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Message started by plodr on Sep 3rd, 2007 at 11:04pm

Title: boot floppy to boot CD
Post by plodr on Sep 3rd, 2007 at 11:04pm
I believe I used this info http://radified.com/cgi-bin/YaBB/YaBB.cgi?board=general;action=display;num=1160286726;start=0#6
in March to create a boot floppy for my 98SE notebook that recognizes either my USB  external drive or my USB external burner. This also works on my 2K notebook. I'm able to boot with the floppy and make an image and restore it. Only my P/S 2 is recognized not a USB mouse so I depend on the touchpad if I forget to attach the older mouse.
I've loaded ghost.exe in C:\ to overcome the size of the floppy.
Now I'd like to create a CD to use in place of the boot floppy and perhaps place ghost.exe on the CD.  I've read posts about using Bart's PE builder and truthfully I've never used this, even though I've been to the site several times because I don't understand it.
Can anyone explain so I understand what I need to do to get the contents of my boot floppy and ghost.exe on a CD to burn so it works. I do understand that I need to put it in the data portion but I don't know what the data portion is? Is it the list of all the files on the boot floppy from autoexec to usbaspi?
If it helps I use ImgBurn to burn ISOs and Adaptec v4 for my data CDs.

Title: Re: boot floppy to boot CD
Post by NightOwl on Sep 3rd, 2007 at 11:56pm
plodr

Creating Bootable CD/DVD's Without A:\Floppy Drive

Adding USB to Ghost Boot CD

Title: Re: boot floppy to boot CD
Post by plodr on Sep 4th, 2007 at 1:05am
Thanks. I read both before I posted and I'm as clueless as ever. I do have a floppy drive so I didn't think I need to go through all the steps in creating a boot CD without a floppy drive. I just wanted to take the working files on my floppy and burn them to a CD with ghost.exe tacked on somewhere. The somewhere is what I do not understand.
I also downloaded all the files mentioned in the link and placed them in the proper directories.
I'll read it again and see if any of it starts to make sense.

Eventually I will be back with what I tried and what failed or worked to possibly help anyone else struggling with this.

If I get it, I'll have project #5 nailed down for Ghost 2003.

About 40 minutes later...I fired up Adaptec (pre-Roxio) v4: Create CD --> Data CD -->File -->New CD Layout -->Bootable CD.   I got a popup, please insert a bootable floppy in the drive A. I put in my working Ghost boot floppy. I'm not sure if it used those. The layout shows BOOTCAT.BIN (2kb) and BOOTIMG.BIN (1440kb). I burned the CD and then tried it in both computers. The CD boots up, finds my external burner and ghost starts where I can choose it to burn an image. On one computer I have ghost.exe in C:\ , in the other I do not. I do have ghost installed in windows on both. At this point I'm not sure why it works the same on both, even though ghost.exe is not on the CD.
It's getting late and I'll wait until I've had a few hours of sleep before I attach the external hd and see if it works with that as well.

Title: Re: boot floppy to boot CD
Post by NightOwl on Sep 4th, 2007 at 8:55am
plodr


Quote:
I fired up Adaptec (pre-Roxio) v4: Create CD --> Data CD -->File -->New CD Layout -->Bootable CD.   I got a popup, please insert a bootable floppy in the drive A. I put in my working Ghost boot floppy.

Well--you're almost there!  Is *ghost.exe* on your *working Ghost boot floppy*?  If so, then it was transferred to the *hidden* boot sector that is created to make an optical disc bootable.  When you boot from a bootable optical disc, that hidden boot sector is mounted as a *virtual floppy drive A:\*, and any files that are called by config.sys and autoexec.bat are loaded and executed.  Your actual real floppy drive is bumped down and becomes drive B:\.

If you try to add any more DOS drivers, such as the DOS USB drivers, you will exceed the size limit for the floppy of 1.44 MB.  To make room, you can do what you are attempting and place the *ghost.exe* in the data portion of the bootable optical disc.


