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#1 djmarian

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Posted 19 December 2013 - 01:53 PM

Hello,

 

I was just asked by my wife to prepare her a windows and office pc to practice office 2013 and I think it would be useful to have a CD that can boot any iso I download from the internet and after that any OS I have on any drive.

 

I have a linux distro on, will put xp lite to start fast and after that I have to repair what windows does to the bootloader. This means 2 CD's or USB keys. One would be so much better. And the best is I would only have to burn it once... Hiren's Boot CD...

 

Also useful in cases where the bootloader gets it.

 

Respectfully,

Dan.



#2 Sha0

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Posted 21 December 2013 - 11:14 PM

Hello and welcome to reboot.pro, djmarian! :)

Let's please forget about "Hiren's Boot CD". There are many alternatives to it, these days. Check out the various WinBuilder projects on these forums!

You can certainly put multiple .ISOs inside a container .ISO and burn it to disk. Tools like GRUB4DOS or MEMDISK allow you to boot an .ISO file.

The challenge lies not in booting them, but having the eventually-booted operating system recognize the fact that they were booted from such an .ISO file.

  • DOS is the easiest case and has no challenge.
  • We have WinVBlock and Firadisk drivers for Microsoft Windows.
  • For Linux, scripts in the initial RAM filesystem can take care of attaching the .ISO as a /dev/loopX device and mounting the ISO9660 filesystem.

Did you have a question?



#3 Wonko the Sane

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Posted 22 December 2013 - 09:26 AM

Did you have a question?

If he has one, it was already answered here:

http://reboot.pro/to...all-iso-images/

 

(about Linux don't forget the .iso mapping as partition ;))

 

:cheers:

Wonko



#4 djmarian

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Posted 23 December 2013 - 11:03 AM

So there is a program I can run from a cd or usb that does this?

- let's me search for an iso on any drive and boots it

- automatically detects all OS's on all drives, gives me a list and let's me boot them



#5 steve6375

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Posted 23 December 2013 - 04:11 PM

Well you can use Virtual Box to boot from any ISO without rebooting Windows.

 

To boot from USB and then boot from (almost) any ISO that is copied onto it, try Easy2Boot.

HTH

Steve


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#6 djmarian

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Posted 24 December 2013 - 08:08 AM

Hi, this is nice, 10x, if it would also list existing OS'es it'd be perfect.

Easy2Boot

Steve



#7 steve6375

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Posted 24 December 2013 - 10:13 AM

So you want it to search every folder on every drive in the system for every ISO file and list them all?

How many days  do you want to wait?



#8 djmarian

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Posted 24 December 2013 - 10:36 AM

nope, I meant that I want it to search for installed OS'es from all drive/partition roots and ISO's on the root of every drive/partition

So you want it to search every folder on every drive in the system for every ISO file and list them all?

How many days  do you want to wait?



#9 steve6375

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Posted 24 December 2013 - 10:43 AM

listing ISOs in the root of all drives is do-able.

What do you mean by 'search for installed OS's'?  Search and do what?



#10 steve6375

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Posted 24 December 2013 - 10:54 AM

As an experiment in E2B, you can try booting linux ISOs from the internal hard disk with a .mnu file of

title ISO Files on Internal Hard Disk 1st ptn Menu \n Run payload files
set LBACKMENU=(bd)/%grub%/menu.lst
(bd)/%grub%/QAUTO.g4b .automenu (hd1,0)/
debug 0
configfile (md)0x3000+0x50

If the 1st partition is a recovery ptn, try (hd1,1) instead.



#11 djmarian

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Posted 24 December 2013 - 10:59 AM

In my first post I said I have to install windows, this means I loose the linux bootloader.

The program should detect all OS'es and list them along the ISO's.

 

Search and do what?

 

 

And BTW, ''Let's please forget about "Hiren's Boot CD". There are many alternatives to it''.

Is there a more comprehensive pack of repair software on one CD?



#12 steve6375

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Posted 24 December 2013 - 11:07 AM

It is difficult to distinguish between different versions of Windows OS and list them accurately. Also difficult to recognise different types of linux Os's just from the files.

 

Many linux installers will install to a hard disk as dual boot. e.g.

Install Windows

Install linux

you now have a dual boot system

 

or

have a HDD with Windows and boot any linux you want from a USB drive so the HDD is not altered.

 

You can run many linux's with persistence from a USB drive (USB HDD or Flash).







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