1.4.5 Beta2 Broke my WinXP!

[forkprong]

For some reason nLite 1.4.5 Beta2 broke my WinXP installation. I'm currently doing data recovery using my Ubuntu LiveCD but I really shouldn't be doing that in the first place!

Why on earth is nLite capable of destroying a Windows installation period? I have no idea how my installation was broke but I do know it couldn't find hal.dll. I tried the recovery console and ended up borking GRUB so my Ubuntu installation is gone too. Bah.

Should'nt it just create a virtual drive or folder to work in, copy the needed files/info from your CDs/system to that area and remaster an ISO once it's done?

[Volatus]

It does. o_O

Few thoughts to this:

First of all, this is the wrong forum. *

Second, this is probably a problem that could have been caused by _ANY_ program. Chances are, for hal.dll to go missing, your hard drive probably became corrupt. Look into figuring out what hardware problem caused your hard drive to get scrambled s*** data. If you're using an 80-conductor ATA133 cable, take a look into tracking down an old 40-conductor cable and try using that instead.

But it's going to be a unanimous conclusion that nLite is not at fault here... unless of course, you did something stupid like selecting your Windows folder for where to place the temporary files! Even then, it would have copied an i386 folder and so-on... totally independent of your Windows install. *meh*

edit: * - this topic was originally in the WinXP forum.

Edited March 30, 2008 by Volatus

[Kelsenellenelvian]

Ummm I have done HUNDREDS of nLite installations and haven't yet found that.

XPize caused it for me a couple of times on the newer sp3's.

nLite WILL NOT bork a already installed windows it just modifies the installation files.

[bledd]

nLite WILL NOT bork a already installed windows it just modifies the installation files.

yup,

sounds like unlucky timing, or another modification you may have done

what else did you use? (addons?)

[forkprong]

But it's going to be a unanimous conclusion that nLite is not at fault here... unless of course, you did something stupid like selecting your Windows folder for where to place the temporary files! Even then, it would have copied an i386 folder and so-on... totally independent of your Windows install. *meh*

Something like this is the culprit. My hardware is fine and it wasn't a settings modification or another conflicting program. Don't ask me how it nuked Windows, all I know is that it did.

That being said, I can't start nLite and give a proper autopsy of what went wrong until I have a working Windows installation, so can someone tell me how to fix it? I think my OEM disks wipe the entire drive when installing WinXP anew which is just out of the question!

I have a working Ubuntu install now which should be of some use.

I copied hal.dll from my OEM disk (actually the ISOs I made of the disks as a backup) so that's taken care of. However, now it's asking for ntoskrnl.exe which I was only able to find as NTOSKRNL.EX_ and I have no idea how to turn that into the file I need.

[Tarun]

Removed some flaming that occurred in here. Keep this topic clean of flames and try to help the user figure out what happened. Remember that there is not one single piece of software in existence that is perfect with no flaws, bugs, exploits, etc.

Forum Rules

7.b This community is built upon mutual respect. You are not allowed to flame other members. People who do not respect personal opinions and/or personal work will be warned in first instance. If you ignore the warning and keep on flaming, you will be banned without notice.

--

forkprong,

you will need to navigate to the directory of your NTOSKRNL.EX_ and do the expand command along with the path to where the file(s) should be expanded to.

[forkprong]

you will need to navigate to the directory of your NTOSKRNL.EX_ and do the expand command along with the path to where the file(s) should be expanded to.

Did that, and now I get the message "load needed DLLs for kernel"

How delightfully VAGUE!

Any further advice will be quite welcome.

[Volatus]

You're probably further destroying your computer the more you keep trying to solve surface problems like this... I can guarantee you that those files were NOT deleted or modified by nLite or any other program for that matter. I've never seen a program do that, ever. nLite certainly wouldn't, unless its supporting runtime, the bastardic .NET Framework, itself caused problems.

Stop trying to solve the immediately visible problems... for example, Windows will tell you it can't find hal.dll if the entire partition or Windows folder is corrupt. Creating a Windows folder and putting hal.dll in there won't fix anything. Running chkdsk on the drive probably will.

So with that, have you run chkdsk on the drive yet? The Windows install CD based chkdsk is really crappy, and doesn't usually even fix any problems. You'll have to slave the drive to another computer, or use another installation, to check it...

(edit: I'm dying to know what flaming went on in here... haha. Funny that people are so passionate about nLite, but those same people would turn around and trash vLite. Hmm...)

Edited March 30, 2008 by Volatus

[nuhi]

I did not read this thread in detail because nLite does not touch the Windows on which it runs.

Only occasion where it uses the registry is during SATA driver integration, but it is just a temporary entry created and removed. So if you experience something like that again and you isolate it down to nLite let me know, but I highly doubt it.

Could be that your machine overheated or hdd got corrupted.

[forkprong]

You're probably further destroying your computer the more you keep trying to solve surface problems like this... I can guarantee you that those files were NOT deleted or modified by nLite or any other program for that matter. I've never seen a program do that, ever. nLite certainly wouldn't, unless its supporting runtime, the bastardic .NET Framework, itself caused problems.

Stop trying to solve the immediately visible problems... for example, Windows will tell you it can't find hal.dll if the entire partition or Windows folder is corrupt. Creating a Windows folder and putting hal.dll in there won't fix anything. Running chkdsk on the drive probably will.

So with that, have you run chkdsk on the drive yet? The Windows install CD based chkdsk is really crappy, and doesn't usually even fix any problems. You'll have to slave the drive to another computer, or use another installation, to check it...

