booting el-torito Hard Disk emulation

So i followed the this topic http://reboot.pro/3890/ and got the cd working and booting, but it's painfully slow. I have seen and have heard of loading that image into ram (like a ram disk) and then loading windows from the ram so it's faster. How do I do this, doe's anyone know ? I've searched everywhere and the closest thing I found was a post on MSDN about doing something like this with a windows xp embeded but it made no sense what so ever. Is grub4dos an option ? and if so where do I begin I never used it before.

Thanks.

So i followed the this topic http://reboot.pro/3890/ and got the cd working and booting, but it's painfully slow. I have seen and have heard of loading that image into ram (like a ram disk) and then loading windows from the ram so it's faster. How do I do this, doe's anyone know ? I've searched everywhere and the closest thing I found was a post on MSDN about doing something like this with a windows xp embeded but it made no sense what so ever. Is grub4dos an option ? and if so where do I begin I never used it before.

Thanks.

WHERE you have "seen" or "heard" about THAT image into RAM?

A CD is inherently slow, and having a "Full XP" on it IS slow.
But which exact hardware did you test the ETBOOT project on?
Or, even better what is your GOAL?
Like having WIndows XP boot in RAM, having specifically ETBOOT boot from ram, etc.? (or, more generally what is the intended use of the *whatever* you have in mind?)

Additionally please post some details, like HOW much RAM do you have on your machine(s), HOW big in size is the *whatever* you want to boot from RAM, WHAT is supposed to be the "backing media" (like CD or DVD or USB stick, etc.)

Maybe this way we can find a solution/give you some hint/suggestion.


Wonko

My goal is to have xp boot from ram. Projects like windows pe is not an option for me because I have to have a specific app installed that is very complicated and installs some drivers and services in windows and making them work in pe wold be a lot harder. This just seems the right solution for me. The ram on the machines i plan to use this with is at least 2gb. I've tested the cd on 2 laptops I own and they work but as i said it's slow. Using nlite and ntfs compression I managed to reduce the windows installation footprint with drivers and everything I need to less then 700 mb (cd). I know this is possible because i have a cd like this but it's really old and I need new drivers and software on it. When booting the old cd "loading RAMDISK image" appears and it loads the el torito partition in ram and then boots xp form ram. As far as I can tell it was made with some windows embedded tools but have not figured out how.

And AGAIN, what alternate boot media can you use?.

Let's say that having an XP fully in RAM from CD is possible (it is).
In any case you need to load the whole contents of the CD in RAM, this will be slow at booting time.

You can compress the image to gain some time in the data transfer.

You can use either WinVblock or Firadisk driver to have a mem mapped with grub4dos image running from RAM.

A .img (raw disk image, i.e. what you burned to the CD as hard disk emulation mode) is preferred over a .iso (as it needs not FBWF, EWF or similar "read only" drivers) is that a problem?

If you want to use the MS ramdisk and NTLDR, it should also be possible, but then you would have a limit of 512 Mb.

Another option is the Diskless Angel driver:
http://www.disklessangel.com/


Wonko

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. I used Firadisk with the help of the tutorial on diddy.bootland.net. And I managed get it working from the cd. I had to lear a few thing about mkisofs and grub4dos but google and diddy.bootland.net was a real friend. It is slow at boot time when loading the cd in to ram but then it works perfectly. i had a few problem with it not booting but it seemed to be the video driver, removing it and using the generic vga driver in xp did the trick. Thank again.

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. I used Firadisk with the help of the tutorial on diddy.bootland.net. And I managed get it working from the cd. I had to lear a few thing about mkisofs and grub4dos but google and diddy.bootland.net was a real friend. It is slow at boot time when loading the cd in to ram but then it works perfectly. i had a few problem with it not booting but it seemed to be the video driver, removing it and using the generic vga driver in xp did the trick. Thank again.

Good .

You may want to try also (as it may give you "higher" resolutions than the "generic vga") the VBEMP UNIVBE/UNIVGA driver:
http://reboot.pro/2325/


Wonko