Some Notes on the Machines

Grub Customizer is a great GUI configurator for GRUB, currently the most common boot loader for ix86 and AMD64 hardware. The Customizer has issues compiling on some setups, especially later versions of gcc. Here’s what I found to do:

1. Download grub-customizer-4.0.6.tar.gz, unpack.
2. ccmake .
3. Resolve any missing libraries et cetera. ccmake . again until nothing missing.
4. Look for these files:
   ./CMakeFiles/grub-customizer.dir/flags.make
./CMakeFiles/grubcfg-proxy.dir/flags.make
5. Add -std=gnu++11 as first item to CXX_FLAGS in both files.
6. cmake .
7. Again resolve any missing libraries et cetera. cmake . again until nothing missing.
8. make
9. sudo make install

Things have gotten rather fragmented and unclear since the BartPE days. Here’s one:

http://www.aomeitech.com/pe-builder.html

A really good toolset:

http://winbuilder.net

Some very good instructions to set NumLock on for the XP login screen are here:

http://windowsxp.mvps.org/numlock.htm

Setting certain BOOT.INI switches will improve OS performance in Windows Server 2003 and XP, if there is 1G or more RAM present:

http://blogs.technet.com/marcelofartura/archive/2006/09/14/3gb-pae-awe-what-basic.aspx

The Super Grub Disk:

http://supergrub.forjamari.linex.org/

http://users.bigpond.net.au/hermanzone/SuperGrubDiskPage.html

is a disk (there appear to be several variations out there) which can fix boot problems on Windows and Linux too. Especially useful after a Ghost hard drive transfer, to fix the MBR and active partitions etcetera. It comes as an ISO suitable for burning to CD, and also as a floppy image. The best floppy image manipulator for Windows out there, I believe, is a special ‘dd’, here:

http://www.chrysocome.net/dd

Sometimes, right after XP or 2000 are installed, at first boot, there will be an error like one of these:

• Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:\system32\hal.dll.Please re-install a copy of the above file.
  
• Winnt_root>\System32\Hal.dll missing or corrupt:Please re-install a copy of the above file.
  
• Cannot find \Windows\System32\hal.dll
  
• Cannot find hal.dll

HAL.DLL is the Hardware Abstraction Layer library. In Windows 2000 and Windows XP, there are several possible HAL.DLL’s which Windows may install. If a message such as the above is seen at first bootup, it is very likely that the Windows installer put in the wrong one for your hardware. It tries to figure it out automatically, and sometimes, fails, especially if your copy of Windows is older and your hardware, newer. Especially this is relevant with multiprocessor systems and ACPI (and lack thereof).

Happily, there is a way to override the auto-figure-it-outer. When the installer first runs, it asks if we want to press F6 to install third-party drivers for RAID or hard drives et cetera. Don’t press F6 — press F5! You will then be able to choose which HAL.DLL to use.

More info is here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/299340