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XP x64 installation fail due to AHCI/IDE problem


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I want to install XP x64, but I'm running into the 0x0000007b error during installation that indicates XP's inability to deal with the AHCI mode. I switched my SATA drives to IDE in the bios of my Asus M597 R2.0 mainboard, but the same error occurs. I slipstreamed the XP-compatible SATA AHCI-drivers from the Asus website, but the setup still throws the same error. I tried a 32bit version of XP, same problem. I used VMWare to install XP directly to the hard drive and installed the AHCI drivers manually, but upon booting the from the drive natively, I get the same error.

Pressing F6 during setup should show the mass storage drivers that Windows would otherwise use, but it only shows "<none>", regardless of whether I run my drives in IDE, AHCI or whether I slipstream my drivers into the installation or not. Googling the mainboard, it seems that merely switching the drives to IDE should be enough to get through the installation without any problems, but for some reason that doesn't work in my case. I'm at my wit's end. I have a Samsung SSD (840 Evo) and two HDDs in my system (SATA ports 1,3 and 5) and none get recognized by the setup. I even set the Bios to use legacy boot instead of UEFI, just in case. Nothing. Does anyone have any idea what I can do or which settings in Bios I can change to make this work?

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Hmmm. :unsure:

XP 32 bit would not even boot without BIOS CSM in UEFI (if you prefer XP is ONLY BIOS compatible and NOT UEFI compatible), and ONLY the IA64 (Itanium processor) version of 64 bit XP used UEFI.

You need to go into your UEFI and enable CSM (Compatibility Support Mode) AND (maybe/possibly) disable a bunch of other options, you might need to check Asus documentation for the BIOS.

Anyway make sure that ALL ports are set to IDE, see:

http://www.overclock.net/t/1072574/problem-with-xp-on-asus-m5a97-evo

and try an UNtouched XP 32 bit source (it is perfectly possible that you did everything correctly but - for *any* reason - the slipstreaming of the drivers failed).

For the sake of the experiment, disconnect ALL other hard disks and keep connected ONLY the disk where you wish to install XP.

jaclaz


 

Edited by jaclaz
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Thank you for the suggestions. CSM was already activated, but I hadn't chosen "Other OS". Though, that didn't change anything. I also removed all other drives to no effect. The mainboard manual merely stated that the board is compatible with XP and recommended to use SATA port 5 or 6 for the optical drive to run the installation from. I hooked up the HDD to Port 1 and 5 to no avail. I even reseted the mainboard back to default settings, just in case an instability from OCing might interfere, but no change.

By now, the only thing left that I can see as a culprit could be the fact that I boot the iso via EasyBCDs iso-boot function due to lack of an optical drive. Though I can't make out a reason how this setup could interfere with the installation's access to the storage devices. I guess I'll transfer the iso to a USB-drive and try the installation from there. That's the only thing that comes to mind that I haven't tried yet.

Edit: Another way to cut out USB entirely would be to run the setup directly from the HDD I want to install XP to. Is there a way to trigger the XP setup by loading the boot sector of the iso directly from the HDD? I doubt it would be possible to start the setup directly via BCD from the boot menu, at least not for XP x64 due to the missing winnt.exe.

Edited by Xiaopang
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@dencorso

Naah, that is Vista or later.

@Xiaonpang

I am failing to follow you, if you "lack" an optical drive, on what (I won't ask why) exactly you are booting the EasyBCD stuff, another hard disk? :w00t:

That could be an issue as a lot of boards with the new stupid UEFI (even in CSM) have queer ways to enumerate disks, installing the XP from WinSetupFromUSB or RMPREPUSB or Rufus or - specifically in this case using a PE 3.x would be however next step.

You'll need some patience, each of the methods mentioned above (and a few more you can find on the relevant section of the board) may contain *something* or *something else* that does not play well with your board so don't be put down if one of them doesn't work.

Maybe you could boot from USB a PE pf some kind and check the VID/PID of the exposed controller (just to check that the BIOS compatibility mode provides the "right" ones).

I am not at all familiar with UEFI based motherboards but I have read several horror stories :ph34r: about a same motherboard behaving differently when booted from this or that bus, you might even want to - if the size of the disk and your intended setup allow it - to actually install a PE 3 to a small partition on the disk to see what happens.

jaclaz
 

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10 hours ago, dencorso said:

Which diska are you using (brand, model and size)? Are they AF? Are they SATA-300 or SATA-600?

Meanwhile you may try this (KB922976)...

