nLited XP installs for a cab

[OzStick]

Hey there spystyle, awesome piece of work with your MAME-XP!

I followed your tutorial and I've now got a very lean and mean install of XP to use on all my setups, so for that I thank you.

The only "issue" I have is that the PC no longer does a full shutdown, which I suspect is to do with Minlogon as I've never had this happen with XP or any other version of TinyXP I've used.

Instead, it now seems to do a suspend of WIndows and pops up a screen saying "Your computer is now safe to switch off". This isn't all bad, because once it's all in a cabinet you then know it's OK to turn the whole thing off at the wall, however I'd like to CHANGE that screen to get rid of the Windows logo and swap it for something else more arcade related.

I know Bootskin can be used to relpace the STARTUP screen, but is there anything that does the same thing to this Shutdown screen?

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Cheers,
Chris

[spystyle]

Hi Chris,

I'm glad you like my MAME-XP tutorial. But rather than change the shutdown screen, perhaps we could figure out which service is missing that would have allowed a proper shutdown...

I'll have to ask around.

Cheers,
Craig

[OzStick]

Hi Chris,

I'm glad you like my MAME-XP tutorial. But rather than change the shutdown screen, perhaps we could figure out which service is missing that would have allowed a proper shutdown...

I'll have to ask around.

Cheers,
Craig

Thanks Craig,

It's interesting you say that - the first time I installed MAME-XP I used a crappy little 2Gb Fujitsu HDD, left it to do its thing and when I came back it had an error message stating it couldn't continue because the folder "\h" had not been created.

I suspected it may have filled the drive so I swapped it for a 10Gb HDD and this is now what I have.

SO for you to say that there may be a service missing has me thinking it is possibly the install CD at fault.

I might do some tinkering myself and if I work it out I'll let you know.

Cheers,
Chris

[tikbalang]

it may have to do with acpi/apm power management. i remember i had to tweak something in control panel --> power options for this kind of problem. at least disable hibernate and make "power off" button shutdown the pc.

in the device driver, "computer"  should be on acpi or standard pc, whichever has the good driver for you mobo. i don't remember how to change that.

look in your bios and check your power management settings. make sure  shutdown really makes the pc shutdown and not sleep,hibernate or standby.

turn off PNP OS even with win2k/xp/vista/linux so everything is set and done by the time your os loads. the only downside with this is some hardware may require a reboot after installing the drivers.

[spystyle]

I will have more time soon to set up a 'puter with MAME-XP on it and do some testing. I'll report my findings.

It's likely a registry setting, a bios setting, a windows setting, or MinLoigon should be updated.

Have fun
Craig

[spystyle]

...it may have to do with acpi/apm power management...

*Ding* *Ding* *Ding*

We have a winner

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Start > Control panel > Power options > APM >

Make sure "Enable Advanced Power Management Support" is checked





Cheers,
Craig

[TeutonicDarkness]

...it may have to do with acpi/apm power management...

*Ding* *Ding* *Ding*

We have a winner

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Start > Control panel > Power options > APM >

Make sure "Enable Advanced Power Management Support" is checked





Cheers,
Craig

 I have 3 computers and none of them even have that option.
Maybe a service I killed when n-liting?

 Anyway they work now... I had to set the right setting for
different PC's 2 work with the Nlite "Computer type" setting
the one would only work when uniprocessor was selected.


Just took a little time and a CDRW and I got a unique setup
for each PC.

maybe that helps?

[spystyle]

That's interesting...

There is no power option in control panel for you?

Cheers,
Craig

[IG-88]

For what it's worth, I'm running TinyXP Beast on this machine and I don't have that option either....

[spystyle]

A theory!

I bet the power options that are in my MAME-XP and not in yours would have something to do with the difference between "XP home" and "XP Professional"

Mine was built from "WinXP Corporate Professional".

I take it you guys were using "Home" ?

