TheTechGuide Forum

General Category => Software => Topic started by: Anonymous on September 25, 2002, 07:32:02 AM

Title: Using W2K BootCD Bootsector for other means
Post by: Anonymous on September 25, 2002, 07:32:02 AM

Hi,

Is the following possible?

I have extracted the bootsector of the W2K/XP CD.
It\'s 2048 bytes long and has the nice \'Press any key to boot from CD\' message if there\'s a bootable partition. If there isn\'t one, it simply boots from CD.

Now I want to use this bootsector on another bootable CD WITHOUT the entire W2K installation stuff around it. It\'s ment to be used as a \'dos\' rescue disc. Eg a normal \'bootdisk\'
Now I know about jo.sys having the nice \'Windows 98 menu\' thing, but that\'s not what I want. I want to use the above bootsector to boot my own stuff...

Any help is welcome,
Rory
rory dot vieira at coolview dot nl

Title: Using W2K BootCD Bootsector for other means
Post by: Clue on September 26, 2002, 08:35:22 PM

You can’t use this boot sector to load any thinks else but Microsoft windows NT/2K/XP but if you want to have a rescue CD use a boot loader such as Diskemu  or Isolinux than from that loader you can load the windows XP boot sector and other
I personally like to use the Bootscriptor boot loader which have the most smart script system that enable you to make a really nice looking menu.
The links:

* Diskemu - http://nu2.nu/diskemu/ (http://\"http://nu2.nu/diskemu/\")
* Isolinux - http://syslinux.zytor.com/ (http://\"http://syslinux.zytor.com/\")
* Bootscriptor - http://www.bootscriptor.org/ (http://\"http://www.bootscriptor.org/\")
* Boot CD wizard - http://bootcd.narod.ru/ (http://\"http://bootcd.narod.ru/\")

The last one has a pre made menu system that enables you to have animated logo at boot time

most of the loader can load the other loader as a \"second level loader\" so if one loader can’t load something just load another one and try loading from the new one the OS (in Isolinux and Bootscriptor which based on Isolinux they both use Memdisk to load floppy images and can’t load windows ME image so you can load Diskemu and from that loader load the windows ME image).

Note that the developer of Diskemu has stopped develop it. And ISO Linux is the most standard loader because is used in almost every Linux distribution boot CD.

The boot loaders enable you to interact while booting so you can have a menu that ask the user from where to boot and if so you probably don’t want to use the windows XP boot sector (two stop in the booting process one for menu of boot loader and second for windows XP boot sector) so it is advised to use windows NT4 boot sector.

Title: Using W2K BootCD Bootsector for other means
Post by: Space Between on September 26, 2002, 10:13:18 PM

Your really stretching it.

Give up on this idea unless your a seasoned 25year guru programmer or just extremely crafty and think in reverse. Which im not and it\'s pretty clear your not.

You should use diskem1x.bin.  If your looking for anything versatile atleast. Even if you get that bootsector to work with somethign else yoru still limited out the azz.

By the way...that is not the correct bootsector man...far far far from it.   Like a minimum of 2048 times larger than it needs and has to be.

Title: Using W2K BootCD Bootsector for other means
Post by: Space Between on September 26, 2002, 10:16:27 PM

Im stupid and can\'t read.. Bytes not kilobytes

Also btw...if you want to change what it boot\'s...to start playing with it. Open it up in a hexeditor and change to the path at the end to whatever you want.  I think it is blahbl.blah.BINi386 by default...change that to where ever you want. Keep in mind this bootsector is look for the Nt5ip