My SSD and a 300GB Samsung (HD321KJ) are not AF and SATA II. How this is relevant to the problem is beyond me though, since the problem is apparently that Windows can't even access the storage controller correctly. The KB-article only applies to Vista, not XP and also only to an already installed OS, not raw installation files.




 

2 hours ago, jaclaz said:

I am failing to follow you, if you "lack" an optical drive, on what (I won't ask why) exactly you are booting the EasyBCD stuff, another hard disk? :w00t:

Yes. May be I should explain my setup a bit. The SSD is my system drive with a regular BCD, so I added the XP iso to the boot menu via EasyBCD which works. I then try to install XP to the above mentioned 300GB Samsung HDD which consists of two 37GB and 260GB partitions. The first partition (37GB) is empty and XP is supposed to go on there. 

By now, I reformatted it to 32GB FAT (was 37GB NTFS before), installed Freedos on it, copied the XP x86 setup over and started it. Windows copies some pre-installation files, but gets stuck on a screen where it claims it's copying the Windows files now, however there's no progress bar or copied file names on the bottom. It just seems to sit there doing nothing. I end up with an NT-bootloader that doesn't work ("Disk error" - "Enter proper boot media"), can see the temp installation folders ($WIN_NT$.~BT + LS), but they only consist of 260 files occupying 14MB. It's kind of odd. If there was some form of document that listed which files are being copied in which order to the temp install folders, I could check which one made Windows choke. It's strange though. It almost seems like it was only able to copy those files that fit into the HDD's cache. 





 

2 hours ago, jaclaz said:

That could be an issue as a lot of boards with the new stupid UEFI (even in CSM) have queer ways to enumerate disks, installing the XP from WinSetupFromUSB or RMPREPUSB or Rufus or - specifically in this case using a PE 3.x would be however next step.



 

Is IsotoUSB any good? It seems to work. RMPREPUSB makes me shudder, because it reminds me of wasted hours of not getting anything usable out of it, but I'll give it a shot if nothing else helps. And since you mentioned PE, I also gave Hiren's Boot CD a shot and the Mini XP was able to access the drives just fine. May be I could run the Win-version of the installation from there.  




 

2 hours ago, jaclaz said:

You'll need some patience, each of the methods mentioned above (and a few more you can find on the relevant section of the board) may contain *something* or *something else* that does not play well with your board so don't be put down if one of them doesn't work.

Don't worry, I'm extremely persistent. As long as there are methods left, I will try them out ;)






 

2 hours ago, jaclaz said:

Maybe you could boot from USB a PE pf some kind and check the VID/PID of the exposed controller (just to check that the BIOS compatibility mode provides the "right" ones).



 

Thanks! I already have the hunch that it's my Bios that is screwing things up for me without a way to fix it. Is there any special tool I can use for that, or will the Device Manager suffice?

Update: Checking the device manager in Hiren|s MiniXP I can see that all disks are being identified as SCSI drives which they aren't. However, that might be tight to the fact that the OS uses FiraDisk Virtual Disk Enumerator instead of dealing with the real hardware. May be I can find a way to integrate this virtual controller into the installation...



 

2 hours ago, jaclaz said:

I am not at all familiar with UEFI based motherboards but I have read several horror stories :ph34r: about a same motherboard behaving differently when booted from this or that bus, you might even want to - if the size of the disk and your intended setup allow it - to actually install a PE 3 to a small partition on the disk to see what happens.

 
That's a good idea! That'll be the last option I try, because I have zero experience with installing anything as old as a PE3 to a hard drive  xD

Edited by Xiaopang
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Well, apart the use of the WAREZ you mention for which you won't have support here, the SSD might well be part of the issue, particularly when coupled with the EasyBCD and the *whatever* (possibly flawed) ways it uses grub4dos to mount/access the .iso.

Try from USB with NO OTHER device connected to the PC if not the target disk drive.

Try expressly with WinsetupFromUSb:
http://www.msfn.org/board/forum/157-install-windows-from-usb/

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/120444-how-to-install-windows-from-usb-winsetupfromusb-with-gui/

http://www.winsetupfromusb.com/
 

Try the XP 32 bit first (as the tool was developed intiially for it and there were obviously many more bugs reports and fixes for it) and remember that you might need the modified NTDETECT.COM.

jaclaz
 

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11 minutes ago, dencorso said:

Keeping talking about it won't do you any good.

