USB BOOTABLE CDROM

[RedVyper]

I hope someone might have an idea as to how I can make this work. I have about 200 DELL PC"s mixed between GX150 and GX270 and GX60

I have created a multiboot DVD Rom with all our different Images for different departments which work GREAT on the machines that have a DVD ROM drive intenrally. I couldn't ask for it to work better.

However on the machines that do not have internal DVD ROM drives this does not work :-( I know I could use RIS or a network drive etc but I'd really prefer to come up with a way of doing it off DVD like i already have setup.

Here is the problem. We have Addonics DVD-ROM USB drives on our NON DELL machines that allow booting USB this again works PERFECTLY. however on the DELL machines they refuse to recognize the USB DVD-ROM as a boot device in the bios thus we can't boot from it.

I have checked with DELL for bios updates they all have the latest bios this has made no difference in our situation. I have called Dell Tech support and am getting no where. I get either its not possible or we don't support that.

I posted some questions in the DELL forumns and have been told DELL machines will not boot of USB CDROM however they will boot of USB FLASH or FLOPPY or HD.

So a thought that entered my mind might be. Can I make a boot sector on a USB flash device that would imediatly boot the USB CDROM and continue on as it would on the other machines. I really don't want to have to make two diff methods of doing this.

Has anyone else ran into this problem? Anyone have a better idea or solution or a way of making something like this work.

Obviously from waht I'm being told the ideal situion of just haveing the USB bootable DVD-ROM is not going to work on those machines.

Is it possible ot make a boot sector or something that would do what I'm asking for anyone know how or have any ideas what I might look for or into?

If this is something that would need a propritary boot sector written and coded or a programmer to do. We are in fact willing to pay for his services.

[teleri]

maybe look at bootdisk.com for a boot disk that has usb drivers on it. I know ther are bot disks that you can make for norton ghgost taht will let you restore an image off of a usb or firewire device so you might look at the drivers on thos boot disks

[Bâshrat the Sneaky]

If I've understood your post correct, you wanna do this:

boot from a CD/DVD drive connected to an USB port and install an unattended windows from there. Since your BIOS's don't support this, you can't do this. So you want a USB stick to boot and let this USB stick start the unattended CD/DVD ???

Perhaps an easier solution: buy a 512 or 1024 MB USB stick (or two if it has to go faster) and make this bootable and let the stick install windows...

[neophyte]

Or you could just buy a bunch of internal DVD drives

Bashrat the Sneaky: You'd need a 1024MB usb 2.0 stick. The i386 folder with SP2RC1 is 560MBish (the SP1 would be somewhat similar).

[[BM]Crusher]

my i386 folder is only 400mb (sp1a) and thats with every critical update in I386/SvcPack

[neophyte]

100MB here, another 100MB there. Not a big deal

[Bâshrat the Sneaky]

Crusher,May 21 2004, 11:16 AM] my i386 folder is only 400mb (sp1a) and thats with every critical update in I386/SvcPack

Thank you for making this clear, [bM]Crusher. That's why I said 512 OR 1024 MB, you have to choose what you need...

BTW: have you guys already deleted the 'LANG'-folder?

[neophyte]

I have the luxury of not having to delete anything.

[[BM]Crusher]

with SP2-RC1 my i386 folder is 202MB after reduction using n-Lite

[RedVyper]

Thank you all for your responses. I'm getting that my only real option is that i buy internal DVD-ROM drives for all the machines.

The problem with the USB memory stick is the fact that I have a multiboot DVD-ROM with several different unattened windows installs on it for different departments. And 1024 USB key is not big enough and very expensive.

I could use a boot disk I suppose but then it owuld not load the menu from cdshell at least I don't think and work properly off a multiboot DVD. am I incorrect on this.

As far as the machines not supporting usb boot. Well actually acording to the BIOS they do however they will not boot off a USB DVD/CDROM I am told they will off other devices. Which is why I wondered about the flash drive

So I guess a new question is. If I leave my multiboot dvdrom as is. and I take a make a bootable usb flash drive can it run cdshell from the multiboot dvdrom and install windows correctly? Withought haveing to modifty the dvd?

[gareththegod]

you can boot from a usb cd/dvd or firewire drive.

I will give you a clue. microsoft xp bootable floppies put the drivers on the pc for that. then just run the machine install

cd:\i386\winnt.exe unattend.txt file location.

I can't tell you what the accual thing is because im using a mac at the moment.

see the unattended.bat file when you use the setupmanager from the deploy.cab that is what you need to run.

the only downside of this is you will have to put the floppies in each pc then run the command. you might be able to make a bootable cd with the floppy images on it + batch file to the usb drive letter. but I don't know how you would add the 7 disks 2 1 cd.

could you use a custom windows 98se dos boot cd with drivers for usb support then burn that 2 cd and run them there?