Ok everyone, I suppose this is a continuation on my quest to get UBCD4WIN onto my hard drive, and to be able to use window's default boot loader to get things started. I guess I'll update this post every time I run into an issue.

Current Issue:
Moving over to pester the guys at ReactOS

So right now, I'm attempting to boot directly from my C:\minint directory, with the windows default boot loader. Note that booting from the .bin file for PE still works. So when I boot with the windows boot loader, I get an error after a bit saying ntfs.sys is missing or corrupt. The odd thing I find about this is that it doesn't use it's full path, like where it should be: C:\minint\system32\drivers\ntfs.sys. I know it's there, and I've even copied over a file that I know is working on my pc, so something else is causing this. If anyone knows, that would be great.

Thanks in advanced!

Previous Issues:
None

UBCD4Win is based off of the OEM version of BARTPE.... so the restrictions you've been told about several times now still apply. It appears to me that you don't want to hear the real answer since you are still asking the same question.

I guess what I'd like to hear is why everyone insists on how copying files off of an XP installation disk doesn't make it windows xp, or how I can make it act like it. And I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "restrictions", if you could elaborate on that a bit, that would be nice. (Unless you're referring to the fact that it's a PE trying to be XP, which will also need elaboration.)

Furthermore, all I really need answered is these tiny little problems that keep coming up, which I would imagine should be simple enough to fix to or be answered.

I'm ready and willing to hear the answer, if only someone could explain on their answer.

Learning is my game here, and I probably won't learn from my mistakes if I don't know what caused it

You simply cannot use the default windows boot loader to launch a "Preinstalled Environment"

PE is Windows setup with a twist. Textmode Setup (real mode) is used with the /minint switch to allow a Preinstalled Environment (Protected Mode) to function with a limited set of windows API's.

I could write a book, and still don't think your going to make the connection.

Perhaps Jaclaz can explain it in layman's terms???

PS: Why are you trying to boot a PE as if it were an installed OS in the first place?

That was the answer I was looking for, thank you. Basically, the reason I'm doing this is for my own education, which I have learned a lot through. To further my education what I was (and still) going to do was attempt to get it to work with the windows boot loader. And I almost had it working, till I reformatted and tried something else. Back in Boot-Land, I was even able to get to the point of seeing a wall paper, till an lsass error came up.

In textmode setup all base hardware drivers are loaded through txtsetup.sif.

When an installed Windows OS is booted these drivers are loaded at a much higher level and will reset the busses causing all kinds of glitches and a nice fat BSOD when hooked after they are already loaded.

Actually, I haven't gotten a BSOD since WinBuilder. And I was messing around with literally everything, so something was bound to go bad. So could these resets you're talking about cause it to read ntfs.sys as bad?

FWIW I boot BartPE from a separate partition on my nb and from a separate hd on my desktop using each machine's XP boot.ini.

The two things I think are worth noting are the BartPE partitions are Primary partitions not Logical partitions and I use GRUB4DOS's grldr to boot them.

This is my boot.ini on my nb:
and my grldr menu.lst
hth

I actually tried doing it, but it did not work:
http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?...=8744&st=16


And more:
http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?...=8744&st=19

Medevil also had a (good IMHO) attempt to explain the thing:
http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?...=8744&st=32

but it did not "pass through".


I am losing my (usual ) ability to make useful (and understandable) examples lately, even this (on a completely different topic):
http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?...c=8741&st=9
didn't "pass through" properly. Getting old, I presume.


jaclaz

I know, I've gotten it, I've gotten it. Yet none of you had explained your answers, rather falling back to enforcing the same answer over and over again, like you said jaclaz. However, hilander has actually explained a bit on the why part, which I would like to say guys, is my whole reason for going through the trouble in the first place. I'd like to learn the why part of of windows and what it does.

Now I'm sure someone is going to enforce again that windows is not pe and a tomato is not an apple. Using that metaphor, It seems to me that still, both are of the same family. (Well, at least tomatoes and apples are.) Not to mention, I feel so close to finding the answer, yet so far.

To MedEvil, if he could explain what part of xp xp is trying to access (?) that would be nice.

Actually the usual confrontation is between apples and oranges, and yes, you are right , they are VERY similar:
http://improbable.com/airchives/paperair/v...1-3-apples.html

The WHY is BECAUSE the good guys at Microsoft implemented XP and PE this way. (and failed to properly document either)

I do understand how for the curious and ingenious mind this seems not rational (and actually it isn't ), but still you cannot do anything about it (or you'll possibly be able to when and if you will create different components that behave the same or almost the same and that are under your full control).

Wait a minute, this is exactly what the good guys at ReactOS have been doing for several years:
http://www.reactos.org/en/index.html

After more than ten years of collective work, they are now at an alpha stage (current version 0.3.10), and believe me when I tell you that among them there are several exceptionally good programmers.

In any case, the path they followed and they are following is the "common sense path": accept (temporarily) the status quo, learn how it is done, learn how to re-create it, then change what you don't like.

