writing or extracting-writing boot sectors

[agonified]

Hi all,

I am going to install xp within WinPe by xcopying $WIN_NT$ etc... folder. But the problem is how can I make the drive bootable? Is there a way to write a bootsector to the harddrive that points windows setup?? I know that during the boot process, boot sector tells system to load this file run this etc.. How can I make a boot sector like this?

Or,

How can I save a boot sector of a hard drive,that succesfully boots, and write that sector to another harddisk that has different capacity?

Any help will be appreciated.

[mattofak]

I may be wrong on this, but it should be possible to just copy the NTDETECT.COM, ntdlr, and boot.ini to the primary (boot) partition of the drive in question... making sure of course that boot.ini is configed correctly to point to the right location...

[agonified]

No dude, I tried it...

Boot sector must tell system to run ntdetect.com or ntldr..

Edited September 26, 2005 by agonified

[mattofak]

ah... i guess you could just scrap the windows bootloader altogether and install Lilo or Grub... LOL!!!!

Um, you could boot into the repair windows mode on the install cd and run the repairmbr command... not really feasible, but thats the best i can come up with, sorry.

[agonified]

I can't load repair windows mode since I can't load setup..

Anyway mattofak, thank you..

[Andromeda43]

You need a disk copy program like Norton's Ghost, or "Disk Copy", Acronis, etc.

They all copy everything down to the last bit of info on the old HD including the boot sector.

Which program to use, depends on whether you're using FAT-32 or NTFS for your hard drive structure.

With a FAT-32 drive, its so simple using Ghost on a boot floppy.

Cheers,

[InTheWayBoy]

If you've already copied the files to the HD, then why not call setup from within WinPE? As I understand, it would start the installation, and when it reboots it goes into the next part of the setup.

[Takeshi]

Setup normally also writes an entry to the boot.ini.

[agonified]

Thank you all!

Firstly, there is not such a file like winnt32.exe in my i386 folder. Have you ever read Gosh's Reducing the size of source tip? By his method, you get setup files of max 350 mb(that excludes migration/upgrading form WinMe/Win98, and 32bit setup files). Therefore I dont have a change to run setup within WinPE. What I have is the files when setup puts in hd after 32bit mode setup ran within any windows..

I xcopy these files to the hd that are written in the same cd with WinPe. The aim is having reduced size but complete windows setup, and editing unattended information just before setup...

So, what should I do in order to make my pc to boot into unattended text-mode of setup??

Now, I am going to inspect the ghosting tecnology. We'll see if it suits my needs..

[agonified]

I've searched but couldnt find satisfying info...That can be a silly question but

Is that ghost images are images of the whole partition/hd or just the used space in partition/hd?? I mean, if I have just 350 mb in partition but partition is 4gb in size, will the ghost image occupy ~350mb or 4gb??

One more thing, what software do you recommend to use with ntfs and also also automating with scripts..???

Thanks alot

Edited September 28, 2005 by agonified