Dual-Boot Installation Workaround Needed...

Try looking for help here if you are having problems with the Ultimate Boot CD.

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Azagaroth
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Joined: Thu Mar 27, 2008 5:10 am

Dual-Boot Installation Workaround Needed...

#1 Post by Azagaroth » Thu Mar 27, 2008 5:30 am

Hello Everyone,

I have an annoying problem at the moment... I need to do a complete re-format of my hard drive, remove all the partitions, and start again with some fresh installs (dual boot winXP, Fedora-Core).

Unfortunatly the internal optical drive in my laptop has completely died, with not much hope of resurection. I have access to an external USB cd/dvd drive.

The snag is that my computer can only boot from my USB memory stick (which currently has UBCD installed), and not from my external USB drive... (despite the fact the bios identifies it during the POST).

Essentially I am looking for a way I can boot via my USB memory stick, maybe using UBCD, and then launch the installation processes for both Windows-XP and the version of Fedora I am using.

Any ideas?

Icecube
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#2 Post by Icecube » Thu Mar 27, 2008 7:06 am

You can try the Gujin bootloader (available on the ubcd CD).
Because your BIOS sees the usb optical drive, gujin can probably read from it. Gujin is able to boot other CDROMs, Linux kernel images as well as other bootable partitions (for *BSD, MS-DOS, Windows, etc.), files (*.kgz) and bootable disk images (*.bdi), and displays a graphical menu for selecting which system to boot.

For more information, see:
http://gujin.sourceforge.net/

Azagaroth
Posts: 5
Joined: Thu Mar 27, 2008 5:10 am

#3 Post by Azagaroth » Thu Mar 27, 2008 10:04 am

I tried Guijn, along with all the other boot managers on UBCD, none of them offered the option to boot from the external drive. Guijn in fact only recognized my NTFS partitions, and did not even detect the USB memory stick as a booting option...

Any other suggestions?

Thanks everyone..

Icecube
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#4 Post by Icecube » Thu Mar 27, 2008 1:16 pm

You have to put a bootable cd in the external optical drive. Gujin checks all partitions and CDROMs that it can find every time you run it. It doesn't give you a boot option for your external optical drive it it doesn't contain a bootable cd. Gujin doesn't detect your bootable usb memory stick because it doesn't recognise the syslinux boot loader.

Are you sure that you have checked all the options of your bios (advanced ...).
Check if you can choose usb-cdrom. Try also all other usb options if it doesn't work and set it as first boot medium.

If that doesn't work either, check if you can see the contents of the CDROM when you boot UBCD and run Volkov Commander. If this works, get grub4dos. Grub4dos supports booting form cdrom (own driver), but I don't know if external cdrom drives are supported. If not, you have to run grub4dos after that you close Volkov Commander (you get to the dos prompt), else you can run grub4dos directly from syslinux.
See https://gna.org/projects/grub4dos/ for more information.

I get this from another site, but I don't know that it will work or not:
To boot a toshiba notebook with external floppy drive and external CD Rom drive make such USB KB/Mouse emulation is disabled in BIOS and that usb legacy emulation is enabled.

Azagaroth
Posts: 5
Joined: Thu Mar 27, 2008 5:10 am

#5 Post by Azagaroth » Thu Mar 27, 2008 2:16 pm

Thanks for the reply.

In the BIOS there are very limited options. I am running the latest bios ver, it just seems like toshiba can't be bothered to include some fairly basic (by todays standards) options in the bios...

I can only boot from the memory stick. And yes, I am trying running gujin with both the xp cd and fedora dvd in the drive (the external optical).

*edit*
A further snag... it seems my computer has trouble running any of the freeDOS based apps on UBCD. Anything which uses the dosubcd.igz image crashes my computer.

Icecube
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#6 Post by Icecube » Thu Mar 27, 2008 4:04 pm

When the freeDOS images boots, you can chose different options, try them.
Also try to choose in the dialog the right options (whathever that may be).

