FBA won't reboot (BSOD error 7B)

[Guest]

I am trying to make a HD for my target system (XPE SP2) but I don't get there
for some reason. Apparently there's something wrong with the drive-letter
setting; I must add that IMHO the tutorials have been made as vague as
possible on that.

Anyway, just because I have been spoiling most of my day today without any
results I decided to move back some steps and follow the tutorial as much as
possible. So I have my XP Pro and XPE designer on harddisk 0, partition 1,
primary IDE channel, and target drive as D: on the secondary IDE channel
(jumpered as slave drive). Boot.ini on C: drive adapated as indicated, TAP
run on my target, component for target created and imported and all the
works, target image builds OK without any errors and none but the usual
single "Warning 1116".

As for the target device settings, the tutorial (step 4) states that the
boot-drive is supposed to be set to D: as well as all drives-letters in the
Windows paths. Tried that, but when I copy the image created with these
settings to the target, XPe won't boot because it's missing some files. What
strikes me is that there is a folder "Drive D" created in which all Windows
dirs and files are located, something I hadn't noticed earlier. Anyhow, tried
to move the contents of the "Drive D" folder directly into the root. FBA
runs, but won't reboot (BSOD with 7B error).
When looking a little further into the WE Studio Help, I ran into "Target
Device Settings" under "Configuration settings" in the "Target designer
guide". Here it is mentioned that the Boot drive property should normally be
set to C:\, even if the target drive would be D:\ , which is contradictory to
the example in the "Getting started" section. In any case, I tried this as
well but the result is the same: BSOD with error 7B.

I found this nifty presentation on MSDN. I followed the exact guideline,
with the exception that my target is a second drive rather than a second
partition on the first drive (would have been much better if the example
given would have done that as well) but again: BSOD and 7B. What is going
wrong or what did I overlook?? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Menno

 

[Heidi Linda]

I am trying to make a HD for my target system (XPE SP2) but I don't get there
for some reason. Apparently there's something wrong with the drive-letter
setting; I must add that IMHO the tutorials have been made as vague as
possible on that.

Have you got the appropriate disk drive and file system components included?

 

[Brad Combs]

Menno,

Since you have a secondary drive in your build system here is what I would
suggest:

1) Build your image in Target Designer as if you are targeting the C:\
drive.
2) After Target Desinger finishes the build copy the contents from the
folder you specified as the build folder to D:\ (or whatever the letter is
for drive 2). This will produce D:\boot.ini, D:\Windows,etc....
3) Reboot, enter the BIOS and change the primary boot drive to your D:\
drive (primary slave or secondary master or however you have it set up).
4) Run FBA and test your image, make changes, add software, etc...

You can also accomplish the same thing by keeping the bios the way it is and
changing the boot.ini on the C:\ drive to look like this:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP
Professional"
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Embedded"

P.S. Since you mentioned missing files (possibly NTLDR ?) you should always
build your images in release mode. Debug mode is useless.

HTH,
Brad

 

[Guest]

Heidi, Brad, thanks for your replies.

I have been spending the better part of today with the same problem but as
of yet are unable to solve it. I did find out that it doesn't actually lie in
the drive letter settings; to make sure I TAP-ed my development system,
created an image for it, put it on the second disk, rebooted, et voila, XPe
running. Did that trick before, so it looks like the problem is in the
hardware component I made for the target. Will start to switch off and on
some of the devices, see where it gets me.
Now for another, although related, problem. Every single example I have been
able to find has been made for XPe on a dual-boot system, i.e. XPe on a
second HD or second partition. My target system obviously needs only a single
bootable partition, but how to create a running image on my development
system for that purpose? I read a reply that it would be better to have the
XPe as primary and XP Pro as secondary disk or partition, but I can forget
about that, will take me days to reinstall all my software so I consider that
as no option. My HP also won't let me change drive letters in the BIOS as
suggested by Brad or even change boot order. So how should I do that? Any
suggestion will be highly appreciated!

Menno

 

[Heidi Linda]

Heidi, Brad, thanks for your replies.

I have been spending the better part of today with the same problem but as
of yet are unable to solve it. I did find out that it doesn't actually lie in
the drive letter settings; to make sure I TAP-ed my development system,
created an image for it, put it on the second disk, rebooted, et voila, XPe
running. Did that trick before, so it looks like the problem is in the
hardware component I made for the target. Will start to switch off and on
some of the devices, see where it gets me.
Now for another, although related, problem. Every single example I have been
able to find has been made for XPe on a dual-boot system, i.e. XPe on a
second HD or second partition. My target system obviously needs only a single
bootable partition, but how to create a running image on my development
system for that purpose? I read a reply that it would be better to have the
XPe as primary and XP Pro as secondary disk or partition, but I can forget
about that, will take me days to reinstall all my software so I consider that
as no option. My HP also won't let me change drive letters in the BIOS as
suggested by Brad or even change boot order. So how should I do that? Any
suggestion will be highly appreciated!

OK, here's what you do:

1) Build your XPe on d: and then edit the boot.ini on there so that it
has options to boot from the first or second disk and a 30-second
timeout. Make sure that ntldr and suchlike are there.
2) Shut down, and swap the drives over. Usually a case of changing the
jumper settings on the two drives.
3) boot back up and select the second drive. You should go back into
your normal windows OS with no need to reinstall anything.
4) reboot, go into the first drive, you should have your XPe running as c:

 

[Guest]

Thanks Heidi, that did the job nicely. At least that problem is solved, now I
can move on to solving the 7B error ...

Once again thanks for the prompt replies.

Best regards,

Menno van den Berg