USB CD-ROM DOS XPe Deployment

P

PJC

All,

First - sorry to ask a non-directly XPe Related question but I think
this group is the only one with the kind of experience to resolve this
issue.

We typically have deployed our XPe software installation on CD-Rom. The
system boots to the CD, where the CD then emulates a floppy drive,
loads DOS, then MSCDEX, mounts the CD Rom and I can access our image to
deploy to the fixed storage.

Now, we must use a USB CD-ROM (USB2.0). The issue, is that the system
will boot the "emulated" floppy or rather DOS from the CD. But when I
load DOS USB CD-Rom drivers (USBASPI.sys or DUSE or ohci.exe/uhci.exe)
in my config.sys file, I lose access to my emulated floppy, causing DOS
to look for command.com.

I have tried using the "Motto Hairu" driver RAMFD.sys, but this driver
does not recognize the "emulated" floppy as real and thus will not copy
the DOS boot files into the RAM disk.

Has anyone on this group explored this problem? Booting from a USB
CD-ROM for XPe image deployment? Would it be better to try to use
WinPE or BartPE and deploy the image from a 32-bit environment?

Thanks all for advice/suggestions/help!

Patrick
 
S

Slobodan Brcin \(eMVP\)

Patrick,

I would suggest making of small XPe image that will do RAM boot from SDI file located on CD.
This XPe image can do all installation necessary to prepare destination disk and deploy files.

Regards,
Slobodan
 
P

PJC

Slobodan,

This is a good idea but doesn;t quite owrk for what we want to do.

Has anyone had any luck load a USB CD driver in DOS without having a
separate flopy boot disk?

I have gotten it to work by booting, creating a RAM Disk with the DOS
command.com on it. Next, when I run ghost to deply the image, it seems
to get half way through and fail

I'm not very sure what's happening to it at this point.

PJC
 
S

Slobodan Brcin \(eMVP\)

PJC,

Another suggestion that perhaps might work depending of course on your BIOS implementation:
If you create bootable CD that will no in HDD emulation mode you will be able to use it as HDD so ghost will be able to read image
file as if it was on HDD without additional drivers.

Regards,
Slobodan
 

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