Deploy XP image to my target device

[Stein Kjølstad]

Hi,

I've tried to make a XPe image to my test target consiting of a PII
computer, hard drive, floppy drive, CD and network card. The bios does not
suppoort booting over network.

1. First I booted using the XPe installation disk 1.
2. Used tap.exe to analyze the target device.
3. Prepared a partition for my image using diskpart utility(NTFS, 400MB)
4. Generate a new image based on the tap.exe output (device.pmq)
5. Copy image (files and directories) from the development computer to the
target device using network connection.
6. Reboots the target device.
7. A cursor is blinking on the screen....and nothing more happens....

Can someone please help me out?

Thanks
Stein K

 

[Slobodan Brcin]

1. Have you selected one partition as active from diskpart. (You need to
activate it so MBR is bootable)
2. You should (and you probably have) use format from WinPE.

Regards,
Slobodan

 

[Guest]

I am sorry but this is not going to be very helpful too
you, as I am only going to sympathise with you.

Are you using a brand new hard drive, if so I have
exactly the same problem and have posted it on the forum
before, to no avail. For some reason the problem only
seems to occur with brand new hard drives.

I think it is that the XPE format command is not capable
of creating the correct boot information.

The only way I have found around the problem is to first
format it in FAT32 and then convert it to NTFS.

 

[Slobodan Brcin]

You are completely right that XP format command is not capable of making
disk bootable.

But diskpart command is very capable with making MBR bootable.
format will make PBR bootable.

So both combined will make your system bootable.

Boot order:

BIOS->MBR->PBR->ntldr->.....


Regards,
Slobodan

 

[Stein Kjølstad]

Thanks!!

I had to clean up the MBR. Right now I really don't know what I did. But I
started a utility that rewrote the MBR of the hard drive.

Regards,
Stein K

 

[Guest]

OK I get that.

At the moment I use disk part to set the partition as
active. So this links the BIOS to the MBR.

I also use the format command to format as NTFS. So this
links the PBR to NTLDR.

What links the MBR to the PBR?

I guess this must be my problem as if there is no link
between BIOS and MBR then you get a "No boot device
found" and if there is no link between PBR and NTLDR then
you get "NTLDR not found". I just get a flashing cursor.

I am desperate to solve this problem.

Do I have to set the partition as active after the format
as well as before? Is there another diskpart command I am
not aware of.

Olie

 

[Slobodan Brcin]

What links the MBR to the PBR?
When you set partition as active MBR is also bound to load selected PBR.

BIOS load first sector from disk it tries to boot at memory address
0x7c00-0x7fff
if word at 510 address contains 0xAA55 bios jump to position 0x7c00

From this point program stored in MBR is responsible for finding and loading
PBR as marked in partition table contained within MBR.
After valid PBR with signature is loded MBR jumps to PBR code.
PBR try to find ntldr. and to load it and execute.
ntldr. load boot.ini and present you with choice if there are few entries
and timeout set.


This all should be set with diskpart (with activating partition) and format.

What is the size of your HDD?
Is it LBA or CHS configuration?
Have you been able to boot anything from this disk? And what was that?

If it is something small few hundreds megabytes.
Try using utilities from old dos like.

fdisk and fdisk /MBR
format
bootprep



Regards,
Slobodan

 

[Oliver Waits]

The hard drive is an Hitachi Deskstar.

Capacity: 41.1GB
LBA: 80.418.240

When you partition and format using Windows XP
Professional and then run my recovery CD which does:
partition, active, format ntfs, copy image; it all works
fine.

 

[Slobodan Brcin]

If your recovery CD is based on XPe, then I don't know what could be the
problem.

Mine is working perfectly.

Regards,
Slobodan