Yep, and - to be picky (as I am)  - EasyBCD is IMNSHO also "border line" (if not downright over it) as anyway re-distributes a few MS files, beside mis- or under- documenting the grub4dos and ultradefrag that is underneath (not complying with their GPL license, i.e. not providing source, etc.), and "forgetting" the PLoP altogether.

Just for the record at the time there was some bickering with the Author of the tool that completely failed to make the thingy compliant :
http://reboot.pro/topic/17655-boot-into-3rd-party-efi-application-via-bcd/

nothing blatant - of course - still not the kind of quality/carefulness I would expect from a (largely Commercial) initiative.

jaclaz

 
 

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1 hour ago, jaclaz said:

Yep, and - to be picky (as I am)  - EasyBCD is IMNSHO also "border line" (if not downright over it) as anyway re-distributes a few MS files, beside mis- or under- documenting the grub4dos and ultradefrag that is underneath (not complying with their GPL license, i.e. not providing source, etc.), and "forgetting" the PLoP altogether.

True. Though I never asked for help with those tools in the first place, so this shouldn't be a problem. Also, as a copyright lawyer I don't consider them "warez" per se since they aren't an illegal carbon copy of an existing product, but they are their own products that commit certain copyrights violations. Just for the sake of pickiness ;)

 

2 hours ago, jaclaz said:

Just for the record at the time there was some bickering with the Author of the tool that completely failed to make the thingy compliant :
http://reboot.pro/topic/17655-boot-into-3rd-party-efi-application-via-bcd/

Thanks for the heads up. I love reading stuff like that :)

 

2 hours ago, jaclaz said:

nothing blatant - of course - still not the kind of quality/carefulness I would expect from a (largely Commercial) initiative.

I absolutely agree.

1 hour ago, Dibya said:

 what is your dev id of sata raid?

I don't have a Sata Raid.


Anyway, I made some progress. I integrated FiraDisk into the x86 and x64 setups et voilà I had access to my hard drives :)
The FiraDisk developer explained the problem I experienced over at Reboot Pro: XP needs a special driver if the iso is being run off a RAM-Drive which is exactly why I integrating AHCI drivers and switching to IDE didn't work.
Anyway, after I integrated the driver, Windows setup would finally proceed and allow me to install the setup files to the hard drive, but that only introduced new problems. The DOS-based part of the setup finished properly, but after the necessary reboot, the GUI-part of the setup couldn't be started due to missing hal.dll, though that couldn't have been the case...

I then switched to giving WindSetupFromUSB a shot. The x64 installation errored out with NTDETECT failed. The x86 one worked better, but didn't find a ton of files during the GUI-setup, but since I'm after installing the x64-version anyway, I gave up guessing paths after a few files.

I'm stumped that it's so hard to install XP off a hard drive or a stick... I think I'm gonna give Rufus a shot now. Is there any other software that doesn't try to intelligently analyze the OS to build its own setup onto the USB drive, but just enables me to boot the content of the iso by directly booting the CD boot sector off the drive? There must be some. The NT boot manager seems to be able to do just that...may be I'll have to meddle with it if nothing helps : /
 

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Well, the issue here is that some (intelligent or otherwise) checking/modifying of the .iso (or the exact way to mount it) is vital for these setups.

JFYI, there are two specific threads for Ram disk (and also non-ramdisk) XP installing from .iso:
 

However it is EXTREMELY queer that WinSetupFromUsb did not work (at least for the 32 bit version which as said has been really widely tested) :unsure: that motherboard/UEFI must have something really "queer".

The HAL issue might be due to *something* that misrepresented the needed HAL OR it could be the (anticipated) possible issue with disk numbering (which might also be connected with the tons of files missing.

Was the actual file missing/unable to be found?

If the latter, it might be due to an incorrect configuration in BOOT.INI that should be easy to fix.

jaclaz


 

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Alright, I got it working :) 

The reason for why my x86 and x64 versions of XP didn't work with WinSetupFromUSB was probably because they contained slipstreamed service packs via an old nlite-version from 8 years ago. I gave it a shot with original, unmodified XP x86 and x64 versions and both worked instantly. I then used the latest version of nlite to slim down XP x64 and was able to install that with WinSetupFromUSB without any problems as well. Looks like nlite's removal process improved a lot since 2009. I also used the chance and slipstreamed proper AHCI-drivers into the setup and the installation went through without any problems in AHCI mode.  :)
 

4 hours ago, jaclaz said:

Well, the issue here is that some (intelligent or otherwise) checking/modifying of the .iso (or the exact way to mount it) is vital for these setups.

