Windows 98SE El Torito

[brit0n]

Brand ImgBurn newbie but been reading a lot Can't find the answer to this but if it's there, accept my apologies.

 

OK. I was testing ImgBurn to see if it could do some things. First up, I created an El Torito Bootable Win98SE CD (data type) - first of all on a CDRW until I have sorted out some of the layouts in the 2.88MB bootable image.

 

Compiled OK and burned. Booted into it which throws it into a good old-fashioned DOS prompt based on Win98SE (without loading windows). I can see and use all the non-NTFS/non-linux partitions as expected. But for the CD itself, I can DIR it but if I try to change directories to something other than root, it says it can't find it. (Yeah, I checked how it was typed etc etc.) (It reads fine in Windows itself.... this is the clue?)

 

Is this likely to be something I messed up in the ISO9660/Joliet/UDF settings? I thought the defaults would be OK!

 

Or is it a Standard v. ASCII thing? I thought straight ASCII was the right setting.

 

I've burned it on an old Mitsumi CR-4804TE (CD burner) and a new(er) Lite-On LH-20A1H (DVD Burner) both of which produce this kind of compilation using other software. Is there something I should know about ImgBurn that is different or have I misclicked a setting somewhere and if so how do I find out what!

 

Any help (or pointers to where in the Forums I missed the answer ) gratefully received.

 

(Yeah and why am I forbidden to change my signature? lol)

Edited April 2, 2007 by brit0n

[LIGHTNING UK!]

So you've made a boot disc and used that as the image for the bootable cd yeah?

 

You're obviously also loading the cdrom drivers and mscdex yeah or else you've no chance of reading the actual content of the CD, only the bootable image itself - which would be drive A: or B: I would guess.

 

That aside, if you make a bootable win98 floppy disc (on a real floppy!), load all the right CD drivers, but it can't parse the filesystem on a normal (non bootable and without messing with any of the 'restrictions' stuff) disc, I guess something's not right with my filesystem.

 

I don't know which filesystem DOS would try and read on the disc. Joliet at best I would guess.

 

I have a similar problem here with Win95 (GUI) reading a DVD Video disc. It will see the root folder and show files / folders within it, but you can't go down to the next level.

 

When I get a minute I'll do some testing.

[LIGHTNING UK!]

Ok, I've tested it! (quick aren't I )

 

I read my year 2000 Win98 bootable floppy disc to an image, mounted that as a floppy disc in a vmware session. I then made an image based on a folder (with subfolders) using iso9660, joliet and udf filesystem. I mounted that as a drive and then started the virtual machine.

 

It booted into the win98 floppy, loaded all the cdrom drivers and i was then able to browse the entire cd without any problems.

 

btw, it seems to just read the iso9660 filesystem. Chances are that it won't allow the 8.3 restrictions to be broken so don't mess with the settings

[brit0n]

So you've made a boot disc and used that as the image for the bootable cd yeah?

Yeah - that's El Torito for ya! lol

You're obviously also loading the cdrom drivers and mscdex yeah or else you've no chance of reading the actual content of the CD, only the bootable image itself - which would be drive A: or B: I would guess.

El Torito sticks the contents of the Boot Image (in this case 2.88MB) in as A:. Can't see them in the directory structure of the CD - it's an IMG file you insert and it can only be seen with an ISO buster like ISOBUSTER and the files in it - DOS boot and DOS utility files - can only be seen if you then break the IMG out - ALL of which I do in XP or Vista but right now in XP as I am still tinkering with tests in Vista before any prod machines use it). It disables the "swap diskette" drive (normally B:) and uses that for a FDD (if you have one).

That aside, if you make a bootable win98 floppy disc (on a real floppy!), load all the right CD drivers, but it can't parse the filesystem on a normal (non bootable and without messing with any of the 'restrictions' stuff) disc, I guess something's not right with my filesystem.

No idea what you mean. I'm not messing with a real floppy. I keep a diskette on one box on the LAN for those odd times when it's needed (normally to aim at it without a diskette in it when testing some software tricks which need a physical FDD to do some things even without a diskette).

 

I don't know which filesystem DOS would try and read on the disc. Joliet at best I would guess.

It SHOULD be able to read ISO9660 and Joliet but not UDF. I did my learnin' burnin' years ago with Roxio, then Adaptec (both yucky). Then when I started making bootable CDs, slipstreamed OSs and now boot USB sticks based on El Torito, I almost exclusively used Nero Burning ROM. Trouble is that I just got the OEM bundle of it and it doesn't HAVE Burning ROM - only Nero Express without the ability to make bootable CDs (did Nero forget why they became successful? lol) and I'd have to shell out even more money for the Vista version of Nero.

 

Now with multi-boot partitions on all the boxes with Vista, XP, 98SE, DOS and Linux, getting one piece of software which will work on XP or Vista and create CDs for all the partitions means I am testing several burning programs. ImgBurn looks like it's ahead of the pack but it has some odd quirks and if this one isn't my mistake, I probably have to move on. Shame - it's a darned nice piece of software WHICH TELLS YOU WHAT IT IS DOING which is getting rare these days with the "we think for you idiots cos you don't understand our software" mentality lol

 

I have a similar problem here with Win95 (GUI) reading a DVD Video disc. It will see the root folder and show files / folders within it, but you can't go down to the next level.

Wow! Not sure why you would want to do that! I only throw these old systems on the boxes so that software which CLAIMS to be able to run on old OSs actually can for reporting to others about them. Also because there really is some software which has never been replaced successfully but which has not been upgraded to work in new OSs.

 

Good luck going back past Win98SE though!

