Ponch

Problem description is not complying with the standards on this board. 1st thing first; is it still recognized by Bios -in your other PC and/or in that one, through the IDE enclosure? If yes can you see any sign of it being there in Windows (Disk Management for instance)?

Don't double post. Don't use meaningless titles like "any expert please help me". "I tried nLite but failed any other software" is not really an incentive to help you as you seem to have given up for any unknown reason that you don't even try to explain. +Editing "all files" of Windows XP is very vague.

If you have more than 1 user and do not have autologon enabled, you first come in the "default" profile, then after entering password (if any), you come in your own profile, that can explain your impresion of "weird" behaviour. So to complete allen2's answer, you also have to change the same registry value in HKU\.DEFAULT\...

EDIT: I wrote all this having only read down to the 1st page of the thread... I now see there was a 2nd page. ... I might read everything and come back if still applies. Anyway you look at it, you need to be able to boot and clone from something else than your XP. Here was a relatively simple way. Download any tool that boots from CD and can resize partitions on your 40Gig (GPartEd comes to mind indeed). Now downsize any partition on your 40Gig so that you can create an additional partition that can contain all you want to image (data size), you should be ok with less than 2.5 gig if XP out of the box (and Win98?) are the only things on your main partition. Now booting from cd, clone your XP to an image (a single file) on that new partition. Then you can do the rest the same way; copy the image (from the running XP) to an additional partition on the 120gig then apply image to the desired partition. To perform that last point though, you will have to run the imaging program from your XP, but some (Ghost32 for instance) do not need to be installed and just run from any place, and it won't modify your image that is already created.. After all is done you can clean the unneeded partitions. Gparted is a great free tool but it is a bit slow. You can also use that external USB to Sata adapter but I've had problems cloning "internal to external". Maybe it was bad luck.

I think this sticks to his request of not installing any software (supposedly "on his C: drive that he's going to clone, before cloning").

I guess yes. Some people react in a different way. Staying polite and sounding genuine are your best moves.

Please note that nLite's is for personal use only, not business related use, you agreed to that when you installed it. We've never given help to people in breach of this agreement here. Forum rule 1d.

What exactly is written on your original disk (physical media) ?

There is no need for one. nLited install disks behave mainly like standard MS install disks. There is a subforum called "Install XP from USB" with a few different methods listed. Only specific methods need some files (winnt.exe and such) NOT to be removed by nLite ("Manual Install and Upgrade" in "OS Options", Components removal) but those methods have been superseded and you did not remove such components anyway. There are even methods now allowing you to copy the iso file as such on the (prepared) flash drive. You could also test your install with Virtual Box, starting the XP install from an ISO file (as a virtual CD) in a virtual machine. You wouldn't need any cd nor USB drive, just few Gigabytes free on your HDD and some ~300Meg RAM available for the "guest" OS. Drawback is that it uses virtual drivers (for virtual machine) and so some aspects of the running OS cannot be tested. There is no "next nLite version". The author has considered the project as finished since a few years now. XP is getting old as well. Prepare for the usual correction of my post and the addition of tons of links by ...someone. Edited...for correction.

You say "fairly old" does it have a floppy drive ? If yes, you could try to reinstall XP using what is called "F6 drivers". He meant SATA controller drivers, you'd need to get them from the motherboard's manufacturer's site (put them on a floppy and press F6 at the beginning of XP install process when prompted to). Bios option is easier though if applicable.

Are you really applying only those settings to the original disk doing this in one go ? It seems impossible that the file is missing with that few services removed. I once had a bad_pool_caller BSOD and it was due to a bad RAM module but it can have other causes to. Is there any cause to the reinstallation (had the PC crashed therefor needing it)?

"Attached settings" are not attached, but let me guess.... you removed "Battery" from "Hardware support".

The Office Compatibility Pack might come handy as well for when clueless "friends" send you docx, xlsx or pptx documents. And it's only 37Megabytes !

You could search the forum for "Cablib", it would get you some possible causes.

Win7's Disk Management will create 3 primary (by default) partitions but will not let you create the 4th as primary, only as extended. Only through (command line) diskpart you can create a 4th primary partition. Now whether Jaclaz had in mind to help you install XP on a logical volume or to let you follow the manual, we'll see.

Dug out alllll the way from the 2nd page of this forum, for tain as he struggles with his memory.

I guess it's a Pentium 1, 233MHz, 32Meg RAM or even less ? Good luck playing video with that.

It all depends really on how much times you plan to use that CD. You only need to integrate SATA drivers if the original install disk can't see the disk behind your SATA controler (the actual disk, HDD/SSD itself makes no difference) and you have no floppy drive to perform "F6" driver injection in install text mode. Now,... if you plan to reinstall a lot of times, for test or multiboot or whatever (but not for work related mass install, as nLite is for personal use only), you might find it interresting to use the program. Keep in mind that you might integrate drivers, updates programs (addons) and tweaks, you still have to make the balance on what will be obsolete or not next time you reinstall. In short, spending 2 hours making a disk that will save you ~3quarters of an hour twice is ...almost ok.

For people who'd still like to double check I love this kind of nonsense. Maybe because I'm Belgian.

In my experience, with XP Pro, if you only have 1 account (the built-in administrator?) and no password, it should not even have shown the welcome screen at first. So was it a standard XP install or from a modded cd ? Was the computer (ever) in a domain ?

If you ONLY did that (introduce or modify Unattended parameters), then yes. You meant "without messing up my key" ?

There can be a lot of possible causes to your problem. Unless you dicuss "unwanted things", the best answer we can give is -buy a new hard drive and reinstall everything. If we get more info more and can assess what you are able to do or not, we might come with a cheaper answer. Can you check the health of your XP partition through your Ubuntu system ? Or can you log on with an other account (like "Administrator") by using Ctrl+Alt+Del twice instead of choosing the user from the Welcome screen? XP Pro ? XP Home?

2-3-4; nLite will only let you rename "Documents and Settings" and "Program Files" (or their french equivalent), which is about half a percent of what you want to do. Also nLite is for personal use only (in case this is work related) You will need deep search to modify the source. Maybe you can find more info in the "Unattended XP". Not sure.

Anything for this type of video (a bit less than an hour long)? The link might be valid for a week only.

The BBC is doing exactly the same with their iPlayer. Your request is one for piracy as you simply do not have the right to watch that. You put it yourself: "other" people can legally watch it.