CHM & HTML help support and editing BartPE menu?, How to configure these things? Options

[paraglider]

For the first attempts at getting a USB stick working its better to use one <= 2GB in size. You will get best compatability with motherboards if you format as FAT. If you are using a larger stick then look at this post:

http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?sho...c=22747&hl=

[TakuSkan]

Good news/Bad news...

Good news: I got a UFD to boot into into a fully operational copy of XPE.

Bad news: The 1st time was easy. The 2nd time took hours. The 3rd time hasn't happened again yet.

I got it to boot correctly by digging out an older 1GB UFD and running Bart's 'pe2ufd -f [x: UFD drive letter]' I've not worked with the 8GB UFD again yet.

I had to download MS Windows 2003 Server and extract its versions of ramdisk.sys and SETUPLDR.BIN in a 'x:\pebuilder\srsp1 folder, as the utility requires that version.

Then I loaded the BartPE/XPE build to the 1GB UFD with PeToUsb and 'Bootable USB-Drive Utility' to see if they could get the 1GB UFD to fully boot XPE. That was a huge mistake. The system refused to even start booting the UFD from builds written to the it with those utilities, reporting that there were either boot errors or that no bootable drives were found.

I need to learn more about what these utilities are doing when they write the boot sector to the UFD. Something is getting corrupted somewhere along the line.

After hours of experiments with diskpart and those three 'BartPE to USB' utilities, I finally got XPE to fully boot off the 1GB UFD into into a usable windows environment again. And again, it was after using Bart's 'pe2ufd -f [x: UFD drive letter]'

However the next day I was back to square '2' where I couldn't get anything to set up a UFD that would even begin to boot. I failed to duplicate what I had done the night before.

Eventually I ended up downloading UnetBootin and successfully loaded an ISO of PuppyLinux onto the 1GB UFD that booted and ran Xwindows. It was a surprisingly quick and and simple task.

Obviously UnetBootin managed to configure the UFD's boot sector in a way that the BartPE loaders were not.

I used 'ghost -ib' to make an image of PuppyLinux on the UFD with boot sector data that I can use to restore a bootable UFD. That's saved me a lot of grief while running these tests.

I deleted the PuppyLinux files from the UFD and used both PeToUSB and 'Bootable USB-Drive Utility' to load my BartPE/XPE files to it. The system was then able to boot it again, but to that same blank desktop as it has been doing.

Whatever UnetBootin had written to the boot sector remained after PeToUSB and 'Bootable USB-Drive Utility' did their respective jobs.

However I haven't been able to get Bart's pe2usb to work at all anymore. Unlike PeToUSB and 'Bootable USB-Drive Utility', when I boot from the UFD that pe2usb created, I get a system boot error message saying:

"Windows failed to open RAMDISK image."
"The file BART.ISO could not be loaded"

These different loaders are writing different things to the boot sector that I just can't find any documentation on. Only UnetBootin consistantly succeeds in creating a UFD that boots.

Can someone explain this to me? Okay... let me rephrase that for jaclaz If someone understands this, please explain it to me.

@fuwi

Just for trial and error: Have you ever tried to switch to FAT32 in the 'Bootable USB-Drive Utility'? Do you have also that empty desktop in XPE with such a FAT32 UFD?

Yes fuwi, the UFD was formatted with FAT32. When I used the 'Bootable USB-Drive Utility' to load the UFD, I had selected 'c' as it is set by default to format with FAT32 (I didn't cycle throught the 's' option to select NTFS formatting).

And yes, when I booted the UFD, it still dumped me onto an empty desktop.

Only pe2usb created a UFD that fully booted XPE. And I have only able to do that twice so far.

TS

This post has been edited by TakuSkan: Oct 2 2009, 01:10 AM

[TakuSkan]

@paraglider:

For the first attempts at getting a USB stick working its better to use one <= 2GB in size.

Interesting coincidence that you posted that as I was composing a report on my initial success with a 1GB UFD using Bart's pe2usb.

But as you can see, things got really dicey when I subsequently tried using PeToUsb and 'Bootable USB-Drive Utility'. I've been doing all of this work on the same system running Win7.

http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?sho...c=22747&hl=

A really informative read. I just scanned it quickly for the moment. I'll have to go back for a closer read. But it appears to deal primarily with compatibililty issues between different systems, different BIOSs and multi-booting various USB drives. So far my problems are limited to 2 systems that initially had no problems with booting either of the 2 UFDs I've been testing.

On a quick read, I didn't catch anything in that article that might explain the boot sector problems I'm looking at.

TS

This post has been edited by TakuSkan: Oct 1 2009, 11:57 PM

[Ed_P]

FWIW On one system I couldn't boot my USB stick until I formated it with PEtoUSB using the LBA option. Everything else that was loaded to it was exactly the same as before the option was used.

hth

[jaclaz]

Can someone explain this to me? Okay... let me rephrase that for jaclaz If someone understands this, please explain it to me.

