaxed specifications (except omitting the ;1 version thing). Then it booted and ran fine from a CD-RW. Of particular note was an odd thing I noticed while browsing the CD - boot.bin and boot.catalog are exposed files! Those are never visible on a standard Windows CD... why are they here? Never had this problem with this system before... must be a problem with the latest RC. There have been more problems I've seen as the RCs go on - nLite is MUCH slower than it used to be, strange problems are popping up everywhere, and the biggest gripe of all: Windows File Protection is 100% broken when you nLiten your CD! Not good, man, not good at all... Anyway, at least I got Windows installed after burning about 5 CDs before tracking it down to not a hardware failure, but a data failure...

I got a headache trying to read all that information. How do you re-enable it?! :-( I seem to have it half-enabled. It still doesn't detect my CD, and because of that I'm stuck with a half-baked SFC that's causing me nothing but problems. nLite's #1 problem is that 100% of its options are completely irreversible. Unlike many nLite users, I like keeping my OS installed for more than a week at a time. I don't want to have to reinstall Windows every time I need a little insignificant piece of s*** I removed back with nLite! =\

I needed some help with this too. Turns out that every single computer in my house has a disabled SFC, and I needed to run sfc /scannow on one of my computers. I thought disabling SFC only disabled "active scanning" and you still had the option to run it. Guess not. (I got an error, saying "The specific error code is 0x000006ba" and that the RPC service could not be contacted - in case someone like me goes searching for this solution.) I fixed it by running the patch program in the first reply; it thought my SFC was enabled so I allowed it to "re-patch" it, then I immediately turned around and had it un-patch SFC. Rebooted, and now SFC is performing a scan just fine. edit: Attached the file I'm referring to. edit edit: Correction. Now it's constantly asking for the Windows XP CD, saying I don't have it inserted (I even put in my completely-official CD and it denied it). Something's majorly screwed up... WFPswitch.exe

Typed up a huge post, submitted it, the server f***ing swallowed it, there's no way I'm rewriting it all. I hacked around it using my 5200 (without drivers, even), installed XPIze (minus some features I knew wouldn't work, or I didn't want), and it looks perfect. Only thing I've noticed is the system properties "pictures". The computer logo and the XPIze branding logo have black backgrounds. Big whoop. Everything else, like the wizard-step images, are solid images (should be written as 24-bit bitmaps, right XPero?), with no blending necessary. They work fine. The 32-bit XP icons blend just fine on the desktop and folders. I'm pretty happy with it. It'd be nice if instead of prohibiting installation, it'd warn the user about the 24-bit condition and ask if they want to continue (like the .NET-not-installed issue, and System Restore being disabled).

I killed the Windows default Luna theme just so I could get XPIze on this system (an Intel motherboard with integrated graphics and whatnot). Turns out the video controller doesn't do 32-bit color. I know Windows does a fine job of emulating alpha blending on the display, so why muck with forcing 32-bit down our throats even if all we want is the theme and wallpaper? (Oh, and the shell-modifications for the new images. Pretty much everything but the programs and the icons.) Can't the installer have a "you will only be able to install 24-bit-compatible components" exception? Anyway, I'm gonna throw in my FX5200 just so I can get the installer to run. Grr. Not that I don't like XPIze (I <3 it), just that you force this limitation on people that really don't give an a** how bad certain components would look... >.< My $0.02.

Too many options? Whoa, what's changed since I last saw it? Hmm. I still don't like the 7-zip file format though. It kinda alienates you from the rest of the Internets, that are using RAR and Zip. Seems kinda weird. But you may just have convinced me to give it another try, just based on the "too many options" part.

^ Ditto that. If the application developer decided to make some kind of memory optimizer crap, that person doesn't know squat about programming. You optimize the page file by disabling it completely. It's that simple. Anyway here's the final version, I made it the day I announced it but just now got around to reformatting a computer and testing it. Last time I installed it, it didn't install, probably because Windows was half-installed 3 times and it already had WinRAR on one of them. I don't blame it. It uses the suggested /S (silent) switch, and to execute that switch I use a silent, temporary self-extracting RAR archive to do so. http://www.hostfile.org/ProgramAddons_WinRAR351.cab Enjoy!