[fryinghorse]

I got 8 internal HDDs connected.
5x Samsung HD154UI (SATA), 1x HD103UI (SATA), 1x 500GB WD (system, 2 partitions) and 160GB WD (both IDE),
1 USB-Stick connected to install Windows from

No USB card readers
no other external mass storage devices connected

It's a Desktop.

Motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-M720-US3

[ilko_t]

fryinghorse, on 05 February 2011 - 01:25 AM, said:

I got 8 internal HDDs connected...

Wouldn't have guessed.
You'd have to disconnect temporarily some of the unneeded ones to get going. Can't properly support more than 6 internal disks + the USB one = 7. One mapping reserved for the virtual CD. Total 8. That's what grub4dos allows currently.

I'll put a warning message in the next version if grub4dos detects more than 7 disks.Didn't expect in a real world scenario such configuration.

Can you test if everything goes smoothly with some of the disks disconnected?

Will ask grub4dos developers if this number can be increased in future release.

[ranjeetmalik4444]

I want to add Windows XP setup both x32 and x64
Ubuntu 10.10
Vista x86 and x64
Windows 7 x86 and x64
and Hiren Boot CD to my USB Drive

I have to Internal HDD (Will That be a problem or its ok with that I dont want to loose my data trying to install windows on my second HDD)

Is this possible....

[ilko_t]

Please read the first post in this topic for your answers.
Hiren's Boot CD is still considered warez, thus no support here.

[ranjeetmalik4444]

I don't think now it comes under warez now it contains only the freeware utilities all the commercial softwares have been removed....leave apart hiren tell me can I do the thing I mentioned above....

[jaclaz]

ranjeetmalik4444, on 06 February 2011 - 01:31 AM, said:

I don't think now it comes under warez now it contains only the freeware utilities all the commercial softwares have been removed....leave apart hiren tell me can I do the thing I mentioned above....

Sure, miniXP and Windows 98 being nororiously Freeware....
And still, try reading again the first post.
Get the stable release.
Read the documentation that comes with it.
Then re-read first post.

jaclaz

[Robou]

For years it's gone well, Nlited XP installation with DP and updates integrated. RMUSBPrep NTFS, 2 partitions, then WinSetupFromUSB.
This installed beautifully on a pre-partitioned harddrive with three primary partitions by means of a lot of scripts and .reg files. In this way it finished with a System drive, a Data drive and a Misc drive, the latter for all the to-do installation sources and being FAT32, fully accessible..

The 2GB Sandisk Cruzer I used became too small for the purpose so I decided to use a bigger one, had some PQI's laying around and a unknown brand.
None of them does the intended job: With the PQI's the initial start of Windows gives a BSOD as Unmountable_Boot_Volume with stop error ED and the undefined one is mounted with drive letter D in stead of U,V or W, which renders it unusable because my scripts expect C, D and E for the hard drive partitions.

The Sandisk acts as expected with exactly the same procedure and computer. The versions of WinSetupFromUSB differ only in the fact that Beta7 works with a Asus-based laptop as was meant by the developer (Except for the hybrid video of course, but this is a matter of DP). RMPrep was tried with many possible combinations of Filesystems and Overrides, reducing size if appropriate.

Two logs are in the attached archive: One for the PQI and one for the unknown brand. After days of struggle I sincerely hope someone can tell me where I'm goofing. It should be me, nowhere I found a clue to similar problems. I suspect the firmware in the sticks used. But then, there's no problem in booting.

[ilko_t]

Can you attach the logs?

[Robou]

Thought I did. Must have missed the final click.  Logs.7z (76.29K)
Number of downloads: 10

[ilko_t]

About the BSOD- did you try again to boot it? MS articles also mention corrupted file system or disk as a reason not to be able to mount the boot volume. Can try running chkdsk on that stick? Does it actually work reliably when used for regular tasks?

As for the wrong drive letters using the unknown brand- please attach it to your computer and export as a reg file from regedit the following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices

Let me know what drive letter that USB stick has at that time and attach the reg file.

