Unintended Consequences...(Long)

[MultimediaMan]

This morning I had a wild hair to format and reinstall Windows XP on my Fileserver (based on a Gigabyte BX2000+, which has an integrated Promise U66 Controller...). I am comfortable with installing Windows, and knew my motherboard well (So I thought).

In the BIOS, I had boot order choices as follows:
A,C,CDROM
CDROM,A,C
LS/ZIP,C
U66,A,C*
A,C,SCSI
D,A,CDROM
E,A,CDROM...etc. etc...

Since I was planning to use the U66 Controller as the boot adapter, and a had a DVD-ROM and CDR/W occupying the onboard IDE channels, I knew I would need to boot from a CDROM. Sagely, I decided to set my BIOS to CDROM,A,C and installed from the CD-ROM (Little did I know...).

All went as planned: I selected the HDD on the U66 Controller, formatted and copied files...all was normal until Windows Setup rebooted the first time: No Active Partition Found!

Oops. OK, I need to boot off of the U66 Controller, right? OK, set the BIOS to U66, reboot: Error, hal.dll is missing or corrupt.

Damn.

Alrighty then...Set BIOS to SCSI,A,C and try that way: Nope, No Active Partition Found!

S#!t.

A,C,SCSI... No Active Partition Found!

F#%k.

Ok, set back to U66, and try to boot off of the floppy...but remember that boot order? U66,A,C..."Missing or corrupt hal.dll". I couldn't even get past the error message!!!

Ok, go to the Knowledgebase: Yes, WindowsXP SP1 actually creates a Hardware Abstraction Layer profile that best fits the host machine: Since I changed my boot order changed in the BIOS between boots, the created hal.dll was no longer a correct match for my hardware configuration! Thus the error perpetuated itself.

Ok, so how do I setup with Floppies? That Boot Order was really getting annoying...

I was going to put my HPT370 RAID controller back in this box, so I configured the boot order to A,C,SCSI. Great setup worked fine, but the RAID array was the C: drive...no good.

Okay...I grabbed a Win98SE setup disk, and reset the BIOS to A,CDROM,C. I did a minimal boot and FDisk'd the U66 Drive, and deleted the Non-DOS partition.

Reboot, reset BIOS to U66,A,C. Booted with WinXPSP1 Setup Floppy#1: No Partition Found! Then the Floppy Drive Went 'Beeb,Burrrp...Swish, swish' - "Windows Is Inspecting Your Hardware Configuration"... I nearly fainted.

Hurrah! Yaaay! It was all downhill from there: Windows XP Setup as normal; 40 minutes later I activated my installation and was on Windows Update downloading the 40+ MB of "updates" from M$.

The difficulty of the install, and the utter impossibility of bypassing the U66 Controller actually was a good thing as I came to find out later: Nobody can hack this box using a set of Boot disks or a CD-ROM. It goes to the U66 Controller FIRST. Since I password protect the BIOS and use the "Old School" Login Screen, nobody is getting into the system without opening the case and clearing the CMOS to ALLOW a CD-ROM or Boot Disk to be used. The only conceivable way to get to the system would be to F8 to a command prompt, but the Filesystem would still protect you from intrusion because the only floppy disk that will work is a Recovery Floppy, and that one will ask you for an administrator's password to use. (This may not seem important, but those of you out there that use WinXP in a "less than secure" location might want to read This article detailing how someone with casual physical access can hack a WinXP machine in under 3 minutes.)

Maybe I'll get really anal and buy some Tamperproof Fasteners to seal the case up with. Then a drill and a set of screw extractors would be needed to open the case. Of course, to Counteract THAT, I could heliarc the case shut...



*It didn't dawn on me until later why the U66 Option was there: When the U66,A,C boot order is selected, it initializes the U66 controller before any other Storage Adapter Device.

[WyWyWyWy]

The "hal.dll" error is related to boot.ini....

[MultimediaMan]

And there is no way way to fix it, if you change the boot order in the BIOS...

Most Boot.ini files look like this:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect

And on four seperate systems that run WinXP I have here, they are all identical, even though two boot from a RAID array, one boots from an onboard IDE controller and the other boots from a U66 controller...

If the boot device initialization order is changed, it won't be able to find the correct path to the OS because WinXP loads the devices in the order they are needed. This is the "custom" hal.dll file that is created during the first setup.

Win9x relied on command.com always being in the root of the drive to get to where it was going. Windows9X didn't care where the Adapter was in the initialization of hardware, it just did it until there were no more devices to load drivers for.

[Technoid]

Did you actualy add the drivers U66 when you installed? (by pressing F6)

[Kurt]

If anyone has physical access to the box, you're toast. The file system won't do squat for you. Just put the drive in a Linux box...won't even ask for the admin password --you can even do this with linux floppies...

[MultimediaMan]

Technoid: No, the U66 Drivers are imbedded in WinXP...

Kurt: Linux Floppies won't do diddly unless you change the boot order. Yes, if you can crack open the box, you'll still have a problem unless you have the drives themselves encrypted, and even then, that can be hacked, given some time. But if you have time to crack open the case, you're absolutely right, you've got the box by the ass.

The key here is 'casual' access: enough access to pfutz with it, not enough to make off with it. Most School Computer Labs would qualify as casually accessible. Hell, some of the local server closets I've seen in places where I've worked would also qualify.