 

Thanks for the swift reply. Actually I am trying another version of the burn (I'm up to 4 so far in ImgBurn which is less than the other programs needed to get this far, but they are keeping other boxes busy lol!)

 

I'll post a [sOLVED] if I find the answer.

[brit0n]

[sOLVED]

 

OK let me shout "Duh!" and go all red-faced. I just ran an unverified build and burn and it's fine. UDP disabled - I was actually wondering when I saw lower case directory names in DOS. So the solution is simple - disable UDF when building.

 

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

Now for the explanation (I think).

 

Unlike Nero Burning ROM which used to allow setting all the filesystems even if they couldn't be used, I hadn't realised that ImgBurn was "strict" (which is good actually and I am impressed provided that strictness to standards is consistent).

 

I don't know if ImgBurn is "thinking Linux" and if that means that UDF is OK for bootable disks, but for any El Torito boots which can end up in DOS (which means MOST if not ALL Emergency CDs) would need to have the UDF disabled.

 

Might I suggest that when:

 

Advanced | Bootable Disc | Make Image Bootable

 

is CHECKED (TICKED), then the program automatically defaults:

 

Restrictions | UDF | Disable Unicode Support

 

to CHECKED (TICKED) also? Perhaps with a simple text addition (there's loads of space on that tab) stating that Unicode Support should ONLY be enabled if the disk is not required to be booted into DOS and then accessed. (Or alternatively and IMHO preferably, reverse the checkbox to be clear as default for bootable disks and would have to be checked/ticked to ENABLE Unicode support.) Just a suggestion.

[LIGHTNING UK!]

As I said in my previous post, the test image I built used ISO9660 + Joliet + UDF.

 

The real Win98 bootdisk I have only read the ISO9660 filesystem on the CD, but it did so correctly (root folder + all sub folders).

 

I don't know how you managed to get yours to display lower case filenames once booted into DOS, because mine certainly didn't. If you relax the ISO9660 spec restrictions when you build, I guess that might be possible, but then you always run the risk of the parser not working correctly.

 

Disabling Unicode support within the UDF filesystem shouldn't have anything to with this. If the parser supports UDF it should support Unicode - and as mentioned above, DOS isn't even looking at the UDF filesystem.

[brit0n]

Disabling Unicode support within the UDF filesystem shouldn't have anything to with this. If the parser supports UDF it should support Unicode - and as mentioned above, DOS isn't even looking at the UDF filesystem.

Yeah, that's what I thought. But that's all I changed. Checked that box to disable UDF and bob's your auntie it worked.

 

The lower case was weird - it was like I was running a version of DOS I never had.

 

I can't think how to repeat "my error" but if it happens again, I'll double-check the settings on the Joliet tab.

 

Now I have the expected result (very nice piece of program coding you have here I have to say), I can't think how or why I would unless you want me to TRY to emulate it! I have a feeling it was simply something I set which is no longer set that way. Is there something I can find in the log which will tell me the file system settings I used? I can only find where it states:

 

"Image File System(s): ISO9660 (Bootable), Joliet, UDF (1.02)"

 

which doesn't tell me much (the successful build was

 

"Image File System(s): ISO9660 (Bootable), Joliet"

 

I don't know how you managed to get yours to display lower case filenames once booted into DOS, because mine certainly didn't. If you relax the ISO9660 spec restrictions when you build, I guess that might be possible, but then you always run the risk of the parser not working correctly.

 

Maybe I did that, but the log doesn't tell me and if I did, I can't think how it got set back again unless ImgBurn "reverts" when closed. And I can't think that building from an NTFS filesystem on the PC running ImgBurn and building from a Network Attached Storage device using CIFS and NIFS.

 

Let's assume I relaxed the file settings and sorry to waste your time. Now that would mean that I set them to something acceptable. But there isn't a "Reset to Default" button. What are the defaults?

 

(Meanwhile, I'll try again with UDF enabled just to see if it does it again.)

[LIGHTNING UK!]

Ah well reminded... I've been meaning to add a 'Defaults' button for the build mode options for some time now but I keep forgetting.

 

There will be another new release tonight so unless you want to uninstall / reinstall (or, with the programs closed down, just delete HKCU\Software\ImgBurn), leave worrying about the defaults until later

 

But basically, on the restrictions tab, all the checkboxes should be left unchecked and the radio buttons on their top / left most options (level 1 etc).

[brit0n]

Thanks. brit0n loves regediting lol (well, at least I know what I am doing... er sometimes lol)

 

Well, you live and learn. You mean they actually came up with a Standard which didn't like files without extensions? Sheesh! That's one check box I have to fill!

 

(You might see my note about file attributes in the bugs forum. It was interesting to note that under IS09660 you can even attribute "file associations" so I guess they were all wrapped up with the dot3 thing lol.)

[brit0n]

OK I think I found it.

 

In case anyone else finds lowercase directories/files in DOS but can't get anything in DOS except the DIR of the root, here's the problem.

 

Pure ASCII isn't pure of course. I had read that ASCII was the standard and being new to ImgBurn, wasn't even sure what "Standard" was.

 

For DOS boot, the defaults need to apply although I am working with the Win98SE version of DOS and that is happy with the "no filename extensions setting" (well, so far at least and I used 8.0 filenames for some identifiers although I am now sticking a .ID on them for future runs.

 

DOS boot MUST have:

 

Advanced | Restrictions | ISO9660 | Character Set | Standard

 

and NOT ASCII.

 

(Anyway, not such an ImgBurn newbie now, but would anyone like a see-through rewritable CD? )