208 replies to this topic

[supraspecies]

I have an issue installing Windows XP on Gigabyte motherboard. Gigabyte has always been an @$$ booting from USB and it didn't even see my flash drive. Solved that by formatting with HP USB format tool - whatever good it did. Now I boot into installation just fine, but before getting to drive selection, setup complains that it cannot find older version of Windows and wants the disc. If I insert the disc, installation proceeds.

 

So the issue seems to be that for whatever reason setup doesn't recognize installation as if it was run from a CD. Also, when I select boot device at startup, USB drive is shown in the list of hard drives (not USB-HDD). Could that be an issue? Like... Windows considers it installation from a hard drive and not USB/CD? Thus, it requires it? Just a wild guess.

 

*Same* USB drive works just fine on my laptop (Acer Eiger mobo) and installs XP with no problem. So it seems to be yet *another* issue with Gigabyte mobos, but how do I get around it?

 

P.S. Using Rufus 1.3.2.

Edited by supraspecies, 29 April 2013 - 01:02 PM.

[steve6375]

Listing the USB drive as a  hard disk is fine.

Could it be due to the contents of the hard disk in the Gigabyte? What is on it?

Is you internal HDD set up as SATA AHCI or Leegacy?

[supraspecies]

I thought about hard drive contents as well: it has Windows 7 on it. And that was my first guess: it detects there is Windows, but cannot verify which Windows is it, so it's complaining. And that was the very first theory I checked on a laptop - it also has Windows 7 on it. But I didn't have that issue on laptop, so I dismissed that theory. Guess I'm gonna format the drive now and see if the problem will disappear. Will report in a bit.

 

EDIT:

 

No go. Still the same. "Setup cannot find a previous version of Windows". And wants to check if I qualify for an upgrade. And yes - this is a full version of XP which installs fine on my laptop from the same USB. Any way to get around this? Even rip that screen out of installation altogether?

Edited by supraspecies, 29 April 2013 - 02:05 PM.

[supraspecies]

Solved my problem by switching to WinSetupFromUSB. It works fine and doesn't ask for disc on my Gigabyte mobo. After creating a bootable USB drive with Windows XP on it, I noticed that it has a small-sized ISO image there as well. Maybe that's what helps it bypass the disk requirement screen?

 

In any case, it would be really nice if Rufus could add compatibility with Gigabyte motherboards. My friend has the same issue as well, and she's on a Gigabyte mobo too. So I assume it's not an isolated case. I'm not saying this problem manifests itself on every Gigabyte mobo out there, but on some (many?) - definitely.

[Akeo]

Well, my first issue is that I don't have a Gigabyte system where I could try to install XP on.

Bear in mind that not every developer out there, especially providers of free Open Source apps, have the backup of a Microsoft, Intel or Google, with regards to development, testing and support facilities...

 

Second issue is that my time is way too short these days, with regards to Rufus, to spend it on features that are likely to benefit only a limited set of people, especially compared to features that will benefit a larger group, and I have to prioritize what I'm actually going to look into.

 

Owners of problematic Gigabyte systems who still want to install XP are not expected to be that numerous, especially as XP will cease to be officially supported by Microsoft pretty soon (and it is now almost 12 years old). Also, I think I stated that before, but the real issue with XP installation is that it was never designed to be installed from USB, so every app out there that's doing XP from USB is applying some kind of workaround to try to make it work, with each workaround having its advantages and its flaws. Further refining these workarounds for the oddball cases is expected to be costly, either in time or hardware or both... which is hard to justify when someone's developing a free app in their limited spare time.

Instead, I would very much like to be able to rely on the help of people with problematic systems to investigate the cause of the issue and provide a possible fix...

 

So, I hope you'll excuse me for trying to turn that last statement around and state that it would be nice if Gigabyte mobo owners could investigate the issue and maybe provide some clues with regards to how the XP installer should be patched. Otherwise, it's unlikely I'll be able to fix this behaviour from within Rufus...

[supraspecies]

As far as "limited set of people" goes, thatI do understand, I understood that from a very beginning, that's why I said that from my observation, WinSetupFromUSB uses a small XP ISO to bypass that screen. I'm afraid that's about all the hints I can come up with. And I did solve the problem for myself, I just though you might know there is an issue with XP install out there.

 

As far as "limited set of people" goes, that's (almost?) everyone who uses a Gigabyte mobo, which is an incredibly big number of people. This issue still stands even on Gigabyte SLI-supporting mobos, which I assume aren't too old. But you are right about XP support, so I guess there may not be a real need to go on in that direction.

