122 replies to this topic

[MedEvil]

that was 50 mins ago, and it's still saying 'inspecting your computer's hardware configuration'. i'll check in the morning to see if it worked. how long does it usually take for it to do that?

Seconds!

[tom fredenson]

ok, after 7 hrs, its was still checking it. I see an end in sight, but does any1 know what is causing that?

[Galapo]

Does the nativeEx iso image boot for you on real hardware? We still need to get some of the basics confirmed before we move onto the more tricky issue of booting from usb.

Regards,
Galapo.

[tom fredenson]

how do you boot an iso image on real hardware/ i have no idea what that is

[was_jaclaz]

how do you boot an iso image on real hardware/ i have no idea what that is

A .iso image is a byte-by-byte copy of a CD filesystem.

You use a CD burning app to burn it to a CD or, for experiments, to a CDRW.

A very good Freeware app to do so is IMGBURN:
http://www.imgburn.com/

Use lowest possible speed when burning.

jaclaz

[Galapo]

Burn the outputted image to CD/DVD. Reboot and boot from the CD/DVD.

Regards,
Galapo.

[Galapo]

Use lowest possible speed when burning.

You know, I always use fastest possible speed with ImgBurn and never had an issue!

Regards,
Galapo.

[was_jaclaz]

You know, I always use fastest possible speed with ImgBurn and never had an issue!

Regards,
Galapo.

I also drive often my bike recklessly and speeding, but I tend to advice noobies to drive slowly.

If I could have a dime for the amount of times people solved their booting problems from CD by simply re-burning the .iso at a slower speed:
http://www.msfn.org/...lem-t87156.html
http://www.msfn.org/...isk-t83732.html
http://www.911cd.net...showtopic=13283

.....I won't be rich ....

.....but a lot of people would have less coasters


Usually there is NO problem when the CD is read on the SAME drive it was burned on , but experience has thought that the same CD if burned at a high speed may not be readable on another machine.

There are also "couples" between a certain make/model of burner and a certain brand/model of media, same burner may "like" a certain brand of media better than another, and curiously enough another burner may "like" better the former brand of mediam see this:
http://www.911cd.net...showtopic=21043

Generally speaking burners read "better" than CD players, this has been attirbuted to a higher precision of the mechanics of burners as comapared to CD readers.

For the record I still have and use in some occasions for "recovery" a Plextor SCSI 1x CD burner (one of those that use a caddy to hold the disc) that can read almost ANY CD that on newer/better/faster CD players/burners canoot be read.

jaclaz

[pscEx]

To the last about five answers:

All suggestions are not really necessary

If you use nativeEx_barebone as proposed, in the project tree there is a Finish >> 4 Burn Image >> Burn CD
Just click it, insert a CD (to save money a rewritable is ok) and build the project.

It will end with a bootable CD.

Peter

[tom fredenson]

lol, srry bout the late reply

yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay I can boot from the cd with the native ex iso.

....what now?

[Galapo]

jaclaz will be able to advise you the best.

But here's one way which I use myself:

1. Build project with BootSDI finish script (creates ram bootable ISO).

2. Install grub4dos to usb stick.

3. Create menu entry to boot iso with --mem paramenter:

title LiveXP

find --set-root --ignore-floppies /!images/iso/LiveXP_RAM.iso

map --mem /!images/iso/LiveXP_RAM.iso (hd32)

map --hook

chainloader (hd32)

boot

You could try one like this, but it doesn't work for me off my usb stick only from harddisk:

title LiveXP

find --set-root --ignore-floppies /!images/iso/LiveXP_RAM.iso

map /!images/iso/LiveXP_RAM.iso (hd32)

map --hook

chainloader (hd32)

boot

Regards,
Galapo.

[tom fredenson]

whats the real difference between using create iso and bootsdi? / which one is faster

[Galapo]

BootSDI is slower to build, but will run faster. You need BootSDI for an "easy" way of getting ramdisk.sys into your build. Note that you have a few files to supply or build with 2k3 sp1 rather than xp.

Regards,
Galapo.

[tom fredenson]

what is the difference between the two codes you provided me?

[Galapo]

The second attempts to boot the ISO "directly" whereas the former loads it to ram before booting it.

Regards,
Galapo

[was_jaclaz]

@Galapo
With all due respect , I do not trust you fully .
If you managed to boot any PE or however NT based system with grub4dos CD emulation WITHOUT using Server 2003 SP1 or R2 files, either you are a magician (possible), or I am missing something (even more possible, getting old, you know).
Can you PM me or start a new thread detailing your build? (not to further derail this thread from helping tom)

@tom fredenson
I am not an expert on the way Winbuilder works, and how it "automagically" makes a USB stick bootable, but now that you have a working .iso we can try manually to transfer it's contents to the stick and see what happens.

You should have a working .iso that you can easily mount with IMDISK, or any other virtual CD app, or Winimage, and a CD that is an exact copy of the said .iso.

In the .iso or CD you should have:
1) CD bootsector invoking /I386/SETUPLDR.BIN (You won't be able to see this as it is not normally viewable)
2) all files in /I386

I am assuming your USB stick is already bootable with DOS, (tested) using the HP USB Format utility as per FAQ #4 here as FAT, not FAT32, not NTFS:
http://home.graffiti...SB/USBfaqs.html

Now, you should insert your stick and format it, again as FAT16, from within Windows 2K/XP.