If you think about it, it's the way mathematics or geometry is taught (and learned) since the ancient greek's time at least, you use postulates and axioms (that need not a reason WHY or a HOW), and you accept them, at least temporarily, to create the basis for a theorem (in which the WHY and HOW is explained and needed in the demonstration)

Last metaphor for today :
You are not using clay for your sculpture, you are using LEGO-like blocks, you cannot create a sphere with them, you cannot assemble them in a way different from what the guys at LEGO devised (one on top of the other) your particular abilities or inclinations will make the difference between a wall:
http://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-LEGO-Wall
and something to break that wall:
http://www.wikihow.com/Build-a-LEGO-Trebuchet

but still you won't have rounded edges .

jaclaz

Ok, I guess that puts me at rest then. Time to reformat and pester the guys at ReactOS

I wonder if it gets windows updates? Hmm. That is a cool thing they have going though. Glad I didn't have to go through ten years of wondering why an ntfs.sys error was coming up

So let me try and draw a conclusion from your metaphore: Are you saying that basically, what I'm doing has very limited ability to be "molded", or changed direction, and that what I have will not let me do much to what I want to do? Like what I was doing was very out there and hardly anyone would know what I was doing. (Like reactos.) And that it wouldn't be pretty? Makes sense. That info on the oranges and apples was interesting

And thanks again for all of your help, everyone.

Also, the patience you guys have is amazing, especially since you aren't being paid for this. (Or are you?) My gratitude to everyone

OK, I'm almost a liar (exactly midnight right now) , and you actually provoked this one....




Actually what I was trying to say (more generally, not limited to this ntfs.sys error you are having) was that:

• I (and several other members here and on boot-land) still fail to understand what your final goal is
• you still fail to try to explain it (setting temporarily apart your fixation of loading a PE like it was XP)

Thus we are at a stalemate.

If you are in point A. and you want to go to point C. the main thing, as I see it, is to get to point C. and the need to go through point B. is secondary.

Right now, you are insisting to go through point B. where a huge LEGO brick wall is erected, blocking your way .

Now it is possible that:

1. you can get to point C. WITHOUT passing through B.
2. that you can jump over the wall at B. and go through
3. that you can use the trebuchet to demolish the wall at point B.
4. that ANYWAY you cannot get to C., even if you manage to pass through B.

#1. is the simplest of the three "working" alternatives, #2. is the one that you failed with and asked help for, #3. is a possible way IF you know how to build the trebuchet.
#4. is an alas unfortunate , but still plausible possibility.

Everyone here is shouting at you:
YOU CANNOT JUMP OVER THAT WALL IT IS TOO HIGH!

jaclaz

Ok, sorry about that. I want to take in the scenery, so I guess I'll try and figure out what point B is anyways. (Haven't reformatted yet.) Well, I guess for old time's sake, I'll explain my ultimate goals with as much detail as I can think of. (If you need more, please ask away.)

So, my ultimate goals: A. to copy over everything that running WinBuilder/BartPE creates, onto a hard drive. (Complete.) B. To boot from the hard drive, via starting with the included boot loader, created by WinBuilder/BartPE. (Complete.) C. To be able to make system registry changes. (Incomplete.) And D, To be able to boot from that same hard drive, with everything else the same, except for using the windows bootloader. I.E an unmodified NTLDR file.

For explaining, I don't really know what you guys want me to explain. Maybe that was part of the communication failure

For your possible ways of going with this, I like the idea of #1, although I'm not exactly sure what the points are representing here. Maybe we can both draw a similar conclusion after I explained it a bit more

So the wall is too high to jump, so I need to find a way around it. Ok, that works. It's just the transferring from your metaphore, (excellent job @ midnight, I might add) to real life.

A. to copy over everything that running WinBuilder/BartPE creates, onto a hard drive. (Complete.)<-Good.
B. To boot from the hard drive, via starting with the included boot loader, created by WinBuilder/BartPE.<-(Complete.) Good
C. To be able to make system registry changes. (Incomplete.) <-There is NO known "direct" way AFAIK , the only way is to backup the Registry and replace it at next boot.
And D, To be able to boot from that same hard drive, with everything else the same, except for using the windows bootloader. I.E an unmodified NTLDR file. <- This is NOT a goal (or it is a scopeless one) this is a "method": a way you think useful to obtain SOMETHING. Why do you care WHICH bootloader is used or HOW it is used? The scope is LOADING, NOT how the loading is made. In other words: what advantages/features do you expect by using NTLDR? If you think that this will lead to point C. above, this won't happen, it simply does not work this way.

jaclaz

Well, what I was thinking was that, because of using the included (not standard) boot loader, it would be causing the registry overwrites, which I don't want. I was kind of hoping for a way around that, but tbh, I don't actually know which part of the BartPE loading process causes it to overwrite the registry, or how I can tell it to just skip that and read from the included one. I'm sure you remember the part where I was having trouble with a corrupted SYSTEM hive, that was because BartPE somehow makes it's own. I just wish I could bend that to my own needs.

I usually completely remove from my memory anything that I don't understand, sorry, you will need to refresh my memory on that episode.

BTW, the bolded part:

Appears anyway what you think happened, not necessarily what happened.

Is it the "not standard" the problem?

