El torito EWF problem

[Jay]

Hi,Slobodan

I am having problem creating El Torito CD which
when booting fails to correctly assign EWF to CD Drive.

The Error message I get during CD boot is

Lssa.exe failed to read/write registry followed by another write error and
before I can read what the message is system reboots.

I am using the method you provided, not creating Initial EWF partition on
the disk but creating EWF through registry entries.

I am also deleting all the HKLM\System\Mounted devices registry values.

CD is created using NERO ultra 6.0 edition as per the instructions you have.


I have also tried to use Microsoft. method of creating initial disk
partition for EWF and using ETPREP-all to flip the drive letters but it also
gives same result.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,

Jay

 

[Slobodan Brcin \(eMVP\)]

Hi Jay,

First is this SP1 or SP2 image? (there might be differences)
What is the MB chipset that you use?

Have you been able to verify that EWF was actually working on OS HDD C: partition?

Also is it possible for you to connect remote debugger trough RS232 or 1394?

But first things first. Make sure that after you enable EWF and delete all reg entries. That you can boot again from HDD.

Regards,
Slobodan

 

[Jay]

Hi Slobodan,

I am using SP1 image

Chip set on main board is Lindenhurst (main board is SE7520 JR2)

This board has a BIOS problem which don't support bootable El Torito CD I am
working with Intel however I have received NTDetect from Microsoft which
allows CD to boot by setting proper ARC path of the boot device ( with out
special NTDetect from Microsoft I get BSOD 7B) .

Yes I can enable debugger on this system but don't know what to check for in
EWF driver. If you can provide information on this I can post the findings.

Yes I can boot from HDD after deleting all Mounted device entries and EWF
is enabled. The display of HKLM/System/Mounted Devices shows all the devices
I deleted in previous boot at this time.

Thanks ,

Jay

Hi Jay,

First is this SP1 or SP2 image? (there might be differences)
What is the MB chipset that you use?

Have you been able to verify that EWF was actually working on OS HDD C: partition?

Also is it possible for you to connect remote debugger trough RS232 or 1394?

But first things first. Make sure that after you enable EWF and delete all

reg entries. That you can boot again from HDD.

 

[Slobodan Brcin \(eMVP\)]

Hi Jay,

I would make sure that there is no hidden EWF partition left on disk from previous attempts. This is the only thing that would give
you false results.
Please recheck for EWF part presence. In case that you are able to configure and enable EWF trough registry only then it must work
on your CD also. I have not seen problems with Reg RAM EWF so far.

After the reboot from HDD what do you see when you type:
1. ewfmgr
2. ewfmgr C:

I think that problem is in EWF partition. In case that it is not it will be a problem to solve it.

There is a thread in this NG from few days ago where we discussed how to redirect setupapi.log to remote debugger and how to debug
target device.
You should provide us with remote log captured from debugger.
And output from "!devnode 0 1" command

Regards,
Slobodan

 

[Slobodan Brcin \(eMVP\)]

Hi Jay,

Log look ok.

Do you see error message when you type "ewfmgr"?

Regards,
Slobodan

 

[Jay]

Hi Slobodan,

Yes I see unable to fine EWF Volume message as I should.

Regards,

Jay

 

[Jay]

Hi Slobodan,

While working with Debugger I found following setting for system Root

0: kd> !object \SystemRoot
Object: e10104f8 Type: (863f12c0) SymbolicLink
ObjectHeader: e10104e0
HandleCount: 0 PointerCount: 1
Directory Object: e1000400 Name: SystemRoot
Target String is '\Device\Harddisk1\Partition1\CNAE_XP\WINDOWS'

Does this mean that El Torito CD drive is Drive 1 and not Drive 0 ?
As EWF protects arc path Multi(0) Disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)
If El Torito is rdisk(1) then it EWF will not work for this drive.
any thoughts comments

Thanks

Jay

 

[Slobodan Brcin \(eMVP\)]

Hi Jay,

What is CNAE_XP ? This sound strange. You should have '\Device\Harddisk1\Partition1\WINDOWS'

Regarding the \Device\HarddiskX syntax it means nothing. Since disk number are assigned as PnP in order of disk driver load which is
unknown.
When all disk drivers are loaded kernel tries to match all ARC names and disk IDs provided by ntldr with the \Device\HarddiskX and
disk ID read trough drivers. And when it find a match it the create SymbolicLink between them.

So after that point in time disk/partitions are referenced by ARC names instead directly trough device names.

