can't read boot disk

[Roger Levy]

I have followed the tutorial "Building and Deploying a Run-Time Image" exactly
with two exceptions:
1. I ran tap.exe in the WinPE environment rather than XP or 2000.
2. My development machine is Windows 2000.

Because of exception 2, I found guidance in past posts that stated I should
replace ntldr and NTDETECT.EXE on my Windows 2000 system with the same files
that are generated by my XPe build.

I have rechecked many times that my boot.ini is set as in the tutorial, that the
settings for my configuration target the D: drive, that my 2nd disk is indeed
the D: drive, etc. And I have tried to boot the deployed system on 3 different
second hard drives - two of them were smaller than 5000MB and one larger. I
used the exact size for the smaller ones and 5000 for the larger one. In every
instance after choosing the XP Embedded system on the boot selection screen, I
get the message "could not read from the selected boot drive."

I know this problem has been covered before but I need to know whether there are
any other steps that apply to the situation of a Windows 2000 development system
and/or whether there are any known hardware compatibility issues.

Roger Levy

 

[Slobodan Brcin]

Hi Roger,

Could you post your boot.ini line for XPE.



Best regards,
Slobodan

 

[Roger Levy]

XPe boot.ini ...
[boot loader]
timeout=0
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Embedded"
/fastdetect

Win2K host machine boot.ini ...
[boot loader]
timeout=8
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000
Professional" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Embedded"
/fastdetect

 

[Slobodan Brcin]

This looks OK, but few extra questions won't hurt.

Beside two HDD, what else is on cable CD perhaps.

I can't remember ARC naming convention, but I think that it goes like this.

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0) - Primary Master
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1) - Primary Slave
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(2) - Secondary Master
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(3) - Secondary Slave

If both you HDD are configured as masters, then you should use
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(2)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Embedded"


Best regards,
Slobodan

XPe boot.ini ...
[boot loader]
timeout=0
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Embedded"
/fastdetect

Win2K host machine boot.ini ...
[boot loader]
timeout=8
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000
Professional" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Embedded"
/fastdetect

Hi Roger,

Could you post your boot.ini line for XPE.



Best regards,
Slobodan

 

[Brad Combs]

Roger,

Two things to double (triple?) check...

1) That the second hard drive that your booting from is formatted with the
correct file system that you chose in TD, and that the partition is marked
active (very important!!)

2) I don't think you need a second boot.ini on the second hard drive. I'm
not sure that it will cause this problem, but it's worth a try. You could
also try this just to check that things are as they seem. Leave the boot.ini
on the XP embedded drive, and change the boot order in the systems BIOS so
that it points to the second hard drive as the first boot device. If it
boots and runs FBA then the error could (possibly) be the extra boot.ini, or
maybe that the disk isn't marked as active.

Hope that helps!!

Brad Combs
Imago Technologies

 

[Roger Levy]

Brad,
Thanks -- You've led me to the source of the problem. I tried your 2nd
suggestion and the system came up with a Linux grub prompt. Grub is a
replacement for lilo and other loaders that allows the user to select among
multiple systems, modify boot parameters, etc. Prior to using the D: drive
for XPe, it had a Linux system installed and Linux used the Master Boot
Record for grub. I used my W2K CD to start a recovery console and I used
the fixmbr command to rewrite the MBR. Now I get further along but I am
getting a message that System32\hal.dll is missing. I vaguely recall seeing
such a problem discussed in the newsgroup so I'll do some searches to see if
I can get an explanation.

I think it was my bad luck to use 3 different HDs in trying to get this
scenario working and probably all of them previously were used for Linux --
I still need to check the other two systems to verify that. My bottom line
is that the XPe loader should be smart enough to say "corrupt or
unrecognized MBR" or even (pardon me Mr. Ballmer) "Linux MBR detected."
Simply declaring the disk to be unreadable when the MBR is not recognizable
seems very weak.

Thanks again,
RHL

 

[Brad Combs]

Roger,

I'm glad you were able to figure it out! The missing hal.dll is *almost*
always caused by an incorrect boot.ini, or from the runtime folder structure
not being the default (docs and settings, windows, etc need to be at the
root of the boot partition). Good luck, and let me know if I can be of more
assistance.

Brad Combs
Imago Technologies