MudCrab, one of our members, takes the credit for this information. He wrote....

http://www.themudcrab.com/acronis_grub4dos.php

...some time ago but I didn't read it very carefully as I thought it only related to Acronis products.

I now have..

BING
IFD
IFL
TBOSDT
CopyWipe for DOS
MS-DOS
SeaTools for DOS
Hitachi Feature Tool
WinPE

...all booting from the one USB flash drive. Because of WinPE I can run IFW and other Windows apps.

Very handy. NightOwl, you definitely need new hardware.

Brian,

While the guide was written mainly to help the Acronis community, the procedure is in no way limited to their programs.

I also have WinPE, BING, and various IFD/IFL booting setups on my flashdrives. It makes it real easy to keep multiple builds/versions on the same flashdrive and updating takes only seconds. I also have it setup on an internal drive that I boot to using the BIOS boot menu.

I'm curious if you're booting BING and IFD from their ISO files or from their BIF files. I've been using the BIF files (extracted with UltraISO) because ISO booting didn't work correctly on those. Also with BING, I have to setup the Grub4DOS entry to swap HD0 and HD1 so that I can install/reactivate BING from the flashdrive (otherwise, BING thinks that HD0 -- the flashdrive -- is the booting drive and starts in the wrong mode).

Paul

MudCrab,

I'm booting BING and IFD from ISOs. No problems. I've only used BING in maintenance mode. I haven't tried to install BING to the HD from the current USB flash drive.

What version of Grub4DOS are you using? I haven't checked lately so it probably has better support now. If they're still releasing like they were, they have multiple releases with the same version numbers and different dates.

When I started, Grub4DOS wouldn't correctly boot the IFL ISO and wouldn't boot the IFD and BING ISO files. It also wouldn't boot WinPE-based ISO files. After a few updates, booting the IFL ISO worked and later WinPE ISO booting worked.

I'm using this one. It seems to be the most recent.

grub4dos-0.4.4-2009-06-20.zip    

And the installer linked from your web page.

It won't boot my old BartPE ISO or the Ghost 15 ISO. That's all I've tried so far.

I imaged my flash drive with IFW and restored the image to my HD. The partition wouldn't boot using BING. Strange, as this method often works with bootable flash drives. It even worked with Ghost 15 which I now have booting from the HD.

I still had the 0.4.4-2008-11-19 version on my main flashdrive. I had downloaded the 06-20-2009 version, but didn't update. I'll try it later and see if it works better.

One thing about Grub4DOS, some builds work better on some computers or with certain ISO files than others.

Try running the Grub4DOS installer on the hard drive. Once that is setup, all you need to do is copy the files onto the partition (just like on a flashdrive).

By the way, I haven't tried booting into a Grub4DOS partition (or drive) using BING. I just installed it to a secondary drive (in the MBR) and then boot directly using the BIOS boot menu (I don't have BING installed on this computer).

I have BING installed with unlimited primaries and about 20 bootable partitions. Grub4DOS installs to the MBR so I don't want that to happen.

I have found some ISOs boot differently in different computers.

I think that you would just select to have Grub4DOS installed to the partition instead of the MBR. I can give it a try later and see what happens. You got me curious now.

In the Grub4DOS Installer, select the Disk, select the partition in the Part List (instead of the MBR), and install it. I would think that BING would then boot the partition okay.

ISO booting is still not perfect, but it's much, much better than it was even a year ago.

MudCrab wrote on Feb 9^th, 2010 at 4:29pm:

I think that you would just select to have Grub4DOS installed to the partition instead of the MBR

Very nice. That works. All the ISOs are now booting from that partition. This is really interesting.

Any other ideas?

I booted the IFD ISO in that partition and imaged the partition. The partition was deleted from my normal BING. Using IFD, the image was restored to unallocated free space on the second HD, HD1. This partition was then booted using BING with the Swap option. G4D booted but none of the ISOs worked. I copied the partition to HD0 and now everything works.

This has a lot of potential.

When you say "none of the ISOs worked" did you get an error message? I'm curious exactly what happened. (My BING computer's been tied up wiping a drive for a repair.)

Did you copy the partition with BING?

I wouldn't think you would need to use the BING Swap option to boot the Grub4DOS drive/partition. Grub4DOS will find grldr in a search. If something needed swapped when booted from Grub4DOS, I think it would be best to have Grub4DOS do the swap.

MudCrab wrote on Feb 9^th, 2010 at 8:23pm:

When you say "none of the ISOs worked" did you get an error message?

My mistake, IFL works from HD1.
Hiren's MiniXP works from HD1.


BING fails.    EMBRL Missing
IFD fails.      TBOSLDR Missing
TBOSDT fails.    TBOSLDR Missing
MS-DOS fails.   Disk I/O error
SeaTools fails.  No error
Hitachi FT fails.   Non-System disk or disk error. Replace and press any key

It is confusing. Two work.


