El Torito Boot CD - Missing Operating System

[PJC]

All,

I could use some help creating an El Torito boot CD with Windows XP
Embedded.

I have read the tutorials on MSDN and adpated them as best I can to our
environment.

Here are the steps I have taken so far:

Created an XPE OS in Target Designer, including EWF, Explorer Shell, El
Torito Components and all dependencies

Placed the OS on a hard drive, with 1 partition, formated to FAT32 and
placed the hard drive in the target device and let FBA run.

FBA runs - the OS comes up great. I then run ETPREP /all

The target system shuts down and before it reboots - I disconnect it,
remove the hard drive and place the hard drive in my development PC.
(it shows up as the F: drive)

Next I run HD2ISO. The hard drive in question is Physical Drive 0
Select partition 1
Set the ISO image path
Advanced Options
Select 74-Minute CD
Specify Disk Signature to match the disk signature in Target Designer
El Torito component (in HEX)
(0x4F544C45)
Change the Volume Name to BOOTTEST
and select partition 1 to boot

I then create the ISO Image.

I burn the ISO Image to a CD ROM using NERO Burning ROM

The CD of course shows no files in Windows Explorer (expected)

I boot the target device from the CD and the BIOS boot screen says:

Boot from CD:
1. HD System Type-(06)
Missing Operating System


Can anyone suggest what steps are going wrong here?

THANKS!

 

[PJC]

I should also add that the "hard drive" partition 1 is formatted at 650 MB
and there are no other partitions

 

[Sean Liming \(eMVP\)]

You need to create a Pre-FBA CD before you boot the image through FBA. The
El-Torito driver is a PnP driver and requires the Pre-FBA CD in order to
load the driver. You should also disable EWF via the setting in TD so it is
not enabled on start-up. Once the image has compeleted FBA, enabled EWF
using EWFMGR and then run ETPREP.

Regards,

Sean Liming
www.sjjmicro.com / www.seanliming.com
XP Embedded Book Author - XP Embedded Advanced, XP Embedded
SupplementalToolkit

 

[PJC]

OK - the Pre-FBA image was a snag.

I have completed that now but I now get the error:

Boot from CD:
1. HD System Type-(06)
Error Loading Operating System

 

[PJC]

Update to this problem:

With Sean's help below (Pre-FBA CD) the process does work - but only from an
IDE CD-ROM

The issue now is that we must use a USB-CD ROM.

I can boot other CDs including Windows PE created CDs from the USB CD ROM on
my target device.

What is different about running Windows XPE from a USB CDROM as opposed to
Windows PE? (other than EWF)-

This application for Windows XPE would only run for a limited period of
time - maybe an hour - not days. If we do not use EWF can we run our Windows
XPE image in the same way that Windows PE runs?

For our application - Windows XPE is preferable to Windows PE because we can
run the explorer shell that our technicans (and I use the term "technicians"
loosely) are used to and launch diagnostic tools to test our devices in the
field and possibly re-install software (Also an XPE image).

Maybe the Microsoft guys have something in here?

PJC

 

[PJC]

Has anyone done this? Had any luck by doing this and adding USB Boot 2.0 and
USB NT Hardware Detect (ntdetect.com) ?

 

[Sean Liming \(eMVP\)]

XP by itself doesn't boot from USB devices. The latest release of XPe
Feature Pack 2007 adds support for USB Boot 2.0, and it supports booting XPe
from USB flash disks.

With this new feture, is it possible to boot from a USB CD-ROM? I don't
know.

Regards,

Sean Liming
www.sjjmicro.com / www.seanliming.com
XP Embedded Book Author - XP Embedded Advanced, XP Embedded
SupplementalToolkit

 

[KM]

There should be nothing preventing you from booting from USB CD-ROM as long
as your BIOS supports USB 2.0 boot.

Basically you have to make sure you included USB 2.0 boot component in your
image. (FP2007) Also, to make sure the right USB drivers are marked to load
at early boot phase you'd probably want to stick with a USB 2.0 device for
FBA. I typically do the FBA on my USB flash key (marked to be seen as fixed
device with ufdprep) and then move and burn the image on to CD.

You can either create a RAM boot CD or go for El-Torito one. For latter
you'd obviously need El-Torito component in your config as well.
For El-Torito in USB CD-ROM here goes the same rules - you have to have
el-torito CD in the drive while going though FBA and you have to clean
MountedDvices key in the registry before capturing the image (or just use
etprep).

Regards,
KM