[There's a reason that Yoda is the unofficial mascot of SBS. Size indeed matters not.] The Banana hack isn't Banana-ing - THE OFFICIAL BLOG OF THE SBS DIVA
Tue, Jul 25 2006 23:16 bradley

The Banana hack isn't Banana-ing

So I have my brand new HP and it has a recovery partition... which I think might be causing issues with me trying to use the Banana hack to get this guy to join a domain....

I put in the recovery console and had to go into msconfig to get the boot process to see it ...and when I go into the recovery console I get a BSOD with a 0x0000007b (0xf7802524,0xc0000034,0x00000000,0x00000000)

..sigh... okay so I know it's not supported...but it's the only OS on the model that I wanted to buy... can I help if if I want to join a domain and I don't care about Xbox extenders?  Okay so off to google I go....

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# re: The Banana hack isn't Banana-ing

Wednesday, July 26, 2006 5:29 AM by A+

Although Media Center is based on Windows XP Professional, it notably has the ability to join an Active Directory domain disabled. However, if you do a clean install of MCE 2005 you actually can join a domain during setup.

The banana hack (see http://extended64.com/blogs/rafael/articles/404.aspx)allows you to leave and join domains within Windows MCE 2005.

# re: The Banana hack isn't Banana-ing

Wednesday, July 26, 2006 8:58 AM by Graeme

If you are getting BSOD on Recovery Console - regardless of why you had to install the RC - I would think that that WAS supported.

I've had a few occassions when I got BSOD when working at that level (including reinstalls of OS) and it was nearly always a bad USB device.

Either - unplug all unneeded USB items
Or - if you can get away with it during recovery/setup - turn off the USB Bus in BIOS till you get a basic OS running.

# re: The Banana hack isn't Banana-ing

Wednesday, July 26, 2006 5:56 PM by kwsupport

I also have a brand new HP witn XP/MCE on it. My problem is that I get errors just trying to do the first step (winnt32.exe /cmdcons ) of the banana hack.

# re: The Banana hack isn't Banana-ing

Tuesday, October 17, 2006 2:58 PM by Garth

I don't know if you still have your problem, but I believe I have the solution, for both of you.

The problem I had was with a Toshiba Qosmio F30 trying to get this going. Since it doesn't ship with CDs, but has the OS OEM, you can't use your CDs to set up the RC because you don't have them.

So next best thing is to either try running it from your "c:\windows\i386\winnt32.exe" or try reaching the RC from booting off another XP CD.

If I am correct and you have the same problem I had, this is where it all falls apart. The XP CD you try can't find any HDDs to work with, be it RC or even trying a new install with XP. Likewise, the RC you installed already just goes into a BSOD.

This is because of SATA RAID drivers. For the Qosmio at least, the HDDs may not be raided, but they need the SATA drivers which don't come default with XP CDs. Thus, they don't see the HDDs and can't use the RC, or it BSODs because the drivers aren't loaded yet when the RC comes into play.

Your options from here are many, but they all come down to the same thing. You need to get the RAID drivers.

You can use a floppy drive for this in default XP setup. (Hit "F6" after booting off the CP when it says "To load third party raid drivers, press F6 now." or somesuch.) Follow the prompts. But here, you need an external floppy because it's a newer laptop. Maybe a USB one, I didn't go that way so I'm not sure if it works.

I built an XP CD with nLite (Yes, using a ligit CD), added the Raid drivers and went through the steps in the Banana Hack with using the RC from the CD I made. I'm now up and running.

Hope that helps.