Booting from CD (BIOS setting independent)

[Soultech]

Hey,

This may be a wierd question but I am making a decommisioning CD for PCs which needs to boot into Windows XP and then boot onto a CD, after a reboot, without changing the BIOS or require any user input so that the hard disk can be repartitioned or formatted (i.e. so the HDD is no longer active).

I've had a look into WinGRUB but I don't know how to select the CD as a bootable drive within it. I also have looked into changing the boot.ini but it seems you can only boot from fixed drives or USB using this method. I also thought about having a bootable CD (press any key) and then corrupting the HDD enough from within Windows to make it think there is no active partition by deleting the boot files in C: but this only makes Windows complain their not there and does not boot from the CD (doesn't matter about the HDD as it's going to be formatted anyway) and then it would auto boot from the CD after this.

so again, I need a method that will work whether the CD is booting before OR after the HDD (I'll not know) and also the people that will be doing the decommisioning will not be able to plug in a keyboard either.

So any suggestions or advice anyone can give would be gratefully appreciated.

[Alan87i]

Just a thought ( have no idea how to set this up)

Would it work if when XP or windows it running booted what have you , pop in your cd have it made to AUTO install with out clicking or choosing anything.

Have the installed software installed on the root C:/ of the drive and during the install have it set to modify the boot ini so your program is the default OS and boot it from the HD of the machine when it's restarted.

[Soultech]

Just a thought ( have no idea how to set this up)

Would it work if when XP or windows it running booted what have you , pop in your cd have it made to AUTO install with out clicking or choosing anything.

Have the installed software installed on the root C:/ of the drive and during the install have it set to modify the boot ini so your program is the default OS and boot it from the HD of the machine when it's restarted.

Hi Alan, thanks for the reply, I also thought of this but the program that would be running from the CD will just be something like WinPE with a startup script to run my program. Things like this need their own partition dedicated to it (AFAIK) which would require the drive to be partitioned, the drive cannot be partitioned while the main partition is active unless you use something like Partition magic to resize the partition but this solution has to only include freeware (for commercial use) or MS stuff unfortunately. As far as I know you can't boot 2 OS's from the same partition but then you'd still have the same problem anyway.

thanks anyway.

[jaclaz]

Wingrub is a VERY old thing, intended as an installer for grub4dos.

You should be looking at grub4dos directly, start from the stickies:

http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showforum=66

And the guide:

http://diddy.boot-land.net/grub4dos/Grub4dos.htm

Expecially:

http://diddy.boot-land.net/grub4dos/files/install_windows.htm#windows1

http://diddy.boot-land.net/grub4dos/files/boot.htm#cd

Basically you need to:

1. add grldr to root of the HD
   
2. add an entry to BOOT.INI (making it default):
   

   c:\grldr="grub4dos"

   
   

3. add a menu.lst with an entry like:
   

   title Boot from CD
   root (cd)
   chainloader (cd)

   
   

4. undo the changes before next boot
   

jaclaz

[Soultech]

Wingrub is a VERY old thing, intended as an installer for grub4dos.

You should be looking at grub4dos directly, start from the stickies:

http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showforum=66

And the guide:

http://diddy.boot-land.net/grub4dos/Grub4dos.htm

Expecially:

http://diddy.boot-land.net/grub4dos/files/install_windows.htm#windows1

http://diddy.boot-land.net/grub4dos/files/boot.htm#cd

Basically you need to:

1. add grldr to root of the HD
   
2. add an entry to BOOT.INI (making it default):
   

   c:\grldr="grub4dos"

   
   

3. add a menu.lst with an entry like:
   

   title Boot from CD
   root (cd)
   chainloader (cd)

   
   

4. undo the changes before next boot
   

jaclaz

Thanks very much Jaclaz, that looks like exactly what I needed. I'll give it a go.