Victor Chew
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#7 Post by Victor Chew » Fri Mar 28, 2008 5:51 am

A further snag... it seems my computer has trouble running any of the freeDOS based apps on UBCD. Anything which uses the dosubcd.igz image crashes my computer.
I have been playing around with UBCD/USB lately, and I hit this problem as well. It appears FreeDOS doesn't like the format of the USB disk when prepared using makebootfat.

You should rename drubcd.igz -> dosubcd.igz. That will use the OpenDOS disk image instead, and it should work.

Azagaroth
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Joined: Thu Mar 27, 2008 5:10 am

#8 Post by Azagaroth » Sat Mar 29, 2008 10:18 am

Thanks for the replies,

I tried using openDOS instead of freeDOS, by changing the image filename as suggested. I got a different error this time, something about an int 13 extention, and how i needed EDD-3.0

However the version of openDOS on UBCD is 7.x so whats the beef?

Any further suggestions? As far as I can figure it, all I need is a boot loader which has USB external optical support, and can boot from the external optical drive. My googling efforts have not had much luck though. It seems like many of the bootloaders do support USB in a limited fashion, but only for HDD's and memo-sticks. No external optical support that I can find.

:-(

Icecube
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#9 Post by Icecube » Sat Mar 29, 2008 3:28 pm

search on google "dos usb cd drive"
http://www.bootdisk.com/usb.htm
Quote from that site.
In fact, I'd remove ANY USB device you dont need [eg cams, mice, printers, etc.] when using the above files to get DOS access to your Drives.
http://www.stefan2000.com/darkehorse/PC ... ivers/USB/ contains several USB CD ROM Drivers.

If you have a big usb stick, you can put the whole iso of fedora on it.

Code: Select all

- Rename the isolinux folder from fedora to syslinux
- Rename isolinux.cfg from fedora to syslinux.cfg
OR
- Rename the isolinux folder from fedora to syslinux
- Rename it to fedora.cfg and put it in the /custom/ folder from ubcd
- Edit the /custom/custom.cfg to:
LABEL fedora
  MENU LABEL Fedora
  CONFIG /custum/fedora.cfg
Maybe it is enough if you only copy the isolinux folder, the kernel and initrd to the memory stick. You probably have to edit the KERNEL line in the fedora.cfg file. Set the root to the right path (USB DVD drive) e.g. root=/dev/cdrom. I don't know how fedora will see the usb dvd drive, so it can be something else.
You can probably do this also when the the system goes to the busy box shell (mount the external usb dvd drive and make the usb dvd drive the root filesystem).

To install windows, see:
http://www.netcal.com/news.php?article=8

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       1. Download the USB DOS driver and Save the file to your hard drive.
       2. Extract the file dosboot.img and put it in /images/
       3. Add the following to the custom.cfg
             LABEL windows
               MENU LABEL Install Windows XP
               KERNEL memdisk
               APPEND initrd=/images/dosboot.img
       4. When it is done, reboot with this disk to use the USB devices.
       5. If everything went well, you should have a drive R:\ for the CDROM drive. You are now ready to copy the I386 folder from the Windows 2000 or XP installation CD to the hard drive.
       7. Hard Drives will most likely be C: (the next letter available).
          Note: There will be no letter for the hard drive if it has not been partitioned and formatted. If you are not familiar with partitioning or formatting a hard drive, please go to the following Microsoft link for the information.
       8. At the prompt, go to the CDROM drive (R:) and run "Xcopy *.* /s C:\"
      9. Now go to the I386 folder (C:\I386) then type Winnt.
      10. Installation should now start. Follow instruction from your Operating System manual on how to install the OS. (Installation will take some time, Please be patient)

Azagaroth
Posts: 5
Joined: Thu Mar 27, 2008 5:10 am

#10 Post by Azagaroth » Sat Mar 29, 2008 4:05 pm

Thanks,

I actually found a workaround very similar to what you listed. It involved using GRUB for NT. I only needed the fedora kernel/initrd, and then the installer was able to finish the install using the disc from the usb drive.

Nice to actually find a solution to an annoying little problem! Thanks for all the help guys... Appreciate it! :-)

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