A
Arnshea
After upgrading the box we use to deploy XPe images, whenever I tried
to boot XPe from a Compact Flash drive w/ a single NTFS formatted
partition I would get a "Disk Read Error" immediately after POST.
Unfortunately the fixmbr option of the wonderful utility MbrFix didn't
work for me (though saving a working mbr then restoring did work).
It looks like the disk management software built into Windows XP (My
Computer -> right click -> Manage -> Disk Management) doesn't set the
partition type byte properly for NTFS. Even if you choose NTFS when
creating a partition, the byte gets written as 0x6 (which is FAT16)
instead of 0x7 (which is NTFS).
You can manually set the partition type byte using the command line
utility diskpart (also included in WinXP). The command is create
partition primary size=<size> id=7 (replace <size> with the size of
your partition - I leave 1MB free since we're using a RAM EWF
overlay).
Use "active" to mark the partition active. diskpart requires you to
set the focus to the drive/partition/volume you're using so use the
list disk command to determine which disk is your Compact Flash drive
then use select disk <n> (replace <n> w/ the correct disk number).
Make sure to clean the mbr before creating a new partition using the
clean command.
to boot XPe from a Compact Flash drive w/ a single NTFS formatted
partition I would get a "Disk Read Error" immediately after POST.
Unfortunately the fixmbr option of the wonderful utility MbrFix didn't
work for me (though saving a working mbr then restoring did work).
It looks like the disk management software built into Windows XP (My
Computer -> right click -> Manage -> Disk Management) doesn't set the
partition type byte properly for NTFS. Even if you choose NTFS when
creating a partition, the byte gets written as 0x6 (which is FAT16)
instead of 0x7 (which is NTFS).
You can manually set the partition type byte using the command line
utility diskpart (also included in WinXP). The command is create
partition primary size=<size> id=7 (replace <size> with the size of
your partition - I leave 1MB free since we're using a RAM EWF
overlay).
Use "active" to mark the partition active. diskpart requires you to
set the focus to the drive/partition/volume you're using so use the
list disk command to determine which disk is your Compact Flash drive
then use select disk <n> (replace <n> w/ the correct disk number).
Make sure to clean the mbr before creating a new partition using the
clean command.
.