Bios seeing USB stick as floppy

[jaclaz]

Yep, You should be past the initial problem.

\$WIN_NT$.~BT\ (and \$WIN_NT$.~LS\) is the "normal" path for a drive seen as HD, just like it is \ (root) for a floppy device and \I386\ on CD.

jaclaz

[ilko_t]

Nice progress

At some point I got lost, what's different compared to the initial attempts?

[barnai]

The main difference is to use fbinst with the --zip option to format the stick.

[jaclaz]

Nice progress

At some point I got lost, what's different compared to the initial attempts?

Right now the stick can be mapped as (hd0,0) or (hdn,0).

Translation:

• the stoopid BIOS reads as FD the USB stick "normally" partitioned/formatted <- it would be nice to understand how/which method it uses, I suspect it automatically "hides" a number of sectors
  
• apparently the particular fbinst formatting allows to workaround the issue
  
• fbinst "more compatible" formatting is enough to let the setup (once mapped by grub4dos) to read it as HD
  

at least this should be the case if SETUPLDR.BIN+NTDETECT.COM go searching biosinfo.inf in \$WIN_NT$.~BT\

It is possible that the behaviour is similar to the old "compatible jumper" real ZIP disk drives had (read also the snippet about BIOS dependant hiding of first sectors):

http://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/linux/zip/zip-1.html

Next move/suggestion to setup it as to start the install is yours.

jaclaz

[ilko_t]

RMPrepUSB and Bootice both have an option to format in USB-ZIP mode. Could you try them and report if their formatting works too?

As I get it now, your stick is formatted in a way, so it's both bootable and capable to be mapped as a hard disk.

Next would be to attempt to complete Setup start, you up for it?

Thanks for all the patience and cooperation by the way, this really helps.

Jaclaz, crossposting

[jaclaz]

RMPrepUSB and Bootice both have an option to format in USB-ZIP mode. Could you try them and report if their formatting works too?

They probably won't work.

Both BootIce and RMPrepUSB can make "normal" ZIP-like partitioning/formatting.

fbinst uses a "redundant" approach, similar, but different , from the "triple MBR" one (which may work in this case):

http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=7932

http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?...c=7932&st=6

Triple MBR:

http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=7507

In other words, both BootIce and RMPrepUsb partition/format as "pure ZIP", the fbinst approach formats/partitions at the same time as "HD/Floppy/ZIP", in several places, "triple MBR" formats/partitions as "HD/Floppy" in several places.

jaclaz

[barnai]

jaclaz is right (but that may be the real truism in the whole story ), zip options with other tools (I tried RMPREPUSB and Bootice) wont work. They actually dont allow a proper mapping as HD (a disk error is returned when trying afterwards to make root (hd0,0)).

To get around all the series of missing files errors I tried to use the previous version of WinSetupFromUSB (0.2.3), since it puts windows files into a folder $WIN_NT$.~BT on the stick. And it worked, since the install goes on now until the end of the loading phase (when it prints out all the info about drivers and devices at the bottom of the screen). But right then I get a BSOD with

STOP: 0x0000007B (0xF7CAF524, 0xC0000034, 0x00000000, 0x00000000).

Any clue ?

[ilko_t]

I'd try the modified ntdetect.com- Q3/A3:

http://www.msfn.org/board/faqs-t116766.html

How did you map the stick- map (fd0) (hd0) or (hd0,0) ?

Next could be trying the small ISO method and BootDevice/SetupSourceDevices "multi(0)disk(0)fdisk(0)" and no mapping. Actually the small ISO is needed just to get around the improperly generated boot.ini at the end of Text mode. For experimenting you can dump entire contents of the CD to a folder, chainload setupldr.bin in it directly and amend txtsetup.sif with the relevant BootPath, BootDevice, SetupSourcePath and SetupSourceDevice.

BTW this method should work as Setup loads completely from an emulated CD:

http://www.msfn.org/board/7-t137714.html

[barnai]

No BSOD with the modified NTDETECT.COM ! :thumbup

Ive got to the choice between install, recovery console and cancel. I cant do the complete install on this comp since its my only one for now, but I think were there.

I suppose youd prefer to have the whole install tested. Isnt it possible to find somebody else with an "installable" pc ?

To answer ur question, I mapped the stick with map (fd0) (hd0).

[ilko_t]

No BSOD with the modified NTDETECT.COM !

Nice, slowly, but progressing, probably nearly done

Isnt it possible to find somebody else with an "installable" pc ?

Hopefully someone will join the game.

I am still curious if ARC path is generated, what ARC path Windows setup would accept and can grub4dos mapping make the USB stick as multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(X)partition(Y). The ~BT & ~LS method has number of limitations, so I'd rather not go too deep in this direction.

