[Unattended] "Datentragerfehler" ??

[Chris Carr]

Hi all,

I'm new to unattended, and have got quite a long way. I booted from PXE,
went through all the partitioning hassle to create a 2GB FAT partition
without trashing the rest of the drive, answered all the questions to
set up unattend.txt, watched it copy all the installation files from the
server, and rebooted. I allowed unattended to replace the MBR.

On rebooting it just says

Datentragerfehler

and then "press any key to restart" in German. I thought this might have
something to do with whatever replaced the MBR, so I used a linux rescue
disk to reinstall grub2 and created a menu entry for /dev/sda1 using
chainloader +1. Now the grub2 menu comes up on reboot but selecting that
entry results in exactly the same error, so I now think the problem must
be with ntldr or ntdetect (since the only files on the root of the
partition are ntdetect.com, ntldr and boot.ini).

I've read everything I can find on google, but I don't think I've seen
anything quite like this. One message[1] details the same error message,
but seemed to have a problem setting up the 2GB partition, which I
haven't (it mounts perfectly under Linux, and everything is present and
correct if only it could boot). Another one[2] talks about disk geometry
and SATA drives, and might be related to my problem, but I don't
understand enough of it. Is there something I need to install on the
partition, or something I need to tell grub2, to make the ntldr/ntdetect
understand its disk environment?

Grateful for any hints,

Chris

[1]http://www.mail-archive.com/unattended-***@lists.sourceforge.net/msg07370.html
[2]http://www.mail-archive.com/unattended-***@lists.sourceforge.net/msg01525.html

[tovis]

Post by Chris Carr
Hi all,
I'm new to unattended, and have got quite a long way. I booted from PXE,

went through all the partitioning hassle to create a 2GB FAT partition
without trashing the rest of the drive, answered all the questions to
set up unattend.txt, watched it copy all the installation files from the
server, and rebooted. I allowed unattended to replace the MBR.

Post by Chris Carr
On rebooting it just says
Datentragerfehler
and then "press any key to restart" in German. I thought this might have

something to do with whatever replaced the MBR, so I used a linux rescue
disk to reinstall grub2 and created a menu entry for /dev/sda1 using
chainloader +1. Now the grub2 menu comes up on reboot but selecting that
entry results in exactly the same error, so I now think the problem must
be with ntldr or ntdetect (since the only files on the root of the
partition are ntdetect.com, ntldr and boot.ini).

Post by Chris Carr
I've read everything I can find on google, but I don't think I've seen

anything quite like this. One message[1] details the same error message,
but seemed to have a problem setting up the 2GB partition, which I
haven't (it mounts perfectly under Linux, and everything is present and
correct if only it could boot). Another one[2] talks about disk geometry
and SATA drives, and might be related to my problem, but I don't
understand enough of it. Is there something I need to install on the
partition, or something I need to tell grub2, to make the ntldr/ntdetect
understand its disk environment?

Post by Chris Carr
Grateful for any hints,
Chris
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For Developers, A Lot Can Happen In A Second.

Post by Chris Carr
Boundary is the first to Know...and Tell You.
Monitor Your Applications in Ultra-Fine Resolution. Try it FREE!

http://p.sf.net/sfu/Boundary-d2dvs2

Post by Chris Carr
_______________________________________________
unattended-info mailing list
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/unattended-info

Hi Chris!
I'm not sure but does anything on your disk, where you suppose to install
windows (also which windows)? What grub does on target disk?
I'm always install XP using only one clean(!) disk as a target, prepared
using this Linux command:

# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/"target disk" bs=512 count=1000

Boot from PXE prepare a new MBR and partitions, and I'm not sure but
installation partition is 4G, not 2G.
Using disk with already installed something, I think is impossible (in
real I'm using OEM installation disk which installer supports only a clean
disk, may be some win9x or DOS, but no Linux, no grub ...)

Regards
tovis

[Chris Carr]

Post by tovis
Hi Chris!
I'm not sure but does anything on your disk, where you suppose to install
windows (also which windows)? What grub does on target disk?
I'm always install XP using only one clean(!) disk as a target, prepared
# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/"target disk" bs=512 count=1000
Boot from PXE prepare a new MBR and partitions, and I'm not sure but
installation partition is 4G, not 2G.
Using disk with already installed something, I think is impossible (in
real I'm using OEM installation disk which installer supports only a clean
disk, may be some win9x or DOS, but no Linux, no grub ...)

Hmmm. The unattended step-by-step guide[1] says this:

"Whether you pick an automated scheme or partition by hand, you need to
make sure that the C: drive is an active 2G FAT partition. The automatic
choices do this by first creating the NTFS partitions, then deleting the
first one and replacing it with a 2G FAT partition, then activating it.
(If you choose to partition by hand, you will need to perform this
procedure by hand.)

If any actual changes are made to the partition table, the script will
reboot the machine so that 2G FAT partition will become the C: drive,
which is where Windows will be installed. During OS installation,
Windows Setup will convert the FAT partition to NTFS and expand it as
far as possible without clobbering other partitions."

So I don't think it matters what is on the rest of the disk, as long as
the first partition (hda1 or sda1) is prepared correctly.

I am also pretty certain that the first part of unattended (copying over
the installation files) fails if the partition is not correctly
prepared. I had this problem earlier in the process, before I noticed
that I had created an NTFS partition on sda1 instead of a FAT
partition.

So, having got past that, I'm pretty confident that the partition is
correct. But it is a SATA drive (Maxtor 160GB) and I think there is
something I need to add to the boot sequence to make sure that it can
boot correctly. I am at the limit of my knowledge here though, so I'm
not really sure what to do.

Thanks for the reply - very grateful for any other comments or ideas.
I'm trying to install WinXP, by the way.

Regards,

Chris
--
[1]http://unattended.sourceforge.net/step-by-step.php