I am using XP SP3 Home on my actual home PC and here is what my power options look like :



So ...  we know how to fix the "it is now safe to turn off your computer" problem on "pro" versions of Windows. How do we fix it on "Home" versions of Windows ?

I will have to make a MAME-XP from a "Home" disk to replicate the problem then try to fix it...

Cheers,
Craig

[tikbalang]

That's interesting...

There is no power option in control panel for you?

Cheers,
Craig

the apm tab disappears after enabling. it happened on my pc but it fixed my problem after that. thay's why i couldn't remember it when i was reviwing my steps on how i did it. maybe they don't have it in the first place.

[tikbalang]

tinyxp is corporate. looking at the pics, maybe the service pack has something to do with it too. this xp pro i'm using started with slipstreamed sp1 and updated later with sp2 and sp3.

[spystyle]

TinyXP is a version of Windows XP SP2 that is Nlite'd.

If you built MAME-XP from an already "stripped" XP ... well that could explain why some things are missing

If you aren't satisfied with your MAME-XP, try making another from a full XP CD. You can import the Nlite settings from your first MAME-XP so you won't have to make all the selections in Nlite again.

Cheers,
Craig

[TeutonicDarkness]

That's interesting...

There is no power option in control panel for you?

Cheers,
Craig

 The is a power option just no "Advanced Power Management"
option..

I have done this with XP Pro Corporate Sp2
on 3 different PC's none have the Advanced Power Management
option under power!

However they will all shutdown correctly with the proper Nlite "Computer type" setting applied. I think 2 were set for standard PC and
one uniprocessor. I never had to even mess with that before
and it worked on all my systems.

 There is no doubt in my mind that this is a result of using
minilogin.. not a problem as long as you know what you
must do.


Hope that helps!

[spystyle]

Interesting.. Did you integrate SP3 into your MAME-XP's ?

[TeutonicDarkness]

Interesting.. Did you integrate SP3 into your MAME-XP's ?

 No not yet... Been kind of scared too! 
Everything has been working good just afraid something won't
work right, or I'll have driver issues, etc.

 I will break down and try soon on a separate partition.

[spystyle]

I see, that could be the difference.

[OzStick]

A theory!

I bet the power options that are in my MAME-XP and not in yours would have something to do with the difference between "XP home" and "XP Professional"

Mine was built from "WinXP Corporate Professional".

I take it you guys were using "Home" ?

I am using XP SP3 Home on my actual home PC and here is what my power options look like :



So ...  we know how to fix the "it is now safe to turn off your computer" problem on "pro" versions of Windows. How do we fix it on "Home" versions of Windows ?

I will have to make a MAME-XP from a "Home" disk to replicate the problem then try to fix it...

Cheers,
Craig

Hi again Craig,

I had a look at Power Options on my setup and that APM tab is not there. I'm running XP Pro SP3 on mine.

I've got another CD with my own stripped version of XP (before I read your tutorial and "knew" what I was doing) into which I have manually inserted Minlogon after the install and it shuts down fine, however the bootup process seems to take about the same amount of time as with the standard Winlogon.

I'd be happy to run with my version, but I now want to replace the bootup screen using BootSkin and it crashes when I do the swap!!

Any suggestions as to what I may be doing wrong?

Cheers,
Chris

[spystyle]

It sounds like you should uninstall minlogon (use regular winlogon) and see if bootskin works.

As for the APM tab I have and no one else has - I am beginning to think it is a feature found only in "corporate" version of XP...

Cheers,
Craig

[OzStick]

It sounds like you should uninstall minlogon (use regular winlogon) and see if bootskin works.

As for the APM tab I have and no one else has - I am beginning to think it is a feature found only in "corporate" version of XP...

Cheers,
Craig

Yup, already tried that and it made no difference!

I've just made a change to the BOOT.INI file via MSCONFIG to switch on the /NOGUIBOOT option and now all I get is a blank screen instead of the regular startup screen, which is a good compromise.