C:\WINDOWS was selected by nLite as my windows installation by default so I just let that be being the n00b that I was. If this was the root of my problems (further research points out that it might be the case) then I suggest nLite be made so it will ignore C:\WINDOWS.

I recently did a reinstall from my OEM CDs and luckily there was an option to reinstall windows without reformatting the entire disk and now everything works fine. However, I get an error when I run nLite that says it "detected an unfinished nlite operation" and insists on a pristine installation. I think my disks reformat my entire drive when it does a pristine install so that's not an option. Is there a way to eliminate this error manually?

BTW, hal.dll was totally MISSING so nLite did something. chkdsk did nothing. A bunch of files were missing and I have no idea where they went.

[forkprong]

Only occasion where it uses the registry is during SATA driver integration, but it is just a temporary entry created and removed. So if you experience something like that again and you isolate it down to nLite let me know, but I highly doubt it.

Could be that your machine overheated or hdd got corrupted.

My Ubuntu installation (after restoring GRUB) works fine and it's on the same disk and a recovery installation of WinXP went without incident and also works. No corruption here and there was certainly no overheating.

However, after restoring windows nLite is now giving me a "detected unfinished nlite operation" error and a pristine install is out of the question. How do I remedy this?

[tap52384]

Even though such a check would be fairly simple to implement, it is not fair to suggest that checking to make sure that the system folder is not selected due to user error. Additionally, nLite does not select a folder by default, the folder path dropbox is blank.

Furthermore, I just selected my C:\windows and I received this message:

---------------------------

Warning!

---------------------------

CD Ident file not detected! Make sure you copied it from the original CD (and all root files).

You can copy it now without restarting nLite.

Copy win51ip to c:\windows\

---------------------------

OK

---------------------------

This is an error message that basically says, "the currently selected folder does not have the files that a normal installation cd have."

A form of check was implemented after all.

[nuhi]

Will add this check, this is a serious problem. But not everyone has i386 folder in their Windows folder, I think manual SP install leaves that.

[Volatus]

I get the distinct, and very unfortunate, feeling that this particular user has absolutely no idea how nLite works or what it is designed to do, by the following points:

1) Selected C:\WINDOWS as the folder to operate on. No excuses. You selected it. nLite would never do such a thing.

2) Spoke about an unfinished nLite error - even though that error is brought up by selecting a folder that's unfinished - that is, your WINDOWS FOLDER AGAIN!

3) Thinks that nLite has anything to do with a clean install or upgrade/repair...

I think someone needs to take the fork out of forkprong's hands before he shoves it in the outlet again... Can someone help point him in the direction of detailing exactly what nLite does? Like, that it creates an installation DISC, not modifies an existing installation...?

[forkprong]

Will add this check, this is a serious problem. But not everyone has i386 folder in their Windows folder, I think manual SP install leaves that.

Actually, when I reinstall my OS I automatically have an i386 folder there filled with a backup of all the major files just as you'd expect. I let Windows Update do all my updates because doing it manually means nabbing and installing 90+ updates and that's just insane.

As mentioned by tap52384 there is a short check of sorts, but the check suggests that you solve the error by copying the win51ip file to C:\WINDOWS which is what I did. Big and lethal mistake to this new nLite user. I hope that gets fixed.

BTW is there a script available that will allow me to nab all of these updates at once instead of manually nabbing them one at a time? Am I correct in believing they'll be required so they can be 'slipstreamed' when I remaster?

I get the distinct, and very unfortunate, feeling that this particular user has absolutely no idea how nLite works or what it is designed to do, by the following points:

And I get the distinct feeling I shouldn't be answering a post belonging to someone with such poor social skills and a great love of the sound of their own 'voice' but I have a minute to set you straight...

1) Selected C:\WINDOWS as the folder to operate on. No excuses. You selected it. nLite would never do such a thing.

WRONG. It did select C:\WINDOWS and suggested that I copy win51ip to there. I did as suggested, hence the problem.

2) Spoke about an unfinished nLite error - even though that error is brought up by selecting a folder that's unfinished - that is, your WINDOWS FOLDER AGAIN!

1. It gives me this error whether I select C:\WINDOWS or a new folder that houses a copy of the win51ip file and i386 folder.
   
2. The problem is that it's detecting that I did work on that system and that the remaster was interrupted before it could finish (because it broke WinXP). it's a nice trait for a program to have (to start where you left off) but if that means working in a directory that will only break the system again then what's the freaking point! nLite should be able to ignore C:\WINDOWS at all costs and the fact it was even able to look there is a major problem.
   
3. What I need fixed is the ability to use nLite again on my system again but on my CDs. If I could convince nLite that I canceled my last remaster attempt that should be enough to start from square one again.
   
4. The condition of the current WinXP installation shouldn't even be a factor. It should run as long as the .NET 2.0 is installed, can write to a user-defined working directory and has CDs/DVD to work on.
   

This error is an odd one that shouldn't really be there. Period.

3) Thinks that nLite has anything to do with a clean install or upgrade/repair...

After reinstalling my OS via a recovery option nLite said that it needs a pristine install of WinXP in order to work. That's a direct quote. It's silly because as I just mentioned it shouldn't even be looking at C:\WINDOWS and nLite should work as long as the dependencies are there.

I think someone needs to take the fork out of forkprong's hands before he shoves it in the outlet again... Can someone help point him in the direction of detailing exactly what nLite does? Like, that it creates an installation DISC, not modifies an existing installation...?

I know exactly when nLite does. I intend to use it to remaster a single, up-to-date WinXP installation disk out of my current out-of-date 8 CD set filled with programs I never used.

I assume the admin will now take a second to delete your post. Seriously, are you fifteen?