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well iirc windows ALWAYS installs its bootloader and "booting-tools" to the first partition of the first hdd (c:). i guess windows simply isn't able to do it a different way.

i think it would be safe somehow to check, wether there's windows-stuff on c:


Lightning

@Lightning:

>> ...first hdd (c:)

Beginning with Vista this isn't true anymore.

Most factory preinstalled Vista/7/8 systems have a small
~100MiB partition which hosts the bootloader whereas the
Windows system files and folders are on a second partion (C:).

Because not all systems are installed this way an installer
has to find out whether the system has been installed to
the first or the second physical partition and whether the
logical drive C: is on the first or sceond partition.

Manfred

Over at porteus, brokenman, fanthom and others found ways around UAC you can check the official porteus installation guide section: Installing Porteus to a USB Flash Drive
in official guide and the section search for UAC . Also brokenman is willing to help in many cases. Thanks Tomas for bringing back Slax! Hope this helps in some way to improve booting on USB devices.

With all respect to fanthom and his fellow campaigners:

They simply disable UAC before installing. Imho this is a
no go and in case of an installer or user failure a high risk
of leaving the users system with UAC staying disabled.

Just my 0.02$

Manfred

Agree with Manfred. The long paragraph at porteus website regarding this is boring, confusing, possibly dangerous and (the main point) completely unnecessary. We can do it better, even without the need for the user to change any settings or even reboot her computer.

For users using windows UAC is a pain in the *.. At least it was in Windows Vista. In Windows 7, it appears to not be that much. Still I prefer to use the Slax cd itself to make a usb bootable. But this is just me! and I am sure many other users will do appreciate your efforts to make things easier to use Slax straight from window$ :)

I'm not sure if I understand. You mean, Slax cd itself, in isohybrid mode to put it to USB device? Or do you mean to just extract Slax CD data to USB and then run bootinst.bat? Because the later is indeed possible, the TAR format is there only for people who can't extract ISO, yet it is the very same data inside.

@tonio:

I'm totally with you concerning UAC.

Nevertheless the problem with switching it off automatically
during an installation is that Tomas would be the one to blame
if something goes wrong whereas the user would be the one to
blame if activated UAC asks him for administrative rights
before installation.

@Tomas

I mean I boot Slax cd itself and insert usb and copy it*
# cp -ra /mnt/slax/* /mnt/usb_mountpoint
then run
# ./bootinst.sh

instead of bootinst.bat which is the one we should use when one uses window$, and copies the data from the cd to the usb device. I have not tried it this out, but from the conversation and the explanation I fully agree with your approaches (yours and Manfred's).

@Manfred
You are right in that the user should be responsible for turning on/off UAC and not hold Tomas accountable for screwing it up when he/she runs it from within window$.

My $0.02

The Slax boot installer (bootinst.bat) can be used in Windows 7 (thumb drive) by right-clicking the bat file and selecting "Run as administrator". No problems with UAC this way..