Setting up New Hard Drive from Recovery CD

[Oliver \(Avolites\)]

We have a Recovery CD that:

1) Partitions the Hard Drive and sets the Partition Active
2) Formats the Hard Drive with NTFS
3) Copies XP Embedded Image to the new c: drive

The Recovery CD works perfectly when the disk is not new
and has already had a Windows installation on it. The CD
will delete the old partition and create a new one with
no problems.

The problem is when the Hard Drive is fresh out the
packet. The Recovery CD will go through the same process
no problem and complete the installation successfully.
However when the system ReBoots to run the Embedded
System it will boot from the Hard Drive but then hang
straight away with no message only a flashing cursor.

The Diskpart command file is:

select disk=0
create partition primary
assign letter=c
active
exit

I have looked at similar posts but non seem to offer a
solution. I am hopping this post might have more luck!

Olie

 

[Slobodan Brcin]

Try selecting partition after create.

Regards,
Slobodan

 

[Rob Neff]

You might need to run bootprep to make the disk bootable? This is something
done once per disk, then it stays thru reformats, etc.

 

[Zirong Wang]

I believe that the master boot record (MBR) is not set
when the disk is brand new.

there is a DOS only tool called bootprep.exe in the
utilities folder of embedded studio.

unfortunately, you can not execute it under XP
(I assume your recovery CD is a XPe since you use diskpart)

so you must play with SDI to deploy your XPe.

MS people, a bootprep under XP would be nice.

Zirong

for my intimate friends:
dd if=/dev/hda of=file.bin ....
dd if=/dev/file.bin of=/dev/hda ...

 

[Slobodan Brcin]

He does not need to do bootprep since he is using NTFS as I'm doing it.

But he could add in first step clean command to make every disk
unpartitioned.

Regards,
Slobodan

 

[Slobodan Brcin]

Try following it is working for me.

select disk 0
clean
create partition primary noerr
select partition 1
active
assign letter=Z noerr

Also question for you.

Have you found the switch for format so you can make auto answer to answer
yes to question wheter to format or not?


Regads,
Slobodan

 

[Anil Ingle]

You dont need a BOOTPREP under XP. Just Initialize, Partition and format
the disk using diskmgmt.msc and make the partition active. That should put
the MBR and fix up the boot record on it.
FYI.. BOOTPREP is a pretty simple program. All it does is replace the PBR
(Partition Boot Record - Not MBR[Master Boot Record]) of a Disk that is
formatted using DOS Tools like FDISK and DOS Format with the PBR that the XP
requires to boot. You will recall that the DOS PBR looks for
MSDOS.SYS/Command.Com to boot and the XP PBR needs to look for NTLDR.

-Anil [MS] This posting is provided "AS IS". If provides no warranties and
confers no rights.

 

[Guest]

I do not believe there is a switch to stop Format asking
whether you want to Format the drive.

It would be nice to have one. However it does stop you
acidentally formatting your drive. As I have done will
developing the Recovery CD. Too easy to do.

I have already tried clean it is in a seperate command
file so that the user can select whether to run it. It
takes forever though, I can not believe that is the
answer as the XP CD does it all in minutes.

Olie

 

[Zirong Wang]

I do not believe there is a switch to stop Format asking
whether you want to Format the drive.

the switch is /y, though not documented

 

[Slobodan Brcin]

Thanks,

I could swear that I have tried this and that it didn't work.
But I gave it another shot and it is working :$

Just to imagine what I have done for work around.

I created two pipes and programmatically read results from format and answer
on question with y, or with old volume label to already formatted partition
to pass confirmations.
Very ugly, and it took me too much time to write this.


Thanks again,
Slobodan

 

[Mark R. Holbrook]

Hi,

I've been out of touch with Win XPe for a while and now
I'm under a deadline to get our system setup with it.

Can you lead me to a place where the steps to create
a "recovery CD" as you have done are outlined?

