WinXPe on CF keeps on rebooting

[Guest]

Hi,
I am trying to make a WinXPe bootable Compact Flash on IDE. I am able to
boot DOS on it. However after I run bootprep, and add ntldr and boot files,
it just keeps on rebooting. To test I added multiple lines in boot.ini and
gave 30 sec timeout, but it seems that ntldr is not loaded.
I followed the steps: fdisk (made the drive active), format (/s to check DOS
boot), fdisk /mbr, bootprep and then copy the image files. The CF is on
primary master and is recognized as removable. Is removable the culprit here?
I am using 1 GB SanDisk Ultra II.
Any body else faced similar problem...
Thanks for any suggestions.
Ansuya

 

[Andy Allred [MS]]

Hi, if it's marked as removable then that's probably the problem. San Disk
used to provide a utility to modify their CF's firmware to appear as
non-removable but not sure if they still do this. I've resolved this for
testing on some machines if you have a CF-IDE adapter and plug into the IDE.

There are some CFs available that come pre-marked as non-removable.

Andy

 

[zen master]

hi, 1 common thing i found when my image always reboot is when te image
you build is Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) PC but
the pc you are running your image is not ACPI enabled. Check your bios
for this.

hope this helps.

 

[Guest]

Thank you all. I tried changing ACPI setting (though my PC requires it), but
to no avail. I even tried converting to NTFS format, thinking that ntldr will
work without bootprep, but that did not work either.
So I checked earlier threads on the same issue and someone pointed a link to
SPFdisk utility at
http://www.iceteks.com/articles.php/spfdiskreview/1.
I checked it out, and it rewrote my MBR and then ntldr was able to read it.
It is not clear to me why ntldr could not read MBR when bootprep changed it.
Could you explain this in more detail.
Anyway for anyone still working with this, this utility works. FBA starts
and WinXPe image is loaded on the CF - though the process is very slow.
Thanks again,
Ansuya