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blackeagleblackeagle
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:
Quote:This change *should* change the Ghost Boot Wizard's behavior so that you will now create a two floppy boot disk set. And, you will probably get a message the *mouse.com* will not be included and you will not have mouse capabilities when you boot from this boot set. We will make adjustments to the boot files so we can create a bootable optical disc, and we will add back the *mouse* program.
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:
Quote:GHOST (directory--empty)
USB (directory with Iomega DOS USB driver*aspiehci.sys* )
AUTOEXEC.BAT
COMMAND.COM
CONFIG.SYS
guest.exe
IO.SYS
MOUSE.COM
MSDOS.SYS
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:
Quote:[mouse]
MouseType=PS2
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:
Quote:mouse.ini
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:
Quote:C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Symantec\Ghost\Template\common\
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:
Quote:GHOST (directory--empty)
USB (directory with Iomega DOS USB driver*aspiehci.sys* )
AUTOEXEC.BAT
COMMAND.COM
CONFIG.SYS
guest.exe
IO.SYS
MOUSE.COM
MOUSE.INI
MSCDEX.EXE
MSDOS.SYS
OAKCDROM.SYS
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.