Rambooting is not limited to binaries from server 2003 or XP Embedded. It works on XP sp2 and sp3 too (don't know about sp1). When I mean works, I refer to booting a real non-pe system from ramdisk with the osloader(Boot Loader)/ntldr (pretty much like diskless XP Embedded systems) and boot.ini. Booting WinPE from ramdisk must be done with setupldr.bin (Setup Loader) and winnt.sif, and maybe only with the 2003 version of it. Note that ntdetect.com can be from XP. Trying to load ramdisk images with the xp version of setupldr.bin gives I/O errors, and cannot read winnt.sif properly. The xp version of ramdisk.sys requires a registry patch (because otherwise it will not start at boot). Therefore ramloading works with XP sources too, and the only time you need 1 2003 binary, setupldr.bin, is when ramloading in PE-mode.
Joakim
I'm quite new in this rambooting kind of things.
My knowledge spreads this much:-
1) can make a raw disk image with Imdisk
2) know a little bit about W2k3SP1 ramdisk.sys & setupldr.bin & how to use them a BartPE
3) have dealt with some freeware ramdisk drive from within an existing Windows installation
4) know the syntax & ramdisk support by Grub4DOS
5) know little bit about Firadisk
Still there are lots of topics which are quite hazy to me. Can anybody explain me how to boot XP in non-PE mode as joakim instruced at the very outset of this thread assuming the above knowledge? Let me ask u one more question, does BartPE use W2k3SP1 ramdisk driver for accessing its ramdisk? How does that type of ramdisk driver differ from one that we use from within a full-blown installation of Windows, e.g. an Audio/Graphics driver? As u can see. I'm quite ignorant about these topics. So please, no hard feelings. I want to learn.