WinSetupFromUSB and Plop / GA-P35DS4 / Weird problem

[NanoBot]

Hi everybody,

I found my way to Plop through this thread over at the msfn-board: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/120444-how-to-install-windows-from-usb-winsetupfromusb-with-gui/

I prepared a USB thumbdrive as installation source for Windows XP for my daughters netbook and there everything works fast and fine. Now I tried to boot the very same USB stick on my desktop computer and unfortunately I noticed, that the desktop PC boots from USB only in USB 1.1 mode. I also tried to use a real USB-HDD instead of the thumb drive with the same result. This makes the Windows setup very slow until the internal USB drivers from the setup are loaded. So I gave the version of Plop which is included with WinSetupFromUSB a try and there I ran in a weird problem.

My PC has a GA-P35DS4 rev. 1.0 mainboard, a Q6600 CPU, the ICH9R is in raid mode, 2 GByte of ram and a GT240 vga card. First, I tried to let grub load the plpbt.bin version which came with WinSetupFromUSB, but all I got was a MEM E820 error message. Then I exchanged the plpbt.bin against the 5.0.11-2 and later against the plpbt-5.0.12-test1 versions. Those two versions indicate that the plpbt.bin is found and loaded as a "dummy" kernel, but then the PC hangs there and nothing happens. I also tried to force plpbt.bin into text mode using the bios fonts, but this does not help. The entry in the menu.lst to make grub load plpbt.bin as a dummy kernel looks like that:

Code Select Expand


title EXPERIMENTAL - Start PLoP as kernel
ls /usbdrive.tag || find --set-root --ignore-cd /usbdrive.tag
kernel /plpbt.bin


Now the weird thing: If I make grub to load plpbt.img as a floppy image, it starts, I can choose to boot from usb and I get returned to the grub menu, like it should be. Nevertheless, when starting the Windows XP setup after that, only a few files get loaded and then the XP setup freezes. If I am loading an acronis.iso or a memtest86+ floppy image after plpbt.img, they load fine and fast; so the USB controller clearly is working in 2.0 mode.

The menu list entry to boot plpbt.img looks like that:

Code Select Expand


title EXPERIMENTAL - Start PloP from floppy image
find --set-root /plpbt.img
map --mem /plpbt.img (fd0)
map --hook
chainloader (fd0)+1
rootnoverify (fd0)
map --floppies=1
boot


Does anybody here have an idea what's going wrong here ? Any hints are appreciated.

Edit: I would like to add another question: If I am defining profiles and paritions, where is the information about them, e.g. the label of the created profiles and partitions, stored ? Is it possible to create, store and use profiles and partitions even if Plop is installed in the bios as a replacement for the network boot module ? Btw. I think I found how to edit an Award 6 bios to exchange the network boot module against Plop. But of course making a mod bios would only be useful if Plop could be configured the same way i can when it is installed in the mbr.

C.U. NanoBot

[Elmar]

Edit: I would like to add another question: If I am defining profiles and paritions, where is the information about them, e.g. the label of the created profiles and partitions, stored ? Is it possible to create, store and use profiles and partitions even if Plop is installed in the bios as a replacement for the network boot module ? Btw. I think I found how to edit an Award 6 bios to exchange the network boot module against Plop. But of course making a mod bios would only be useful if Plop could be configured the same way i can when it is installed in the mbr.

the data is stored after the program sectors on the hard disk. for the optionrom version you have to configure the profile settings with plpcfgbt before you create the boot manager rom file

regards
elmar