To be honest, the most "agreeable" stripped version of XP I've tried so far was MicroXP, as it is lightning fast to install, has only the necessities that I NEED and is very quick on startup and shutdown. However I don't like the "MicroXP by eXperience" splash screens it comes up with just prior to the desktop loading on startup and on shutting down. If I could get rid of them then I'd be a happy person!!!

Cheers,
Chris

[spystyle]

I tried all the Tiny and Micro OS's. But they were missing some of the important drivers - like legacy video and audio who's drivers are built in to XP, you can not download those drivers, no one hosts them because they are built in to XP. They are called "native drivers".

I wanted to make something that had 100% of the available drivers. It makes it much more compatible with the full spectrum of computers and no hunting for drivers is necessary.

Why did "eXPerience" make a teeny-tiny OS but make it incompatible with most old computers? What better platform for a teeny-tiny OS than an old computer? They are a match made in heaven.

Obviously his goal was to make an XP that was an 80 MB download, and that's it.

As for the splash screens, I bet that is easy to remove. If no one here knows, I'm sure these guys know :

http://www.msfn.org/board/forums.html

They know everything about computers.

Cheers,
Craig

[sordid]

 

i am new to this full-on emu-in-a-cabinet hardcore stuff....
but i know all about XP.

and im totally shocked that the 'cabinet community' isnt cranking out custom windows isos.  it is a *perfect* way to minimize the pain of a custom rig.

im just learning about all of the details of the FEs and emus,  but it doesnt seem to far out of the question to create a giant iso that installs a barebones XP, all the emus, and an FE, in one shot. and id imagine you could create a bootable dvd install disc, and make it unattended.
bang!

i only know enough about all of the pieces to know its possible, and that it would be absolutely effin amazing!
a dual booting box with one side as tinyxp booting to maximus sounds real nice to me.


and i will say, the eXPerience released isos are amazing. they *really really* know what they are doing. moreso than i think possibly anyone else, even at microsoft. there are a TON of reg hacks and little changes done to most of those releases, and they work flawlessly.
the only one that is tricky is the ultra tiny one. the iso is like 106mb. thats the one with nothing. again, i dont know enough to know what would cause problems with the emus, but i used it for pro audio, and the .NET framework was the *only* thing i had to add to the install to make it run smooth.  it was actually amazing.
if someone could hack that one into an install disc with an FE and some roms, thatd be one pop-u-lar iso......
also, "TinyXP_Platinum_2" from eXPerience is an amazing install. check out the docs that come with it...   that might be a good one to start with too. not as much left out, but still has the tweaks done...


i just had to post after finding this thread. i was wishfully thinking someone may have whipped up an iso and tossed it on a torrent already and that id find the entire community was using this one rock solid install....  not quite yet, but it seems there some people experimenting.   

if i end up staying involved with the emu thing and learning more of the details, i will most definitely be experimenting with some hacked down XP installs.

and either way, nice to see you guys' work!

[IG-88]

......if someone could hack that one into an install disc with an FE and some roms, thatd be one pop-u-lar iso......

Careful with spoutin' them words around here.  As a matter of fact this has been done a few times before and the legality issues caused some major headaches. Not to mention it really pisses some people off. 

People put these discs together and then put roms (the legality of those is a constant issue) on them and then try and profit from them on ebay. Basically stealing others work and taking a chance on getting the attention of people/companies we in this hobby would rather not irritate.

Frankly I'm surprised it hasn't got shut down yet....

[spystyle]

...I'm totally shocked that the 'cabinet building community' isn't cranking out custom windows isos.  it is a *perfect* way to minimize the pain of a custom rig.

I show how to do that in my tutorial

But distributing the ISO would be so illegal, Microsoft might send Mappy the mouse to arrest me!

I'm just learning about all of the details of the FEs and emus, but it doesn't seem too far out of the question to create a giant iso that installs a barebones XP, all the emus, and an FE, in one shot. and I'd imagine you could create a bootable dvd install disc, and make it unattended.

I also show how to do that in my tutorial, though not in step by step detail. The key is in the $1 folder on the CD.

