XP USB bootable environment with drivers

[morris]

I'm trying to build an XP USB bootable environment with sound (Connexant AC'97) and video drivers (Intel GMA900/915GM) for an old laptop that lacks a hard drive.

So far I tried BartPE but I haven't been able to get either driver working (adding them to the drivers folder).
I also tried the driverpacks approach, adding the Graphics packs, and the Audio pack. The latter required some renaming to be included into the build (it was being ignored), but nevertheless, none worked at all.

I also tried UBCD4WIN which should have work better, but to no avail.

Can you please suggest what's the best software and way to achieve this?

It seems like this software has been abandoned for many years and information is scarce and hard to find. As if it was removed from the web, or maybe it never was very popular.

Any help to solve the mystery would be greatly appreciated.

[ED_Sln]

WinPE is not designed to be fully functional, so the drivers may not work there either. You need to install a full system, and to boot it from USB, use UsbBootWatcher: https://github.com/vavrecan/usb-boot-watcher

[morris]

Hey, thanks for your suggestion. Have you actually ever been able to perform such full XP install to a USB flashdrive using UsbBootWatcher?

I have spent many many hours, followed the steps to the letter, but haven't been able to create a .wim image that can successfully boot from a USB drive.

The first problem is: where do you get a .wim image to feed imagex? I've used XP2ESD v1.6.2 to create it. After about 2 hours you get an ISO and the two .wim files (boot and install) inside the _output\sources directory. But there's something wrong about the install.wim file, because it doesn't include a boot directory inside the Windows directory, and bcedit complains accordingly. After being patched with UsbBootWatcher, it does start booting, but unfortunately it always crashes with a 7B error and then reboots.

If you have created such a compatible .wim image, can you please tell me how did you make it?

FWIW I used these ISOs, but I don't think they are particularly relevant.

en_windows_xp_professional_with_service_pack_3_x86_cd_vl_x14-73974.iso

And for Config.ini

WINBASEISO=en_windows_7_professional_with_sp1_x86_dvd_u_677056.iso
WINENGINEISO=en_windows_10_pro_10240_x86_dvd.iso

 

Edited October 15 by morris

[Dietmar]

Go to Ramsey XP and choose USB live.

This works,

Dietmar

[ED_Sln]

21 hours ago, morris said:

Hey, thanks for your suggestion. Have you actually ever been able to perform such full XP install to a USB flashdrive using UsbBootWatcher?

Yes, I have been able to make a portable WinXP on a USB HDD before. But although I think I used UsbBootWatcher that time, now I failed to boot the system, I get BSOD 7B. And the instructions in my link are for Win Vista+. WinXP should be done differently, first it should be installed as usual on another computer on HDD, then it should be configured to boot from USB (you should look for more options), then the partition should be cloned to a USB flash drive.

[morris]

2 hours ago, ED_Sln said:

Yes, I have been able to make a portable WinXP on a USB HDD before. But although I think I used UsbBootWatcher that time, now I failed to boot the system, I get BSOD 7B. And the instructions in my link are for Win Vista+.

I appreciate your answer as I was banging my head against the wall with the linked Vista method...

2 hours ago, ED_Sln said:

WinXP should be done differently, first it should be installed as usual on another computer on HDD, then it should be configured to boot from USB (you should look for more options), then the partition should be cloned to a USB flash drive.

What do you mean with "then it should be configured to boot from USB (you should look for more options)"?
Apply UsbBootWatcher? What other configuration should be done?

I tried this approach, installing it to a virtual machine on my main computer and then copying the files to a USB drive, then applying the UsbBootWatcher patch, but it didn't work on the target laptop. I suppose some system file or registry should be modified, yes? I tried setting the hard drive drivers to the Microsoft defaults, but it didn't help.

[morris]

21 hours ago, Dietmar said:

Go to Ramsey XP and choose USB live.

This works,

Dietmar

Hey Dietmar, thank you.
You rule.

The Ramsey USB mode worked and I was able to install from a CD directly to a USB drive on the target laptop. I had some problems booting. After the first stage I got a flashing cursor. Grub4dos helped with that. Now the system is fully functional! but there are some remaining questions, namely,

Should I have a pagefile?

Upon boot it complains about it not existing, despite the option being set correctly. It seems that the system can't create it because it actually detects that it is being run from a removable disk (C:\ has the removable disk icon).

The sequential write speed is too low (6-10 MB/s) for a USB drive, but the read speed is on par compared to a regular 2.5" IDE HDD speed (~31 MB/s).

Should I enable write caching on disk? (Optimize for performance). I did but it doesn't help with the write speed test.

Any other tips?

 

[user57]

32 MB/s is a very common speed for old flash memory - you might look what speed your flash usb stick has

flash memory are in USB sticks, SD-cards and SSD harddrives

to make an older example the super ninentendo ram uses flash memory 

 

https://www.kingston.com/en/blog/personal-storage/memory-card-speed-classes

flash memory is a lot faster then reading from optical devices (like the cd-rom to dvd/blu ray) - the cd-rom use light to read out the signal 

 

the next storage is a common hdd drive, it use a magnetic tape older versions where VHS (yes hdd drives and vhs have a "head" for the reading signals)

those are cheaper to manufacture 

 

the optical devices long lost the battle also because they are bigger light is around 380-800 nanometers

 

while a modern CPU goes with 5 nanometers, thats a lot smaller then the light

also a common myth is that light drives faster then "electrons" , this is not the case 

what also is very important is the frequency that can be used - not always only the "drive speed"

a fibre-glas-wire is also never straight it bounces in the wire - also the "basel effect" makes it impossible for light to go straight - therefore you never reach the 300 000 km/s (travel not tick/frequency speed)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basel_problem

a next problem is that the "photons" due that problem have different momentums so some overlap because a different momentum - so some what not suppose to reach the target yet are hitting the target before the others 

then you have to give the "photons" more time - what result in less speed

 

now the catchy part photons dont exits its a so called electromagnetic spectrum (aka 380-800 nm)

there are smallers (gamma rays for example) that also travel in that 300 000 km/s speed 

[ED_Sln]

On 10/16/2024 at 4:48 PM, morris said:

What do you mean with "then it should be configured to boot from USB (you should look for more options)"?

I meant to look for other programs or options how to activate the USB driver first at boot, it's the reason why the system can't boot. But since you found a solution, it's horribly irrelevant.

On 10/16/2024 at 5:20 PM, morris said:

Should I have a pagefile?

Yes, you can't install a paging file on flash. And even if you could, it would use up the entire resource very quickly. Flash has a very small write resource.

On 10/16/2024 at 5:20 PM, morris said:

The sequential write speed is too low (6-10 MB/s) for a USB drive, but the read speed is on par compared to a regular 2.5" IDE HDD speed (~31 MB/s).

It depends on the flash drive, you should look for a faster one, then the system will work faster.