In Easy2Boot with the DPMS2 package added, I can install XP as follows:
1. Boot to USB drive (grub4dos)
2. create F6 txtsetup.oem disks (one has firadisk, one has ahci driver)
3. Patch txtsetup.oem file with firadisk registry patch to load the ISO
4. map ISO as sector map using grub4dos (map /xp.iso (0xff))
5. swap hdds so internal hdd is drive 0
6. boot from ISO
If I use a USB Flash drive for this, then it all works perfectly.
However, if the E2B USB drive is a USB hard disk (I tried both an 80gb FAT32 USB-HDD and a 2TB NTFS USB-HDD) then I get BSOD 0x0000007B error as soon as it switches to Windows in text-mode setup.
If I load the ISO into memory in step 4 (map --mem /xp.iso (0xff)) then it works OK.
Here are results by using F6 manually to ensure only the correct drivers are loaded (using direct iso sector map, not --mem):
Acer 7740G AHCI Mode:
iasotor7.sys+Fira from USB HDD boot = BSOD 7B (works if use --mem)
iastor7.sys+Fira from USB Flash boot = OK
Acer 7740G IDE Mode:
Fira from USB HDD boot = OK
Fira from USB Flash boot = OK
If, instead of FiraDisk, I use WinVblock+iastor7.sys in AHCI mode then it is OK
So it appears that FiraDisk does not work when I boot from a USB HDD but does work when I boot from a USB Flash drive.
I tried both NTFS and FAT32 USB drives and the problem followed the same pattern.
This is a great shame because FiraDisk can use direct sector mapping and thus provides a low-ram solution for systems with <512MB. WinVBlock does not (for GUI-mode you need to load the ISO into memory using --mem in grub4dos).
Any ideas anyone?
P.S. For completeness (as expected these don't work but they do give the same 7B error at the same point):
IDE mode: no Fira/WinV driver = BSOD 7B
AHCI mode: iastor7.sys only = BSOD 7B
AHCI mode: Fira only = BSOD 7B
Edited by steve6375, 06 July 2013 - 06:27 PM.