Quote:
I fired up Adaptec (pre-Roxio) v4: Create CD --> Data CD -->File -->New CD Layout -->Bootable CD.   I got a popup, please insert a bootable floppy in the drive A.  I put in my working Ghost boot floppy.

At this point, before you tell the program to *burn* the disc and make it bootable--you should be at the burning program's usual setup interface where there are three panels--one on the left showing various program options, and two on the right--one on top which is where you browse and select files to be added to the data portion of an optical disc (i.e. source files)--and the one on the bottom which shows what files have been added to the optical disc for burning (i.e. destination list of files).

Use the upper panel to find you copy of *ghost.exe* on your system, and drag-n-drop a copy of that to the lower panel.  Now, burn--the hidden boot sector is burned to its hidden area, and *ghost.exe* will be burned to the data portion of the optical disc.

If you wish to burn images to optical discs, making them bootable, in the future with this bootable optical disc setup, you can have Ghost place a copy of itself on those bootable optical discs for you by using this command line to start Ghost after booting from the disc:

ghost.exe -ghostoncd

Now, Ghost will copy the *ghost.exe* to the data portion of the optical disc along with the image file(s) as well as placing the hidden boot sector of the optical drive that you booted from in the new disc's hidden boot sector.

Title: Re: boot floppy to boot CD
Post by plodr on Sep 4th, 2007 at 6:57pm

Quote:
Is *ghost.exe* on your *working Ghost boot floppy*
No it won't fit. The floppy has 989 kb remaining and the ghost.exe is 1008 kb. If there is a trick to squeeze it on, I'd love to know.  I have in the past formatted a floppy so it holds more than 1.44 MB but I found it to be unstable at times.
I have ghost.exe in two places, in C:\ and in my USB external hard drive.

I tried the ghost boot CD on my desktop (two internal hard drives 2K, NTFS and linux) with the USB external drive attached and it didn't see the drive. I made a note to turn off sharing because I think this version of ghost won't allow an image on a networked drive and the fact that it was shared on just this computer might cause ghost to think it is networked. I turned off sharing and I'll try this again to see what happens. This computer runs Acronis True Image and I use that to make my backups but I wanted to see if this ghost boot CD would function for an NTFS formatted drive.

The boot CD works, ghost runs, it sees the USB burner (this is on two notebooks a 98SE and a 2K both FAT32). Today I tried the USB 80 gig external hd. The Ghost CD also sees that but something isn't working properly because when I select the folder as the target for the image by highlighting it in the external drive, the minute I move my mouse, the highlighting goes away and I get a red <--- arrow appearing. This behavior occurs on both computers.

I'll do a little more "tweaking" and see if I can figure out something else to try.
Thanks for the help, I do appreciate it.

Title: Re: boot floppy to boot CD
Post by ben_mott on Sep 5th, 2007 at 3:17am
Boot CD Forum

http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?s=2ea3ebe2ba309de95f8379488c84e954&showtopic=14127&st=0&start=0
useful info:
page one
http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=14127&st=0

page 2
http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=14127&st=20

Regards Ben
:)

Title: Re: boot floppy to boot CD
Post by plodr on Sep 5th, 2007 at 7:34pm
ben_mott, thanks for the links. I'm reading the first one which brings up a question. I don't use the ghost created boot floppy because on a 98SE computer it wouldn't recognize anything connected by the USB cable. I created my own with the Panasonic and Moto Hairu USB driver following a guide, probably by nightowl on  the radified archived forum. Can I start by having ghost create a two set floppy, then move the first floppy to another computer and compare it to my custom floppy and change what needs to be changed? I'd then, after the change go back to my cd drive and have it burn the altered two boot floppy set?

forget the above...Ghost 2003 only makes a 1 disk boot floppy. Now comes the interesting part. I tried it in my 98SE computer and the external drive was seen. I think what might have caused the ghost generated boot floppy to succeed now where it previously failed on every attempt is that I removed all the USB specific drivers and I installed a generic USB driver which causes 98SE to treat USB devices as plug and play. Once I can get to the other computer (it's currently busy making an image to the external drive), I'll post a link to this USB generic driver so that anyone limping along on 98SE might be able to use it. (Some computers just can't be upgraded and are still to good to just throw away).
My next step will be to simply run ghost and have it make a boot CD. If the boot floppy worked, the boot CD should work. That particular computer doesn't have a burner but I can plug in a USB external burner that it sees and burn to that.

