Making A Bootable Cd With Nero 5.5.9.5, Problem involving Ghost boot floppy Options

[Former_Miguel_post]

Hi,

[a brief introduction]
I made a backup CD from my hard disk using Norton Ghost. I tried to make it bootable using Nero
and the boot floppy (PC-Dos) provided with Ghost but it didn't work at all. But PC-Dos floppy boots!
It went fine when I use a MSDOS floppy instead so I supposed something is wrong in PC-Dos boot sector.
After some tests, I decided to make a custom boot sector to display loading address and I discover
it varies: 0000:7c00 when booting from floppy and 07c0:000 for cd booting. PC-Dos boot sector seems
to be designed for 0000:7c00 boot only.
Thus, I must adjust Nero settings to get a bootable CD with a different load address...

[the question]
I've made several failed attempts to acomplish that.
Does any one know how to change boot sector load address when making a bootable cd using Nero 5.5.9.5?
Any help will be very appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

Miguel.

[evilvoice]

Hmmm, well, im not really understanding this here. Are you using a 1.44mb image file for both msdos and pcdos? Also, in the booting of pcdos does it find your cdrom drive (since I assume this is where the gho image file is)? You talk of bootsectors, which, for the most part are 2kb files, this would not be enough to boot from and load ghost and whatnot. If your pcdos boot floppy does boot and loads cdrom before getting you to the a:\ prompt, then something is wrong. Are you using an image file for you boot up, or are you using a:\ for nero. One option would be to take your diskette, have winimage read it and save as a .img file. The load it into nero. For just a boot floppy that does basic dos stuff, this should be all that is needed, I cant imagine why you are having errors unless you are using just a bootsector (2KB) instead of a floppy image - the reason I say use a floppy image is nero may have some problem reading ALL the information from your floppy. Winimage will also tell you if it deems you have a bad sector on the floppy (I know you probably dont, but if winimage cant read the floppy, neither will nero) SO, the steps are
1. Make sure you are using a 1.44mb image or 2.88mb
2. Make sure pcdos loads your cdrom driver
3. Have winimage read your actual floppy of pcdos to create an image file
4. Make sure you save the image as uncompressed and rename the extension to img (instead of ima)
5. Have nero load your newly created img file as boot loader.
6. Test cd

this should work, if it doesnt, then tell me exactly where it has a problem, but you should not have a problem booting from cd (I mean, it should boot pcdos, but it may not run whatever youre using to use your gho file. If it boots but does not run ghost, then ghost may have an error with pcdos)

[Former_Miguel_post]

Ok. I'll try to explain myself.

1.- I got a non bootable CD containing an image file from my hard disk (i.e. a backup) generated by N. Ghost.

2.- I created a boot floppy disk (PC-Dos) by means of "Norton Ghost Boot Wizard". It is intended to start PC
in dos mode and run Ghostpe.exe application so restore backup can be done.

3.- I thought it was easy to compile another CD (bootable) combinating those, so I used Nero to create a
boot cd choosing "A:\" as source of the boot image file. Burning was successfully but PC stops during the
initial phase of startup process after displaying strange characters.

4.- I tried again but placing another boot floppy into drive A:. The diskette was generated by a "sys c: a:"
command in a W95 system (btw my PC is W2K and sys command is no available). The CD so generated
works fine!.

5.- I used Debug to load and disassemble boot sector of PC-Dos boot floppy and I realized it only works if
loaded in 0000:7c00 exactly but Bios seems to load in 07c0:0000. These addresses point to the same
byte but...

6.- Now, I want to know how to set Nero in order to change loading address to 0000:7c00.

I hope this helps.

Bye.

[evilvoice]

Well, I remember a problem people were having with winxp and such with nero. Try and see what this does. When you make a new bootable cd-rom, it reads your a drive then displays a screen before you hit ok. goto enable expert setting, itll already say "floppy emulation" Boot Message (which you can change) Load segment 07c0 Number of loaded sectors is 1, change it to 4. maybe that will offset 07c0 to be 0000:7c00, worth a shot, but i think thats all that you can do, or try using mkisofs to make your iso.

[Former_daikatana_post]

SInce many older versions of Nero, I had found out that, using "use A:\" in the Nero boot options for a bootable cd, does not work!
Don't ask me why...
May be it is lazy floppy drives not giving the correct data streame during the CD burn process, when Nero attempts to read a bootable floppy placed in A drive.