I need to do much the same thing. I would like to make a
CD that will format, install XPe, install our software on
a new HD.

Thanks in advance.

My email is: (e-mail address removed)

 

[Dan H]

I have been pondering how to make a recovery CD myself.
Could you provide info on how you did this? I can't seem
to find any info on the MS websites on this...
my email is:
(e-mail address removed) (remove "NoSpam.")
Thanks...

 

[Zirong Wang]

Anil,

Thank you for the info.

You dont need a BOOTPREP under XP. Just Initialize, Partition and format
the disk using diskmgmt.msc and make the partition active. That should put
the MBR and fix up the boot record on it.
FYI.. BOOTPREP is a pretty simple program. All it does is replace the PBR
(Partition Boot Record - Not MBR[Master Boot Record]) of a Disk that is
formatted using DOS Tools like FDISK and DOS Format with the PBR that the XP
requires to boot. You will recall that the DOS PBR looks for
MSDOS.SYS/Command.Com to boot and the XP PBR needs to look for NTLDR.

-Anil [MS] This posting is provided "AS IS". If provides no warranties and
confers no rights.

I believe that the master boot record (MBR) is not set
when the disk is brand new.

there is a DOS only tool called bootprep.exe in the
utilities folder of embedded studio.

unfortunately, you can not execute it under XP
(I assume your recovery CD is a XPe since you use diskpart)

so you must play with SDI to deploy your XPe.

MS people, a bootprep under XP would be nice.

Zirong

for my intimate friends:
dd if=/dev/hda of=file.bin ....
dd if=/dev/file.bin of=/dev/hda ...

 

[Slobodan Brcin]

You can make XPe that is bootable from CD, and use it for deployment of
another working XPe.
This is how I do it.

You can use El-torito boot, or RAM boot using custom boot loader.

Regards,
Slobodan

 

[Zirong Wang]

Anil,
thank you for the info.

You dont need a BOOTPREP under XP. Just Initialize, Partition and format
the disk using diskmgmt.msc and make the partition active. That should put
the MBR and fix up the boot record on it.
FYI.. BOOTPREP is a pretty simple program. All it does is replace the PBR
(Partition Boot Record - Not MBR[Master Boot Record]) of a Disk that is
formatted using DOS Tools like FDISK and DOS Format with the PBR that the XP
requires to boot. You will recall that the DOS PBR looks for
MSDOS.SYS/Command.Com to boot and the XP PBR needs to look for NTLDR.

-Anil [MS] This posting is provided "AS IS". If provides no warranties and
confers no rights.

I believe that the master boot record (MBR) is not set
when the disk is brand new.

there is a DOS only tool called bootprep.exe in the
utilities folder of embedded studio.

unfortunately, you can not execute it under XP
(I assume your recovery CD is a XPe since you use diskpart)

so you must play with SDI to deploy your XPe.

MS people, a bootprep under XP would be nice.

Zirong

for my intimate friends:
dd if=/dev/hda of=file.bin ....
dd if=/dev/file.bin of=/dev/hda ...

 

[Dan H]

It was my impression that doing that violates the
licensing agreement, or requires the purchase of an
additional license... Do you know if this is true?

thanks,
Dan H

 

[Slobodan Brcin]

I don't know, but my vision of this subject is:

1. You have COA sticker on target device.
2. This CD is executed on target device (should be legal).
3. Only one instance of XPe is running at one time on target device.
4. I can't recall that I saw clause that you can't execute more than one XPe
image on target device, as long as they are not running at the same time
(this would be scary but possible to do).

So by my standard it is logical that this is legal, but I can be sure, since
logic has nothing to do with layers
I have read once complete license agreement, but I don't understand most of
things that are written there (at least their possible interpretation).


I hope that someone else can express their opinion on this matter,
preferably from Microsoft.

Regards,
Slobodan

 

[Oliver \(Avolites\)]

I have tried all these sugestions does anyone have any
more!