XPPRO boots (not) from DVD

[Dietmar]

Hi all,
now I have holidays and one week to do silly things. I enabled EWF with
Ram overlay in XPPRO (thanks to SFiorito).
I make a try with NTFS compressed and with FAT16 and both work wonderful.
I burned it with 1.8 GB Fat16 partition on a DVD, like You Slobodan told
us with ELTO. First the bootmenue and then the XP Professional screen
appears and disappears.
My question is now: Have You ever tried to build an XPE image without
ELTORITO and without EWF and so on that boots normal from an Ide harddisc
and, after FBA was ready, include EWF and so on and make a CD boot? If
Yes, it must be able with XPPRO.

Thanks, Dietmar

 

[Slobodan Brcin \(eMVP\)]

Dietmar,

Technically you can add EWF to any Windows XP based OS at any time extremely
easy.
With eltorito it is same thing but you will have to reboot computer once or
twice with El-torito CD in.

Regards,
Slobodan

 

[Dietmar]

Hi Slobodan,
I am very astonished to hear that. Why should anybody after hearing that,
build in his image the ELTORITO and the EWF components?
Have You succeed with this building of EWF and so after FBA with booting
XPE from CD?

And I have an other question: It is quiet impossible to clear
MountedDevices when You have installed EWF. You cant do that by hand when
EWF is enabled and you cant do that if EWF is disabled, because on next
boot all the other drives are recogniced again. The only way for me is to
cut any floppys, CDRomdrives and harddisks to receive the same effekt. But
C:\ remains in MountedDevices or?
Dietmar

 

[KM]

Dietmar,

Hi Slobodan,
I am very astonished to hear that. Why should anybody after hearing that,
build in his image the ELTORITO and the EWF components?

Maybe because dragging the components in to Configuration is still easier?

Have You succeed with this building of EWF and so after FBA with booting
XPE from CD?

You mentioned yourself that you were able to have EWF running on XP Pro. The steps you did there you can use on XPe.
You can also search this NG archive for the steps. They have been mentioned here a few times.

And I have an other question: It is quiet impossible to clear
MountedDevices when You have installed EWF. You cant do that by hand when
EWF is enabled and you cant do that if EWF is disabled, because on next
boot all the other drives are recogniced again. The only way for me is to
cut any floppys, CDRomdrives and harddisks to receive the same effekt. But
C:\ remains in MountedDevices or?

When you enable EWF it will be really enabled after reboot. So when you do "ewfmgr c: -enable", you can clean up the MountedDevices
key using regedit and then reboot. Although you will still see the MountedDevices key in registry after reboot - it will only be the
overlay version and will be gone after reboot.

 

[Slobodan Brcin \(eMVP\)]

Dietmar,

Well Konstantin said it all.

But if you want to know how I do it then.
1. Add my Reg RAM EWF component from www.xpefiles.com. There is SP2 version
also.
2. While I'm in regedit and delete MountedDevices I also change value of
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\EWF\Parameters\Protected\Volume0\Enabled
from 0 to 1.
3. Then I use fba.exe to shutdown computer.
4. Make CD.
5. I know that EWF will work next time when I boot

HTH,
Slobodan

 

[Dietmar]

Hi Konstantin and Slobodan,
now I know, that EWF works before new recognizing once more the drives.
First I cant believe that, because I saw them again after the reboot but
now I believe what You said. But why is now any need of the first CD? Only
to tell MountedDevices that there is a new ELTO device with name C:\ ?
And can this explain the behavior of booting XPPRO with DVD that the DVD
has until now not the right C:\ name? If my DVD has for example the drive
name H:\ , does it comes nearly to full boot? I dont believe that.

Thanks, I think You have tried much more than me with CDs, DVDs ...
DVDRAM(Fat32)!

Dietmar

 

[Slobodan Brcin \(eMVP\)]

Hi Dietmar,

But why is now any need of the first CD? Only
to tell MountedDevices that there is a new ELTO device with name C:\ ?

Certainly not that since if you delete all entries from MountedDevice on
next boot from either CD or HDD your system will boot.

My guess is that they rely on late PnP to fill some registry entries during
the PnP of El-torito enumerated disk.
Probably they did not wanted to waste some time on solving it better with
wait for driver to load so that OS can boot from CD without the need for
template CD.

Is it problem for you to use template DVD during the PnP?

Regards,
Slobodan

 

[KM]

Thanks, I think You have tried much more than me with CDs, DVDs ...

DVDRAM(Fat32)!

I never tried the "Eltorito" DVD. I don't yet have a DVD drive here.