Unfortunately it won't be of any use right now.

You talk of matters you simply do NOT (yet) have even the basics.

You appear to throw in, and in a semi-random way, any utility you can find on those stick, without a plan, an order or a scope.

Choose one, ONLY one of them (and NOT Unetbootin, for the moment, as it is NOT a USB formatting/partitioning utility) and let's talk of THAT one you choose ONLY.

In any case, and this is a "general" kind of advice, always - and until you are not sure about what you are doing - start from scratch, i.e. with a stick where first 100 or 200 sectors have been zeroed out.

Example:
http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?...=4015&st=21

If you want to understand a bit what you are doing, try doing it manually instead of "trusting" any app "as is".

Take your time reading the "history" of an app (when available), the development process, bugs found and solved, etc., etc.

Just fake that you are zoso in this thread:
http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?...c=8802&st=9
all the advice I can give you and the procedure will be roughly the same:

• stop doing random attempts
• take some time reading and understanding the basics
• do one thing at the time

(of course if you are willing to play the game )

An alternative might be, if you run dsfo as detailed here:
http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?...c=5000&st=1

and you post the exact size of the stick, I can give you actual "right" values for the MBR.

jaclaz

[fuwi]

@TakuSkan

But as you can see, things got really dicey when I subsequently tried using PeToUsb and 'Bootable USB-Drive Utility'. I've been doing all of this work on the same system running Win7.

running Win7 -> are you running PeToUsb and 'Bootable USB-Drive Utility' in Windows 7 'Windows XP Mode'?

fuwi

[TakuSkan]

@fuwi:

running Win7 -> are you running PeToUsb and 'Bootable USB-Drive Utility' in Windows 7 'Windows XP Mode'?

No. But after you mentioned it I installed and ran everything over on a system running Windows XP and found the resulting UFD booted perfectly into XPE. Thanks for pointing that out fuwi.

@jaclaz:

Just fake that you are zoso in this thread:http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?...c=8802&st=9

I followed all those links, stitched them all together, and was a couple of days trying to duplicate what was discussed there with no success.

An alternative might be, if you run dsfo as detailed here: http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?...c=5000&st=1
and you post the exact size of the stick, I can give you actual "right" values for the MBR.

Running the command 'dsfo \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE3 0 0 NUL' resulted in a size of 1031798784 for my 1GB UFD. What should the "right" values for the MBR be?

I also went ahead and followed the procedure outlined there for creating a bootable UFD. But executing the command 'dsfi \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE3 0 0 test.img' (my UFD being drive #3), consistently resulted in the error message "Access is denied" when trying to write to the UFD.

However after following fuwi's suggestion of switching to WinXP to do this work in, running that command succeeded. But the UFD I created with just boot.ini, ntdetect.com and NTLDR on it booted to a black screen with no command prompt. After reading that URL several times, I'm still not sure what the screen is supposed to present me with after the resulting UFD is booted.

But it's obvious that these procedures were never made to be compatible with the Windows 7 OS. Since there was no indication of that in any of the many web pages I managed to read about setting these things up, I feel I can take some solace in the realization that the problems I’ve been encountering had little to nothing to do with any errors I may have been committing.

Is there any work being done to address these sorts of Vista/Win7 conflicts? These utilities would surely run a lot faster on my Vista/Win7 system than they do on the old system here running WinXP.

Thx
TS

[jaclaz]

Running the command 'dsfo \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE3 0 0 NUL' resulted in a size of 1031798784 for my 1GB UFD. What should the "right" values for the MBR be?

A bifurcation:

• automatically, use (NOT under Windows 7) my small batches
• manually, follow me:

You want (trust me ) a geometry of nx255x63.
NOW:
1031798784/512=2015232 Sectors
2015232/63=31987,809
31987/255=125,439

125x255x63=2008125

This would go in a partition table (FAT16 CHS mapped) as:
80-06-0-1-1-124-254-63-63-2008062

Use the spreadsheets here:
http://www.boot-land.net/forums/?showtopic=2959
to verify and "play a bit" with the values.

Then read carefully this thread:
http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=23050
AND links given in it.

And, among the linked to threads, read this one (where fuwi's tool has been discussed and "evolved"):
http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=21702
and this particular parts (if you were using FAT32):
http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?sho...1702&st=129
http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?sho...1702&st=241

But it's obvious that these procedures were never made to be compatible with the Windows 7 OS. Since there was no indication of that in any of the many web pages I managed to read about setting these things up, I feel I can take some solace in the realization that the problems I’ve been encountering had little to nothing to do with any errors I may have been committing.

Is there any work being done to address these sorts of Vista/Win7 conflicts? These utilities would surely run a lot faster on my Vista/Win7 system than they do on the old system here running WinXP.

Another step:
http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=8200
http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?...=8200&st=39

jaclaz