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Install Windows from unmodified Windows install ISOs by using grub2 and wimboot

grub2 windows install

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#26 erwan.l

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Posted 08 July 2019 - 04:19 PM

About mounting an iso over a network share, ImDisk will obviously work.

 

Just tested the below with success :

>vmount-win64 attachvhd "\\servername\sharename\iso\win10\install.iso"
OpenVirtualDisk OK
Flag 5
AttachVirtualDisk OK
\\.\CDROM1

Only downside here is that you cannot pass credentials so your share needs to be allowing everyone.

On the plus side, as this is a standalone exe, you can "inject" it with wimboot next to the winpeshl.ini and startup.bat (whereas imdisk would need to be injected upfront thus modifying the iso).



#27 steve6375

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Posted 08 July 2019 - 04:48 PM

You dont need to modify the ISO upfront to use ImDIsk, you could package it up into a self-extracting file and inject it using wimboot (assuming there is no size problem), or you could use wget to pull a self-extracting ImDIsk file over http.



#28 a1ive

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Posted 21 November 2019 - 11:46 AM

@erwan.l
That is a problem as old as the egg (or maybe the chicken is older ;)), the bootmanager in real mode passing suitable parameters to a protected mode driver (capable of reading them).

 

The problem (ONLY between grub4dos and Firadisk/Winvblock) was solved because the developers found a way to exchange this info while SVBUS (if I recall correctly) resolved it because it directly looks to BIOS disk/drives.

 

With UEFI (and GRUB2) the matter is very different. 
Most probably (but the good guys that develop GRUB2 for *whatever* reasons seem to ignore the advanced features that grub4dos brought to the original GRUB code, that made it into the flexible bottmanager it is today) it would be trivial to add to GRUB2 (if they aren't already buit are simply not documented) some of the features of grub4dos, including that of creating a small RAM drive to store these exchange info and to have disk/drive mapping/remapping.  

But in the case of a wim/PE which is RAM loaded the approach by Steve6375 (via IMDISK, httpdisk, or *whatever* is "good enough") and has the advantage that the ISO needs not any modification.

I've added 'map' features (under UEFI) to my modified version of GRUB2.

source code: https://github.com/a1ive/grub

more info: (Chinese) http://bbs.wuyou.net...read&tid=417233


Edited by a1ive, 21 November 2019 - 11:47 AM.


#29 mizzcrazi

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Posted 24 November 2019 - 07:25 AM

How easy or alot of messing bout if youv never made a disk bfor





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