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#1 Franz Ferdinand II.

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Posted 13 January 2020 - 08:35 PM

There's a small boot utility to test physical memory from PassMark and I'd wish to add this tool to Windows 10 boot menu, but unfortunatelly the format in which Passmark delivers this tool (IMG) is so nonstandard that I'm not able to convert it to anything usable for Microsoft's boot manager. At least converting it to proper ISO and adding it to BCD store via EasyBCD would work, but the problem is that the IMG architecture is so strange that the resulting ISO has unrecognizable structure.

By using OSFmount I'm able to mount this image either as physical drive or logical one of the two contained partitions (2x FAT 256MB), then saving the virtual drive to ISO works but as I mentioned, it's not readable.

Any clue how to handle this really weird image for MS bootmgr would be very appreciated!



#2 steve6375

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Posted 14 January 2020 - 09:36 AM

MBR boot or UEFI32 or UEFI64?



#3 Wonko the Sane

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Posted 14 January 2020 - 09:55 AM

MBR boot or UEFI32 or UEFI64?

 

https://www.memtest86.com/download.htm

 

 

IMPORTANT: MemTest86 V8 images support only UEFI boot. On machines that don't support UEFI, MemTest86 will not boot. Please download the older V4 BIOS release of MemTest86 instead.

 

and:

 

 

System Requirements
x86 based hardware, 32bit or 64bit
UEFI platform firmware
Windows, Linux, or Mac OS
USB Flash Drive (>= 512MB capacity)

 

You see how the new paradigm is to give to the user LESS choices (thanks to - stupid - UEFI)? :whistling:

 

 

@Franz Ferdinand II.

At first sight the disk image is pretty much standard, it has two FAT16 partitions, each with its own EFI bootloader (both 32 and 64 bit).

I have no idea how you can chainload it from BOOTMGR, though, ISO or not ISO, and - personally - I won't touch EasyBCD with anything but a 4' stick.

 

You will probably need to use GRUB2 "in the middle", but it wil probably be pesky if possible at all, memtest is "low level" enough to be incompatible with a number of boards (see bllacklist.cfg) so it has to be seen how it would react to an intermediate boot manager. :(

 

However:

https://www.memtest8...m/technical.htm

 

 

However, for UEFI systems that can only boot via CD/DVD media (such as systems with older UEFI implementations, or systems that only support remote boot via CD-ROM emulation through the BMC or IP KVM devices), we provide an (unsupported) CD/DVD ISO image of MemTest86 Free Edition for download.

 

https://www.memtest8...mtest86-iso.zip

 

Which BTW at first sight seems a lot like a pretty much normal hard disk emulation .iso with the same disk image inside. 

 

:duff:

Wonko



#4 Franz Ferdinand II.

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Posted 11 May 2020 - 07:48 PM

I'm kinda dogged into this task. What does not work is extracting the virtual image to root of empty FAT16 partition (X:) and creating new {bootmgr} entry as STARTUP apptype with device set to "partition=X:" and path to "\EFI\BOOT\BOOTX64.efi". I suppose then that Microsoft's bootmgr can't directly chainload the .EFI file delivered by PassMark, so I've mounted the entier Passmark's image by OSFmount as virtual disk and made it's full snapshot into VHD format, so now the VHD image should be UEFI-bootable copy of memtest86-usb.img. The question is if and how can this image be hooked as virtual drive or RAMdisk either as {bootmgr} or {fwbootmgr} menu entry. I've created another new bcd entry as BOOTSECTOR apptype without setting path value as I want to use it's own bootloader:

Real-mode Boot Sector
---------------------
identifier              {ccd5aa0b-523f-11ea-88cd-54bef771218b}
device                  vhd=[C:]\boot\MemTest86_raw.vhd
description             PassMark MemTest86

This entry however doesn't appear in the boot menu at all, despite inserted to displayorder sequence. Any idea how the BOOTSECTOR entries should be handled properly, or what apptype to use.....

 

I believe the image is somehow bootable, if the menu entry is accurately defined, but there's real lack of documentation for all the apptypes, the only examples of using VHD image as virtual device is for booting another Windows as OSLOADER device type, which is not this case.


Edited by Franz Ferdinand II., 11 May 2020 - 07:53 PM.


#5 Franz Ferdinand II.

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Posted 28 July 2021 - 07:14 AM

I'm trying now to solve the task by installing Grub4Win software. It enables customizable boot options via Grub2 menu entries. By googlng a bit I've come to this code

menuentry "MemTest86" {
    insmod chain
    insmod search_fs_uuid
    search --fs-uuid --no-floppy --set=root B7649D23-74C5-412C-4D7F-00EE267B537E
    chainloader /EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.efi
}

where the GUID was reported by disk manager software. However if I boot this entry, it reports error for the reason it can't find partition with this GUID. Is there a different way how to locate it? It's the last partition (FAT16) on the only hard disk which is GPT type.



#6 Wonko the Sane

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Posted 28 July 2021 - 10:08 AM

Go to the GRUB2 command line and try using the probe command from there.

https://askubuntu.co...he-grub2-prompt

 

or, since it is a "fixed", "known" partition, hard code it, i.e. set root=(hd0,gptn)

 

You might need to insmod part_gpt (and possibly also insmod part_msdos)

 

:duff:

Wonko



#7 Franz Ferdinand II.

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Posted 28 July 2021 - 01:38 PM

Thank U, probe revealed for FAT16 partitions it uses serial number instead of GUID. Having entered the SN, it booted instantly.



#8 Wonko the Sane

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Posted 29 July 2021 - 08:22 AM

Thank U, probe revealed for FAT16 partitions it uses serial number instead of GUID. Having entered the SN, it booted instantly.

Good :)

 

I don't think that this is peculiar to FAT16 :unsure: , the uuid is the volume UUID that for FAT16 volumes is actually the serial number.

 

It is a mess, the confusion between UUID, GUID, and the various ways they are read/parsed is common.

 

Only as a side note (and FYI) the NTFS is the "long" serial (that you cannot get with "normal" windows tools that provide only the "short" one):

http://reboot.pro/in...showtopic=19698

 

The best thing is always use the "native" (be it the grub4dos uuid command or the grub2 probe) to check how the specific volume is seen in the specific environment.

 

:duff:

Wonko







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