DTS56

Yes - I am aware of that but thankyou. This "tool" allows you make the boot flopy from the image directly from the cd. Hope this clarifies. Regards, DTS56

Recently, I got it into my head that it would be a really cool idea to add the ability to make boot floppies from the floppy images contained in my repair/recovery multiboot. Then when I had finished, I realised that this is going to be of somewhat limited use as the whole point of a multiboot cd is to be able to boot from it and use the tools directly booted from the cd. There only only a couple of practical uses that I can think of for such a utility. For older machines that don't support booting from eltorito you can make the bootable floppy for the tool that you require and then use the floppy (granted you will need another machine to do this though). The only other use is if you need to leave someone one of the tools, like say a 98 floppy, you can then make one there and then without any messing about. Apart from this I can't think of any other practical uses for this but as it is only a fairly straightforward batch file using rawrite to write each floppy image it didn't take me too long to do and it is now there should I ever need it. Can anybody else think of any other uses for such a tool? Also if anyone is interested, I am quite willing to paste the code for this. It might save someone some time if anybody else is considering doing such a daft thing. Regards, DTS56

Hi there, Hey that's really cool. I didn't know that about bcdw. I don't use UBCD, I have made my own repair/recovery/utility cd with dozens of tools on it, but still nowhere near the limit so no real space worries at the moment, but its still well worth knowing that bcdw can do that for when/if I start to get close to the cd space limits. Thank you for sharing that snippet of info - it's one that is well worth remembering. Cheers, DTS56

Hi there, Thanks HTC for the clear reply. So basically bcdw is an all round replacement for memdisk/diskemu and also it is better than them. As I have already built my utility cd do u think any mileage in changing it all to use bcdw instead, or is that just a waste of time seeing as it all works anyway. Regards, DTS56

Hi there, Could I ask why it is better to use the bcdw unless it is absolutely necessary to use memdisk/diskemu. I have produced a multiboot repair/recovery cd with dozens of tools, most of them use chain "image filename" but I have found that it was necessary to use bcdw for certain things, such as the acronis tools, but those that use memdisk/diskemu work just fine with no probs. Just wondering why you suggest using bcdw in favour of memdisk/diskemu. I already know that bcdw usually works when memdisk/diskemu won't, but I don't know enough about it to know whether or not it is supposed to be a complete replacement and/or even better than just a complete replacement. Just wondering. Regards DTS56

hi there, thanks for the reply travolta. Kindly note that setupsource in txtsetup.sif is pointing at the following: In my boot folder SetupSourcePath = "\SETUP\2000\2000-PRO-SP4" and in \SETUP\2000\2000-PRO-SP4 SetupSourcePath = "\" This has not changed. I hope this is now clear. Also thanks for the unattended info but my prob is not with winnt.sif as I am not making it unattended (yet), Though I now have no idea what file file I actually checked when you asked me to check my winnt.sif as this file doesn't exist in the boot folder. Must have been asleep at the time Any other ideas are gratefully accepted. Regards, DTS56

Hi There, Thanks for the reply Travolta, but I already have things setup this way, as per my original post. (Sorry if it wasn't made clear) Also thanks for the tip about adding "\" to the end of the folder path, but I don't think that this is necessary as it is just a folder path there should really be no need to add it. Also there is no final "\" in the txtsetupsif in any of my other boot folders, and they all work just fine. Have checked my Winnt.sif and I can't see any unnecessary settings in there. What does anyone else think about the final "\" ? Thanks anyway for your efforts and suggestions.

Hi all, I hope that someone out there can help with this. On the multiboot version the win2k setup boots ok but shortly after formatting the hdd I get: I have tried this twice now and have got the same result. I have used the ISO I created for win2k succesfully on its own, to install win2K. As I am not making unattended install, the only .SIF file is TXTSETUP.SIF. The line which the error message refers to reads: This is the same in the original iso and in the multiboot version. At first I thought it looked a bit strange, but there are other lines under [sourceDisksFiles] that also contain the "_x" in the same position. SetupSourcePath = "\SETUP\2000\2000-PRO-SP4" in the txtsetup.sif in the boot folder and it is set to "\" in the I386 folder in \SETUP\2000\2000-PRO-SP4. Anybody any ideas why this works ok when running from a win2K iso but not from multiboot version. I am using Virtual PC. Any help or suggestions gratefully received. Thank you in advance for any help you are able to give. Regards, DTS56

Hi All, Hey Loomes, thanks for the tip. However I didn't use UltraISO, I used Nero, so UltraISO wouldn't have been the problem. I will keep a note of your cdimage command line though, if you don't mind, for future reference. I decided to give this prog one more attempt and built it again from scratch (using my own hex-edited files) and unbelievably, this time, it worked. Still don't know what I was doing wrong the umpteen other times though. Funny thing is that I have just done the same thing with ERD 2003 (rebuild it from scratch several months after giving up on it) and that now works fine as well. I suppose there's a moral here somewhere. Thanks to all for your help with this one. Regards, DTS56

