Possibly slightly on topic as I am looking for a DIY solution :-)
As usual, posting here because of the wealth of IT knowledge.

Briefly, Windows XP has an historical flaw.
Despite having the underlying capability to handle USB devices at boot time
it doesn't configure the USB drivers fully until part way through the boot.
This means that you can start booting from a USB HDD if your BIOS supports
it but XP then does something to USB which means it won't read from a USB
HDD during the critical parts of the boot sequence.
Sadly, the drivers are all there, just not declared in the correct way and
in the correct places of the configuration files and registry.

Google has found me far too much information but there are so many competing
resources out there that it is proving very difficult to find a simple
definitive solution.
I have a long description about how to produce a modified XP installation
disc which will populate the configuration files and registry during the
first part of the install.
I am now wondering this; as I have completed the first stage of the
installation of XP which involves formatting the USB HDD to NTFS, copying
the XP files across, and populating the registry hives could I modify the
configuration files and registry entries on the HDD directly instead of
having to go through a number of steps to unpack the ISO, modify the files,
then rebuild a new ISO before creating a new CD?

So before I embark on a long and frustrating sequence of investigations I
thought I would ask if anyone else on the NG had solved the problem, and if
so which route they took.

To be absolutely clear, I want to install to and run XP from a 40Gb external
USB HDD.
I don't want to use the HDD to install on my internal drive (which at 4Gb
SSD in an EEE PC 900 is too small to comfortably run XP).
I have an external USB CD/DVD drive to use for my XP CD.
I want to use XP because I have bought the OEM CD which proved to me that
running XP from the SSD is too much like hard work.

Any advice and previous experience more than welcome.

Cheers

Dave R
--
No plan survives contact with the enemy.
[Not even bunny]

Helmuth von Moltke the Elder

(\__/)
(='.'=)
(")_(")

On 14/09/2011 13:40, David WE Roberts wrote:
Possibly slightly on topic as I am looking for a DIY solution :-)
As usual, posting here because of the wealth of IT knowledge.

Briefly, Windows XP has an historical flaw.
Despite having the underlying capability to handle USB devices at boot
time it doesn't configure the USB drivers fully until part way through
the boot.
This means that you can start booting from a USB HDD if your BIOS
supports it but XP then does something to USB which means it won't read
from a USB HDD during the critical parts of the boot sequence.
Sadly, the drivers are all there, just not declared in the correct way
and in the correct places of the configuration files and registry.

Google has found me far too much information but there are so many
competing resources out there that it is proving very difficult to find
a simple definitive solution.
I have a long description about how to produce a modified XP
installation disc which will populate the configuration files and
registry during the first part of the install.
I am now wondering this; as I have completed the first stage of the
installation of XP which involves formatting the USB HDD to NTFS,
copying the XP files across, and populating the registry hives could I
modify the configuration files and registry entries on the HDD directly
instead of having to go through a number of steps to unpack the ISO,
modify the files, then rebuild a new ISO before creating a new CD?

So before I embark on a long and frustrating sequence of investigations
I thought I would ask if anyone else on the NG had solved the problem,
and if so which route they took.

To be absolutely clear, I want to install to and run XP from a 40Gb
external USB HDD.
I don't want to use the HDD to install on my internal drive (which at
4Gb SSD in an EEE PC 900 is too small to comfortably run XP).
I have an external USB CD/DVD drive to use for my XP CD.
I want to use XP because I have bought the OEM CD which proved to me
that running XP from the SSD is too much like hard work.

Any advice and previous experience more than welcome.

Cheers

Dave R

AIUI, you can only boot via USB using a FAT32 file system, ie NOT ntfs.

I could be wrong and no doubt others will correct me.

Another Dave

On Sep 14, 1:40*pm, "David WE Roberts" wrote:
Possibly slightly on topic as I am looking for a DIY solution :-)
As usual, posting here because of the wealth of IT knowledge.

Briefly, Windows XP has an historical flaw.
Despite having the underlying capability to handle USB devices at boot time
it doesn't configure the USB drivers fully until part way through the boot.

David WE Roberts wrote:

To be absolutely clear, I want to install to and run XP from a 40Gb
external USB HDD.
I don't want to use the HDD to install on my internal drive (which at
4Gb SSD in an EEE PC 900 is too small to comfortably run XP).
I have an external USB CD/DVD drive to use for my XP CD.
I want to use XP because I have bought the OEM CD which proved to me
that running XP from the SSD is too much like hard work.

Not the way you say you want to do it, but I am running XP Home on an
EEE PC701, with the 4Gb SSD.

