How to install ReactOS to a netbook (or other) via USB

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NicolasLusignan
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How to install ReactOS to a netbook (or other) via USB

Post by NicolasLusignan »

Greetings folks,

I've been following the progress of ROS for quite some time now and never had the chance to give it a try until lately when I dug up my old Asus EEE PC 701 Here are the spec of the machine itself:

Asus 701 ACPI Bios Revision 0910
Intel Celeron M 900mhz running at 600mhz (as default setting of the machine)
Updated to 2 gb ram
Stock 4gb internal Siliconmotion harddrive
Added a 64 gb SD card for additionnal storage.

Used a usb stick to install (I know now of the bug which I've been able to overcome I'll explain how soon) and ran into a few problem. I'll try to describe some of those, and provide how I've been able to work around them.

First of all this crappy old netbook used to run Lubuntu at a "whooping" crappy slow turtle crawling speed so I was more then happy to try something new on it. Using a Macbook Pro as my main computer, I decided to use it to try ReactOS. To say the least It's been quite a ride to get it to boot, still have some stuff to iron out (mostly drivers) but so far I'm more then impressed by the speed of the machine at this point.

Like I said previously, since that netbook as no cdrom, and the HDD is not removable, I had to use a usb stick to install it on this machine. At first I struggle with the BSOD 0x0000007B both with the liveCD image and the install one. Tried them in a VirtualBox and both worked fine. After a lot of search and head scratching, bios setting change, usb key and port on the machine, despair, several booze bottle later, I've been able to find this russian site, providing a modified version of the 0.4.7.2 iso with better USB support. Here is the link for it: http://vgal.ru.com/reactos-0-4-7-2-new-usb/, like I said it's in russian but google translate did a marvelous job for it.

Needless to say that after several hours of frustration, I was ecstatic to see and complete the first part of the setup, until I hit the wall again, upon the first reboot I've received a message saying opening hive file failed.... :( :( :evil:..... Until I remember a bad experience I had in the past while attempting to rebuild a Windows setup I had to troubleshoot... I decided to take a look at the loader file:

Code: Select all


freeldr.ini: 

[ReactOS]
BootType=Windows2003
SystemPath=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\ReactOS
Allow me to explain what is going on over here: Since I've used a USB stick, upon boot from it, it was declared as being disk 0 the internal one being declared a 1 during setup (I suppose by the bios but I'm not sure at this point). Since I was now booting the computer from the internal drive, the rdisk value was invalid. At this point I'm not sure if this is a bug in the installer or the intended way it suppose to be, but that being said, by editing the file, and changing all entry in the file from rdisk(1) to rdisk (0) and I've been able to proceed with the next step of the setup yay :D

That part was processed without a hitch, and before I knew it, I was greeted by the ReactOS desktop, asking me to configure a few system devices, which I will tackle and provided more details in a separate post as it will be more specific to that netbook model.

But to resume the purpose of that post, it is possible with some elbow grease to achieve an installation on a computer using a USB stick at this point. Feel free to drop a comment if you have further question on my process or if you think I need to add more details.
Blitzen_Dóiteán
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Re: How to install ReactOS to a netbook (or other) via USB

Post by Blitzen_Dóiteán »

vgal has been working on the usb stack for little while now, and I beleive he could still use some more input on how it's working. I just misplaced where he asked...
*blank*
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EmuandCo
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Re: How to install ReactOS to a netbook (or other) via USB

Post by EmuandCo »

Even if you post it somewhere here and the few threadfs regarding his work, he will see it. Feedback always is welcome. That's why I burnt the CDs for Chemnitz Linux Days with his work included. Sadly not much feedback yet...
ReactOS is still in alpha stage, meaning it is not feature-complete and is recommended only for evaluation and testing purposes.

If my post/reply offends or insults you, be sure that you know what sarcasm is...
SSeago
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Joined: Mon Mar 26, 2018 3:20 pm

Re: How to install ReactOS to a netbook (or other) via USB

Post by SSeago »

Thank you NicolasLusignan for the posting, and vgal for the iso. This was very helpful.

Hardware
  • Broadwell i5 (i5-5300) based NUC (NUC5i5MYBE)
    Transcend m.2 2280 SATAIII 256GB SSD
Using "bootusb-ReactOS-0.4.7.2-vgal.iso" and I'm finally able to install ReactOS on this hardware.

Using vgal's image is the only way I've been able to get ReactOS to install on this hardware. The system freezes when tying to install hardware on first boot, but I'm determined to hack my way through it.

