Recovery Console

[jaclaz]

What commands should I have in the WINNT.SIF if I want to skip straight to the recovery console on a multi-boot cd I've made? I've tried what's in jaclaz's above (though I wasn't able to set the path for OriSrc as the cd drive letter can change) but the best I could get was an error saying the installation files couldn't be found.

I'm afraid I'll wear a hole in my hard disk with the amount of failed isos I've built trying to get this working so if anyone can put me out of my misery that would be great.

I am not sure to have understood your problem.

Since the posts above some progresses have been made, you may want to loook at this:

http://www.boot-land.net/forums/?showtopic=5316

it may contain the solution you are seeking.

Please be patient boot-land is experiencing some intermittent server problem.

Otherwise, please post some more details, your setup your exact goal, etc.

jaclaz

[Protocol7]

Hi jaclaz

Sorry I could have been a bit clearer. I posted that after a long long day of trail-and-erroring stuff I was adding to my bootdisk.

I have a multiboot disc with BartPE and some other floppy image based utils that I boot using CDShell. I added the recovery console using a pebuilder plugin I found online (I think it was cdob's). It loads fine from CDShell (and thanks to another post from cdob it also uses the driverpacks mass storage drivers for increased support). But it goes to the welcome to setup screen where I have to press R to get to the recovery console. It's only one keypress, but it would be nice to skip it as the other choices are no use. From reading around, it seemed it was possible to do this by adding a WINNT.SIF to the recovery console folder with some settings, but I tried a few variations and none worked.

A hacked bootloader seems another possibility but most threads I've read go off in other tangents (usb sticks etc). All I want is to boot straight to the console, not any of the other hacks. And if it involves anything more than adding/editing a file then I'll stick to pressing R

[jaclaz]

A hacked bootloader seems another possibility but most threads I've read go off in other tangents (usb sticks etc). All I want is to boot straight to the console, not any of the other hacks. And if it involves anything more than adding/editing a file then I'll stick to pressing R

There are THREE ways to "skip the R" and get directly to Recovery Console, which actually are the same, involving the change of the bootsector.

You either have a hexedited bootsector, use grub4dos to hexedit it on the fly, or use NTLDR with /cmdcons switch.

I don't think that anyone ever found a way to "skip the R" DIRECTLY from CD.

As well, though I am NOT done with it, it seems like there is no way to use the "no more CATCH 22":

http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?sho...20983&st=25

(which is VERY useful )

unless you use a (USB) stick or drive....

jaclaz

[Protocol7]

Thanks jaclaz

Hacked bootsector seems the most likely candidate. I saw something about replacing the string msdos5.0 with cmdcons but I couldn't figure out what file I had to hexedit to get this. It sounded like I had to build the bootsector out of another file like spcmdcon.sys (?). There's so many overlapping methods on these threads... It might work, I dunno. The other options (grub etc) are too much hassle for what I'm trying to achieve. Plus I still have to be able to call the recovery console from CDShell.

As well, though I am NOT done with it, it seems like there is no way to use the "no more CATCH 22":

http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?sho...20983&st=25

(which is VERY useful )

unless you use a (USB) stick or drive....

Yeah that was one of the main threads I found last night. But I'm not really concerned with the catch 22 problem. I've only ever had one xp machine with an admin password set and in that case I just blanked the pass.