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You cannot see the local disk drives after you start a Windows XP Embedded image by using Remote Boot Server

Article ID: 943838 - View products that this article applies to.

SYMPTOMS

After you start a Windows XP Embedded image by using Remote Boot Server, you cannot see the local disk drives. If you view the drive in Device Manager, you find that the drive cannot be installed. Additionally, you receive error code 39. When this problem occurs, you cannot prepare the drive or copy data to the drive.

This problem does not occur if one of the following conditions is true:

The local disk drive is a removable media object, such as a compact flash card.
The Windows XP Embedded image has previously recognized the local disk drive during First Boot Agent (FBA).

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CAUSE

This problem occurs because the driver for the local disk drive is automatically loaded when the system starts, even if the system is started from a Ramdisk drive instead of from a disk drive. This may cause a problem during the installation of a disk drive.

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WORKAROUND

To work around this problem, delete the following registry entry in the critical device database:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\CriticalDeviceDatabase\gendisk

To do this, use one of the following methods.

Method 1

Delete this registry entry in the post-FBA image. To do this, follow these steps:

In the post-FBA image, click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
Locate and then click the following registry subkey:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\CriticalDeviceDatabase
Right-click the gendisk registry entry, click Delete, and then click Yes.
On the File menu, click Exit.

Method 2

At the end of FBA, use an FBA generic command to delete this registry entry. For example, in the FBA generic command, you can specify “%11%\regedt32.exe” for the FilePath property and specify “/s gendisk.reg” for the Arguments property.

Note The placeholder gendisk.reg represents the file that you create and that contains the following content:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\CriticalDeviceDatabase\gendisk]

For more information about how to use the FBA Generic Command resource, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb521399.aspx

(http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb521399.aspx)

After you delete this registry entry, the driver for the local disk drive is not automatically loaded when the system starts. This is necessary when the Windows XP embedded image is started from a Ramdisk drive. In this case, the Ramdisk.sys file is the correct driver.

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