CF card windows install

**brendan** · 05-07-2008, 08:14 PM

ok, so this is just a cheap test with cheap equipment may that be my first statement, im using a $5 fleabay sata to CF adapter and $25 8GB (280X) cf card, whether or not it goes that fast i don't know.

anyway, it works fine as another hard drive in windows i can format it and play with it, i just even 'installed' XP on it, however after XP goes thorugh the first install progress, you know, with the blue screen and the yellow bar, it then has to re-boot to go into the pretty part of the install, it won't do that and is telling me

"filling missing/corrupt please re-install:<windows root>\system 32\ntoskrnl.exe."

hmmm, more playing around will ensue, also i have tried simply ghosting a working install on to it, to no avail, and it works fine with partition magic, i can format to NTFS or fat32 and create partitions.

yes i know about this website: http://granturing.blogspot.com/2006/09/starting-up.html and am slowly going through it but i was hoping it woudl be able to install a normal XP and jsut pretend this was a normal hard drive, and i know i should install the no-write program.

**Machinehead** · 05-08-2008, 08:16 AM

From what I've read you can't just install windows to a CF card. This part of granturing.blogspot is what you really need to read and use:

Deployment

You want to get your XP installation as small as possible so that it can fit onto a CF card. I recommend using nLite. Most likely you’ll have to choose between a 512MB or 1GB card. Do some research and try to find the fastest CF card you can afford. I’ve only used SanDisk Ultra II, Extreme, and Extreme III cards. Keep in mind that if you plan on using hibernation, your space requirements will increase by the amount of RAM you install in the system. So if you’ve got an XP installation that takes up 320MB and you’ve got a 256MB stick of RAM you’ll use up about 576MB of space. You’ll need to get a 1GB card, but if you don’t need hibernation you can make do with a 512MB card and save some money. You’ll also need to buy a CF-IDE adapter. Do a search on Google and you’ll find quite a few different adapters out there. The cheaper adapters out there may not support the faster speeds of the SanDisk cards. I’ve used adapters from acscontrol.com and logicsupply.com. The best way to go about this is to first set up your system on a regular hard drive. Load up all your drivers, 3 party tools, make configuration changes, and of course install EWF and MinLogon. Once you’re happy with the system you need to initialize your CF card. Microsoft recommends using a FAT file system to improve the performance of EWF and minimize writes to the drive. You may have no choice depending on the type of CF card you get. Off-the-shelf CF cards come configured as removable drives and can only be formatted as FAT. Windows XP will not allow you to partition and format a removable drive with NTFS, so you must use FAT. You can sometimes get a special utility from the manufacturer to configure the drive to be fixed. XPe includes a special tool called Bootprep.exe that is used to make FAT formatted disks able to boot into Windows XP. To setup a CF disk using FAT you’ll need a DOS boot disk with fdisk.exe, format.com, and bootprep.exe.

1. Start by installing your CF card as the master drive on the primary controller and your hard drive on the secondary controller.
2. Boot into Dos and partition your disk, then format it using the command “format c: /s”. This will set the disk to boot into Dos. Do this first to make sure your BIOS and CF card are set up correctly. Reboot, and if all goes well the system will boot into Dos from the CF disk. If not then you need to check your BIOS settings.
3. Once you’ve confirmed that your CF card boots successfully, reformat the card by just using “format c:” (no /s switch) and then finally run Bootprep. The command for Bootprep is “bootprep /dc” (the /d switch specifies which drive to use).

If you are using a fixed disk and plan to use NTFS then just simply use Windows Disk Management to partition the drive and format it.

Now you are ready to copy your XP install over. Use whatever method you prefer, whether it’s booting into Knoppix, Dos, or another XP installation. Just make sure that you copy all hidden and system files and keep the attributes intact.

Once the transfer is done connect your CF card to your system, remove all other hard drives, and boot up. As long as all the files were copied over properly it’ll start booting into your XP install just as it did from the hard drive. Once the system boots up take a look around and make sure everything is working right. Bring up a console and check that EWF is running. If you’re going to be making significant changes to the system you may want to consider doing it on the hard drive first and then redeploying to the CF disk that way you can clean out log files, temp directories, and any other leftover junk that’ll take up precious space on your CF disk.

**brendan** · 05-08-2008, 11:24 PM

ok, so i've read through the above posting, and thanks for pointing it out 'cause it got me seraching, and granturing many times and it's starting to come together but it seems to be written more towards somebody who knows what they're doing, so during more research i came across this website: http://www.windowsdevcenter.com/pub/...ex.html?page=2
which simply walks me/you though the process, i sure do hope this works.

on a side note, on the last page of the guide i found it's pretty much exactly the same as the above text, hmmmmm

i am using this post as my aid: http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/winn...ot-screen.html

i believe i am using the same DOS cd he used, when i type format c: /s it says invalid drive, or format not supported

i've tried using C insted of c aswell as not putting in /s

when i run fdisk it says my drive is C: and status is N

i don't really know what im doing but i hope i have conveyed the information

**SFiorito** · 05-09-2008, 08:13 AM

The page from WindowsDev Center is based off the chapter I wrote for Car PC Hacks.

Most likely you're problem is the CF adapter you're using. As you'll see on my site, I stress not to settle for cheap Chinese knockoffs from ebay. Those things rarely work as they should. You don't give the model of CF card you're using?

If DOS can't handle the disk, Windows cetainly won't. Just go to my site and read through the EWF instructions. Just follow the steps one by one.

**Machinehead** · 05-09-2008, 08:26 AM

That guide you posted is written by the same guy, that's why it reads so similarly.

I wonder if the format is being dodgey because it doesn't support fat32.

You probably should ask SFiorito he has a lot more experience with this stuff than I do.

**brendan** · 05-09-2008, 09:28 PM

ok, new problem, you very well could be correct my adapter could be poo.

anyway now i am trying a sandisk ultra 2 2gB and i type format c: /s/x and it says "insufficient memory to execute FORMAT" darn. whats it mean?

ok well during my typing of this post i googled my problem and came up with http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000230.htm and followed the 3 steps, and have i suppose determined my adapter is poop, darn, but it would format while in windows, why not in dos

although it was dodgy in partition magic.

http://www.logicsupply.com/products/fdm44xdi1g these look cool, good/bad?

**SFiorito** · 05-10-2008, 12:47 AM

http://granturing.blogspot.com/2008/...liability.html

DIGItonium · 05-11-2008, 10:03 PM

Installing XP works perfectly fine, and so far my favorite adapter is from Addonics. It works with SATA so you'll get some hot swap capability. Check the Classifieds.

**dyne** · 05-11-2008, 11:08 PM

Originally Posted by SFiorito

As you'll see on my site, I stress not to settle for cheap Chinese knockoffs from ebay. Those things rarely work as they should.

I have 2 cheapo ebay ones (a CF->40pin ide and CF->44 pin ide) and they both work perfectly fine

**brendan** · 05-22-2008, 01:07 AM

ok, time to go at this again, i got the same CF/IDE adapter the guy from my mentioned thread had, i also have a proper 2Gb ultra 2 CF card.

what DOS do i use!!!!???

i have tried 2 DOS CD's so far and the one sorta works to format the disk but the other one won't, where do you recommend i get my DOS disk from? no floppy disk drive in system.

i am using this site: http://www.allbootdisks.com/download/iso.html and DOS 6.22 from their download ISO images list.