I've got one system from a batch I can permanently experiment on. These are fanless machines designed to run Point-of-Sale software on sales counters attached to warehouses in a multi-state, more than 40-year-old distribution company. Most of the hardware attached to our current fleet require drivers that haven't been updated since Windows XP and getting them to work reliably (plus the cost of licensing) on Windows 8.1 and beyond is a real problem. My hope is to see a (any) journaling or log-structured flash-aware file system that supports files over 4GB implemented and some stability improvements made and then I will begin deploying one per branch and collecting logs as needed when something goes wrong. NTFS would be ideal since this is in an Active Directory environment, but there are ways to work around permissions-related obstacles related to file system features.
WinXPfan
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Re: How to install ReactOS to a netbook (or other) via USB

Post by WinXPfan »

i have a toshiba nb305-n440BL that i want react os on will it work? i haven't had any luck at all...
i want a free alternative to windows. i love the project. help me with my netbook
karlexceed
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Re: How to install ReactOS to a netbook (or other) via USB

Post by karlexceed »

WinXPfan wrote: Wed Nov 28, 2018 11:07 pm i have a toshiba nb305-n440BL that i want react os on will it work?
I don't know.
WinXPfan wrote: Wed Nov 28, 2018 11:07 pm i haven't had any luck at all...
... help me with my netbook
What have you tried?
WinXPfan
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Re: How to install ReactOS to a netbook (or other) via USB

Post by WinXPfan »

karlexceed wrote: Thu Nov 29, 2018 4:23 pm
WinXPfan wrote: Wed Nov 28, 2018 11:07 pm i have a toshiba nb305-n440BL that i want react os on will it work?
I don't know.
WinXPfan wrote: Wed Nov 28, 2018 11:07 pm i haven't had any luck at all..
... help me with my netbook
What have you tried?
it installed perfectly but the arthos wi-fi driver causes it to lock up
it has a atom n455 (if you haven't seen the specs) and upgraded to 2GB of Ram.
I tried the audio driver too... it just wont install the realtek hd audio driver
plus i installed it from my custom pc below the computer i am typing this on
i disconnected the SATA Data cable from the main HDD and left the power plugged in but i used another SATA Data connector on it
the desktop's board is a Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H (rev 1.0) it has 4GB of RAM(soon to be upgraded) a GTX560. and 2 HDD's.

the OS ver is 0.4.9
tell me if i have to install 0.4.10

BTW React OS is stuck on reclaiming sectors after several boot attempts
sometimes it BSOD's with STOP: 0xc0000213
i am too lazy to install Windows 7 Starter.
and i love React OS even if it is in alpha
karlexceed
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Re: How to install ReactOS to a netbook (or other) via USB

Post by karlexceed »

WinXPfan wrote: Thu Nov 29, 2018 11:35 pm arthos wi-fi driver causes it to lock up
...
I tried the audio driver too... it just wont install the realtek hd audio driver
Are you using the XP drivers from here? https://support.toshiba.com/support/mod ... 42&osId=50
I know there's a known issue with the audio driver, and wireless support is pretty hit-or-miss for now. These issues may not be fixable yet.
WinXPfan wrote: Thu Nov 29, 2018 11:35 pm the OS ver is 0.4.9
tell me if i have to install 0.4.10
I'd certainly recommend it. 0.4.10 will have fixes that aren't in 0.4.9, and the first thing anyone will ask you if you post an issue here is, "Are you using the latest version?"
WinXPfan wrote: Thu Nov 29, 2018 11:35 pm BTW React OS is stuck on reclaiming sectors after several boot attempts
Apparently installing on BTRFS instead of FAT can address some of the corruption issues that happen when ROS BSODs. I've not tried it myself, but it may be worth a shot.

So, I'd say you should probably start with a clean install of 0.4.10 and go from there.
WinXPfan
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Joined: Mon Oct 01, 2018 7:10 pm

Re: How to install ReactOS to a netbook (or other) via USB

Post by WinXPfan »

karlexceed wrote: Fri Nov 30, 2018 12:27 am
WinXPfan wrote: Thu Nov 29, 2018 11:35 pm arthos wi-fi driver causes it to lock up
...
I tried the audio driver too... it just wont install the realtek hd audio driver
Are you using the XP drivers from here? https://support.toshiba.com/support/mod ... 42&osId=50
I know there's a known issue with the audio driver, and wireless support is pretty hit-or-miss for now. These issues may not be fixable yet.
WinXPfan wrote: Thu Nov 29, 2018 11:35 pm the OS ver is 0.4.9
tell me if i have to install 0.4.10
I'd certainly recommend it. 0.4.10 will have fixes that aren't in 0.4.9, and the first thing anyone will ask you if you post an issue here is, "Are you using the latest version?"
WinXPfan wrote: Thu Nov 29, 2018 11:35 pm BTW React OS is stuck on reclaiming sectors after several boot attempts
Apparently installing on BTRFS instead of FAT can address some of the corruption issues that happen when ROS BSODs. I've not tried it myself, but it may be worth a shot.

So, I'd say you should probably start with a clean install of 0.4.10 and go from there.
yes i am using the XP driver from that exact link and site.
but i will try the BTRFS
elhoir
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Re: How to install ReactOS to a netbook (or other) via USB

Post by elhoir »

"I'd certainly recommend it. 0.4.10 will have fixes that aren't in 0.4.9, and the first thing anyone will ask you if you post an issue here is, "Are you using the latest version?""

Even 0.4.10 is not the latest version. Developers and testers use daily builds, which are always more updated than official releases.
learn_more
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Re: How to install ReactOS to a netbook (or other) via USB

Post by learn_more »

To add to that:
daily builds contain more features, but also more bugs!

Our releases contain a ton of carefully crafted workarounds to known problems that are in our development builds.
WinXPfan
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Re: How to install ReactOS to a netbook (or other) via USB

Post by WinXPfan »

i got it to work with the lan so far i am about to install the wi-fi driver and yes now i am using 0.4.10 :)
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