Trying to get the team on CAD

[josh.pruim]

After installing Windows 7 and Inventor, I'm getting constant bluescreens on the portable drive when booted normally. I am unable to diagnose them as the minidump files are not being written anywhere. (I checked the flash disk's C:\, and I also checked C:\ on the internal hard drive of my computer.) Is it possible that the two are causing collisions in drive assignments, and not allowing it to boot? (My setup machine was not a physical machine, I used a virtual, due to the massively long time it takes to set up over a USB2.0 line, then cloned it to a flash disk.) Is it possible to reassign C:\ to something like G:\ if this is the issue?

[Mr. Lim]

Originally Posted by josh.pruim

After installing Windows 7 and Inventor, I'm getting constant bluescreens on the portable drive when booted normally. I am unable to diagnose them as the minidump files are not being written anywhere. (I checked the flash disk's C:\, and I also checked C:\ on the internal hard drive of my computer.) Is it possible that the two are causing collisions in drive assignments, and not allowing it to boot? (My setup machine was not a physical machine, I used a virtual, due to the massively long time it takes to set up over a USB2.0 line, then cloned it to a flash disk.) Is it possible to reassign C:\ to something like G:\ if this is the issue?

Very likely the problem is Windows is expecting G:, but now that you're booting directly, it's on C: instead and is confused...

I once installed Windows to D:, then deleted the C: partition. Thus D: was reassigned to C:. It would constantly blue screen during boot.

I created a tiny placeholder C: partition, reassigned the Windows partition back to D:, and it came right back up.

You might be able to reassign C: to G: with a partitioning tool, but I'm not sure if the reassignment will persist, or if Windows will react nicely.

There's some discussion on the topic here:
http://www.sevenforums.com/installat...t-drive-2.html

The best thing might be to try and reinstall Windows again, ensuring the target drive is C: before the installation starts.

[josh.pruim]

Actually, what I was meaning is the flash disk is C:\, and my laptop has an internal drive, that is also C:\, to make a total of 2 C:\ drives at once. I was wondering if there was a way to install Windows to say, a drive G:\, so that the drive would not collide with any existing Windows installations? I would think the best way would be to mount an existing C:\ drive, then run the installation again. since the drive is an image, I am going to attempt to change the mapping of it. If that causes any issues at all, i will revert back to a reinstall with a mounted C:\ drive.

[josh.pruim]

I plugged it into an older laptop, I had removed the internal hard disk drive, and it still bluescreened. I am now assuming it is not the C:\ collision, but a more serious error.

[Mr. Lim]

Windows could be complaining about the changes in "hardware" between your different setups: virtualized, physical booting, and now a completely different laptop.

This is a shot in the dark, but if you can still boot into the image in your virtual environment, try generalizing the image.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/l...=ws.10%29.aspx

[Mr. Lim]

Also, the "Phase III" section of this article might be useful.

http://ftanada.wordpress.com/2009/02...ckflash-drive/

[josh.pruim]

Originally Posted by Mr. Lim

Also, the "Phase III" section of this article might be useful.

http://ftanada.wordpress.com/2009/02...ckflash-drive/

I was actually looking for an article like this (I had been doing so many different things, but it never occurred to me to remove the USB controller from the VM during the install, I managed to get a crashdump, and it was indeed an issue with the USB drivers and how Windows unmounts and remounts USB devices that are not NTFS on boot)

The article on 'generalizing' the image appears a little difficult to understand, but from what I gather, you run

cd C:\Windows\System32\sysprep
sysprep.exe

then a box pops up that you can select "Enter OOBE" and check "Generalize"

[josh.pruim]

Ah. I got the normalization working, and right now I'm imaging the disk to a file.
So far my steps were

1. Follow this guide http://ftanada.wordpress.com/2009/02...ckflash-drive/*
2. Install Inventor
3. Generalize the OS
4. Boot Clonezilla, save image
5. Restore image to Flash Drive with Clonezilla

*Changes to Guide in my case
I Used a physical disk, partitioned to have one same-size minus 1GB as the flash disk (of what the computer sees, not what is on the label, my 32 GB drive was actually 30.9 GB, so, partition was 29.9 GB), and another occupying the rest of the disk space. Formatted both as NTFS, named the additional space (The second partition) "Image Cache" and the 29.9 GB "Windows"

Clonezilla, image the "Windows" partition to the "Image Cache" partition, then restore it to the USB drive. (My reason for imaging is so that if I need to make duplicates, it's very easy)

If you were being clever, you could get a 500GB hard disk, chop it into 5 partitions
(Windows installer disk, Windows install partition, Image cache, Clonezilla, and a universal bootloader) and make a laptop that you simply can set up, image, and prepare for restore without any external drives.

[josh.pruim]

I have posted my methods on http://caddrive.joshpruim.com/ if anyone wants to contribute, or share their ideas, it's an open Wiki.

[josh.pruim]

Update: I was browsing the Mac OS App Store, and found Inventor Fusion for Mac.
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/autod...29580720?mt=12
Since it's free, I don't see any disadvantages to testing it out. It's not full-featured CAD, but it appears to export files that either Inventor Pro or NX can read.