[Maebe]

• the stoopid BIOS reads as FD the USB stick "normally" partitioned/formatted <- it would be nice to understand how/which method it uses, I suspect it automatically "hides" a number of sectors
  
• apparently the particular fbinst formatting allows to workaround the issue
  
• fbinst "more compatible" formatting is enough to let the setup (once mapped by grub4dos) to read it as HD
  

Good day to all.

I have run into similar problem, and although I have partly succeeded/ partly given up, but here are my personal findings, they might complicate matters further.

I tried to prepare 3 sticks, Kingston 2Gb, Transcend 1Gb and Noname 256 Mb with HP Utility, fbinst and BootIce.

None of them were bootable with HP utility or similar, no matter what I chose in BIOS setup.

With fbinst (formatted both with fat16 and fat32), they were bootable and recognized as fd0, with exactly the same simptoms as barnai:

- find returns (ud), (fd0), (hd0,0). I can address files on (ud) and (hd0,0) without problems. (fd0) though is inaccessible: ls (fd0)/ gives "Error 17: Can not mount the selected partition", and I can't find any files on fd0, including .tag file. So nothing stored in fbinst data partition runs. When I move stuff to (ud) though, grub4dos finds it just fine. Note, however, that at some point (fd0) must have been accessible, because menu.lst is correctly loaded from (fd0).

With BootIce 7.2, my computer skipped the stick if it was formatted with fat32, and recognized it as (fd0) when formatted with fat16. In fact, ls(fd0) showed correct contents of the BootIced-stick, quite unlike fbinsted-stick. I have managed to run most of recovery utilities using this setup.

Now for the third part of the epic - I have tried to format 4GB stick with bootice/fat32 - and it loaded as (hd0,0) straight away. I thought that perhaps jaclaz was right, but the margin between sticks being recognized as fd0/hd0 lies at 4Gb, not 1Gb.

And to make matters more complicated, after I have repartitioned my hard disk and installed Win7, my BootIce-sticks refused to boot via BIOS USB-HDD, yet continued to boot via BIOS USB-FDD

To sum it up:

-4GB BootIce-stick(fat32) now loads from BIOS-USB-FDD, ends up as (hd0,0), files on a stick are accessible

-2Gb BootIce-stick(fat16) now loads from BIOS-USB-FDD, ends up as (fd0), files on a stick are accessible

-2Gb fbinst-stick(fat16) now loads from BIOS-USB-HDD, ends up as (fd0), files on (fd0) are inaccessible, but files on (ud) are fine

Now, that was complicated. Sorry for not formatting the post properly, am a bit in a hurry.

[jaclaz]

Your report is a bit "confused/confusing", but thanks for it.

You seem to fail to attribute the right "focus" of the problem: it has NOTHING to do with the actual sticks, it is all about the way a given motherboard BIOS behaves.

In other works the SAME stick "normally" partitioned/formatted with, say, the HP utility may boot allright on 99 motherboards and fail on the 100th.

I thought that perhaps jaclaz was right, but the margin between sticks being recognized as fd0/hd0 lies at 4Gb, not 1Gb.

Well, here you missed a point, by definition jaclaz is always right , some motherboards will have the "switch" at 512 Kb, some at 1 Gb, some at 2 Gb some may not have it completely.

Cheers.

jaclaz

[barnai]

Getting back to get over with this topic (after quite a long time, I know, but I had a rather serious problem with a piece of hardware).

@ilko_t

I tried to get the iso method to work as well, and it appears that as for the other method, the only way is to map fd0 to hd0. Thus the txtsetup.sif in the iso is modified with:

BootDevice="multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)"

And same for SetupSourceDevice.

With those, the annoying "biosinfo.inf" error disappears, and the installation goes on. Once again, after the driver loading phase, I got a BSOD 0x7B, and got rid of it by using the modified ntdetect.com.

End of the tunnel ?

[ilko_t]

Getting back to get over with this topic (after quite a long time, I know, but I had a rather serious problem with a piece of hardware).

@ilko_t

I tried to get the iso method to work as well, and it appears that as for the other method, the only way is to map fd0 to hd0. Thus the txtsetup.sif in the iso is modified with:

BootDevice="multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)"

And same for SetupSourceDevice.

With those, the annoying "biosinfo.inf" error disappears, and the installation goes on. Once again, after the driver loading phase, I got a BSOD 0x7B, and got rid of it by using the modified ntdetect.com.

End of the tunnel ?

Wow, nice, at last

Did you complete setup? Did it pass the GUI mode using small ISO method?

[barnai]

No m8 I still have this single PC at hand, and cant reinstall Windows on it .

I think that things should be fine from that stage, but actually it would be fine to try and make the whole install (especially to check the second part).

Does Maebe (who posted above) have an "installable" PC ?