blackeagle

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That's your choice--it's *good* DOS information--but, you will not have to fully *understand* it--I'm going to be listing the step-by-step *cook book* steps that you can probably mostly *cut and paste* to get a much better boot disk and eventually disc!

blackeagle

blackeagle

Sorry I've been gone for the last week--had a number of unexpected *life issues* intervene--but, I'm back now!

So, lets create some MS-DOS based boot floppy disks that we can use to create bootable optical discs to use on your laptop, and see if we can find a combination of boot files that will work!

My plan is to create 3 different boot disks to test different possible problem areas:

#1.  This will be a basic boot disk using MS-DOS system boot files instead of the Ghost PC-DOS system files.  It will include Ghost's Iomega DOS drivers (*aspiehci.sys* and *guest.exe*) that access external mass storage devices and assign a DOS drive letter (if everything works compatibly and the way they're supposed to!).

#2.  Will be the same as #1, but we will add the DOS memory manager *himem.sys* to see if that has any effect on being able to successfully load the Iomega USB DOS drivers plus Ghost.

#3.  We will abandon Ghost's Iomega DOS USB drivers and switch over to the Panasonic DOS USB drivers to see if they have the ability to work with your newer, larger external USB HDD.

Before I continue, I made the following statement in my reply #53:

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Apparently that only occurs when the Boot Wizard is creating a single boot floppy.  When it switches to the two floppy boot set, it no longer has to squeeze the boot files into a small space, so it does include *mouse.exe* in the two floppy boot set!

So, here's the contents of the first boot disk created by the Ghost Boot Wizard using MS-DOS:

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We will not delete any of these files, but we will make the following changes:

(It's best to use the Windows *Notepad* program if creating or modifying any text based files. Notepad does not have the ability to add any *hidden* formatting characters that some other *word processing* programs might!)

A:  Add the following files to the floppy disk:

#1:  So, open *Notepad*.  You should be at a *blank* page to begin a *New* document.  Copy and paste the following text to that blank page:

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Now, with your boot floppy disk #1 in the floppy drive, select the menu item *File* and *Save as...*.  In the *Save as* dialog box, navigate to your floppy drive and in the *File name:* line in the bottom part of the dialog box type:

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And then press the *Save* button.  (Make sure the *.txt was not included in the saved file name.)

The reason we're doing this is that the *mouse.exe* program included by the Ghost Boot Wizard requires that it be able to write a *.ini* file to the directory where the *mouse.exe* program is loaded from.  Because we are going to be transferring this boot disk to a bootable optical disc which will create a *virtual floppy drive* that is *read-only*, the *mouse.exe* will not be able to create and save that *.ini* file to the *virtual floppy drive*.  But, if the *mouse.exe* finds a *mouse.ini* file already in that directory, then it bypasses the need to create the file and write it to that directory.  And, thus we avoid the DOS load error of not being able to access the floppy drive (I think you've seen that error before in some of the other tests!)

#2:  Add the *OAKCDROM.SYS* and *mscdex.exe* files to the floppy disk:

Because we can not fit the boot files and the *ghost.exe* of a two floppy boot disk set into the standard sized boot sector of a bootable optical disc (1.44 MB), we need to be able to access the data portion of the optical disc.  That's where we will be putting the *ghost.exe* program.  So, we will need to add those DOS files to the boot disk.      

If you installed the Windows Ghost to the default directories, you should be able to find the *oakcdrom.sys* and *mscdex.exe* files in the following location:

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Copy and paste each of those program files from that location to your floppy disk.

So, your final file list on the floppy drive should look like this:

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Next, we're going to change the boot files *config.sys* and *autoexec.bat* to load what we need for the two disk set to work using a bootable optical disk.  I will separate those steps into the next post.

If there's any questions or problems along the way, be sure to ask.

blackeagle

So, now we should be ready to make the test bootable optical disc.

We will need to have access the *ghost.exe* build 793 form your HDD.  So, if it's not there already (did you replace the *ghost.exe* from your *old boot floppy* with the *ghost.exe* that was installed when you installed the Windows Ghost program?--then you can simply access that file there.), you will need to put the floppy disk in, make a copy of the *ghost.exe* from that old boot floppy and save it to the Desktop or wherever you wish.

Now make sure the boot floppy we just edited is in the floppy drive.  Open your Roxio program and select the necessary procedure to create a bootable optical disc.  You want to select *Floppy disk emulation*, and point to the floppy disk in the floppy drive.  After the Roxio program has read the boot floppy into its interface, there should be two files listed in the lower half of the Roxio screen.  Mine were:

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Now go to the upper half of the Roxio screen where the *source* files are listed.  Find your *ghost.exe* and highlight it.  Press the *Add* button or *Down arrow* and *ghost.exe* should now be listed along with the above two files:

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That indicates that the *ghost.exe* file will be placed in the data area of the optical disc.

You should now be ready to hit the *Record* button to create the bootable optical disc.

Once it's created, make sure your USB HDD is hooked up and on, reboot your system and boot from the optical disc you just created.  Hit the F8 button as soon as the system begins to access the optical disc for booting so you can select the *Step-by-step* confirmation of each command line in the *config.sys* and *autoexec.bat* file.

Look especially for the results when you load the *aspiehci.sys*--does it see your external USB HDD?

And then, what response is there when you load *GUEST.EXE*--is a DOS drive letter assigned?

In the

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command line, I have added the */L:x* switch which tells mscdex.exe to assign the drive letter *X* to the first optical drive.  That drive letter assignment will only be valid when you use this particular boot disc in DOS.  When you re-boot to Windows, it will be whatever the drive letter normally is in Windows again.  If there were additional optical drives on a given system, they would be given the next drive letter *Y*, and if there were a third optical drive, then the DOS letter *Z*.

Results?

Hi NightOwl,
                I will come back to you in a few days time. I have a load of things to do these days. I'm sorry for this inconvenience but I'll  get back to you as soon as I can.

Thanks