[project] ETBoot

Hello,

I'm going to release the new project that been used by myself internally, this project can create a real bootable Windows Live CD/DVD,
so you will be able to use full installation of Windows operating system on CD/DVD without installation.

Tested working Windows version list:

• Windows XP (5.1 Build 2600 - SP2, SP3)
• Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs (5.1 Build 2600 - SP2)
• Windows Server 2003 (5.2 Build 3790 - SP1, SP2)
• Windows Code Name 'Longhorn' (6.0 Build 4051)

Possible working Windows version list:

• Windows XP (5.1 Build 2600 - SP0, SP1, SP2, SP3)
• Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs (5.1 Build 2600 - SP2)
• Windows Server 2003 (5.2 Build 3790 - SP0, SP1, SP2)
• Windows Code Name 'Longhorn' (6.0 Build 3551~4094)
• Windows Home Server (5.2 Build 4500)

Screenshot:


Download Toolkits + Tutorial:
 ETBoot.part1.rar   6.5MB   42306 downloads
 ETBoot.part2.rar   6.5MB   40663 downloads
 ETBoot.part3.rar   6.5MB   40522 downloads
 ETBoot.part4.zip   1.56MB   1147 downloads

 

Attention

There is a mirror download site at http://erwan.labalec.fr/ETBoot/

 

 

-------------

The file ETBoot.part4.rar is reported as broken, it is just left included for historical reasons.

 

Any suggestion/comment are welcomed.

Edited by Nuno Brito, 01 March 2015 - 01:46 PM.
Updating the download links, thanks to Wonko, Erwan and other brave members

Any suggestion/comment are welcomed.

Yay!

One quick suggestion.
Rename the title to something like
ETBoot - Boot youre Windows Install from CD-DVD
More people can find it later.

Downloading project and testing ill have to do in the weekend. Thanks for the Project.

Yay!

One quick suggestion.
Rename the title to something like
ETBoot - Boot youre Windows Install from CD-DVD
More people can find it later.

Downloading project and testing ill have to do in the weekend. Thanks for the Project.

Title changed

Title changed

I am using VirtualPC for virtualization.
Without any problems, I went thru all steps up to step 7.

When I started ETBoot Builder and navigated to my virtual disk
I have received message that Virtual Hard Disk.vhd is not valid.

Edited: The same is valid for virtual disk made with VirtualBox!?

How I can overcome this problem?

I am using VirtualPC for virtualization.
Without any problems, I went thru all steps up to step 7.

When I started ETBoot Builder and navigated to my virtual disk
I have received message that Virtual Hard Disk.vhd is not valid.

Edited: The same is valid for virtual disk made with VirtualBox!?

How I can overcome this problem?

Virtual hard disk (*.vhd) from Microsoft Virtual PC is not a flat hard disk image, it used proprietary format from conectix.
You may need to use another method to get the correct hard disk image (That's why I included SelfImage in the .rar file).

VirtualBox use it own format on virtual disk, so it is not a valid disk image.

To do this, you will need another working virtual machine, make sure the target virtual hard disk are attached.
Boot into the virtual machine, open SelfImage and then choose your target disk (entire disk) and save it as .img file.
Do not use any compression method for saving disk image.

Screenshot:

Any suggestion/comment are welcomed.

Testet on vmware and 6 different systems. works like a charm !!
a little slow until all hardware are detected, but then all installed programs works !!!
Very good work.

Joshua

@Dhilip89

I had a very quick look at it, it seems like REALLY NICE work.