The sneaky bit was installing 2 Gig of RAM, and using a 32Gig SDHC card
for programs and data. I also formatted the SSD as NTFS and compressed
the filesystem. There is no swap needed with this much RAM in spite of
Windows' dire warnings, so I set the swap size to zero. I also remove
the backup folders whenever Windows updates itself using a program
called, rather boringly, Windows Update Remover. Disable your browser
caching, too. The only gotchas are that system restore and hibernation
aren't possible and things slow right down when the free space on C:
drops below about 400Meg.

Another possibility with the EEE PC 701s is to replace the wifi card
with a PCI Express SSD, and that will give you up to 64 Gig of space,and
you can use a USB dongle for wifi. Some early ones actually have a spare
PCI Express socket on the motherboard, and they all have the solder pads
and space to fit one.
--
Tciao for Now!

John.

Another Dave wrote:

AIUI, you can only boot via USB using a FAT32 file system, ie NOT ntfs.

I can't see any reason why it would matter, other than NTFS having a
very high overhead on small sized drives.

On 14/09/2011 17:19, Andy Burns wrote:
Another Dave wrote:

AIUI, you can only boot via USB using a FAT32 file system, ie NOT ntfs.

I can't see any reason why it would matter, other than NTFS having a
very high overhead on small sized drives.

What I mean is that all the BIOSs that I've come across can only boot
from FAT file systems via USB.

Another Dave

"a i" wrote in message
...
On Sep 14, 1:40 pm, "David WE Roberts" wrote:
Possibly slightly on topic as I am looking for a DIY solution :-)
As usual, posting here because of the wealth of IT knowledge.

Briefly, Windows XP has an historical flaw.
Despite having the underlying capability to handle USB devices at boot
time
it doesn't configure the USB drivers fully until part way through the
boot.
This means that you can start booting from a USB HDD if your BIOS supports
it but XP then does something to USB which means it won't read from a USB
HDD during the critical parts of the boot sequence.
Sadly, the drivers are all there, just not declared in the correct way and
in the correct places of the configuration files and registry.
snip
IIRC I used the method described here the one time I needed to do
this:-

http://preview.tinyurl.com/487zpnn

Sadly AFAICT this uses BartPE which installs a radically cut down version of
XP - designed for the times when the USB flash drives were very small.
I would prefer a full install of XP with the USB issue resolved.

Thanks for the link, though.

--
No plan survives contact with the enemy.
[Not even bunny]

Helmuth von Moltke the Elder

(\__/)
(='.'=)
(")_(")

"John Williamson" wrote in message
...
David WE Roberts wrote:

To be absolutely clear, I want to install to and run XP from a 40Gb
external USB HDD.
I don't want to use the HDD to install on my internal drive (which at 4Gb
SSD in an EEE PC 900 is too small to comfortably run XP).
I have an external USB CD/DVD drive to use for my XP CD.
I want to use XP because I have bought the OEM CD which proved to me that
running XP from the SSD is too much like hard work.

Not the way you say you want to do it, but I am running XP Home on an EEE
PC701, with the 4Gb SSD.

The sneaky bit was installing 2 Gig of RAM, and using a 32Gig SDHC card
for programs and data. I also formatted the SSD as NTFS and compressed the
filesystem. There is no swap needed with this much RAM in spite of
Windows' dire warnings, so I set the swap size to zero. I also remove the
backup folders whenever Windows updates itself using a program called,
rather boringly, Windows Update Remover. Disable your browser caching,
too. The only gotchas are that system restore and hibernation aren't
possible and things slow right down when the free space on C: drops below
about 400Meg.

Another possibility with the EEE PC 701s is to replace the wifi card with
a PCI Express SSD, and that will give you up to 64 Gig of space,and you
can use a USB dongle for wifi. Some early ones actually have a spare PCI
Express socket on the motherboard, and they all have the solder pads and
space to fit one.
--
Tciao for Now!

John.

With you until you mentioned a 64Gb SSD - being of poor and 'umble stock
this is not financially attractive.
Besides, I already have the USB HDD.
I have programs and data moved over to the second 16Gb SSD - however this is
reportedly too slow to run XP effectively if the OS is installed there.
I also have the drive compressed and regularly clear out all but the latest
restore point.
It is the windows updates that are killing me, despite regular attempts to
sweep up behind them.
I could also get a fast SDHC card but the EEE PC 900 treats this as USB
attached at which point my bucket springs a familiar hole.

I originally planned to nLite the XP install and reinstall on the 4Gb SSD
but if I could just install on the 40Gb USB HDD it would make life so much
easier.
However, life was not meant to be easy.