 

In any case, as I said, I have sorted the problem out for myself and reported the best way I could. Thanks for your attention and good luck!

[gbrao]

I use Rufus 1.3.2 to install Win 7/8 from USB. I do that quite often thanks to reboot (esp wimb). I have only one UFD to install Win, so I developed a tool that allows me to install more than one version of Win 7/8 form the same Rufus UFD ( still testing it ).

 

I would like to do the same for installing different versions of Win XP. I noticed the MBR installed on the UFD seems to depend on the XP ISO used. In this image :

 

http://i.imgur.com/qPqNhx2.png

 

the top two are from two nLited XP ISOs, the bottom right is with the original untouched XP ISO.

 

Could you please tell me what those differences are ?

[steve6375]

Easy2Boot will allow you to install Windows from any ISO. Just add all your Windows Install ISOs and go!

[gbrao]

i know. but : i like the 'press any key ..' feature & i want to easily add/modify files like ei.cfg, PID.txt, autounattend.xml. plus the files don't have to defragmented ...

[Akeo]

Hi, gbrao,

 

the top two are from two nLited XP ISOs, the bottom right is with the original untouched XP ISO.

 

Could you please tell me what those differences are ?

 

unless the USB flash drive in the bottom right dump is the same size as the other 3, I'm not seeing much of anything abnormal about the MBR.

The 85 DF 06|B2 21 05|87 0D 22 are bytes from the MS Disk Signature, which gets a different value every time you create the flash drive.

See the table "Structure of a modern standard MBR" here.

 

The 3F FE vs 7B EB difference is from the field that contains the address of last absolute sector in partition (see the table "Layout of one 16-byte partition entry" at the same page), which seems to indicate that your last MBR is from a drive that has a different size from the other 3. Likewise, the last set of difference has to do with the number of sectors in partition, which is also expected to be different if the drives differ in size.

 

So, all in all, I don't see anything in the MBR that is dependent on the image used, and I didn't code anything in Rufus for that either. It all seems to have to do with the size of your drive, as well as the unique disk signature, that gets created each time your format a new drive.

 

Are you saying you are seeing errors during the installation process of nLite images? If so, can you detail what they are?

 

I think I had a mail report from someone saying they had some trouble with nLite processed ISOs, but if this is confirmed, I'm pretty sure the issue is with the file content (such as a setup file that Rufus expects to find or patch and that is different from official XP with nLite) rather than the the MBR or partition boot record. I also have at least one report from someone using nLite without issues.

 

If someone uses nLite and experiences an issue with Rufus, I'm kind of hoping they can also investigate the difference that could be causing it. This could be done by keeping a copy of the files extracted by Rufus from official XP, and use that to replace the ones from the nLite USB until it installs. At any rate, if you see errors with nLite, please indicate precisely where they occur and what they are.

[gbrao]

thanks. i would like to boot more than one version of XP from a single UFD. when i saw the differences in rufus-xp mbr, i thought that would not be possible. so you are saying i can install a version of XP from a rufus-UFD  even if the UFD was created using another XP ?  

i have tested my utility for booting more than one version of W7/8 from the same UFD. It worked well. I will make it available soon, in fact it can be used with a UFD made with any tool similar to Rufus.

one question, this may sound silly, do you think it would be possible to install W7/8 from a UFD that has a rufus-xp mbr ? rufus-xp mbr ends up chainloading 'bootmgr', right ?

 

EDIT : I was able to install Win 8 from a UFD with a Rufus-XP MBR. So it should be possible to add versions of XP to the UFD too ( in addition to Win 7 & 8 ).

[Akeo]

so you are saying i can install a version of XP from a rufus-UFD  even if the UFD was created using another XP ?  

 

Yeah, I see no reason why that shouldn't work. From what I recall, all the XP PBR (partition boot record) does is look for bootmgr, so whether it's the one from the original install or the one from a new set of files, it shouldn't change anything.

 

i have tested my utility for booting more than one version of W7/8 from the same UFD. It worked well. I will make it available soon, in fact it can be used with a UFD made with any tool similar to Rufus.

 

Sounds great. And I very much like the idea of having a separate tool from Rufus handling multiboot. It's much better to separate tasks that can be separated in tools that can be chained, than trying to do everything in a single tool. For what is worth, I'm going to introduce limited support for commandline in the upcoming version, which might be useful to you, and if needed, I could also look into adding support to install a bare MBR/PBR for XP, so that you can add your files (just like I have an option to do something similar for Syslinux).