I copied (with BING) the partition from HD1 to HD0 and everything works from HD0.

EDIT....   You are correct. I disabled Swap and now everything works from HD1.

Brian,

I'm glad it worked. I wonder if the "Fix Swap" option in BING would have also fixed the problem. In general, I think keeping swapping to the absolute minimum is best.

It would seem from the errors that they couldn't find the drive. I would guess that the swap doesn't "hold" (kind of like with Vista/Win7).

MudCrab wrote on Feb 9^th, 2010 at 8:52pm:

I would guess that the swap doesn't "hold" (kind of like with Vista/Win7).

What happens there? I can't recall trying to boot these OS from HD1.


EDIT.... Did you mean this?


Quote:

Keep in mind that, because swapping is done at the BIOS level, once an operating system boots in protected mode, it may ignore the BIOS and, in effect, undo the swap.

MudCrab wrote on Feb 9^th, 2010 at 8:52pm:

I wonder if the "Fix Swap" option in BING would have also fixed the problem

I tried the combination of Swap and Fix Swap. That works. But as you point out, neither are needed.

Yes. That's kind of what I meant. On some systems, swapping works better than others. Also, depending on the way it's done, it may work for some things and not for others.

I think the ISO mapping is taking place at the same general level.

@ Brian


Quote:

NightOwl, you definitely need new hardware.

Couldn't agree more!!!  I'll put it on my birthday *wish list*!

Clarify--


Quote:

run the Acronis Media Builder

Do you run this to create the Acronis ISO to boot from.  If you have an ISO of another bootable disc--then running the *Media Builder* is not part of the necessary procedure?

I'll pass that question to MudCrab. I didn't use the Acronis part of the tutorial.

@ Brian


Quote:

I didn't use the Acronis part of the tutorial.

So, I assume that means you didn't run the *Acronis Media Builder*, and it wasn't needed to create the other bootable ISOs being used--the *Acronis Media Builder* is just for the Acronis bootable ISO--correct?

Acronis Media Builder only needs to be run to either put the Acronis files on the flashdrive or create the Acronis ISO file. If you're not using Acronis software, you wouldn't use Media Builder. Just ignore any Acronis-specific instructions.

Just put the desired ISO files on the drive, add the entries to the menu.lst file, and it's ready to go (assuming you installed Grub4DOS to the drive already).

Standard WinPE builds can be booted directly too. Just add an entry to call bootmgr. This can be handy for booting WinPE setups that won't work correctly from an ISO (license checking problems and things like that). For example:

Code:

title Win7RescuePE chainloader /BOOTMGR

@ NightOwl

With the TeraByte products you can create a bootable ....

floppy
CD
USB flash drive
or an ISO

The other ISOs I'm using, I downloaded. The MS-DOS I'm using was a Win98SE ISO. I changed the format to 2.88 MB and added a few DOS apps.

@ MudCrab

I tried

chainloader /BOOTMGR

with a WinPE and saw Error :15  File not found

(The ISO does contain BOOTMGR)

Brian,

Sorry, I wasn't clear. bootmgr needs to be on the partition along with all the other WinPE files. For example, with a flashdrive, this would be the same type of flashdrive as if you setup the flashdrive using DISKPART, created a WinPE build, and then copied the files to the flashdrive.

In other words, you can take a standard WinPE setup and boot it directly with Grub4DOS via bootmgr. Examples include a VistaPE flashdrive, VistaPE CD, WinPE-based CD, or similar setups.

I have to do this with one of my WinPE-based imaging apps because the license can't be found when booted as an ISO. It can be found when booted normally. I have this setup on my hard drive partition. With Grub4DOS already installed, I just copy all the files/folders from the CD to the partition. You can only boot into one WinPE "bootmgr" setup this way. If you need multiple versions (like I do), you can setup additional BCD entries to boot them. In the end, the process is this: You boot to Grub4DOS, select your "WinPE/bootmgr" entry, and then select from the Windows Boot Manager menu which sub-item you want.

Another advantage of using this method is that you can work with any files directly as they are not packed into an ISO file. In a VistaPE build, for example, you could update or modify any files (including programs) not packed into the WIM file. If you need to modify the WIM file, you'd have to mount it or rebuild. This helps with testing more than general use, though.

@ MudCrab


MudCrab wrote on Feb 10^th, 2010 at 12:48pm:

I have to do this with one of my WinPE-based imaging apps because the license can't be found when booted as an ISO. It can be found when booted normally.

I just noticed that with the Demo of Active@ Boot Disk. When I tried to boot the ISO it asked for a name and serial. The app loads when using the program created USB flash drive.