I would suggest:
1. create your bootable diskette using a floppy diskette and the Norton Ghost boot diskette wizard.
2. confirm that you can boot your PC using this diskette
3. Use Winimage (under WIN os), and make an UNCOMPRESSED image of your floppy diskette, and saved the image file as uncompressed winimage file (IMA extension).
4. In Nero bootable cd dialog box, specify the WINIMAGE file as the source for boot image, and choose 1.44 MB floopy emulation mode (assuming Ghost has created 1.44 MB, otherwise revise your emulation accordingly).
5. create the bootable cd as you normally do, and if possible try a re-writable CD.
6. Test out your bootable cd!

If the above does not work then you have to go to Bart's web-site, get the mod-boot diskette stuff, and then add your ghostpe.exe to your diskette, and make a winimage file from this diskette and use that in Nero!

I believe though, if the norton ghost boot diskette wizard creates a proper bootable diskette (which you can confirm with a test-boot), then an image created from this diskette should allow you to create a bootable cd with Nero using the above instructions!

[evilvoice]

Well, daikatana, I did aleady say most of that in one of my posts before, but he rejected the idea. He also has successfully made a msdos version, but wants the pcdos that ghost makes, so barts modboot wouldnt be what he wanted since its msdos based (might be freedos now, but it was msdos). I gave him the only solution i had for changine 07c0:0000 to 0000:7c00 which is to change the load segment to 4 (which should technically work). Yes, there is an error with nero readin floppy drives (sometimes, just like any other program, it really depends) - which is why most people who make bootable cdroms opt to use winimage. But thanx daikatana for reiterating what I said (its hard to get a point across if youre the only one sayin it)

[Doctor xp]

Ok, as another solution you can use Norton Ghost to create your boot CD directly.

Use the "-bootcd" option while starting Ghost, and it will prompt you if you want to create a bootable CD, click on Yes and the created CD will be bootable.

[Former_Ghost Dog_post]

I don't know if this helps, but I've created a custom boot floppy (and subsequent WinImage File) for use with Ghost 2003. I use this instead of the default floppy that Ghost lets you create. Its so that the restore CD can auto boot and start the restore with minimal fuss. It's only one disk.

Let me know if you want me to post the info for the custom Ghost boot floppy.

All I did was edit the Ghost CD Boot floppy and added Mouse support.
I used WinImage, Ghost 2003, Notepad. Of course you'll need the Ghost Ghost.exe file.

[Former_lanwarrior_post]

I have similar issue and I tried using BCD from Bart's webpage, but to no avail. All I need to know is how can I create a bootable CD with:

1. Customized Autoexec.bat and Config.sys so I can load my USB 2.0 and Firewire driver (since my Ghost image is in a USB External HDD)
--> NOTE: The driver works if I use floppy boot disk as it was created by Ghost itself
2. Add necessary DOS Tools into the bootable CD

This way, I can boot my machine using the boot CD and perform an image restore form my USB 2.0 HDD.

Any ideas?

[Wendy]

The problem here is that the boot sector from PC-DOS and MS-DOS is set to load by offset, (ie 0000.7c00), rather than segment (07c0:0000). While both of these point to the same addy (07c00), they are treated differently.

One needs to find an alternate boot sector for pc-dos, such as the one that comes with freedos's 'sys' command.

[DigiWiz]

Good Grief was the second to be resurrected from the dead (Lazarus being first).

This thread is now #3.

DW

[Wendy]

It was ressurected, because it gives the solution for using older MS-DOS and PC-DOS either in virtual machines or by booting the diskettes.

Miguel actually tells us what is causing the problem, which is a whole lot further than has been done elsewhere. The problem, then is to find an alternate boot-sector that can load pc-dos from say, 07c0:0000.

Currently the only pc-dos boot sector outside of ibm is the one in freedos sys command. This seems to be more resilliant, and some hope is placed on booting these versions dos from a cdrom using this alternate bootsector.

W

[DigiWiz]

My post was an attempt at a little resurrection humor - not the vaildity of your post.



DW

[Wendy]

You know, that after four hours of forraging on the internet with google, this is the only place where i found an explanition on why pcdos dos not like cdroms: i thought it well and truly was worth a little helping hand..

yes. i suppose that i am trying to raise pcdos 6.3 from the dead, too: see for example,

http://z3.invisionfree.com/Boot_Land/index.php?showtopic=79

for my efforts into getting MS-Windows + PC-DOS into a workable form. DOS is largely complete. I am now working on the initial layout of windows for warehouses 3.11.