Ponch

You needed to keep OOBE, the component (it says so with a red warning). "Disable OOBE" in Unattended section is only preventing it from running at start, that doesn't make no difference. Neither does IE. Still removing IE core will probably get you trouble later.

Ranish Partition Manager lets you have a backup (and more) at a place of your choice. Drawback is that it's user interface is not intuitive at all, not to say user unfriendly. And as we saw, support for bigger disks is dodgy.

That's why you ask us to think for you. Now answer the question.

Probably all of them. That's the idea of disk/partition imaging. It's for you to make sure you can run the program and access both the image and the target partition when your original system is failing.

Weird. Can you disconnect one of them to see if it's a problem "between them" ? Are they both IDE on the same cable ? If yes, have you checked the jumpers?

Either you ran nLite twice or your source is not clean. Where does that "original version" come from ? Always start with an original. +Read the big red message up your screen.

He probably set the external screen as "main" screen. The old Dell probably being 3/4 ratio and the 22" being widescreen, you can't really clone one onto the other.

That's because the tool has its own way of implementing unattended setup. Read point 4 here (I never had the courage to read it all because for me... it just worked).

If same method and same files were used, there should be no difference in this case, so there is something else that you forget to say.

A bit like adding a floor to a building. It would be very different to to add a floor on top than digging the ground under the building watch the whole building shifts down and end up creating the new floor, ...still on top, for a same final height.

I see this now and I am a bit confused on what exactly you have achieved or not. Have you managed to install XP at all the way you are doing now (with external USB cdrom) or not ? You seem to mean yes in the 1st post but no here. Are you keeping the original install on the same drive ?

Where does that come from ?

1) edit your posts to remove your XP key from both attached _u files. You never know, someone could register it before you. 2) run nLite on your files a first time, only integrating ServicePack 3 from Microsoft and save the result as a starting point for next builds. DO use XP, not Win7 for that. 3) get the drivers, at least for the chipset, VGA and LAN from Asus's site for EeePC 901/WinXP, unzip them and integrate them in your build with nLite (I see there are tons of inf files, use "integrate multiple drivers"). Apparently you don't need any "text mode" driver. 4) to be able to use ProgFilesPath = "d:\Program Files" , your D drive must be existing and formatted before Windows setup starts. 5) I don't see where you "get a choice of "C-step i486" or "other"(???), but previous points might get you through to a successful install. If you really need some space saved on your C:, you might consider checking components removal (printers, vga drivers, etc ...but better be safe than sorry). If all this doesn't work, Windows might have a problem finding the install media (USB cdrom) after reboot so you might check our "Install Windows from USB" forum as well.

Use a verb ?

Yes. And the size you set for 4th "volume" is the size Win7 Dm sets as the size of the 1st logical drive inside an extended partition that takes the whole remaining space of the drive. Which makes sense as you theoretically won't be able to create a 5th partition.

It seems the only way is running diskpart under cmd.exe with the command 'create partition extended'. Thus not using DM.

I tried... but Google lead me here ! And I refused to write "not up to date update pack" as it felt like an oximoron

What do you mean by "I have had trouble loading the ACPI driver" ? What kind of machine is it ? Why resolution 800x480 ? +Is your D: on the same HDD (or at least internal)?

Your download is correct (for an english/US version of XP). Why nLiye asks for something else is probably as Kelsenellenelvian suggested, because you are not using defailt settings but importing a preset of things "to do" that include that file. RVMUpdatePackSP3_1.0.3.7z is an "addon pack" that includes POST SP3 updates but it is 2 years old now. It still needs SP3 to be included in the source. For a really up to date cd, you're better off checking -X-'s site. (search for any thread here by user -X- and check his signature.)

The question was for the O.P.. Ever heard of the "black swan" theory ?

I've never seen one so this might be a stupid question ... but... no switch on the enclosure itself that says "Writing Enable/Disable" ?

Pedantic remark; at Point 6, there is no reason for it to say "C:\". More important, not to say crucial, at point 7, you're all well assuming that -you knew what files you should backup before it's too late (like where are your adress book, Outlook mails and such) -your pc is set to boot from floppy and cdrom before hdd, or you know how to set is so. -your Win98 cd is bootable (which if I remember correctly is not the case for all of them). Otherwise you'll have to launch the install from floppy, assuming your floppy has drivers for your optical drive and you know your way at the command line (where to find setup.exe). -your bootable Win98 cd has drivers for your optical drive. -you have a valid key for the version of Windows you're installing or could grab it before it's too late. -you have device drivers for your old hardware and Win98 (some websites might have disappeared). -you still have all your old MS-Office 97, Nero 5 and stuffs, install media that you might absolutely want (not that I feel they are irreplacable). -other things I forgot, but I see you're banned anyway.

Can you put it back there and confirm there is no issue in that environnement (booting from any external thing or from the drive itself), or otherwise, explain how sure you can be that it was a "working" HDD at first ? + have you checked the jumper ?

I tend to see the same people adopting both behaviours just depending on who's asking. Often for the same request. Sometimes a few minutes from each other. Now for the funny part, I had a EU civil servant stumped in front of his desktop's screen asking me to come over and see why clicking on the "Talk" button would not allow him to converse with people on his screen, ...video conference, live, the 6th box was empty, just his name in it. -You have no microphone and no camera... -Oh...Do you think that might be the problem ? -...yes. The guy was "Technical Advisor", salary about 4times mine. I had one (even higher level but not "technical") asking me why he wasn't able to log on, screen was black but ON, unresponsive keyboard and mouse were not bringing it alive, back from sleep mode or whatever... pointing to his newly installed docking station..... the laptop was at home. I am not inventing this. Even his secretary had a hard time not laughing in his face. A colleague of mine was asked to install arab fonts in Windows for someone having received a Word doc that was not displaying properly... After install, asked if it was "OK now", the guy then realized... he didn't know arab anyway! I had a guy working a whole day on a Word doc that had been "recovered" by Word. Each time he was saving it with Ctrl+S, he was prompted to give it a new name, he was hitting "cancel" and at the end of course, he closed Word without saving. Furious when told the document wasn't saved, he demanded his computer to be reinstalled because there was a bug ! I once had an "advanced PC repair" colleague adding an IDE cd burner in a desktop. I was doing something else aside but just to be on the safe side, I said "check the jumpers". When done and the pc wouldn't boot , I said "you did check the jumpers, didn't you ?" -"yes I did, ...there was one."

It's a waste of a few hours. What your install cd can see and what your soon to be OS can see and what any booted OS will be able to see on your drive is the master boot record, possible malware in it, and any partition defined in it. Whiping the mbr (few sectors) will make any defined partition unvisible to any program other than programs specifically made to seek them, like data recovery thingies, which is not the aim of an install cd nor any malware (not that you're planning to get infected later anyway). If the mbr is zeroed, it does not make any difference to the next booted OS if the drive is full of 1s or of 0s or anything. The drive is seen empty, nothing "possibly hidden to search for". Unless you boot with malware.