If there's anything you'd like to see in Rufus, to help with your tool, let me know.

 

one question, this may sound silly, do you think it would be possible to install W7/8 from a UFD that has a rufus-xp mbr ? rufus-xp mbr ends up chainloading 'bootmgr', right ?

 

All the PBR should do is try to locate a BOOTMGR on the drive and run it, so whether that BOOTMGR was replaced, and is from XP orWin7/8  shouldn't make much of a difference as far as booting is concerned. Plus as you tested...

 

EDIT : I was able to install Win 8 from a UFD with a Rufus-XP MBR. So it should be possible to add versions of XP to the UFD too ( in addition to Win 7 & 8 ).

 

...this seems to work. Now, to switch between Win7 and XP, you'd probably need to create a BOOTMGR wrapper that can select and invoke either the (renamed) BOOTMGR from XP or the BOOTMGR from 7/8, since I'd be very surprised if they are interchangeable. But I guess you already know that.

[gbrao]

uhhh .. my utility is very simple. all it does is rename files. but it's working really well (for me at least).

 

basically the utility 'tags' all files belonging to one version of Windows with a prefix. so if you choose a prefix 'W7U32' for one version it renames all the files & directories of that version as W7U32+file/dir name. there are less than 8 files & directories so it's fast. it stores the info in a ini file - so you can choose which version to make 'active' (using the tag you assigned for it). plus the usual add & remove options.

 

btw : my utility runs from windows so it needs to be run prior to using the UFD to install windows.

 

what i was doing when i wanted to install only win 7/8 :

- prepare the ufd using rufus.

- use bootice to install grub4dos to the pbr of the first (active) partiton on the ufd.

- use the grub4dos menu to chainload bootmgr.

- one grub4dos menu entry was to boot a win xp pe; from which i could run my utility if necessary.

 

EDIT : If you would like to have a peek : https://sites.google...in2usb_beta.zip . i still haven't put up any documentation on the site but the program is quite easy to use.

[gbrao]

Add additional versions of Windows to a Rufus UFD.

 

version 1.00 of addwin2usb : https://sites.google...usb/information

[Akeo]

@gbrao, thanks for the links. I'll try to take a look when I have a chance.

 

In other news, a beta version of Rufus v1.3.3 is now available.

 

Since there was some major overhaul of the drive handling routines from 1.3.2, I'd be grateful for anyone willing to test and report if they see anything broken with the new version.

 

Besides the drive handling, v1.3.3 also brings the following changes:

• Add support for raw/unpartitioned drives
• Add (limited) commandline support, to specify an ISO image.
  Basically, if you specify -i <ISO_PATH>  when invoking Rufus, it will automatically open the ISO selected.
• The cheat mode to list fixed drive (Alt-F) is now also an option in the UI, in the advanced format section. The option also enables the detection of unpartitioned drives).
  
• Fix broken detection of unsupported ISO images

If you are subscribed to the release channel, you should get notified about the new beta, and prompted for download, if you use Rufus within the next few days. Or you can also use About → Update → Check Now.

[Akeo]

Just gonna point out that Rufus v1.3.3 has now been released.

[Akeo]

And there's a beta of Rufus v1.3.4 now available at the usual location.

 

The main changes are:

• Support for Syslinux v5. This should work for both ISOs (though I haven't found a public ISO using Syslinux v5 yet - if anybody knows of one, I'm interested!) as well as to install a blank Syslinux, when the advanced options are selected:
  
• Improved drive handling, to fix the longstanding "media is in use" issue some people seem to be having
• Switched to the much better LZMA compression in UPX (Rufus is compressed using UPX to make the binary smaller). This means that even with the extra 55 KB of Syslinux v5 files that have been added since last version, Rufus is barely 6KB larger...

As always, you are more than welcome to test and report any issue you find.

[psychoboust]

Hello,

 

I have tested Rufus 1.2.0 - 1.3.3 - 1.3.4 beta 3 and still the EULA issue with windows XP.

I have tested several ISO (downloaded from MSDN website or generated from original CD ROM)

 

I check and all file on the usb stick are lowercase.

 

Any help ?

[Akeo]

First of all, please make sure that you use ISOs of XP that include SP2 or SP3. As far as I remember, XP and XP SP1 won't work.

 

I just re-tested fr_windows_xp_professional_with_service_pack_3_x86_cd_x14-80440.iso (one of the French Windows XP SP3 ISOs from MSDN) with the latest Rufus, and found no issues. I didn't go through a full install, but got past the EULA screen and got the HDD selection as expected.