Hi, Thanks for the quick reply. For the exact error, please see Loomes's screenshot (about the 8th post in this thread) Also thanks for the other tip but the problem is not that it won't boot. It boots fine to my menu and then boots into Ghost 2005 with no probs. It's just that when I select an option I get the error outlined above. Strange thing though, is that I can access the help and also use the items on the advanced recovery tasks menu in Utilities, including running Ghost 8 from this menu. I only seem to get the error when I try to run any of the Ghost 9 tools. I have tried copying the contents of the entire cd into both the root of multiboot and into a sub-folder with the appropriate renaming of files and folders and the appropriate hex-editing of the boot files etc but still get the same prob. It would appear that Ghost 2005 is set to look in a particular place for it's programs and I am somehow missing out on pointing it to the appropriate place. I'm missing something here, but what? Regards DTS56

Hi there, Thanks everybody for your help so far and thanks for for posting your structure Jito. Have tried it and still get the same prob as Loomes. So I tried using WebJunkie's files (for which, thank you WebJunkie) instead of my own hex-edited files and still get the same result. I have also tried using bcdw (cdshell extension) as well as isolinux (chain) but still the same prob. Any other ideas as to what's going wrong? Anybody, Please? Regards, DTS56

Hi all, I too have been attempting to put Ghost 2005 onto a multiboot but without success. It all boots up ok, and the application starts but then I get the same prob that other people have been having. When I ran into problems with this, I started searching for ideas/help and I came across this thread. For those of you that have been successful with this could I just ask where you are putting the remainder of the cd besides the I386 folder and how are you accessing these files. As it turns out I have followed more or less the method outlined in this thread, except that I extracted the boot file direct from the cd. The cd works just fine in Virtual PC, but when I use the files from it I get the probs outlined above. I have also copied all the files from the cd into AIO\Ghost-2005 and pointed setupsourcepath in txtsetup.sif at this folder but that didn't work either. Any help or further advice would be appreciated. Many thanks in advance. Regards, DTS56

Cool. It works a treat. I knew there had to be an easy way to do this. Many Thanks Regards, DTS56

Hi all, I hope Someone out there can help me with this. I'm trying to add some acronis .wbt files to a multiboot cd that I have built using cdshell. Have tried chain and memdisk but neither of them work. I haven't tried using diskemu because one of the posts I read when I searched the forum for this said that diskemu doesn't work. How do I persuade these .wbt files to boot from cdshell. Any and all suggestions gratefully received. Many thanks. Regards, DTS56

Just a thought, nothing major, but would you consider adding a couple lines or so to the sections that show your new method of getting the boot files from a winXP etc cd to explain that following this will not actually reinstall windows to your drive and that if you just follow the installation through then you will be dropped back into windows and nothing other than the couple of folders you have mentioned will be copied. Otherwise, brilliant - I successfully followed the guide for adding XP pro with no probs. Regards, DTS56

I have just had a look at the links in ArmyDoc's post and if it is Acronis products or DOS you are talking about you will find all you need there, but you may need to adapt for your particular situation. I don't currently have any of the Acronis products nor currently a need to put DOS on my multi-boot, that's why I didn't bother looking at the links before. (Sorry ArmyDoc). Regards, DTS56

Speaking personally, I haven't yet come across a program that makes more than 2 floppies so would appreciate knowing which particular program(s) you are talking about. I'm guessing here (maybe someone more knowledgeable can help out with this) but I would imagine that if you were to create a logical drive on your hard disk of the required size then you should be able to read the first floppy into an image file then copy it to your newly created logical drive. Then you would be able to inject files from however many floppies you need to into the image. Then you could point nero (or whatever) at the image file on the newly created logical drive and it should make the iso from that. As I said I haven't actually come across this problem before but that is how I would approach it and then tackle any problems from there. Confirmation of this approach would be nice. Help, anyone?? Regards, DTS56

Hi Neo 3333, Alanoll's suggestion of just pressing a key to continue has worked on everything I have done so far. So you might decide to just live with it but it doesn't have to be that way. If you don't want the message "insert 2nd disk and press any key" or similar to appear the best bet is to look for a file called autoexec.bat in the image and then extract it to a folder of your choice. You can then edit the file in Notepad (or another text editor) to remove the lines that display this message and deal with the keypress. Then save the file and inject it back into the image file, allowing it to overwrite the existing file. When doing this kind of work it's always a good idea to make a copy of the original and put it somewhere safe - just in case... I have successfully used this technique for several of the multi-floppy images that ask for the 2nd disk. If you are unsure about any of this please post details of the particular app. and if I have it available I will take a look and post more info. for you. Hope this is helpful. Regards, DTS56