HTH,
Slobodan

 

[Jay]

Hi Slobodan,

Thanks for the information.

I have been able to create El Torito CD which boots OK using "Microsoft
method" meaning create disk based EWF partition during FBA and use
ETPREP -all to delete partition and flip drive letters for BOOT/EL Torito
disk. Use Hd2iso toll to create ISO image of the El Torito disk and use Nero
software to burn image on the CD. This process creates CD which boots OK.

what I need is to add additional Directory and files to this CD (which is
another image ) which will be copied to hard disk when booted from El Torito
CD.

In Nero software when I select to burn image there is no provision to add
extra files.

If I create multisession CD where first burn the image on CD and then
continue Session by adding extra files I can burn the CD but it gets error
during boot indicating NTLoader missing.

Do you have any thoughts on how to go about adding files with Nero ultra
edition 6.0 software when burning ISO image.

Thanks for all your help

Jay

Hi Jay,

What is CNAE_XP ? This sound strange. You should have '\Device\Harddisk1\Partition1\WINDOWS'

Regarding the \Device\HarddiskX syntax it means nothing. Since disk number

are assigned as PnP in order of disk driver load which is

unknown.
When all disk drivers are loaded kernel tries to match all ARC names and

disk IDs provided by ntldr with the \Device\HarddiskX and

disk ID read trough drivers. And when it find a match it the create SymbolicLink between them.

So after that point in time disk/partitions are referenced by ARC names

instead directly trough device names.

 

[Slobodan Brcin \(eMVP\)]

Hi Jay,

How about now falling back to my method again?
Please do not skip steps. And make sure that you have one CD with valid signature during the FBA.

Regards,
Slobodan

 

[Matt Kellner \(MS\)]

Hi Jay,

I'm not sure how you would setup a multi-partition CD to accomplish what
you're trying to accomplish here, but here's an alternative: You can make
these extra files part of the El-Torito boot disk itself (provided these
files will fit on the disk).

Basically, before you run etprep -all, you can do anything you want with the
runtime, including installing extra software or adding files and folders to
the runtime partition. If you have enough space in your target partition to
hold the files, you could simply copy them to the runtime partition before
you run etprep, and these files will simply be a part of the runtime image.
Then run etprep, create your ISO image and burn the CD as normal. Then you
will be able to boot to the El-Torito CD and copy the files to your
destination hard drive.

Unfortunately, the El-Torito specification does not allow you to remove the
boot CD-ROM, whether you do this from WinPE or an El-Torito-enabled XPe
image. Doing so will cause the runtime to hang or bluescreen - as far as
the runtime is concerned, it's equivalent to unplugging the hard drive in an
HDD-based installation. So hot-swapping CDs in a WinPE or El-Torito XPe
environment is not possible.

--
Matt Kellner ([email protected])
STE, Windows Embedded Group

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
===============================

 

[Slobodan Brcin \(eMVP\)]

Hi Matt,

I'm not sure how you would setup a multi-partition CD to accomplish what
you're trying to accomplish here, but here's an alternative:

FYI this can be done. You can create CD that contain both El-torito and regular CDFS records at the same time as per specification.
http://groups-beta.google.com/group...e9cd63d679b/4bb9658425996274#4bb9658425996274

Unfortunately, the El-Torito specification does not allow you to remove the
boot CD-ROM, whether you do this from WinPE or an El-Torito-enabled XPe
image.

I'm not sure that Jay wants to swap disks during the work.

Fortunately El-Torito specification has nothing to do with CD removal. It is not concerned with these problems at all since it is a
problem of OS usage not specification itself. Specification only define format in which data should be written on CD/DVD so that
BIOS know how to emulated disk and to load first bootable chunk of data. Everything after that is up to bootloader and OS.

Doing so will cause the runtime to hang or bluescreen - as far as
the runtime is concerned, it's equivalent to unplugging the hard drive in an
HDD-based installation. So hot-swapping CDs in a WinPE or El-Torito XPe
environment is not possible.

Correct. But we always have an option to load OS completely in RAMDISK so that he can exchange El-torito CD used for loading image
to memory safely.

Also (I might be incorrect here let me know if I am) WinPE consist of only few MB of data in El-torito part of CD. And all OS files
are in regular Windows accessible part of CD.
My guess is that ntldr and kernel contain special code paths that support CD boot. (Not the boot trough El-torito like in XPe)

Regards,
Slobodan