Yeah, I figured as much. Still, it's strange that you can easily start the installation via a simple boot sector on a CD, but not on a hard drive. You'd think that after so many years someone would have developed a simple loader that would allow for that. Back in the day I created many BCDW-powered multi-OS installation DVDs to always have all my necessary admin and maintenance tools ready on one disc. The XP x64-versions I tried, also came from such a disc. With tools like WinSetupFromUSB it's unfortunately absolutely impossible to boot such multi-discs from a USB drive and I'm just absolutely amazed that booting the iso directly via grub is the only way to make use of these discs if no optical drive is available any more.

 

4 hours ago, jaclaz said:

However it is EXTREMELY queer that WinSetupFromUsb did not work (at least for the 32 bit version which as said has been really widely tested) :unsure: that motherboard/UEFI must have something really "queer".

The HAL issue might be due to *something* that misrepresented the needed HAL OR it could be the (anticipated) possible issue with disk numbering (which might also be connected with the tons of files missing.

Was the actual file missing/unable to be found?

If the latter, it might be due to an incorrect configuration in BOOT.INI that should be easy to fix.

This error was courtesy of an nlite version from 2009. The hal.dll error occurred with the x86 version, but the x64 one errored out completely differently. Somethig about a failed NTOSKERNEL if I recall correctly. At that point my frustration was too big to properly document the error, especially since I wanted to see first if the original XP versions would throw the same errors. The difference of errors between both versions was a good indicator that this wouldn't be the case which proved eventually correct.

Anyway, thank you to all of those who helped, especially you, Jaclaz. I learned a lot today :)

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10 hours ago, Xiaopang said:

Yeah, I figured as much. Still, it's strange that you can easily start the installation via a simple boot sector on a CD, but not on a hard drive. You'd think that after so many years someone would have developed a simple loader that would allow for that. Back in the day I created many BCDW-powered multi-OS installation DVDs to always have all my necessary admin and maintenance tools ready on one disc. The XP x64-versions I tried, also came from such a disc.

Well, this is "by design" in the sense that a protected mode OS does need a driver for the .iso (which came a little bit later in the game through Firadisk or WinvBlock and for some uses Imdisk besides the *need* of a booloader such as grub4dos and/or Syslinux/Memdisk, if not using the good ol' Server 2003 SP1 Ramdisk), and rest assured with Easy2boot (based on grub4dos) you can make almost *anything* boot from USB stick in a multi-boot fashion (or directly with grub4dos if you know where your towel is).
 

Using a .iso on hard-disk-like device (such as an internal or external disk or a USB stick) is a choice which is suited to have a same object (the .iso) that can be used indifferently on the device or - if really needed - burned to CD/DVD, the "original" approach to install windows from USB used not the .iso approach, it came later as a "convenience":

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/61384-how-to-bootinstall-from-usb-key/

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/111406-how-to-install-xp-from-usb/

The use of .iso's, particularly for the install of XP became prevalent much later in the game, see this as a reference:
http://reboot.pro/topic/8944-boot-any-iso-image-or-boot-all-iso-images/

exactly because of the lack of "proper" NT drivers, whilst the "newer" OS's of the NT families provided through the use of a "real" PE as a setup environment and .wim access/deploying a much more "portable" approach to installing from "any" media.

10 hours ago, Xiaopang said:

With tools like WinSetupFromUSB it's unfortunately absolutely impossible to boot such multi-discs from a USB drive and I'm just absolutely amazed that booting the iso directly via grub is the only way to make use of these discs if no optical drive is available any more.
 

but nothing prevents you from creating a "flat" install build manually (as the mentioned USB_multiboot set of batches do), the issues you had with WinSetupFromUSB are expected when using a modified source because obviously the tool has been tested only with unmodified or very little modified sources.

Still, on a multiboot stick it would make sense to boot to another capable OS (usually a PE 3.x or 4.x which you would have anyway on such multiboot device) and install the XP from hard disk after having copied the install files to the internal disk (which remains IMHO the best approach, used since the good ol'times of Winnt.exe and Winnt32.exe, as it is usually faster and the install remains with actual install files "on board" so that you don't happen to have "please insert install CD" messages if running SFC or needing an additional driver for a device).

And nowadays this can be done - besides manually - through the WinNTSetup:
 

So, all in all it is just a matter of preferences and personal likings, but we now have a lot of possibilities :).


 

jaclaz



 

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