Hi there, Just a quick update on my progress so far. Yesterday I tried remaking the Bart cd and using the just the output folder to make the multi-boot cd. Unfortunately, exactly the same problem. Again, I generally messed around with with changing the boot files and so on but all to no avail. Carried on playing around tonight and was on the verge of giving up on having Bart included when I remembered that I have a copy of BCDW so i used that to create a boot cd from a freshly made Bart output folder. Guess what - the exact same problem. This indicates that it's probably nothing to do with the multi-boot set-up as such but more to do with the way Bart is set up. I have had a quick look at the plug-in folders for the progs that don't work and they all have either the file to run the program or what looks like an important file to the prog in their main folder and not in the files subfolder. I tried amending one one of the plugins to adjust the position of the file and moved the file to the files folder and I really thought that this time I had cracked it but this just gave me a cd that booted OK into Bart but still wouldn't run the particular program. ie exact same problem. I don't really fancy changing the plug-ins for all the programs that don't work on my Bart cd and I am sure I really shouldn't need to so I think it's now time to call it a day on this for the time being and maybe re-visit Bart on the multi-boot cd at a later date. Anyway, I have just bought a dvdrw drive from a friend who upgraded to an 8x drive so I may well tackle multiple operating systems on a dvd next. For my purposes, I only actually need 98 and XP, but it would be good to be able to include 95, ME, 2000, 2003 as well as a whole host of tools that I could make good use of. Anyway, I just want you to know that your help and suggestions have been appreciated and that without the help and advice that I have been given here in this forum I would have given up on this long ago. Thanks everyone for all your efforts to help me even though in the end I couldn't make it work. Next job is to install my new drive so I can tackle several operating systems on one disc. Regards, DTS56

Hi there, Many thanks for your suggestions Maverick and ArmyDoc. I've now been working at this most of tonight, changing filenames and swapping things around and generally trying anything I could think of. Unfortunately none of this has worked so far, even though in my last attempt I ensured that my dir matched exactly with that of ArmyDoc's (thanks for taking the time and trouble to post yr screenshot) except that the only difference is that mine does not include "bootfix.bin" but this shouldn't really cause this sort of prob as it's only there to display "press any key to boot from cd" which I didn't really want to happen. The only other thing I can think of to try is to start again completely from scratch and start by rebuilding the Bart cd (output folder) and then completely rebuild the cd/iso again from that. This I will have to leave until probably Friday night. Once again your help is appreciated. I will let you know how I get on. Regards, DTS56

Structure of BPE1 folder as follows Folders in BPE1 FONTS INF PROFILES SYSTEM SYSTEM32 WINXS Files in BPE1 _DEFAULT BIOSINFO.INF EXPLORER.EXE NTDETECT.COM OB1.INI SETUPLDR.BIN SPCMDCOM.SYS SYSTEM.INI TXTSETUP.SIF WIN.INI WINBOM.INI does this help? Regards, DTS56

Interesting that something as simple as remaking the cd worked. Here is my Dir structure AIO-3 (Root of cd) Boot ) BPE1 ) Folders Programs ) BPE1.DAT ) MENU.BAT ) WIN51 ) Files WIN51IP ) WIN51IP.SP1 ) WIN.BOM ) Is this what you wanted? Regards, DTS56

Hi Maverick, Thanks for your suggestion. I tried it, creating a multiboot cd with only Bart on it. I tried doing this using both the Bart iso and the original Bart cd even down to extracting the boot files from each. Unfortunately this didn't work. When you had this problem was that only some of the progs wouldn't work or was it that none of the progs would work. In my case, it is only that some of the progs don't work. Any other ideas? Please. Regards, DTS56

Hi There ArmyDoc, Wow, I didn't expect to get such a quick reply - just checked on the off chance. Anyway to answer your queries: Yes all the files are on the cd. I have 2 cd drives, but no probs with swapping cds as it all fits comfortably onto the one cd. I am using cdshell and the command I use to start Bart is chain. Although I am fairly new to this multiboot cd stuff, I have to agree that it's a very weird problem. If you need any more info just ask. Regards, DTS56

Hi everybody, I have built a multi-boot cd with ERD on it and thought it would be good to have my bart cd added. No probs adding bart to the cd. The multi boot cd boots boot with no problem and it boots into the bart environment with no probs but some of the progs I have added to Bart do not run. most importantly Nero does not run from the bart environment on the multi-boot cd but it works ok from the original Bart CD. Any ideas or help would be much appreciated. Many thanks, DTS56