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Boot disks not working on new Dell/HP laptops!! (Read 9546 times)
Drew
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Boot disks not working on new Dell/HP laptops!!
Oct 5th, 2009 at 12:36pm
 
Ok I've been using ghost 11 for years now and up until these new little HP elite book 2530p and 6530p notebooks and new Dell Latitudes (E4300, M4400, E6400), as well as Dell's new T7500 showed up, the boot disks I have to hand out to customers have worked flawlessly.

Now, despite using the same boot floppy for creating the bootable image DVD's, the same recurring error is showing up on all these new systems.

Device driver not found: MSCD001.
No valid CDROM device drivers selected

Invalid drive specification
Bad command or file name
A:\>


I'm at a loss for what could be the issue here.  They all have (from what I can tell) standard DVD drives.  Why it can't load the drivers, if that's the problem, is a mystery to me.

The win98 boot floppy I'm using has the most recent (that I know of) GCDROM.SYS file


Here's the contents of my autoexe.cfg file
Code:
@ECHO OFF
set EXPAND=YES
SET DIRCMD=/O:N
set LglDrv=27 * 26 Z 25 Y 24 X 23 W 22 V 21 U 20 T 19 S 18 R 17 Q 16 P 15
set LglDrv=%LglDrv% O 14 N 13 M 12 L 11 K 10 J 9 I 8 H 7 G 6 F 5 E 4 D 3 C
cls
call setramd.bat %LglDrv%
set temp=c:\
set tmp=c:\
path=%RAMD%:\;a:\;R:\
copy command.com %RAMD%:\ > NUL
set comspec=%RAMD%:\command.com
copy extract.exe %RAMD%:\ > NUL
copy readme.txt %RAMD%:\ > NUL

:ERROR
IF EXIST ebd.cab GOTO EXT
echo Please insert Windows 98 Startup Disk 2
echo.
pause
GOTO ERROR

:EXT
%RAMD%:\extract /y /e /l %RAMD%: ebd.cab > NUL
echo The diagnostic tools were successfully loaded to drive %RAMD%.
echo.

IF "%config%"=="NOCD" GOTO QUIT
IF "%config%"=="HELP" GOTO HELP
LH %ramd%:\MSCDEX.EXE /D:mscd001 /L:R
echo.
GOTO QUIT

:HELP
cls
call help.bat
echo Your computer will now restart and the startup menu will appear.
echo.
echo.
echo.
echo.
echo.
echo.
echo.
echo.
echo.
echo.
restart.com
GOTO QUIT

:QUIT
echo To get help, type HELP and press ENTER.
echo.
rem clean up environment variables
set CDROM=
set LglDrv=
R:
ghost.exe -fni -buffersize=8 -clone,mode=load,src=r:\IMAGENAME.GHO,dst=1 -sure
rem e:
rem ghost.exe -fni -buffersize=8 -clone,mode=load,src=e:\IMAGENAME.gho,dst=1 -sure



I'm using Nero 7.7.5.1 to burn these disks.  I'm telling it to burn a bootable dvd rom, using the floppy disk as logical boot drive as source of boot image data then in the compilation window, I just drag the GHO file and any other image files along with ghost.exe and burn the disk.

Data verification passes fine and if I put the DVD into any other system, it'll load the image fine.  so it's something up with the hardware in these new systems that the startup files aren't digging.

I've got another boot disk that I use to boot into norton and capture the image up to a server and that works fine.

I think it's something in the win98 startup that is getting stuck but I don't know enough about the process to know what's the problem.

If there is something in the bios that needs to be changed, I may can handle that but with potentially thousands of these new things rolling into the work place, having the computer lab managers all digging around in the bios and changing settings to get the image to load properly has me worried and I'd like to resolve this another way if at all possible.

Any resolution would be good though because right now, they're all coming to me and I load them off the server rather than off a boot disk.  It works but it's a lot of extra work for me.

thanks guys!
 
 
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NightOwl
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Re: Boot disks not working on new Dell/HP laptops!!
Reply #1 - Oct 9th, 2009 at 12:42am
 
@
Drew

Ghost questions involving versions that are DOS based belong in this forum.

Quote:
The win98 boot floppy I'm using has the most recent (that I know of) GCDROM.SYS file

Are you sure that *GCDROM.sys* is on the Win98 boot disk?  I think that file is the DOS optical driver for SATA optical drives.  SATA optical drives did not exist back in the days of Win98!

Quote:
these new little HP elite book 2530p and 6530p notebooks and new Dell Latitudes (E4300, M4400, E6400), as well as Dell's new T7500 showed up

Are these using SATA optical drives?

How about posting your *config.sys*!
 

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Drew
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Re: Boot disks not working on new Dell/HP laptops!!
Reply #2 - Oct 13th, 2009 at 11:03am
 
Yeah I just pulled a drive out of one of the Dell E6400's.

SATA format.  Model TS-U633  It has a small sata power connector though so I can't hook it up to a desktop PC to try and boot from it that way to confirm if it's the actual drive or something else up with the system.

We've got dozens of other machines though that have no problems at all booting with SATA CD drives.