[Robou]

You are very attentive, thank you for that. I already composed the following post, you were ahead of me:

I just discovered that, even when formatted with NTFS, the partition on the stick holding the installation source shouldn't be over 2GB. At 900MB, no Overrides, PQI acts flawlessly, "Unknown" still is assigned D:, wonder how come they act so differently.
My only problem now is to put an extended partition on the PQI holding a logical partition (in order to avoid a mess in driveletter assignment) which in turn holds all the stuff needed to copy over during installation. Matter of finding out and changing scripts, I hope.
Rest the question why "Unknown" doesn't confirm to the migrate stuff. For the moment I'm more curious than desperate, what may change when I don't succeed in putting a second partition on the PQI.

And answer your post, after installing XP with the "Unknown":
The PQI, which caused the BSOD, I had the same suspicion about, so I reformatted it with the HP program and ran different test, amongst them chkdsk, no problems. Being larger than 2GB turned out to be the culprit.
The installation finished, I attach the exported .reg from the new installation, more accurate than from "any" computer, I think.
 Mounted.7z (980bytes)
Number of downloads: 8

[ilko_t]

Robou, on 08 February 2011 - 05:00 PM, said:

You are very attentive, thank you for that. I already composed the following post, you were ahead of me:

I just discovered that, even when formatted with NTFS, the partition on the stick holding the installation source shouldn't be over 2GB. At 900MB, no Overrides, PQI acts flawlessly, "Unknown" still is assigned D:, wonder how come they act so differently.
My only problem now is to put an extended partition on the PQI holding a logical partition (in order to avoid a mess in driveletter assignment) which in turn holds all the stuff needed to copy over during installation. Matter of finding out and changing scripts, I hope.
Rest the question why "Unknown" doesn't confirm to the migrate stuff. For the moment I'm more curious than desperate, what may change when I don't succeed in putting a second partition on the PQI.

And answer your post, after installing XP with the "Unknown":
The PQI, which caused the BSOD, I had the same suspicion about, so I reformatted it with the HP program and ran different test, amongst them chkdsk, no problems. Being larger than 2GB turned out to be the culprit.
The installation finished, I attach the exported .reg from the new installation, more accurate than from "any" computer, I think.
Mounted.7z

It's weird this 2GB barrier...Could it be the flash drive is faulty or with fake size? Or BIOS? Have you tried on other machines, the same USB stick?

As for the extended partition- in this case you'd need to use a filter driver such as hitachi microdrive filter driver or dummydisk in order Windows to see it as fixed disk and be able to show and use other partitions on it. Or to turn the removable bit on the USB stick controller, making it fixed drive.

As for the drive letters- what drive letter is the USB stick in question on this machine?

[Robou]

Weird it is.. Both the flash drives were checked with RMUSBPrep for true size. They act the same on two different computers.
The driveletter is D: in the Mounted.7z, persistent after replugging.

As for the extended partition, this turned out not to be necessary after all, because a second primary partition wasn't seen at setup so no drive letter interfered. I'm thinking of integrating the Hitachi filter driver (cfa) and check for the correct drive letter in the script after install. The only hassle is editing the .inf for every individual flash drive. So changing the removable bit could be a better idea, but then the extra drive letter will show up during setup and may cause problems. I'll try it out. Unless you have a brainwave...

[ilko_t]

You could use cfadisk with a generic PNPID, search cdob's topics with keyword cfadisk. You could also use dummydisk.sys, it does not require PNPID and does work during Text mode.

As for the drive letter of the unknown USB stick- I guess it doesn't have a serial number, let's confirm:
http://www.nirsoft.n...vices_view.html

Does it show a serial number? Does this stick get a new drive letter when plugged into another USB port on the same computer?

If that's the case..hmm, changing USB port might also mean a new ParentID Prefix/MountedDevices key, perhaps also a new drive letter, look at section USB serial number:
http://www.uwe-siebe...btrouble_e.html

Would have to figure out how Vista/7 deal with these cases too. No such USB stick around to play with, but interesting issue to be studied further.

Thanks cdob for pointing the right track.

[cdob]

Robou, on 08 February 2011 - 05:00 PM, said:

Being larger than 2GB turned out to be the culprit.

That's quite strange. I suspect a BIOS limitation.
Which motherboard do you use?
Your sitck is greater 2GB. Which storage size do you use now?

