I had been banging my head trying to figure out why I kept getting the following error "Cannot find the file MSVMSCSI.SYS" early in the test mode portion of setup when testing my latest build of my automated Windows 2003 R2 (x86) CD.

I finally figured out the issue and I thought that I may as well share the resolution here in case it could help even one person.

What was causing the problem was the case of the file, on my hard disk the file existed as "msvmscsi.sys" just as I had copied it from the Microsoft supplied driver disk. I use BCD and mkisofs to generate my ISOs with the following options:

mkisofsargs -iso-level 4 -allow-multidot -relaxed-filenames -allow-leading-dots -N -l -d -D -duplicates-once -no-emul-boot -b boot.bin -hide boot.bin -hide boot.catalog

These options were a deviation from my long time mkisofs settings of:

mkisofsargs -D -N -l -allow-leading-dots -allow-multidot -joliet -hide boot.bin -hide boot.catalog

Changing the case of the driver file (to UPPERCASE) in my source folder fixed the issue and allowed me to continue setup, but I'm sure that reverting to the old mkisofs settings would have worked as well.

Edited February 13, 200620 yr by Ausmith1

Welcome back.

It's a long time since your last post.

Thanks for this info.

i will check my latest attempt to burn an uACD with added massstorage device drivers.

The installation goes fine when launched from a RIS server and fails miserabily when launched from uACD with the same MSD. Adding MSD in txtsetup.sif and makecab the .sys binary in i386 folder solves the issue on uACD.

Rather strange cause I use CDIMAGE.EXE and not makeiso.exe and all mine are upper case and never had a failure for that. Perhaps its the program and the way it writes instead of

CASE case?

I mean I'm thinking setup don't care

Edited February 13, 200620 yr by maxXPsoft

Nevermind...You fixed it. o.O

Edited February 13, 200620 yr by Daemonforce

The mkisofs switch "-iso-level 4" creates a file system compliant to what the mkisofs man page refers to as "ISO-9660:1999 (Version 2)" (I do not use cdimage.exe due to legal concerns)

This filesystem is different than the standard ISO-9660 filesystem that is on the original Microsoft CDs/ISOs.

There is no difference between how a VM or a physical system interpets the the filesystem. The problem comes down to the initial textmode portion of setup only looking for files in uppercase. I have verified that on a physical system.

Keep in mind that I have not tested this on anything other than Windows 2003 SP1 install CDs (x86 and x64) but I see no reason as to why 2000/XP should not have the same issue.

so the answer if you use Makeiso then is

mkisofsargs -D -N -l -allow-leading-dots -allow-multidot -joliet -hide boot.bin -hide boot.catalog

Actually I found that there is a mkisofs option "-force-uppercase" that will work better.

My new mkisofs args are:

mkisofsargs -iso-level 4 -force-uppercase -allow-multidot -relaxed-filenames -allow-leading-dots -N -l -d -D -duplicates-once -no-emul-boot -b boot.bin -hide boot.bin -hide boot.catalog