Here's the config.sys


Code:
[menu]
menuitem=CD, Start computer with CD-ROM support.
menuitem=NOCD, Start computer without CD-ROM support.
menuitem=HELP, View the Help file.
menudefault=CD,20
menucolor=7,0

[CD]
device=himem.sys /testmem:off
device=oakcdrom.sys /D:mscd001
device=gcdrom.sys /D:mscd001
device=btdosm.sys
device=flashpt.sys
device=btcdrom.sys /D:mscd001
device=aspi2dos.sys
device=aspi8dos.sys
device=aspi4dos.sys
device=aspi8u2.sys
device=aspicd.sys /D:mscd001

[NOCD]
device=himem.sys /testmem:off

[HELP]
device=himem.sys /testmem:off

[COMMON]
files=10
buffers=10
dos=high,umb
stacks=9,256
devicehigh=ramdrive.sys /E 2048
lastdrive=z

 
 
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NightOwl
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Re: Boot disks not working on new Dell/HP laptops!!
Reply #3 - Oct 14th, 2009 at 3:53pm
 
@
Drew

Quote:
The win98 boot floppy I'm using

Okay--so you have *modified* the Win98 boot disk to include the *GCDROM.SYS* file and the necessary commands in *config.sys* and *autoexec.bat*.

Have you been using SATA optical drives on other systems and has this worked okay?

The reason I ask, all the recommended syntax commands for *config.sys* have always shown using the */Cx* switch--where *x* is the SATA controller number--either 0, 1, or 2.  And, the commands always include a separate line in *config.sys* for each controller #.  I don't have SATA to play with, so I don't know if that */Cx* switch is *necessary* and/or if you need to specify all the possible SATA controller #'s in order for *gcdrom* to find the optical drive on any given system.

So, you might try:

[config.sys]

Code:
DEVICE=GCDROM.SYS /D:CDROM000 /C0
DEVICE=GCDROM.SYS /D:CDROM001 /C1
DEVICE=GCDROM.SYS /D:CDROM002 /C2


and

[autoexec.bat]

Code:
LH %ramd%:\MSCDEX.EXE /D:mscd001 /D:CDROM000 /D:CDROM001 /D:CDROM002 /L:R 



Let us know if that works!

 

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K Singh
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Re: Boot disks not working on new Dell/HP laptops!!
Reply #4 - Oct 22nd, 2009 at 7:10am
 
Any chance you would like to switch to a WinPE mode than a DOS mode.

I recently switched to WinPE when i realised the Win98se disc would not detect my dvd drive on dell studio.

Since WAIK kit is freely available at microsoft, give it a shot. You would see that other than initial booting time as compared to DOS things are much smoother when working on WinPE.

Only effort would be to create a default WinPE image, which is also very much automated using the batch files provided by microsoft.

Also you can pre-install drivers like network card or raid array etc in WinPE which you may need if you restoring or backing up to some server etc.
 
 
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Drew
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Re: Boot disks not working on new Dell/HP laptops!!
Reply #5 - Oct 26th, 2009 at 7:41am
 
Still no luck with the updated files Sad

Here's what I'm getting

Quote:
no cdrom driver to use gcdrom not loaded

preparing to start your computer

The win98 startup disk could not create a temporary drive for the diagnostic tools.  This may be because this computer has less than the minimum required extended memory.

Path not found _ :\Command.com
Path not found _ :\extract.exe
Path not found _ :\readme.txt

Bad command or file name

The diagnostic tools were successfully loaded to drive

Invalid drive specification.
 
 
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NightOwl
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Re: Boot disks not working on new Dell/HP laptops!!
Reply #6 - Oct 26th, 2009 at 2:30pm
 
@
Drew

Quote:
no cdrom driver to use gcdrom not loaded

Is that *driver* or *drive*?

Whichever--looks like the *gcdrom.exe* is not finding an optical drive to *mount*!

And:

Quote:
The win98 startup disk could not create a temporary drive for the diagnostic tools.

Looks like the *system* is reading the boot files, but failing to successfully load and run DOS utilities--this error is saying the the *RAM drive* was not successfully loaded--all the errors after that are because the RAM drive is not present.

I don't know enough about hardware to know the answer--but it sure looks like this system is not compatible with running DOS based programs!

Quote:
If there is something in the bios that needs to be changed, I may can handle that but with potentially thousands of these new things rolling into the work place, having the computer lab managers all digging around in the bios and changing settings to get the image to load properly has me worried and I'd like to resolve this another way if at all possible.

Again, I don't know what BIOS setting would be needed (or, even available) to allow for DOS programs to run on a given hardware setup--but, you might want to look around and see if there's any options regarding this.  You might want to contact the manufacturer and see if they can shed any light on if there is a hardware issue that will prevent a DOS program from running on these systems--seems unlikely--but perhaps!

I know that there was an issue in the past where SATA controllers had settings that would prevent DOS from communicating with the HDD unless a BIOS setting was changed from the *optimized* settings for running SATA HDD's under Windows to a *compatibility* or *combined* setting designed to work with DOS's ability to communicate through the SATA controller with the HDD.  Maybe there's a similar issue here!?
 

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