 

[Dietmar]

Hi Slobodan,
no, the template DVD is not my problem. I first believe, that it must be
possible to do all the things I need without a second DVD, because I had
an image of real XPPRO, where no drivers must be added on or after FBA.
But in a few minutes I can told You, whether You need a second DVD or not.
I have this DVD and now I use it as Template to recieve a second
better(?)one.
Do You know, if ever one succeed to boot from DVD with real XPPRO?

Glad to hear from YOU all
Dietmar

 

[Dietmar]

Hi Konstantin,

I cleared the MountedDevices and do than
ewfmgr c: -enable

After reboot the EWF function works once more, but You can boot as often
You will, always are there new MountDevices A, C , D, E, F, G, H and there
partners. And that is not, because
I forgot ewfmgr c: -commitanddisable -live

I think You are not allowed after clearing the MountDevices and enable EWF
to boot once more in that Partition!

Dietmar

 

[Slobodan Brcin \(eMVP\)]

I never tried the "Eltorito" DVD. I don't yet have a DVD drive here.

Eh.... High tech piece of equipment ;-)

Regards,
Slobodan

 

[Slobodan Brcin \(eMVP\)]

Dietmar,

You need to intall el-torito driver on XPP trough regedit. Look at what
el-torito component do.
Then put template DVD and reboot.
After that PnP should do it's thing.

Regards,
Slobodan

 

[Slobodan Brcin \(eMVP\)]

Dietmar,

After reboot the EWF function works once more, but You can boot as often
You will, always are there new MountDevices A, C , D, E, F, G, H and there

This is good and it should be that way. If you boot from HDD C: will be XPe
volume on HDD.
If you boot from CD C: will be XPe volume on El-torito.

At any time if you look in offline image MountedDevices will be empty, this
is the beauty of this

PnP is very good thing is you know how to (mis)use it.


Regards,
Slobodan

 

[KM]

Dietmar,

If you cleared up the MountDevices key just before the reboot after you ran the "ewfmgr c: -enable", then on next boot it is a clean
key and the system will fill it up with the data about storage devices that PnP could find on the device and mount on this very
boot.

To confirm that, shut down the image that is currently at the state you mentioned below and open System hive offline - you shuld see
the empty MountedDevices key.

 

[Dietmar]

Hi Slobodan,
what does the ELTorito component do exact?
Is it not only to write ELTO in the bootsector of the DVD?

Thanks
Dietmar

 

[Slobodan Brcin \(eMVP\)]

Hi Dietmar,

Are you serious? It contain driver inside of course. (eltorito.sys
eltorito.inf) and registry entries to preintall them.

Is it not only to write ELTO in the bootsector of the DVD?

Nop, that is what my program do.

Regards,
Slobodan

 

[Dietmar]

Hi Slobodan,
the looking at eltorito.inf does not show me all the places, where it is
needed in registry.
I extracted the two files eltorito.inf and eltorito.sys from the Embedded
Disks but my registry (in XPPRO) shows only one place where they are
needed. So I have to build an eltorito component to my XPE image to spy,
where it may be in XPPRO.

Thanks, I told You my results
Dietmar

 

[KM]

Dietmar,

Hi Slobodan,
the looking at eltorito.inf does not show me all the places, where it is
needed in registry.
I extracted the two files eltorito.inf and eltorito.sys from the Embedded
Disks but my registry (in XPPRO) shows only one place where they are
needed. So I have to build an eltorito component to my XPE image to spy,
where it may be in XPPRO.

You can do that easy way - just add the component to your configuration and explore its Registry section (Registry node under the
component node).
(Make sure you have set Resources option in View menu in TD)

 

[Dietmar]

Hi all,
hi Slobodan, I get Your regramewf.zip only for XPE SP2, wonderfull tool
=^_^= ,from xpefiles.com and added it to my database. The image is very
XPPRO like with 350MB(!). It takes a little time to include crtdll.dll for
the C-library. When this CD is ready and boots perfekt, I make an ISO of it
and compare bootsector and registry entries (is eltorito.sys only needed if
You make a BOOT CD with NO EMULATION?) with the ISO from my real XPPRO ISO
from DVD. I think, after that the corrected DVD has a chance to boot real
XPPRO, what do You think?
Dietmar

 

[Slobodan Brcin \(eMVP\)]

Dietmar,

I lost you completely.

Eltorito driver is required if you use MBR data structure on your el-torito
CD section.

If you use boot.ini /MININT approach used by WinPE then you can use NO
EMULATION approach since el-torito section contain only 2048 bytes of boot
code.
ntldr and kernel have special support for CD boot already inside and in that
case you don't need EWF and El-torito but you will have to figure out how to
use that.

Regards,
Slobodan