Cheers

Dave R
--
No plan survives contact with the enemy.
[Not even bunny]

Helmuth von Moltke the Elder

(\__/)
(='.'=)
(")_(")

David WE Roberts wrote:

"John Williamson" wrote in message
...
David WE Roberts wrote:

To be absolutely clear, I want to install to and run XP from a 40Gb
external USB HDD.
I don't want to use the HDD to install on my internal drive (which at
4Gb SSD in an EEE PC 900 is too small to comfortably run XP).
I have an external USB CD/DVD drive to use for my XP CD.
I want to use XP because I have bought the OEM CD which proved to me
that running XP from the SSD is too much like hard work.

Not the way you say you want to do it, but I am running XP Home on an
EEE PC701, with the 4Gb SSD.

The sneaky bit was installing 2 Gig of RAM, and using a 32Gig SDHC
card for programs and data. I also formatted the SSD as NTFS and
compressed the filesystem. There is no swap needed with this much RAM
in spite of Windows' dire warnings, so I set the swap size to zero. I
also remove the backup folders whenever Windows updates itself using a
program called, rather boringly, Windows Update Remover. Disable your
browser caching, too. The only gotchas are that system restore and
hibernation aren't possible and things slow right down when the free
space on C: drops below about 400Meg.

Another possibility with the EEE PC 701s is to replace the wifi card
with a PCI Express SSD, and that will give you up to 64 Gig of
space,and you can use a USB dongle for wifi. Some early ones actually
have a spare PCI Express socket on the motherboard, and they all have
the solder pads and space to fit one.
--
Tciao for Now!

John.

With you until you mentioned a 64Gb SSD - being of poor and 'umble stock
this is not financially attractive.

It's not essential, and I don't use one.

Besides, I already have the USB HDD.
I have programs and data moved over to the second 16Gb SSD - however
this is reportedly too slow to run XP effectively if the OS is installed
there.

There I can't help, as I've only got the 4GB SSD and a SDHC card slot.
But I doubt the SSD is *that* much slower than a normal laptop HD. The
gotcha seems to be that on the EEE, all the drives except the boot drive
are USB mounts. My boot SSD has 3.21 GB used (compressed from 4.83 GB),
and half a Gig of that is the antivirus database.

I also have the drive compressed and regularly clear out all but the
latest restore point.
It is the windows updates that are killing me, despite regular attempts
to sweep up behind them.

Windows Update Remover (Free, no nags) will remove 99% of the crud that
Windows update leaves behind, at the cost of not being able to uninstall
any updates.

http://www.brothersoft.com/windows-x...er-190541.html

If you don't use it to remove the backup folders, it will also uninstall
individual Windows updates if they're causing problems.

I could also get a fast SDHC card but the EEE PC 900 treats this as USB
attached at which point my bucket springs a familiar hole.

Whwether it's fast enough depends on what you want to do. My 701 is fast
enough for browsing and office work, the main problem is the screen
size, which is way too small at 800x480. If I can be bothered, it's also
acceptable for a bit of photo editing or ripping the odd CD.

I use it as my day to day machine when I'm touring and haven't got
enough power available to run the all-singing, all-dancing dual core
Toshiba. Using the USB mounted DVD drive, it will even play DVD movies
full screen using VLC. I have edited a short (30 second) video sequence
on it, but that was more a proof that it could be done than a
pleasurable experience.

I originally planned to nLite the XP install and reinstall on the 4Gb
SSD but if I could just install on the 40Gb USB HDD it would make life
so much easier.
However, life was not meant to be easy.

True, and when you think you've got it cracked, they change the rules. I
found that nLite didn't help that much, by the way. There is a limit
below which XP becomes unusable, and you can already do that by using
the install options on the XP CD.

Keep trying, and you'll find that the EEE PCs are more capable than they
seem to most people.

Now, if anyone knows how to format a SDHC card using NTFS, then I could
compress the drive and free enough space for a couple of movies. It
might even let it run a bit faster, as the bottleneck is the USB interface.

--
Tciao for Now!

John.

In message , David WE Roberts
writes
Possibly slightly on topic as I am looking for a DIY solution :-)
As usual, posting here because of the wealth of IT knowledge.


