37 replies to this topic

[was_jaclaz]

>jaclaz
Please make the working fira-boot-driver for Windows xp 64 bit

Maybe you should re-word it as:

>jaclaz karyonix
Please make the working fira-boot-driver for Windows xp 64 bit

jaclaz

[CD-RW]

Thanks karyonix for this great Driver. give 5 stars.

is it possible to make a new FBWF Driver ?

Greetings

Kare
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www.kare-net.de

[MedEvil]

is it possible to make a new FBWF Driver ?

Why? What's wrong with the old FBWF?

[CD-RW]

Why? What's wrong with the old FBWF?

Old FBWF is a Microsoft Driver. Copyrights by Microsoft.
A new Driver is free.

Kare
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www.kare-net.de

[bobsobol]

I agree with MadEvil to some extent. If the FBWF was combined with this driver, you could reduce the RAM requirement considerably, reading directly from the ROM image, and only writing back to RAM.

I have no idea how to make such a thing work... But it's a cool idea, and as I say, it's not far from Linux cloop devices, so it should be possible. IMHO.

Oh, and yes, if you can boot from a USB memory device, then you don't need this... If you are supporting systems on remote sites which you don't own, and which you didn't choose the hardware in, and which may be very old... there is no guarantee that they have USB ports, let alone a BIOS which will support USB boot. CD boot is pretty much guaranteed.

[MedEvil]

Old FBWF is a Microsoft Driver. Copyrights by Microsoft.
A new Driver is free.

And that's important, because FBWF is the only thing holding us back from distributing XP based PE as a free OS or what?

[bobsobol]

And that's important, because FBWF is the only thing holding us back from distributing XP based PE as a free OS or what?

Well, I'm sure Microsoft License agreements will still apply to any distribution of XP. Only Microsoft can legally give it away free, and I can't see them ever doing that. ReactOS is FOSS and is available as a Live Disc, but doesn't yet support, and may never natively support, any variant of NTFS.

The point is that with FiraDisk you can boot and use an entire system from CD / DVD on any PC... provided you have enough of the right drivers for it on the ROM install.

However, unlike a modern Linux Live CD, you will loose as much RAM from the operating system as you have stored on the OS image on the disc.

The more drivers you add, to support more systems, the less RAM you have once you boot, and the higher the minimum RAM requirements for booting will be.

This is exactly the same with WIM PE boots, because they copy into RAM and boot from there too. That's why you need so much RAM just to install Vista.

With a cloop device, only what is written to the volume you boot from is allocated in RAM, everything read is checked against the RAM cache, and if it's not been changed since the initial boot, it comes directly of the CD/DVD.

So you can include every driver ever released and the only space they will take up in your system RAM is the few registry changes to make them active.

You may be able to run tools and utilities from the ISO portion as "portable" versions with this method alone, without them taking space in RAM unless you run them, but with a cloop they could be part of the OS image and still not need to be loaded into RAM.

cloop is like the differencing files and snapshots in Virtual Machines. Only the difference between the base image and the working system is stored in volatile memory.

The goal would be to be able to boot even an old 64Meg NT4 Workstation into XP / 2000 from a CD to be able to perform recovery, backup, forensic analysis etc... and have all your favorite tools available without having to pull the Hard Disk out and stick it in an analysis machine... or to have a CD with your OS and all your tools and programs and settings that you can use in any Cyber-Cafe or public library to keep in contact without having to risk leaving logins and logs and security keys on their system.

[MedEvil]

@bobsobol
What are you brabbeling on about?
You can run a PE just fine directly from CD/DVD without the need to load it into RAM or of an overlay driver.
And in case you really want an overlay driver, there is EWF and FBWF.

But imo, overlay drivers are just crutches for people too lazy to do the work of configuring their software properly.

[Joshua]

@bobsobol
What are you brabbeling on about?

Thank you for learning a new vocable!
http://www.dict.cc/e...h/babbling.html

Joshua

[MedEvil]

Hey! How can you criticise my perfect genglish?

[paraglider]

And also if you are using a wim booted pe you don't have to run all your programs from the same wim.

There are many options to reduce the memory footprint of a vista / win7 based pe.

Johshua has proved with win7rescuepe that it boots directly from the CD not using a wim container.

[karyonix]

@CD-RW
Currently, I don't have enough knowledge to write file system filter driver. It is completely different from port driver.
My first driver, FiraDisk, is still incomplete. I will have to do something about it first.

[bobsobol]

And also if you are using a wim booted pe you don't have to run all your programs from the same wim.

There are many options to reduce the memory footprint of a vista / win7 based pe.

Johshua has proved with win7rescuepe that it boots directly from the CD not using a wim container.

That is good... and yea, you can always move applications of to another partition... and if they are written, and configured correctly then there is no problem. But just getting an OS designed the way Windows (not Windows PE) is to boot from a read only media is not an easy thing... If you need Windows, and the PE won't cut it this seems to be just the ticket.

I wonder how far you could get with junctions and such. But I still feel that if this driver only filtered writes into RAM, and reads filtered through RAM the whole process would be so simple you wouldn't need to be a BootDisc GOD to make your entire OS portable on a ROM disc.