Forum: USBoot

on Sat 30 of Jan., 2010 03:18 CET, by Zosso

what steps in each phase of USBoot should I take in order to have the most compatable USB XP for booting on foreign harware?

I cant find enough details on each steps options to know what is best in this case (foreign harware compatibility)

is there available a FAQ, help file, or manual for USBoot?

great work Gerd! Ive been using USBoot alot and recently I am trying to expand my possibilities booting on foreign hardware with a multiboot USBoot XP

thanks

on Sat 30 of Jan., 2010 06:04 CET, by Zosso

also, would frsh instal of XP then cancel all prompts to update drivers help for maximum compatibility?

and disable all non critical devices in device manager?

my plan is to build a multiboot USBoot HDD with one copy of USBoot from all my machines.

each copy with max boot.ini options and extra harware profiles.

Im looking for any tips into how I can increase chances from booting on foreign harware.

(maximum compatibiliy)

after boot success on new hardware I use First Defense ISR from leapfrog software to copy the OS while its running and save it so I can add to my boot options for future hardware that my exsisting set-up might not boot.

any and all help is much apreciated!

thanks

on Sat 30 of Jan., 2010 18:23 CET, by admin

>what steps in each phase of USBoot should I take in order to have the most compatable USB XP for booting on foreign harware?

Usually the default settings should be the best choice.

Keep in mind that you will have to select a compatible HAL when booting on a system that is not supported by the actual default HAL.

However you may try some of the following options:

Step VII: install only generic drivers of classes 'USB' and '1394'

Step X: reinstall present devices of class USB preferring generic device IDs

Step XI: reinstall all present devices preferring generic device IDs (! error-prone !)

Each of them may prevent problems that may occur if more specific drivers are used to drive a device.

But beware of using in Step XI. It may help in rare cases but it also brings the risk of introducing new issues.

>is there available a FAQ, help file, or manual for USBoot?

No, actually there is not!

> and disable all non critical devices in device manager?

Could you please explain this more in detail.

Gerd

on Sat 30 of Jan., 2010 19:59 CET, by Zosso

> > and disable all non critical devices in device manager?
>
> Could you please explain this more in detail.
>
> Gerd

yes, on the IDE HDD that I start phase-I from, first I install fresh XP then before phase-I, in the device manager, disable things such as the display card, sound card, network card, etc. any devices that might be different in foreign hardware and non critical for running XP.

also, I do not understand the boot options:
"ACPI APIC MP HAL"
"ACPI APIC UP HAL"
"ACPI UP HAL"
"EISA UP HAL"

what reason to choose each one of these options?

what does ACPI, APIC, MP, UP, and EISA mean?

thanks

on Sat 30 of Jan., 2010 21:08 CET, by admin

> yes, on the IDE HDD that I start phase-I from, first I install fresh XP then before phase-I, in the device manager, disable things such as the display card, sound card, network card, etc. any devices that might be different in foreign hardware and non critical for running XP.

Unless root or software enumerated devices are concerned this should not be of help.

> also, I do not understand the boot options:
> "ACPI APIC MP HAL"
> "ACPI APIC UP HAL"
> "ACPI UP HAL"
> "EISA UP HAL"
>
> what reason to choose each one of these options?

These are about the selection of different HALs.

EISA UP should be running on the broadest range of systems. However it does not support more than one logical/physical CPU.

exclaim

And though it seems to work in many cases, Microsoft explicitly discourages switching from a non-ACPI HAL like EISA to an ACPI HAL.

exclaim

So you may use EISA as some kind of last resort, but as the logical structure of the device tree differs between non-ACPI and ACPI HALs you may experience unwanted side effects.

ACPI UP is the most general ACPI HAL with uniprocessor support.

ACPI APIC UP adds support for advanced interrupt controllers but will not work on non-APIC systems.

ACPI APCI MP adds multiprocessor support. It should also run on ACPI APIC single processor systems but with a slight loss in performance.

Switching HALs within the ACPI range should work without major problems.

If your system hangs immediately after the bootloader has loaded the boot core's modules (use "obeserve bootmessages") I would consider this a strong indication for a HAL mismatch!

For more information on HALs, ACPI, APIC and so on simply have a go with your favourite search engine ...

Gerd

on Sun 31 of Jan., 2010 00:50 CET, by Zosso

thanks Gerd. do you have any other suggestions or tips to increase the odds for success booting USBoot on foreign hardware? anything will help.

I have tested some with the HAL options but sometimes if one fails it seems to render the USB device un-bootable until reformating and copying USBoot again. does this happen to you also?

what I may try is a multi boot USB set up with each HAL option in a seperate USBoot OS with boot.ini

I think then I can reboot without a reformat in these cases. then I could try a different HAL set and then only need to delete and recopy the crashed USBoot OS but not reformate the whole USB device.

I cant thank you enough for this tool either! your work has allowed me to make progress with my system set-up in less time.

otherwise I would probably still be struggling with Dietmar and Ngines methods! I continue to study them but now at a relaxed pace since USBoot works an everything I have tried it on so far.

sometimes its just a matter of the right combination!

thanks Gerd

Forum: USBoot

questions about building USBoot XP for use on foreign harware

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