$OEM$\$1

Everything placed in that folder is copied to C:

Therefore, if you put your emulator and roms in a folder called "MAME" and placed it in the $1 folder on the disk it would be copied to C:\MAME

To place a shortcut on the desktop and in the "startup" folder you would have to use the exact same folder names in the $1 folder. For example :

$OEM$\$1\documents and settings\default user\desktop

$OEM$\$1\documents and settings\default user\start menu\programs\startup

It would be really easy

..."TinyXP_Platinum_2" from eXPerience is an amazing install. check out the docs that come with it...   that might be a good one to start with too. not as much left out, but still has the tweaks done...

In my opinion it is much too big. MAME-XP is a purpose built OS made specifically for the arcade machines. Anything else is a "desktop operating system" made to do many things a MAME computer doesn't need to do, like surf the internet ect.

I just had to post after finding this thread. I was wishfully thinking someone may have whipped up an iso and tossed it on a torrent already and that I'd find the entire community was using this one rock solid install....  not quite yet, but it seems there some people experimenting...

If you can focus for 3 hours you can make it yourself. Then upload a torrent and be the hero you are looking for

...Frankly I'm surprised it hasn't got shut down yet....

Well it would be hard to shut down an entire "hobby"

But everyone is really careful, like the info screens on the MAME programs are a "CYA"

The moderators of this forum being quite strict about linking to ROMsets and Warez is "CYA"

Disclaimers here there and everywhere, we are all very careful

As a result I think this hobby will endure

Cheers,
Craig

[cadmium]

Does anyone know how to *remove* minlogon from an existing xp system? I *accidentally* installed it and while it works, I'd like to go back. Restoring the original winlogon.exe doesn't seem to work???

[spystyle]

Does anyone know how to *remove* minlogon from an existing xp system? I *accidentally* installed it and while it works, I'd like to go back. Restoring the original winlogon.exe doesn't seem to work???

It should be very easy, when you installed it you renamed "winlogon.exe" to "winlogon.bak" and you renamed "minlogon.exe" to "winlogon.exe", right? Simply undo that by renaming "winlogon.exe" to "minlogon.exe" and "winlogon.bak" to "winlogon.exe". Then restart.

You could do a search on the hard drive for "winlogon.exe", you might have to replace it in 2 folders... maybe if the windows file protection thing is activated.

Cheers,
Craig

[cadmium]

Yeah, I got into some funky trouble with windows activation. After I reverted to the original winlogon.exe it would start to log on then come up with an error about windows activation. Clicking okay just started the boot process again, so it was an infinite loop. It was the same in safemode.

The only thing that worked was doing a repair install. Which worked out okay I guess.

I did the same procedure on my arcade cabinet and it worked just fine (minlogon didn't work too well booting straight into my FE). Same basic installation, so I don't know what the deal was.

[spystyle]

Windows activation? Did you try a crack to circumvent that or do you actually go online and activate?

I hate "activation" and "genuine" and all that hassle, M$ really hassles it's users. I avoid all of that mess.

Cheers,
Craig

[cadmium]

LOL, didn't give me a chance to do either.

[spystyle]

I think I had that problem with one corporate version... IIR home and corporate reacted differently to milogon integration. That what's good about "Virtual PC", you can make an OS and quickly test it to see if it works.

Cheers,
Craig

[cadmium]

I think I had that problem with one corporate version... IIR home and corporate reacted differently to milogon integration. That what's good about "Virtual PC", you can make an OS and quickly test it to see if it works.

True. It was my fault and I hadn't intended to install it on that particular machine at all, so I have only myself to blame. I've been needing to repave it for a while anyway.

[DP Louie]

Wow Spystyle, nice work!  I'm going to follow your tutorial and install Mame-XP on an older cpu that I have.  Do you know if it will run any of the popular console emulators?  Like zsNes, stella, etc.  I'd also like to have headkaze's CPWizard running.  Thanks!

[spystyle]

...Do you know if it will run any of the popular console emulators?...Thanks!

