Hi All,

I extracted the ubcd files onto my usb drive and it loads up fine. However, when I try to use Hdderase, it says that I am missing the hdderase.bat file.

Am I doing something incorrectly?

The FreeDos image doesn't see your USB drive.

Can you give the output of the drd command?

A workaround can be found here:
http://ultimatebootcd.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2159

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I'm using UBCD V5.0RC2 and running into the same problem. The output of drd is:

DRD: 'A:' writable (memdisk fake writable)
DRD: 'Q:' writable
DRD: 'T:' inaccessible

All the other letters show up as "invalid".

I tried the workaround found here http://ultimatebootcd.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2159, but when I select the "User-defined -> Boot DOS apps of UBCD50RC1" menu item and hit enter, nothing happens.

The strange thing is I remember getting HDDErase to run before on the same machine from a USB drive. I recently reformatted my internal hard drive using DBAN. Could that have anything to do with the problem?

I tried changing some of the USB configuration options as suggested in this post: http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=6307#6307, but I still get the same error. Any other things I can try?

What mode of USB booting are you using?

Because if it is USB-HDD, the BIOS should emulate the HDD interface, so FreeDOS should see it without problems. As such, I suspect it is either USB-FDD or USB-LSZIP?

For the latter two cases, I do not have much experience with those modes, but have you tried activating the USB drivers under FreeDOS (by typing "usb" at the command prompt)?

I don't see an option in BIOS setup to select the USB boot mode. There's a "USB Emulation" section that has "Enabled" and "Off" options and is currently set to "Enabled". This is on a Dell Inspiron 6400 if that's any help.

I tried activating the USB drivers under FreeDOS with various combinations of settings, but none of them worked.

I'm experiencing what the OP is as well. Missing bat file when trying to run HDDerase.

It's getting frustrating having to download and burn all these utilities separately since they don't work properly in the UBCD.

Like Icecube mentioned in his previous post, run "drd" from the DOS command prompt. If your USB drive is not assigned a drive letter, you will have problems with all FreeDOS-based apps (not just HDDErase).

In this case, you will need to find a way to get your USB drive to be recognized under FreeDOS (try adjusting the BIOS options, or run "usb" and tweak the various USB options).

Otherwise, try the CD version of UBCD.

When I run either HDDErase v4.0 or this version I added (v3.3) from the CD and from the UBCD USB flash drive I just created, I get this message:

[something about the cdrom being disabled]

BOOTDRV: A:
RAMDRV: Q:

UBCD: Error!!! missing hdderase3.bat (check CD)

Press any key to continue...


My optical drive and hard drives are all SATA. I've tried changing the BIOS from AHCI to IDE modes, but still get the error.


EDIT:
Redownloaded the ISO and redid the modifications and all is working now.

Thanks again!

@ Victor
Should I spend some time to make a script to build a small ISO with only the DOS apps?
http://ultimatebootcd.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2159

_________________
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Use Parted Magic for handling all partitioning task: http://partedmagic.com/

Spoke too soon. While it works fine on an old (~5 years) PC in the living room, it doesn't work on my PC (built last year).

When I run either HDDErase v4.0 or v3.3 from the USB flash drive or CD (SATA optical drive), I get:

BOOTDRV: A:
RAMDRV: Q:

UBCD: Error!!! missing hdderase.bat (check CD)

Press any key to continue...

@ Victor
You should change the error message to something else:

The batch files are generated on the fly from the content of ubcd.ini.
So a more accurate message would be nice.

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How about we move all the DOS apps into an ISO, and get rid of "c:\ubcd-extracted\ubcd\dosapps"?

This should solve the DOS driver issue.

It is OK for me.
Do you want to keep the same directory layout for the UBCD_DOS ISO or a simplified one:

Complex (but similar to the full UBCD50 ISO):

Or a version with less subdirectories?

I prefer the 'complex' version because of its similarities.

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What I did was I created a bootable fdubcd.iso that looks like:



then use memdisk from UBCD to launch fdubcd.iso.

The funny thing is FreeDOS can't see the emulated CDROM drive. It can only see the physical CDROM drive.

I tried "cdrom" and its various options (including "identify all drives") but to no avail.

Any idea?

@ Victor
Did you change the batch files, so ubcd.ini is searched in /dosapps/ and not in /ubcd/dosapps/?

isolinux.cfg (small iso)

==> gzip the iso
From UBCD50, syslinux.cfg and isolinux.cfg:


The following will boot xbios directly:

Note: I need to change the sed script to generate the right code for grub4dos.

I don't have ubcd50 at this location, but I will make the image for you this evening.

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Yes I did. But under FreeDOS, "T:" displays the content of the physical CDROM drive, not the content of fdubcd.iso.

I use (eg):



If memdisk documentation is correct, I should get two drive letters, one for the physical CDROM drive, and one for the emulated CDROM drive. That's not what I see.

It works fine for me in qemu and VirtualBox. I don't need to select anything special. But I am not able to see the qemu/VirtualBox CD drive.
Here is the ISO I use:
http://ubcd.stopspazzing.com/downloads/ ... bcd.iso.gz

I found a bug in the implementation of mdiskchk.com in autoexec.bat:

should be:

Else the ubcdcmd= parameter passed to the ISO isn't detected (only if ubcdcmd= is passed to the floppy image itself)

I didn't change the batch files to look for ubcd.ini in \dosapps\, but it seems to find it automatically.

_________________
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Use Parted Magic for handling all partitioning task: http://partedmagic.com/

Thanks for fdubcd.iso.gz. Got it working under VMWare (Player 3.0.1) with the same behaviour (T: => emulated CDROM drive; cannot see physical CDROM drive).

I can see the difference is that fdubcd.iso.gz uses isolinux as the bootloader, which in turn boots fdubcd.img using memdisk, whereas my fdubcd.iso uses fdubcd.img as the boot image. My tiny brain is exploding under all this complexity. Do you know why the former assigns T: => emulated CDROM drive, while the latter assigns T: => physical CDROM drive?



Got it! Updated autoexec.bat.

Anyway, I think this approach has potential for those booting from USB CDROM drives or memory stick but have problems getting their source devices recognized under FreeDOS. There might be side effects though that will require further testing, plus we need to write scripts to generate fdubcd.iso.gz, plus we need to settle on the steps to add customized FreeDOS apps so that upgrading to a new version of UBCD is as easy as possible, so let's explore this in the next release.

When you make an ISO with floppy or hard disk emulation, the floppy or hard disk will be booted end the rest of the ISO will be invisible. AFAIK this is by design. When you use no-emulation on your ISO, you see the full iso (ISOLINUX, GRUB(4DOS)).

The script won't be to difficult to write, I guess.

_________________
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Use Parted Magic for handling all partitioning task: http://partedmagic.com/