"Debarting to adventure :-)"

Now one thing I didn't mention in last night's entry (you'll note the date stamp of 11:59pm, heh) is how my server is now hosed. I finally scanned it for viruses, something I should have done a long time ago. It found a bunch and of course it failed to successfully clean them. So I had it delete all infected files. Which made the system no longer capable of logging in. I could actually get to the logon screen and put in a password. No blue screens or anything (which you would expect even from Windows 2000 Server after hosing vital system files). So "a-hah!" I thought, "I'll just restore the system via my ghost images! that's why they're there after all...". But alas, no! The ghosts also contained viruses in vital system files. Even the very first one from last July! It's all my sisters fault for using Kazaa. And my fault for leaving open full-access shares on my server and not install an anti-virus on both hers and mine before she had the chance to infect us all.

But that's neither here nor there. Well possibly here. I now have to re-install my stupid OS. But it's not even that easy, ya see. I don't have a bootable OS CD so I have to do what I did originally: install NT Workstation 4.0 (that CD is bootable), install the service pack, upgrade to Windows 2000 Pro, install the service pack, upgrade to Windows 2000 Server (horray!). Should only take 12 hours. I was in the middle of trying to install a fresh copy before I decided to go from scratch. You can run the install program from within Windows and it will reboot and go through he setup. But it wouldn't give me the option to format the partition, just delete the system folder. That doesn't much now does it? Actually the setup files it copied was the reason why it wasn't formatting now that I think about it. So I put the HDD in my other computer as a slave, saving the temp files from the setup and formatted the drive that way then copied back the setup temp files. I don't think it's going to work though. So I've got plans for the next 12 hours!

Now I could use this as an opportunity to "slip stream" the Windows 2000 service pack into the setup files and burn to a bootable CD. I am in fact sophisticated enough I could accomplish something like that. But it could in fact take the same 12 hours to actually figure out and I just assume get it done. Right? Ah forget it. Maybe I'll just play that MUD for the next 12 hours instead :-). OS installs for 12 hours! Now that's FUN!!

Update: 4:10pm

Well I've just finished making my SP4 slipstreamed bootable Windows 2000 Server installation CD. It only took 2 hours to finally complete it, and I only have 3 or 4 coasters to add to the collection :-). I did in fact much prefer this to the 12-hour version. It's so nice to be able to actually complete a task I set out to accomplish. Now all I have to do is re-setup the domain, install an anti-virus and making a workable Ghost image (deleting the tainted ones).

Update: 8:40pm

Now I've not only accomplished my installation CD thing I've actually done two things: created a bootable WindowsXP CD via Bart's Preinstalled Environment (BartPE) bootable live windows CD/DVD. The only reason I hadn't done it sooner is because I never did do a "slip stream" of XP's service pack 1 into the XP installation files. And a lot of the reason that never got done was because I kept getting read errors when I tried to copy the i386 directory from the CD to the HDD. But thanks to my unsuccessful attempt at making a custom-brew bootable Windows98 CD (see the archive under February 2004) I was into DOS enough I figured out how to use the XCOPY utility to copy the whole i386 directory from the CD to the HDD -- continuing if there were errors. Ahah! See the command line IS good for something. Normal Windows drag-and-drop copy doesn't have that feature.

So when I went to use the BartPE program I got one error the first time through because it couldn't find a file. So I simply did a search of my HDD drive for it and copied that file to the location the program expected it to be. Tried again and it worked. I now have my BartPE ISO ready for the burning. I've tried it on 3 computers so far (the server, my sister's which is a Celeron with 64 megs of RAM so I wasn't expecting much and my Dad's) and only my server worked. Not sure why my Dad's didn't work. Now I'd just like to further customize the installation. I HIGHLY recommend trying this out if you have any interest or need for a bootable Windows XP what so ever. For the record the XCOPY command I used to copy all the files was:

xcopy i386\*.* /s /y /k /h /c F:\WinXP-ProSP1a\I386\

Run on the command line from the directory immediately above the i386 directory. In other words if I wanted the files in c:\i386 and my CD-ROM drive was D: the command prompt would say

C:\>

and the command would be:

xcopy d:\i386\*.* /s /y /k /h /c c:\I386\

You could get even fancier and add a > output.txt to the end that way you can see what errors you ended with at your leisure and copy the files manually either from your HDD or search the Internet (I'm sure somebody somewhere has it).

I think that's enough lessons in MS-DOS for today!

Now I'm hoping I can use this successful command line used in the creation of the ISO to create the Win98 CD although this now seems more and more an unreachable dream if it seems anything. But I can't give up! I can go on hiatus but I can't give up. I've been a non-competent C++ programmer for about 7 years now, that doesn't mean I've given up...I'm sure I'll be the same when I'm 35...but not given up!

Oh look I've finally found a forum dedicated to boot from CD! And there's some sort of cult following behind BartsPE I just mentioned: tons and tons of plug-ins for further discussion. And I found this another article on bootable Windows 98 CDs that I haven't seen before. Perhaps this is host for this most hopeless of projects.

I can only really think of one more thing: a posting I made to slashdot.org scored something higher than a 2! Yes, I now have a post scoring a staggering 4. But just a 4! A "4, funny"! And I all I did was post a link and comment how said link had kept me sane during long blocks without tech support calls. You can read my post if you want. The site I linked to was Bastard Operator from Hell, one of the best sites ever, at least to overly frustrated tech support types.

  ¶ 2:10 PM