If I may throw in a few ideas/suggestions:
a. Although what you wrote is very correct, the El-Torito standard provides for THREE "ways":
1) El-Torito Floppy Emulation
2) El-Torito NO emulation
3) El-Torito Hard Disk emulation
Most people only know/use first one (for DOS based images) and second one (for 2K/XP install CD's and the various PE's).
Maybe you should specify that you use instead the third one.

b. You could provide, instead of instructions for "VMWare", instructions for Qemu (+QemuManager) as it:
1) it is Freeware
2) supports "natively" RAW disk images
3) XP installed in it uses already the default "Standard dual channel PCI/IDE controller"

c. The RAW disk image can be easily mounted with VDK.EXE (either directly or, if needed, through the use of a .pln descriptor file to have correct geometry), this way I guess one would not need the ETboot.iso at all, and just need running ETbootbuilder from the "real" machine.



jaclaz

@jaclaz

My ETBoot project are based on:
3) El-Torito Hard Disk emulation

I choosen VMware Workstation because I used it frequently, and it was easier for doing my experiment.

Some virtual machine will fail to boot the final ISO image generated with ETBoot Builder (maybe those VM software doesn't implement hard disk emulation boot correctly).

I used ETPatchBoot.iso to install El Torito/EWF support because you can't access to some registry on normal user/Windows installation, unless you take ownership on the registry entry.

ETPatch will work very well with user "SYSTEM" or using Windows PE based environment.

@jaclaz

My ETBoot project are based on:
3) El-Torito Hard Disk emulation

Yep, I have seen that , I mean it would be useful to add this piece of info to the docs.
A bit out of topic, can you share just the way (program and commands) you use to make this HD-emulation .iso? It is something I never found appropriate explanation about.

I choosen VMware Workstation because I used it frequently, and it was easier for doing my experiment.

Some virtual machine will fail to boot the final ISO image generated with ETBoot Builder (maybe those VM software doesn't implement hard disk emulation boot correctly).

I will try a build with your app under Qemu and post results.

I used ETPatchBoot.iso to install El Torito/EWF support because you can't access to some registry on normal user/Windows installation, unless you take ownership on the registry entry.

ETPatch will work very well with user "SYSTEM" or using Windows PE based environment.

I haven't got handy a XP machine right now, but I will see if the ETPatch runs either through the "AT/SCHTASKS" trick or the Sysinternal PSExec or Skrubbeltrang PowerPrompt thingie:
http://www.boot-land...?...c=3828&st=8
( a few kb download is much handier than several Mbytes)



jaclaz

A bit out of topic, can you share just the way (program and commands) you use to make this HD-emulation .iso? It is something I never found appropriate explanation about.

mkisofs -hard-disk-boot -b <Hard disk image> -V <Volume label> -o <ISO image output> <Hard disk image>

I haven't got handy a XP machine right now, but I will see if the ETPatch runs either through the "AT/SCHTASKS" trick or the Sysinternal PSExec or Skrubbeltrang PowerPrompt thingie:
http://www.boot-land...?...c=3828&st=8
( a few kb download is much handier than several Mbytes)

That is much smaller, but you can't backup the registry hive easily if corrupted (ETPatch built-in restore backup option).

Very nice tutorial, Dhilip89! Unfortunately i'm at the moment in no position to test your little project.

But i have some questions.
- Why has the size of the HDD image to be limited to belog 4GB?
- Is it possible to put a second HDD image on the bootable DVD or will this somehow break the DVD?

Since you're deeper into that matter than i am, can you tell me what eltorito.sys exactly does?
All that i could find is, that it is a cdrom driver, but we already have one of those, cdrom.sys?

Very nice tutorial, Dhilip89! Unfortunately i'm at the moment in no position to test your little project.

But i have some questions.
- Why has the size of the HDD image to be limited to belog 4GB?
- Is it possible to put a second HDD image on the bootable DVD or will this somehow break the DVD?

Since you're deeper into that matter than i am, can you tell me what eltorito.sys exactly does?
All that i could find is, that it is a cdrom driver, but we already have one of those, cdrom.sys?

The size of hard disk image limited to 4GiB - 1 Byte because the ISO9660 file system limit, it use 32bit value to store size information 2³² (0xFFFFFFFF).
Only one hard disk image that contain 1 partition are allowed.

eltorito.sys does mount the hard disk image volume on CD/DVD when booted with hard disk emulation mode.

