[ilko_t]

jaclaz, on 04 September 2012 - 04:32 AM, said:

Quote

2) Once you got Win7 working and booted from the third partition which should be already the active one, delete the small one if you haven't yet.

NO , the currently active one is the second.
...

Jaclaz, you must have missed some bits and pieces from what I posted

At that point, if he followed the tutorial posted, the active one should be the third one.

http://www.terabyteu...icle.php?id=409

Quote

...
13. Remove the drive letter assignment from the System Reserved partition and set the Windows 7 partition as the Active (booting) partition.
...

And, as mentioned, it's to be deleted only when it's confirmed that Win7 boots alright with its partition(third) set as active and boot files copied on it, to stay on the safe side.

[jaclaz]

ilko_t, on 04 September 2012 - 05:20 AM, said:

.
Jaclaz, you must have missed some bits and pieces from what I posted

At that point, if he followed the tutorial posted, the active one should be the third one.

Not really, different linguistical interpretation, nothing of much relevance .

I read "already" as "already" as opposed to "at that point",or, if the actions suggested in #1 were carried:

ilko_t, on 03 September 2012 - 05:19 AM, said:

1) Move Win7 boot files out of the small partition and put them in hd0,2, that's the third partition and set it active.
Do not delete the small partition yet, just in case, if you need you could simply mark it back as active from GParted or DiskPart launched from Win7 setup and get back Win7 boot.
http://www.terabyteu...icle.php?id=409

2) Once you got Win7 working and booted from the third partition which should be already the active one, delete the small one if you haven't yet.

the bolded part in 2) would be a truism. (double one , as in #1 the third partition is made active and also in #13 of the linked tutorial) on the other hand, IF the thrid partiion had not been made active, the system wouldn't have booted at all.....


The "play safe" was actually refered to the "Move" (as opposed to "copy"):

ilko_t, on 03 September 2012 - 05:19 AM, said:

What I would do:
1) Move Win7 boot files out of the small partition and put them in hd0,2, that's the third partition and set it active.

I am pretty sure that your approach is very correct :, but as I see it missed a "what if something goes wrong" wayback provision, IMHO when dealing with disks/data always "better be safe than sorry" .

jaclaz

This post has been edited by jaclaz: 04 September 2012 - 05:36 AM

[ilko_t]

Yep, correct, copy instead of move, just as the tutorial posted instructs. I might have been more precise if was typing the exact steps and commands to be performed.

Quote

Instructions:

Part 1 - Copy the Booting Files and Configure the Windows 7 Partition for Booting

As for the truism- correct, kinda happens when thinking out loud.

As for the safe part:

Quote

Do not delete the small partition yet, just in case, if you need you could simply mark it back as active from GParted or DiskPart launched from Win7 setup and get back Win7 boot.

Anyway, I think the OP should now clearly get the idea what is to be done, thanks for the corrections.

[SteveOC]

Thanks to both of you for posting, Ilko_t and Jaclaz.

I haven't gone away or given up - just fighting problem after problem (mainly with unreadable SD cards).

I now have some further inkling about where the problem lies - it appears to be in the first part of the Windows Install phase, during Setup, immediately after the message about Windows Starting. I think that there is a default setting somewhere along the lines of reboot-on-error and I think that this is what happens when Windows fails to start - it just reboots and goes back to the (GRUB?) menu.

The messages that flashed up during Setup about 'copying' files actually said 'loading' and not 'copying' - which I presume means loading into memory, hence nothing found on disk - as I discovered after trying again and again.

I don't know if this is a disk/controllerdriver issue - I have tried downloading the Intel F6Floppy driver package for my controller, creating an IMA file from it, and including it in the build (I see it under WINSETUP directory) but when I try to use it during the install it still fails. It is an AHCI driver - My BIOS says it will AUTO detect XP and not use AHCI, and I even tried disabling it long back but it makes no difference.

I am still trying to digest all your recommendations for the best way forward - it may take me a while.
As this is my only working machine, I would like to be able to adopt an approach whereby I was able to boot x number of OS'es without compromisng the ability to recover the W7Starter system using the standard Samsung build so I would prefer to leave the *SYSTEM and *RECOVERY partitions untouched even if that means manually setting things up.


Thanks for all the help to date - interesting stuff.

Steve O.

[jaclaz]

SteveOC, on 09 September 2012 - 05:25 AM, said:

I don't know if this is a disk/controllerdriver issue - I have tried downloading the Intel F6Floppy driver package for my controller, creating an IMA file from it, and including it in the build (I see it under WINSETUP directory) but when I try to use it during the install it still fails. It is an AHCI driver - My BIOS says it will AUTO detect XP and not use AHCI, and I even tried disabling it long back but it makes no difference.

Yes, this may be an issue.
You might want to try another approach, slipstreaming the actual AHCI driver to the source (by itself or using the DriversPack) as to remove this possible issue.
I am not sure to understand the reference to the SD cards.

More loosely, you have a working OS (Windows 7) and a USB stick (or SD card reader?) that can boot to grub4dos, so you have in any case a way of booting.
Before making other experiments I would create (on the USB whatever) a Windows 7 boot floppy image, see here:
http://www.multiboot....uk/floppy.html
For a quick howto.

And test it from the USB.
Something like:

map --mem /myfloppy.img (fd0)
map --hook
root (fd0)
chinloader /bootmgr

should do nicely.
If you need more info on how to make the floppy image (I would personally use IMDISK) , just say so.

Once you have this "failsafe" provision, you can try to copy the Windows XP source to the internal hard disk and install it through WinntSetup:
http://www.msfn.org/...winntsetup-v22/

jaclaz

[wcy0236]

需要这么复杂吗？ 直接进入系统按F8进入安全模式——选在带命令行的安全模式——在xp包解压出来放任意一个盘符里面去——输入你的路径.........——运行i386文件夹里的winnt32.exe

This post has been edited by wcy0236: 22 October 2012 - 02:37 AM