Bootble CD

[joker]

I'm having difficulties in making a working bootable CD.

I used an image file created with WinImage (.IMA) from a booting partition (90MB).

The visible part of the CD is OK, but the CD doesn't boot.

I succeded in making a working CD with NERO (and the same image file), so I think there is some hidden trick (or pehaps a bug)?

 

Emulation type: Hard Disk

Boot Image: file.IMA

Developer ID: blank (what's the meaning of this field??)

Load segment: 07C0 (readonly)

Sectors to load: 1 (readonly)

 

I tried building an ISO first and then burn, or write directly to the CD: with same results.

 

Thanks.

[LIGHTNING UK!]

Hmm well I just took a copy of a windows 95 vmware drive (using diskedit.exe from norton utils). I used that file in the 'boot image' field within ImgBurn and set the emulation type to hard drive.

 

I added a dummy file to the build window (because you have to) and then made an iso.

 

I mounted that iso as the cd drive in a non windows 95 vmware session and when it booted up, it didn't load the real OS of that session, it loaded Windows 95 instead (i.e. from the CD).

 

So on that note, I'd have to say my test worked and bootable cd's with hdd emulation were working as expected.

 

Not really sure why yours didn't?!

 

Perhaps it's to do with the partition you're emulating?

 

What exactly were you trying to boot? Is it something I too can download from somewhere - i.e. a linux distro or something?

[joker]

What exactly were you trying to boot? Is it something I too can download from somewhere - i.e. a linux distro or something?

Well, I'm booting a customized XP embedded. I'm afraid I can't upload 90MB!

I created the partition in a secondary HardDisc with XP Pro (disk manager), formatted FAT, and then made active; the partition contains few files and a big file.sdi that is loaded in memory by ntldr

 

Sorry, but I don't understand the software/way you tested.

I'll try to create a tiny partition with DOS (old good 5.0 ) and then create an image from that ...

I'll let you know if works next week.

[LIGHTNING UK!]

Going by what I'd read, the image has to be of a physical drive, not just a partition from it.

 

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/167685

 

I don't have a small hdd like that so I had to make a virtual one via VMWare.

 

Once I was running inside a VMware session with a small (500mb) drive, I just used DiskEdit to read the raw sectors of it.

 

That image then became my bootable image and it loaded up fine from the CD.

 

EDIT: I guess if your tool can convert a partition image file into a hdd with 1 partition image file, that would work in the same way - I didn't look into doing that (but I will do now!)

[dbminter]

Don't know if it applies here or not, but, I still haven't been able to get a booting disc from a Linux bootable disc's image.

[LIGHTNING UK!]

lol that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me db!

 

If it's a bootable disc image, you just burn it?!

 

If you're talking about extracting the bootable bit, that's not easy if they're using custom (none) or hdd emulation.

[dbminter]

Yeah, I am sorry. I did not word that very well. I meant to say creating a bootable disc image using an extracted boot sector file thinggy from the bootdisc itself. I just used that as the boot image and burned just it and the folder containing things that were run on boot. It would start to boot and, well, I forget, but, it was chronicled in my post in the past... wherever that was. Really helpful here, I know.

[LIGHTNING UK!]

I've been messing around with bootable hdd emulation stuff for hours now and I've added 'Local Disks' to the drop down box where you can select what you want to make the bootable image from.

 

It'll create a file containing a MBR (with 1 partition, marked 'active') and then the given hard disk partition - so really the image looks like a proper physical disc.

 

This image CAN be used with the normal hdd emulation option in ImgBurn, so it saves you messing around with WinImage etc - which I could never get to work anyway!

 

All you have to do is ensure the partition you're reading is small enough to fit on your destination media.

 

i.e. I made a FAT32 partition of 625MB - as told to do in the xp embedded docs I read.

 

So the ImgBurn bit is now working ok but I can't get xp embedded to boot up! Too much pissing around with whatever the hell EWF is! I just get a BSOD with stop error 0x0000007B

 

Once I can get it working on (copied over to) my 2nd pc I'll go through the El Tortio build steps properly. I just don't want shut this PC down and boot into my test XPe image!

[LIGHTNING UK!]

Ah hhaaaa! Sussed it!

 

My XPe image works properly now from the partition I copied it to.

 

After running 'etprep -all', using ImgBurn to create a boot image of that partition and finally a bootable ISO, I now have XPe on CD and it boots fine

 

No 3rd party tools involved in the build at all

[JasonFriday13]

Ahh, I love happy endings .

[joker]

I succeeded at the end! The image has to be of the whole disk, (to include MBR, stupid of me!).

I tried with a virtual disk and with a very small disk and is OK.

(I'm not and expert with WinImage, I downloaded it only to try this functionality with ImageBurn #39;( : there is a comand 'create Virtual Hard Disk from phisical drive ...' that does, I failed using 'ReadDisk' with a letter driver selected that copy only the partition )

but

 

I've added 'Local Disks' to the drop down box where you can select what you want to make the bootable image from.

It'll create a file containing a MBR (with 1 partition, marked 'active') and then the given hard disk partition - so really the image looks like a proper physical disc.

 

No 3rd party tools involved in the build at all

this would be great, and much appreciated! (in next release?)

 

Thank you.

[LIGHTNING UK!]

Yep it's in there for the next release (v2.2.0.0).

 

Out of interest, why aren't you just using hd2iso.exe ? It comes with XPe and lives in some utilities folder somewhere.

[joker]

I tried HD2ISO to build an El Torito CD (XPE that start from CD), but discarded that solution because:

1. the procedure to obtain the CD is very complicated, and quite impossible to batch

2. hd2iso doesn't allow a visible partition (if I'm right) where to put other files (ex documentation)

Also from what I understood HD2ISO create a "no emulation" bootable CD.

3. Access to the CD is very slow.

4. My target is to have a little installer/rescue system whithout need of OS, not a working CD itself.

 

Regards.