You're welcome, I'm glad you find it useful.

As for compatibility - try your disk in VirtualPC, try to get the emulators you like running and let us know if it worked.

MAME32 and MALA / FastMAME work,  I would imagine most other emulators will work as well. I think, for the most part, emulators are "self contained" and don't use a bunch of the windows components we remove to make MAME-XP.

Good luck,
Craig

[DrumAnBass]

Anyone try "Micro XP"? Curious if it has everything needed for Mame and Mala...

[spystyle]

Anyone try "Micro XP"? Curious if it has everything needed for Mame and Mala...

Too many drivers are missing. If you happen to have a computer that doesn't need the "Window's native drivers" that those goofs removed then you'll be all set. Otherwise your computer won't work. Try testing it in VirtualPC and see the device manager.

Adding Bashrat's driverpacks doesn't replace the native drivers either.

Cheers,
Craig

[web.geek]

OK, I finally wrote the tutorial detailing how I made "MAME-XP" :

Fantastic tutorial, Craig. I created my MAME-XP CD, and I am going to try it out this weekend.

Thanks!

[spystyle]

You're welcome

[iano]

Hi Craig. Thanks alot for the tutorial. I have a few questions though. 1.) When i copied my xp cd to the xp cd folder it is bigger than yours (>600Mb). I'm using XP Pro Corporate but it has service pack 2 integrated so maybe that explains the extra size ? Would it be "cleaner" if i tried to remove the sp2 files before integrating sp3 ? If so, i don't know which files to remove. 2.) The driverpacks structure has changed i think. I cannot see the 10 individual 7zip files in the folder like you said but instead i have one 7zip file (DP_MassStorage_wnt5_x86-32_805) - what do i do here ?

Cheers,
ian.

[spystyle]

Hi Craig. Thanks alot for the tutorial. I have a few questions though. 1.) When i copied my xp cd to the xp cd folder it is bigger than yours (>600Mb). I'm using XP Pro Corporate but it has service pack 2 integrated so maybe that explains the extra size ?

There are folders on the 'retail XP CD' that are safe to delete if you want to have a smaller overall size. Comparing my 'retail SP2 disk' to my 'MAME-XP disk' I think the following are safe to delete :

d:\docs (7 KB)
d:\dotnetfx (40 MB)
d:\support (13 MB)
d:\valueadd (3 MB)
d:\I386\COMPDATA (700 KB)
d:\I386\DRW (200 KB)
d:\I386\LANG (100 MB)
d:\I386\WIN9XMIG (2 MB)
d:\I386\WIN9XUPG (4 MB)
d:\I386\WINNTUPG (800 KB)

Would it be "cleaner" if i tried to remove the sp2 files before integrating sp3 ?

No - SP3 contains SP1, SP2 and of course, SP3. So starting with SP0, SP1, or SP2 should have the same result ... I think

The driverpacks structure has changed i think. I cannot see the 10 individual 7zip files in the folder like you said but instead i have one 7zip file (DP_MassStorage_wnt5_x86-32_805) - what do i do here ? 

That is incorrect - each driverpack is represented by a single 7zip file - if you only have "DP_MassStorage" that means you only have a single driver pack - specifically the one for mass storage.

The folder should have these 7zip files :

DP_ChipSet
DP_CPU
DP_Graphics_A
DP_Graphics_B
DP_Graphics_C
DP_MassStorage
DP_Sound_A
DP_Sound_B

If you intend to add driverpacks to home computer OS, rather than just MAME computer OS, the following driverpacks should also be present :

DP_LAN
DP_WLAN
\3rd party DriverPacks\DP_Modem

Cheers,
Craig

[iano]

Thanks Craig for the info. I don't think Google threw up exactly what i was looking for - sorry, i should of followed up on it a bit more. I went ahead and created an iso. I noticed i have a few more files in my $OEM$\$1\ folder than you have (although i changed one or two options). Does this look abnormal. Thanks.