I'll be back, if not tonight then tomorrow to link to the generic USB driver for 98SE and to report on my progress.

Again thanks to nightowl and ben_mott for coming to this lady in distress and offering assistance.

an hour or two later...the boot floppy allowed me to make an image to my external drive. I want to verify it.
Go here:  http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=43605 to see the thread and a link to download the native USB driver for 98SE. I can attest to the fact that the version I'm running 2.4 works for a dozen flash drives, (SanDisk, Verbatim, PNY, Kingston, and Lexar brands) a Lite-on external CD burner, and a Western Digital external 80 gig hard drive. I can plug in any of those devices and the computer sees it without asking for a driver.

Title: Re: boot floppy to boot CD
Post by TheShadow on Sep 6th, 2007 at 9:04am
Floppy Disk to CD is just a matter of putting the fd in its drive,
putting a blank CD in its drive and running Nero in the "Make Boot CD" mode.

Nero then takes all the info from the fd and puts it on the CD, making it boot just like the floppy did.

When I went from Ghost 2003 to Ghost 8.3, 2005, the files would no longer fit on a single floppy, so I set it up on a Bootable 64meg Flash Drive.  NO Problem.  
(I now also have it set up on a SD Flash Card.)

Nero once again came to the rescue.  
It accepted the Flash Drive just like it would a floppy and burned the bootable CD.

Since the Flash Drive was 64 meg, and not 1.44 meg like a floppy, I was able to incorporate my custom Windows ME Utilities and even Ghost Explorer on the same disk.

I then made an ISO of that CD and compressed it using 7Zip.  The zipped size is only about 3.6 megs.  A size that can easily be sent over the internet, even to people with dial up ISP's.
The zipped file is also Self-Extracting.

It's been a while and a lot of work, experimenting, etc., but it's been worth it.
A lot of CD's have bit the dust in the process.

Cheers Mates,
Shadow  8-)

Title: Re: boot floppy to boot CD
Post by Baddstuff on Sep 7th, 2007 at 6:26pm
I made a Ghost 2003 boot CD a while back using Roxio and I used a Windows 98 boot floopy. First I copied the Ghost files from the floppy to the hard drive. I then fired up Roxio and chose the option to make a bootable CD. I let it copy the files from the Windows 98 boot floppy to make the CD bootable. I think the only file I used from the Ghost floppy was the ghost.exe file but I'm not 100% sure right now.  

When I boot up with the CD I get a screen asking if I want to enable CD-ROM support (just like a Windows 98 boot floppy will ask) and I select yes. At the A:\ prompt that eventually shows up I just type in ghost and ghost will start up. There are other ways to make a bootable Ghost 2003 CD but that's what I did and it works like a charm. I also did the same thing to create a Partition Magic boot CD and I think I only needed the files from the second Partition Magic floppy. Booting from a CD beats booting from a floppy any day of the week!

Title: Re: boot floppy to boot CD
Post by TheShadow on Sep 7th, 2007 at 8:06pm
True, so true!
But, booting from a Flash Drive is even Quicker and you don't run into read problems like you can with a CD, reading it on different machines.
But granted, CD's are more universal.  Many PC's out there won't boot from a Flash Drive, but will from a CD.

I don't and never would use Roxio, but it sounds like it makes boot CD's just like NERO does.