Not to denigrate the knowledge of the esteemed contributors to uk.d-i-y
:-) but the denizens of uk.comp.homebuilt are often pretty good with
these sorts of questions
--
Chris French

On Wed, 14 Sep 2011 22:45:25 +0100, John Williamson
wrote:

Now, if anyone knows how to format a SDHC card using NTFS,

Either FAT32 or NTFS...
To assure of the kosherness of the driver, go to this page first and
follow the link/instructions to extract the genuine HP utility...

http://archive.cnblogs.com/a/2016957/

On 14/09/2011 21:55, David WE Roberts wrote:

"John Williamson" wrote in message
...
David WE Roberts wrote:

To be absolutely clear, I want to install to and run XP from a 40Gb
external USB HDD.
I don't want to use the HDD to install on my internal drive (which at
4Gb SSD in an EEE PC 900 is too small to comfortably run XP).
I have an external USB CD/DVD drive to use for my XP CD.
I want to use XP because I have bought the OEM CD which proved to me
that running XP from the SSD is too much like hard work.

Not the way you say you want to do it, but I am running XP Home on an
EEE PC701, with the 4Gb SSD.

The sneaky bit was installing 2 Gig of RAM, and using a 32Gig SDHC
card for programs and data. I also formatted the SSD as NTFS and
compressed the filesystem. There is no swap needed with this much RAM
in spite of Windows' dire warnings, so I set the swap size to zero. I
also remove the backup folders whenever Windows updates itself using a
program called, rather boringly, Windows Update Remover. Disable your
browser caching, too. The only gotchas are that system restore and
hibernation aren't possible and things slow right down when the free
space on C: drops below about 400Meg.

Another possibility with the EEE PC 701s is to replace the wifi card
with a PCI Express SSD, and that will give you up to 64 Gig of
space,and you can use a USB dongle for wifi. Some early ones actually
have a spare PCI Express socket on the motherboard, and they all have
the solder pads and space to fit one.
--
Tciao for Now!

John.

With you until you mentioned a 64Gb SSD - being of poor and 'umble stock
this is not financially attractive.
Besides, I already have the USB HDD.
I have programs and data moved over to the second 16Gb SSD - however
this is reportedly too slow to run XP effectively if the OS is installed
there.
I also have the drive compressed and regularly clear out all but the
latest restore point.
It is the windows updates that are killing me, despite regular attempts
to sweep up behind them.
I could also get a fast SDHC card but the EEE PC 900 treats this as USB
attached at which point my bucket springs a familiar hole.

I originally planned to nLite the XP install and reinstall on the 4Gb
SSD but if I could just install on the 40Gb USB HDD it would make life
so much easier.
However, life was not meant to be easy.

Cheers

Dave R

Been there done that on a 901. The 16GB SSD is *far* slower than the 4GB
one, and not worth using for boot. I agree that the updates are a PITA
for filling up the disk.
In the end I gave up with Micro****e, and put on EasyPeasy:
http://www.geteasypeasy.com/ and more recently Ubuntu.
EasyPeasy was good, and quick, but was intermittent with WPA networks.
Ubuntu seems better in this respect, but version 11.04 is a bit slow. I
may switch it to the 10.x release soon.

Linux + OpenOffice on an Eee is a fairly good combination for day-to-day
use.

Alan.

Grimly Curmudgeon wrote:
On Wed, 14 Sep 2011 22:45:25 +0100, John Williamson
wrote:

Now, if anyone knows how to format a SDHC card using NTFS,

Either FAT32 or NTFS...
To assure of the kosherness of the driver, go to this page first and
follow the link/instructions to extract the genuine HP utility...

http://archive.cnblogs.com/a/2016957/

The URL given on that page actually points to a BIOS update.

I've got the proper program now, and will be checking it shortly.

--
Tciao for Now!

John.

On Fri, 16 Sep 2011 17:44:21 +0100, John Williamson
wrote:

Grimly Curmudgeon wrote:
On Wed, 14 Sep 2011 22:45:25 +0100, John Williamson
wrote:

Now, if anyone knows how to format a SDHC card using NTFS,

Either FAT32 or NTFS...
To assure of the kosherness of the driver, go to this page first and
follow the link/instructions to extract the genuine HP utility...

http://archive.cnblogs.com/a/2016957/

The URL given on that page actually points to a BIOS update.

And if you bother reading the fecking instructions...

I've got the proper program now, and will be checking it shortly.

"AlanD" wrote in message
...
On 14/09/2011 21:55, David WE Roberts wrote:

"John Williamson" wrote in message
...
David WE Roberts wrote:

To be absolutely clear, I want to install to and run XP from a 40Gb
external USB HDD.
I don't want to use the HDD to install on my internal drive (which at
4Gb SSD in an EEE PC 900 is too small to comfortably run XP).
I have an external USB CD/DVD drive to use for my XP CD.
I want to use XP because I have bought the OEM CD which proved to me
that running XP from the SSD is too much like hard work.