After successfully load the ISO image from CD, I tried to make it run remotely using tftpd32 with no luck.
All my test finish with a BSO, anyone tried or have any cue.

Thanks.

motote, first thing, welcome to the board.

After successfully load the ISO image from CD, I tried to make it run remotely using tftpd32 with no luck.
All my test finish with a BSO, anyone tried or have any cue.

Thanks.

Well, since the project has been released only YESTERDAY, it may take a bit of time before it is tested AS IS, definitely some more time before all sorts of VARIATIONS will be introduced and possibly even some more time before these variations can be troubleshooted.

I guess you'll have to wait a bit before anyone (apart the Author) gets enough hands on experience on this thingie here.

About reporting a BSOD, you may want to read the "Common Sense Advice" within Rules:
http://www.boot-land...?act=boardrules
with particular attention to point #d.

jaclaz

Hi all, it woould be very nice, to make such an XP on CD that boots any computer, like PE does.

I think, that is possible. I make a try on this weekend,

nice to her from you,
Dietmar

PS: What is abot the boottime?

Virtual hard disk (*.vhd) from Microsoft Virtual PC is not a flat hard disk image, it used proprietary format from conectix.
You may need to use another method to get the correct hard disk image (That's why I included SelfImage in the .rar file).

VirtualBox use it own format on virtual disk, so it is not a valid disk image.

To do this, you will need another working virtual machine, make sure the target virtual hard disk are attached.
Boot into the virtual machine, open SelfImage and then choose your target disk (entire disk) and save it as .img file.
Do not use any compression method for saving disk image.

Screenshot:

After I have managed successfully to make HD image under VirtualPC with SelfImage and
started ETBootBuilder, the answer is:

After I have managed successfully to make HD image under VirtualPC with SelfImage and
started ETBootBuilder, the answer is:

Only one partition are allowed in the hard disk image.

After successfully load the ISO image from CD, I tried to make it run remotely using tftpd32 with no luck.
All my test finish with a BSO, anyone tried or have any cue.

Thanks.

That is not designed to use with PXE boot.

Only one partition are allowed in the hard disk image.

But there is only one partition on my disk image!?

But there is only one partition on my disk image!?

Copy first 512 Bytes from your hard disk image using hex editor then post to here.

Copy first 512 Bytes from your hard disk image using hex editor then post to here.

Could MBR help?  HDD0.zip   499bytes   1583 downloads

Could MBR help?  HDD0.zip   499bytes   1583 downloads

I checked that MBR only contains one partition, maybe the issue with Windows Vista ?
Try it under Windows XP.

I checked that MBR only contains one partition, maybe the issue with Windows Vista ?
Try it under Windows XP.

Or maybe it works only under VMWare?!

Or maybe it works only under VMWare?!

I'm not sure it works under Virtual PC or not, I just tested with VMware.

Question about ETPATCH.CMD script inside ETPATCHBOOT

if exist %Drive%\pagefile.sys ( attrib -r -h -s %Drive%\pagefile.sys )
if exist %Drive%\pagefile.sys ( del /q %Drive%\pagefile.sys )
if exist %Drive%\pagefile.sys ( attrib -r -h -s %Drive%\hiberfil.sys )
if exist %Drive%\pagefile.sys ( del /q %Drive%\hiberfil.sys )

Do you check if pagefile.sys exist in order to delete hiberfil.sys

should be

if exist %Drive%\pagefile.sys ( attrib -r -h -s %Drive%\pagefile.sys )

if exist %Drive%\pagefile.sys ( del /q %Drive%\pagefile.sys )

if exist %Drive%\hiberfil.sys ( attrib -r -h -s %Drive%\hiberfil.sys )

if exist %Drive%\hiberfil.sys ( del /q %Drive%\hiberfil.sys )

Purpose is to delete both files, isnt'it?