SETUPLDR.BIN is "standard", it was written by Microsoft guys to load a PE. (and Setup).
NTLDR is "standard", it was written by Microsoft guys to load a "full" NT based system (NT/2K/XP/2003).

Starting from XP the kernel accepts a switch " /minint", that makes a PE possible.
If the /minint switch is supplied, among other things, the Registry is loaded to Ram (and thus it is NOT persistent).

If using SETUPLDR.BIN, a /minint switch is implied (and a /I386 or /minint kind of structure) is needed, AND changes to the Registry are NOT persistent.

If using NTLDR a /Windows/ kind of structure is needed.
If using NTLDR with a /minint switch in BOOT.INI, a /Windows structure is needed, AND changes to the Registry are NOT persistent.

So you need to write your own SETUPLDR.BIN that implies NOT the /minint switch. (and possibly a NTDETECT.COM also)
Or you need to write your own NTLDR that uses /I386 or /minint structure (and possibly a NTDETECT.COM also)
Both the above may not be sufficient, and you will need probably to write a new kernel also and countless .dll's/services.

But, then again, what would be the SCOPE of that?

I mean, thanks to several findings here on 911CD or on boot-land, you can use a PE on almost any media (with PE limits) or a "Full XP" on almost any media (with XP limits):
which are the limits in XP that you find NOT in a "hypothetical" PE with persistent Registry? (remember to balance the supposed advantages against the limits of a PE build)

Or, as said, if you really really want a PE with persistent settings, why not easily (or not easily) workaround the problem on a PE by backing up and restoring the Registry (or, better, selected parts of it, and then restore it)?

jaclaz

Ah, that does clear some things up. Just after copying over the BartPE files to the hard drive, and attempting to boot up with normal (standard booting) files, it would say \minint\system32\config\SYSTEM is missing or corrupt. It was missing, since (and I'm still thinking on what I'm thinking) it normally creates it's own. (I'm beginning to see that that may be partially due to the txtsetup.sif file.) I guess I'll try and be more specific when I'm seperating PE from normal booting. I guess I'l just say that if I'm trying to boot like any normal computer, I'll say normal, and if I mean booting through the PE on the hard drive, well I think you get what I mean

What I seem to be finding is BartPE and related create their on SYSTEM registry on the spot, so I doubt I'll be able to load anything unless I find a way I can tweak it. So, I guess what I want to do now is find a way to make the registry non-volatile.

Perhaps a bit of explaination on the why's is in order... aka some history that most already know... mixed in with some perseptions of my own as to why some things were done... in short, some history and some of my own conjecture of what was done and why... but without a lot of specifics that shouldn't be needed here.


With the release of the NT kernel came another format for the file/disk system that provided a lot more security than the previous FAT based ones provided and also more reliability because it was a journeling file system... we know this as NTFS. ( Can you say very over-simplified... lol, there are many features of NTFS not mentioned ). At first this file system and Windows itself had a limitation... the OS needed to start from a FAT based system which meant that Windows itself had to reside on a less secure file system. This limitation was removed with XP since it could boot from an NTFS system.

BTW... Microsoft purposely chose to not backport NTFS support to their previous OS's for other reasons other than just technical ones some of which were in part security and part to help combat piracy concerns...

Speaking of piracy concerns, this had been a very big issue for Microsoft so this needs to figure into the picture at some point so keep this in mind in a bit.

The other thing that needed to be addressed was how to implement the installation of XP since previous methods didn't take NTFS into account. So, MS needed a way to implement a roll out to a lot of systems so they came up with a limited API version of XP called WinPE to help install the OS for OEM companies as well as enterprise companies.

There was an issue that WinPE brought with it... users could also use it to build a hacked version of XP that didn't address the piracy issue that had been addressed with activation. So Microsoft placed limits on the PE version that wouldn't allow it to keep changes to the registry as well as a time limit ( as well as others ) that it was allowed to run.

So when WinPE was created they addressed two major issues... the ability to do massive roll-outs to multiple systems... and also keep a lid on others using the PE to pirate their software. The issue with a PE needing to reboot every so often was worked around... the other limitaion was not.

Ah, this is what I mentioned back in Boot-land, thank you rdsok. Ya, I had a feeling this was kind of getting into a grey-ish area, although I can assure you that I have no priate intentions, this is only for my education. (Although I'm sure Microsoft doesn't care.) Well, this is too bad.

If you do or do not have pirating intentions is not the point... the point is that the limitations of PE are there... which you've been told many times but do not seem to want to take for what you have been told... so that is the BECAUSE portion you were told before..

In short, why it is that way ... is also the reason because you can't do everything you are asking...


There is also one other part... the unless part.... UNLESS YOU can find a way to do it that many others much more experienced then you has never found....


A PE OS has limitations BECAUSE they were programmed into it. The Linux live CD's ( if I may use an unrelated example ) do not have those limitions because they were not programmed with them.

Right, so, I guess the registry was a dead end after all. Maybe I can experiment with the live cds instead, or try reactOS.

Again, thanks for your time, guys. If you have any last minute ideas, I'd be glad to hear 'em.