 

Do you have multiple hard drives on your target machine by any chance?

If so, you should either disconnect all HDDs except the one you want to install XP to, or change the BIOS ID to something else than 0x80.

 

Oh, and the files being lowercase is not an issue.

[psychoboust]

OK I have downloaded fr_windows_xp_professional_with_service_pack_3_x86_cd_x14-80440.iso to make some test.

I only test on computers with only one hard drive.

First result with SATA AHCI enabled : it complains about EULA

If SATA ATA is enabled instead it goes to the disk selection.

 

Now I use the DELL OEM XP SP3 CD which include AHCI drivers:

TXTSETUP.SIF -> iastor = "Intel Matrix Storage Manager"

 

And it's ok, it goes to the disk selection with SATA AHCI enabled

 

So all is ok !

 

I will continue to test, because now I don't understand what went wrong last time I test !

 

 

If so, you should either disconnect all HDDs except the one you want to install XP to, or change the BIOS ID to something else than 0x80.

 

You mean something else than 0x81 ? because when I choose XP ISO, Rufus automatically check 0x81

 

 

Oh, and the files being lowercase is not an issue.

 

Yes I know but as you said : "Rufus v1.3.1 has now been released, mainly to fix XP support" & "you shouldn't try to ignore ISO9660" & "it expects to find lowercase files"

 

I just confirmed that file was in lowercase on the USB Key, because I understand you said UPPERCASE was an issue ( like in rufus 1.30).

 

Thanks for this great tool.

[psychoboust]

I made test on several computers.

It works for some computer and on another computer I get bluescreen of death with Error stop 7B (problem with harddrive controller)

I have this issue on Dell Optiplex 320 and Gx520 (no AHCI support on those computer).

But it works on Dell Laptop D620 (also with no AHCI support).

 

I try with  fr_windows_xp_professional_with_service_pack_3_x86_cd_x14-80440.iso and DELL OEM iso.

I also try to put  0x80 instead of  0x81 (by the way 0x80 provide EULA issue on my other computer).

 

Thanks for your help

[ilko]

A modified ntdetect.com cures that 0x7B issue on many Dells:

http://www.msfn.org/...009#entry738009

[Akeo]

psychoboust, I'm glad you identified the issue with the EULA.

 

As to old Dell computers being a hit and miss with XP installation from USB, I'm well aware of that issue. I actually have an old Dell Optiplex GX260 that produces the 0x7B error when using Rufus to create the USB.

As pointed out by ilko, the issue seems to be that something with the hardware/low-level software makes these machines incompatible with the default ntdetect.com when booted from USB.

 

However, the patched ntdetect.com pointed out above is:

• not something I can include in Rufus. This is proprietary copyrighted code from Microsoft, that nobody outside Microsoft has a license to redistribute.
• rather heavy (it's not a simple modification of ntdetect.com from the XP ISOs, but instead seems to be based on a completely different ntdetect) and (as far as I can tell) undocumented, so, unless I get data on what exactly was patched to eliminate error 0x7B, I can't try to use the existing ntdetect.com found on the XP ISO and patch it (which would solves the redistributable issue with copyrighted code above).
• doesn't work with Rufus as is. While it does avoid the 0x7B failure on my GX260 machine, I get an EULA error later in the process. So even if we were able to work around the issue of embedding/downloading the original patched file, the XP installation process will still fail.

Unfortunately, I don't think I'll have a chance at trying to figure what exactly this patched file does, that makes the 0x7B error go away, before I have a lot of time on my hand (which is unlikely to happen before XP is officially retired...). So if anybody has any information as to:

• What the official ntdetect.com was, upon which this patch is based, so that I can get the minimal diff OR
• What needs to be patched in an official ntdetect.com to avoid the 0x7B code

I would be very grateful.

[Zoso]

does rufus not function when it is started from a booted USB HDD? it worked fine booted from internal IDE drive but when I try to use it from USB HDD the selection boxes are blank. this is probably a safety feature but I just wanted to ask to be sure.

I was trying to load an ISO onto a USB Flash drive while booted from a USB HDD.

tried to different computers (using same OS booted from USB HDD)

anyway.. impressive tool, Ive used it once for WES7IBW.ISO fast and easy!


thanks

[Akeo]

Yes, if ran from an USB drive, Rufus will remove it from the list to prevent users formatting it.

This is pretty much the same feature as Windows preventing you to reformat your system drive while Windows is running, which makes sense.

For the record, this was Enhancement Request #143.

 

PS: I'm glad you like Rufus. Thank you very much!