Ok, I'm stuck.

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jonathan Swift
  • Start date Start date
J

Jonathan Swift

I've used Target Designer to select the components I want, built the image
files, and I've got a directory with the folders, eg. Program Files,
Windows, etc.

My system runs Windows 2003 server on the primary partition. I've just
added another drive, formatted it to FAT32 (200MB), copied the directory
there. Tried booting in to that partition to run SYSPREP - but this drive
is the 2nd IDE (slave) drive on the primary channel, and can't be made
active. CD-Rom is on 2nd IDE channel separately.

I've read the documentation but I still don't really understand what I'm
doing wrong. I presume I run sysprep - which obviously will need to put in
the "ntldr" and other files - so that the image can boot. Then presumably
I'm supposed to run HD2ISO to create the ISO. By the way I created a 2nd
partition on the 2nd drive (IDE 1) to hold the ISO.

Help !
 
Hi Jonathan,

Since you have Windows 2003 Server on primary disk, then I assume that this
is your test and development machine.
Nevertheless open boot.ini from your C: and add entry that will allow you to
chose what OS to start between 2003 Server and XPE.

In your particular case you can skip all preparations and go directly to
testing.

Best regards,
Slobodan
 
This is my development machine - and it's 2003 Enterprise Server as that's
what we use at work. I develop the automated server builds for deployment.

Why I've done is create a small partition on the first drive (just after the
C: drive, in disk management). It's formatted FAT32 and I've re-built the
image using that drive.

Boot.ini has a new line:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="WinXPe"

When I boot it said missing NTOSKRNL.EXE - so I added that from another XP
system, then it wanted HAL.DLL - so I added that, now it says there are
missing loader DLLs. Rather than copy the whole lot in I'm obviously doing
something wrong so I'll stop there.

Perhaps using 2003 Server wasn't a good move. It's only on there because
before I installed XPe I used that machine for build testing.

I'll go back and read the manual and watch the video.

thanks very much for your help - I think I've moved on, closer to getting to
a working build.
 
This is my development machine - and it's 2003 Enterprise Server as that's
what we use at work. I develop the automated server builds for
deployment.

I guessed that.
Why I've done is create a small partition on the first drive (just after the
C: drive, in disk management). It's formatted FAT32 and I've re-built the
image using that drive.

This is ok, but you mentioned second HDD.
Boot.ini has a new line:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="WinXPe"

This is ok for second partition on first disk.
When I boot it said missing NTOSKRNL.EXE - so I added that from another XP
system, then it wanted HAL.DLL - so I added that, now it says there are
missing loader DLLs. Rather than copy the whole lot in I'm obviously doing
something wrong so I'll stop there.

In TD you didn't set paths to D:
Perhaps using 2003 Server wasn't a good move. It's only on there because
before I installed XPe I used that machine for build testing.

It should be ok to use Windows 2003.
I'll go back and read the manual and watch the video.

This can't hurt you.

Best regards,
Slobodan
 
Slobodan Brcin said:
This is ok, but you mentioned second HDD.

What I did was use a 200MB FAT32 partition on the primary drive instead of
the 2nd drive.
This is ok for second partition on first disk.
I've switched to using the 2nd partition on the primary drive rather than
the (slave) 2nd drive.
In TD you didn't set paths to D:
I set TD to build on to D: - in case there were settings within it.

What I've found is that the NTOSKRNL.EXE, HAL.DLL, etc., files aren't in
D:\Windows\System32. I seem to have got a pretty full build - about 80MB -
but those essential files are missing.

I've got another machine with XP on which I may use instead. Failing that I
can rebuilt this box with XP as all my main testing is now done in VMWare -
so base OS isn't important for that development.

Lots of thanks for your help - I'll get there this weekend I'm sure !
 
Hi Jonathan,
What I've found is that the NTOSKRNL.EXE, HAL.DLL, etc., files aren't in
D:\Windows\System32. I seem to have got a pretty full build - about 80MB -
but those essential files are missing.

This is almost impossible! You can't get even basic build without those
files! So you have some other problem non related to XPE or TD.

Are you sure that your build folder is D:\ ?
Or you use some other folder and then move files manually?

I'm using second technique, because TD requires empty destination folder
before build. And sometimes I use Windows XP on second partition for network
deployment. So I can't have empty C:


Best regards,
Slobodan
 
Did you add the minlogon or winlogon sample macro? Try
adding one of these. If you think you have everything
setup properly in the settings on TD then you may be
missing one of these components.

Robert
 
All sorted. My development 2003 Server box had DTC disabled. Started
switching services back on Dist. Link Tracking Client, and DTC first, then
re-created image. Now has NTOSKRNL.EXE in System32 and boots. Sorry to put
you lot out - I'd forgotton that this build was based on our File Server
build, but TD uses MSDE so needs to be treated like our SQL build instead,
eg. DTC on. I guess there's a lesson there for me too as occasionally
people build Application Servers (those running the odd service for an
application) by using our Data/Apps server build role - so they could come
up against this too.
Best wishes, and many thanks for the help.

Jonathan
 
Jonathan,
I'm a relative beginner as well and I still am grasping for the "big
picture." However in my various learning exercises I did something
similar with a 2nd drive. The procedure comes from a tutorial in the
documentation named "Building and Deploying a Run-Time Image." After
copying the files to your 2nd drive, try editing boot.ini on your
primary drive by adding:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP
Embedded" /fastdetect

You do not need to mark the 2nd drive active.

I know exactly what you mean when you say you have read the
documentation but still don't know what you are doing. I find the
documentation to be a loose collection of incomplete and sometimes
contradictory information. And when something goes wrong, the error
messages are largely useless in identifying the problem and pointing to
a fix. As an example, when I followed this procedure I kept getting the
message "disk read error" every time I tried to boot the embedded
system. It ultimately turned out that the reason was that my 2nd disk
had a corrupt master boot record. Days of my time could have been saved
by a more intelligent error message. Useless error messages have wasted
days of my time on other occasions.

I long for the days when software came with a printed and well edited
manual rather than an uncoordinated collection of documents written by
many different authors.

Roger
 
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