Robou, on 08 February 2011 - 08:03 PM, said:

I'm thinking of integrating the Hitachi filter driver (cfa) and check for the correct drive letter in the script after install.

Post #1024 contains a dummydisk example http://www.msfn.org/...post__p__931540
Integrate drivers to windows source files first.

[Robou]

@ilko: "Unkwown" reports no serial number. The computer has not been set to ignore it. So apparently this is what breaks assigning the drive letter to "U" and beyond.
Aside: It may be desirable to add one or two letters, as some MSCR's contain three devices and can't easily be switched off (notebooks).
Any flash drive gets D: assigned, unless a second one is plugged simultaneously, then the next available letter is used. Replugging this second one after a restart makes it return to it's assigned letter.
Thanks for pointing to Uwe Sieber's site. I'm using his USBDLM for years now.

@cdob: This testing happens on a MS-7207V2, my garbage bin, although on a brand new ASUS-based notebook my confusion started. I must agree, not very trustworthy BOISes, but the MS-7207 has been eating everything so far. I used 900MB for storage, enough for the XP-source and some initial stuff like DP's.

Both: I didn't go into the cfadisk matter for being too tired, tried the dummydisk way, which seemed pretty straightforward. But it didn't work, even put Dmmydisk.sys in Dosnet.inf, doublechecked the typing, but it never showed up in the installation. So I took the crowbar and initiated the first script with the commands as in attachement. It does the job, the second partition shows in seconds and I can go on.
I'm glad I mentioned this problem-to-come, both your responses saved me days of digging into a technique I'not familiar with.

The phenomenon of the 2GB still exists, I could work around it thanks to your great help, but if either of you wants me to check things out I'll be glad to, if it were only out of curiosity.

Off topic: The "Unknown" was bought by a friend of mine in a photoshop in Spain, as medium for emptying her cameracard. (Don't ask.) Being back home she asked me to download the pictures on her computer, on which, as with all my installations, anything about autorun had been switched off. The flashdrive contained an autorun.inf and about the meanest trojan possible, which turned out to be widely spread in Spain by that time. It was easy to make the drive switch owner. Now here is my punishment!

Attached File(s)

•  USB.7z (211bytes)
  Number of downloads: 11

[jaclaz]

Run Chipgenius on the "UNKNOWN":
http://reboot.pro/4661/

Post what it says, maybe we can find the origin and re-set it with a serial.

jaclaz

[Robou]

Unknown seems to have some identity:
Device Name: +[x:]+USB Mass Storage Device(General USB Flash Disk USB Device)
PnP Device ID: VID = 090C PID = 1000
Serial Number: 5&&167ABEC4&&0&&4
Revision: 1100
Device Type: Standard USB device - USB2.0 High-Speed
Chip Vendor: SMI
Chip Part-Number: SM321~SM325
Product Vendor: (N/A)
Product Model: (N/A)

But please, don't give it too much thought. As a matter of fact, I'm on the verge of putting all of the PQI's and this one aside because so much formatting and testing has been done with them that I don't trust them any more for a serious job like this. And it may very well be that with a decent modern controller the 2GB barrier is gone. But nevertheless, I learned a lot, the cfadisk integration will be tried out soon but I probably will stick with my "crowbar" solution as in USB.7z because it can be switched back after the job and the OS will act as normal again.

BTW, if used in a batchfile it is advised to add some ping's between the lines and at the end, it may take some time for the second partition to become available.

[jaclaz]

Robou, on 09 February 2011 - 06:40 PM, said:

But please, don't give it too much thought. As a matter of fact, I'm on the verge of putting all of the PQI's and this one aside because so much formatting and testing has been done with them that I don't trust them any more for a serious job like this.

Actually, as I see it EXACTLY because of that the "Unknown" SMI stick is a good candidate for tests, as you have *NOTHING* to loose.

Of course if you see the experimenting as "fun".

Here:
http://flashboot.ru/...es&op=cat&id=10

Quick "generic" instructions:
http://reboot.pro/13...121989__st__127

jaclaz

[ilko_t]

@Robou
Couldn't get this part- does the drive letter change if you plug the same unknown brand USB stick into another USB port on the same computer and no other USB sticks were plugged meanwhile?

What happens if you unplug this one, plug another one and plug back the first one in another port?