Copy to the root of stick the files:
1) NTLDR (from your current XP OS install or from source CD)
2) NTDETECT.COM (from your current XP OS install or from source CD)
3) a BOOT.INI file, the one you have in root of your hard disk will do, and edit it to have this contents:

[boot loader]

timeout=30

default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS

[operating systems]

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP test" /fastdetect

c:\grldr="grub4dos"

Try booting from the stick, you should be able to see the boot.ini choices.
Selecting any of them will of course throw an error, as there is no \WINDOWS dorectory, nor files in it, nor any c:\grldr file

Now boot normally and add to root of the stick the grldr and menu.lst files you can find in grub4dos latest release, currently this one:
http://grub4dos.jot.com/WikiHome
http://grub4dos.jot....-2008-05-14.zip?

Try booting again from the stick, now choosing second entry in boot.ini should bring you to the grub4dos menu.
Again any choice you make in it will not work as files are missing, exception made for the entry "find and load NTLDR of Windows NT/2K/XP".

Boot again normally, and copy the whole \I386 folder from CD or .iso to the stick.

Now you have to decide whether you want to use \I386 on USB stick (editing SETUPLDR.BIN) or change the name of the folder from \I386 to \minint.

I do recommend first as it has been proved to be generally more compatible with some paths that may be "hardcoded" in the build.

Info is here:
http://www.911cd.net...showtopic=17504

Make sure, by opening a command prompt and changing directory to <drive_letter_of_ stick>\I386 that the "I" in "I386" is capital.

Now edit menu.lst on stick adding these lines:

title find and load SETUPLDR.BIN of PE build

find --set-root /I386/SETUPLDR.BIN

chainloader /I386/SETUPLDR.BIN



title find and load setupldr.bin of PE build

find --set-root /I386/setupldr.bin

chainloader /I386/setupldr.bin

Try booting from stick, select grub4dos in boot.ini choices, try the two entries above in menu.lst.

What happens? Please report.

Should any of the listed steps be not clear, or not be working as described, do post your doubts.

jaclaz

[pscEx]

or I am missing something (even more possible, getting old, you know).

OFFTOPIC:

Maybe you are right

BootSDI is slower to build, but will run faster. You need BootSDI for an "easy" way of getting ramdisk.sys into your build. Note that you have a few files to supply or build with 2k3 sp1 rather than xp.

Regards,
Galapo.

Peter

First time that I could beat you?
Or does your magic wend again produce some unexpected?

[tom fredenson]

Copy to the root of stick the files:
1) NTLDR (from your current XP OS install or from source CD)
2) NTDETECT.COM (from your current XP OS install or from source CD)
3) a BOOT.INI file, the one you have in root of your hard disk will do, and edit it to have this contents:

after this, it doesnt seem to boot into my usb.

NB:i did this thing "HP USB Format utility as per FAQ #4 here as FAT, not FAT32, not NTFS:" with FAT32, as FAT was not in the dropdown list.
I was also forced to format in linux, as windows doesnt seem to be able to format my external hard drive as fat 16, only fat and fat 32
and after i formatted my thing as fat 16, it still said that its type was just FAT

sorry if this doesnt make perfect grammatical sense, im a bit tired today

[amalux]

Copy to the root of stick the files:
1) NTLDR (from your current XP OS install or from source CD)
2) NTDETECT.COM (from your current XP OS install or from source CD)
3) a BOOT.INI file, the one you have in root of your hard disk will do, and edit it to have this contents:

after this, it doesnt seem to boot into my usb.

NB:i did this thing "HP USB Format utility as per FAQ #4 here as FAT, not FAT32, not NTFS:" with FAT32, as FAT was not in the dropdown list.
I was also forced to format in linux, as windows doesnt seem to be able to format my external hard drive as fat 16, only fat and fat 32
and after i formatted my thing as fat 16, it still said that its type was just FAT

sorry if this doesnt make perfect grammatical sense, im a bit tired today

FAT means Fat16 (as oposed to Fat32) ((only Jaclaz would know of Fat12 which doesn't exist anymore ))

[pscEx]

FAT means Fat16 (as oposed to Fat32) ((only Jaclaz would know of Fat12 which doesn't exist anymore ))

How is a floppy formatted, if not FAT12?

Peter

[amalux]

How is a floppy formatted, if not FAT12?

Peter

Always thought mine were FAT16 (FAT), how do I tell?

[pscEx]

Always thought mine were FAT16 (FAT), how do I tell?

I'm also not sure and I would not bet on FAT12

Peter

[was_jaclaz]

FAT12 is still used on floppies ONLY.

It has an addressing limit of around 32 Mbyte:
http://www.data-reco...esource/fat.htm


Check comments for Partition id 01:
http://www.win.tue.n...on_types-1.html

jaclaz

[amalux]

FAT12 is still used on floppies ONLY.

It has an addressing limit of around 32 Mbyte:
http://www.data-reco...esource/fat.htm


Check comments for Partition id 01:
http://www.win.tue.n...on_types-1.html

jaclaz

I knew you would know, thank you sir!

(hopefully Tom got his answer) 'FAT' = FAT16

[tom fredenson]

first i did this:

Copy to the root of stick the files:
1) NTLDR (from your current XP OS install or from source CD)
2) NTDETECT.COM (from your current XP OS install or from source CD)
3) a BOOT.INI file, the one you have in root of your hard disk will do, and edit it to have this contents:

after this, it doesnt seem to boot into my usb. ie i get stuck here

NB:i did this step "HP USB Format utility as per FAQ #4 here as FAT, not FAT32, not NTFS:"

with FAT32, as FAT was not in the dropdown list.