Not the way you say you want to do it, but I am running XP Home on an
EEE PC701, with the 4Gb SSD.

The sneaky bit was installing 2 Gig of RAM, and using a 32Gig SDHC
card for programs and data. I also formatted the SSD as NTFS and
compressed the filesystem. There is no swap needed with this much RAM
in spite of Windows' dire warnings, so I set the swap size to zero. I
also remove the backup folders whenever Windows updates itself using a
program called, rather boringly, Windows Update Remover. Disable your
browser caching, too. The only gotchas are that system restore and
hibernation aren't possible and things slow right down when the free
space on C: drops below about 400Meg.

Another possibility with the EEE PC 701s is to replace the wifi card
with a PCI Express SSD, and that will give you up to 64 Gig of
space,and you can use a USB dongle for wifi. Some early ones actually
have a spare PCI Express socket on the motherboard, and they all have
the solder pads and space to fit one.
--
Tciao for Now!

John.

With you until you mentioned a 64Gb SSD - being of poor and 'umble stock
this is not financially attractive.
Besides, I already have the USB HDD.
I have programs and data moved over to the second 16Gb SSD - however
this is reportedly too slow to run XP effectively if the OS is installed
there.
I also have the drive compressed and regularly clear out all but the
latest restore point.
It is the windows updates that are killing me, despite regular attempts
to sweep up behind them.
I could also get a fast SDHC card but the EEE PC 900 treats this as USB
attached at which point my bucket springs a familiar hole.

I originally planned to nLite the XP install and reinstall on the 4Gb
SSD but if I could just install on the 40Gb USB HDD it would make life
so much easier.
However, life was not meant to be easy.

Cheers

Dave R

Been there done that on a 901. The 16GB SSD is *far* slower than the 4GB
one, and not worth using for boot. I agree that the updates are a PITA for
filling up the disk.
In the end I gave up with Micro****e, and put on EasyPeasy:
http://www.geteasypeasy.com/ and more recently Ubuntu.
EasyPeasy was good, and quick, but was intermittent with WPA networks.
Ubuntu seems better in this respect, but version 11.04 is a bit slow. I
may switch it to the 10.x release soon.

Linux + OpenOffice on an Eee is a fairly good combination for day-to-day
use.


Thanks for confirming the slowness of the 16Gb SSD.
I am as usual between a rock and a hard place.
16Gb too slow.
4Gb too small.
External USB a PIA to set up.
Unfortunately I need Windoze to run some specific utilities when I am
travelling and not lugging my 15" portable.

Linux sems to run O.K. off the 16Gb drive - I have a tailored version of
Ubuntu on there (can't remember where I got it) for EEE PCs and it is pretty
good.

I think I will have to fight my way to an XP install on the USB HDD but over
a longer time period.
--
No plan survives contact with the enemy.
[Not even bunny]

Helmuth von Moltke the Elder

(\__/)
(='.'=)
(")_(")

Grimly Curmudgeon wrote:
On Fri, 16 Sep 2011 17:44:21 +0100, John Williamson
wrote:

Grimly Curmudgeon wrote:
On Wed, 14 Sep 2011 22:45:25 +0100, John Williamson
wrote:

Now, if anyone knows how to format a SDHC card using NTFS,
Either FAT32 or NTFS...
To assure of the kosherness of the driver, go to this page first and
follow the link/instructions to extract the genuine HP utility...

http://archive.cnblogs.com/a/2016957/
The URL given on that page actually points to a BIOS update.

And if you bother reading the fecking instructions...

It works, and claimed to format the card as NTFS, then when I started
writing to it, it gave a delayed write failure error for both the file
and the MFT after half a dozen Gigabytes.

Back to the drawing board. I may use something like Truecrypt to set up
a compressed partition. Or I may need to get hold of a 64GB thumbdrive
and solder an extra socket onto the motherboard.


--
Tciao for Now!

John.

On Sat, 17 Sep 2011 22:03:21 +0100, John Williamson
wrote:

It works, and claimed to format the card as NTFS, then when I started
writing to it, it gave a delayed write failure error for both the file
and the MFT after half a dozen Gigabytes.

Odd; I've been using it quite happily to format a couple of 16GB SDHC
cards as NTFS and FAT32 alternately. Perhaps a compatibility problem,
as raised its head recently with an SD/CF converter card - it wouldn't
read in my Canon or PC card reader, but can be read fine in my old
Fuji; which is ok, as I simply take the SD card out of it.