XP Brain Teasers

[MYstIC G]

Righty, where to begin... Well my shuttle decided that the Windows XP system directory had gone for a walk this morning. As I'm using Serial ATA which isn't directly supported by the mainboard I have to load a device driver from a floppy in order for XP's install to correctly identify my Hard Disk.

This is becoming somewhat of a pain in the arse as I don't have a floppy drive in the machine at present & don't wish to once again disassemble the bastard.

So I'm hoping you lot can give me some helpful suggestions or help with the following questions:

1. Can the WinXP installer read floppy drives that are connected via USB (i.e. can I buy a USB floppy drive & just connect it as and when this scenario may occour in the future)?
2. Can the WinXP install CD-Rom be modified so that my Serial ATA driver is on there (i.e. can I copy my WinXP cd contents and driver onto one disk & boot from that)?
3. As my shuttle supports booting from a USB device, has anyone ever created a bootdisk for the XP install & say loaded it and run it from a USB pen drive successfully?
4. I've got Mandrake Linux on another partition, is there any way I can use it (or download an addition to use on it) to check (& maybe even repair) the NTFS file system on my XP partition?
5. Are there any other alternatives I've not considered?

Cheers Peeps
Regards
Rob / MYstIC G

 

[Shovel]

I can't give definate answers, but I think these may be of some worth, so here goes:

Re: 2. You might try reading up on Unattended install CDs. MSFN have an excellent guide. They essentially allow you to modify everything that's on the install CD - you can set it to install 3rd party apps automatically, replace system files (hacked uxtheme.dll is popular) and therefore, it may give the ability to include a SATA driver automatically. I'm sorry I can't offer any more than "maybe" - I'm yet to try it myself.

Re: 4. There are ntfs kernal modules available. Basically, it's all rather experimental. Read Only ntfs support is fairly usable, but Read/Write is rather touch-and-go due to Microsoft not having publicised the ntfs specification. However, if you have nothing to lose on that partition anyway then you could give it a go and see where it takes you.
Try: http://www.jankratochvil.net/project/captive/ and http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/ for some Google sourced possibilities.

With regards to the other points: USB access etc. I have an incling that it /will/ but I don't know whether it is dependent on Windows SP version, motherboard version of whether it's just bollocks.

Hope that helps out though.

Ben

 

[MYstIC G]

*hugs*

Thanks for all this Shovel, I'm now working on a full install CD with the info from that site which even gave me a link with how to do a CD with _exactly_ my SATA driver incorporated ( http://greenmachine.msfnhosting.com/READING/addraid.htm ).

*clicks to add reputation*



Thanks
Rob / MYstIC G

 

[Xavier]

1. yes

2. yes, and this is your best option.

Which SATA do you have?

Xav

 

[MYstIC G]

*humps Xav*

I've done 2 now & it's a Silicon Image 3112

Suffice to say now knowing how easy it is to build an install CD, I'll be doing one that goes for full drivers, etc sometime soon.

 

[Shovel]

Aye, they're great aren't they