You can add some enhancements to that Floppy before you make the CD of'n it.
Add Mouse.com and load it via the Autoexec.bat file.
Then you can add a DOS menu with options as to how to run Ghost.
Here's the menu from my own Ghost 2003 boot floppy:

GHOST 2003 Menu

  1.  Run Ghost to make a new image. (Windows XP Only)
       This program will delete all temp files, cookies, histories, etc.
       The Cleanup works only on a FAT-32 partition.

  2.  Run Ghost
       This program runs Ghost alone, with NO cleanup being done.
       Use this version to do Ghost Restores or Ghost image without cleanup.
       You must use this option on any NTFS partition.

  3.  Run Ghost on Windows 98 or ME (del the Swapfile and all temp's, etc.)
 
  4.  Delete all Restore points (Windows XP. Works on FAT-32 partition only)

  5.  Delete Windows "Pagefile" (Windows XP. Works on FAT-32 partitions only)

  6.  Remove all the old Restore files in Windows ME.

 Type in a number at the DOS Prompt and press ENTER.

************************************

If you read the menu carefully, you'll see that this disk works on any system from DOS to vista (#2).  
There are of course several options for XP on a FAT-32 HD, because that's what I use and set up for many of my customers.
Option #2 works for any system not covered by the other options.

Want a closer look?  download the Floppy Disk builder file here.
http://users.wildblue.net/xpguru43/GH-SX.exe

Just click the file and it will build a ghost boot floppy for you.

Good luck and happy computing,
8-)

Title: Re: boot floppy to boot CD
Post by Baddstuff on Sep 7th, 2007 at 9:27pm
good points TheShadow. One can make a good customized boot CD or just keep it quite simple. Whatever works, right? Floppy drives are slowly fading away. Booting from a USB is becoming more commonplace so I guess it's good to have both a USB bootable device and a bootable CD. As long as one has something to boot from in a time of crisis that's the important thing.

Title: Re: boot floppy to boot CD
Post by plodr on Sep 7th, 2007 at 10:23pm
Baddstuff, thanks for the information, I'm going to try that method too.

Title: Re: boot floppy to boot CD ---  Hiren It
Post by UffABrew on Sep 11th, 2007 at 7:34pm
Finally got the best solution to the boot floppy to CD SNAFU.  Use Hiren's Boot CD 9.2! ;)

I have a site lic. for  Ghost 7.5 and the newer GSS 2.0 but hate using those darn floppies, especially trying to make network boot floppies.  It would be best to have one CD with a multi network card template.  Unfortunately,  my student techs nor I have never been able to make a successful Multi Network Boot CD.  Yet,  when I tried a copy of Hiren's to remove a Windows password I discovered it contained Norton Ghost 11.0.x .............

I dropped in the CD and booted up.  Selected Ghost from a menu of five other cloning tools.  It found my 3COM NIC without me doing a single thing (Norton you need to listen up!), I selected to do a manual configure the IP, Subnet, Gateway, etc.....  And off it went.  Loaded up Ghost, selected Peer to Peer and proceeded to clone the Master Machine to the Slave.

Rave:   Worked perfect!   I am going to try it on the other PCs with different network cards.  

Rant:    Why can't Norton learn a bit from Hiren's on how to make things user friendly.  I must have wasted countless hours and  burnt a 100 "coasters" and never got a successful Network Boot CD.  Yet,  the staff that  produced "Hiren's Boot CD" are able to make an All-In-One Boot CD that recognizes our network cards without me doing anything.   Why is this "grey" program easier to use than the real thing?  

Title: Re: boot floppy to boot CD
Post by plodr on Sep 14th, 2007 at 1:56pm
Uffabrew, FANTASTIC! I fired up my version of Hiren's v7 and it worked perfectly. I no longer have to fool around with floppy disks to boot. It offered me the correct USB drivers the panasonic, rather than the ones supplied on the Ghost CD. I agree with you - why can't they figure out that some of the drivers offered don't work across a broad platform.

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