Icecube wrote:Can you try to see if the dm_creator.exe can create a floppy image when you install VFD or imdisk in your XP VM (non't attach a floppy drive to your XP VM, jsut to make sure if the dm_creator.exe does even work with VDF/imdisk.
Using your suggestion/request, I successfully made these floppy images:
-Based on Ontrack Floppy Creator:
IBM Disk manager 9.57
Ontrack Advisor 5.00 Trial
Ontrack Disk Manager 10.46 (2 floppy disks)
Samsung Disk Manager 10.42
Seagate Disk Manager 9.56a
Seagate Disk Wizard Standard Edition 10.45.06 (2 floppy disks)
Western Digital DataLifeGuard 5.04f
-Based on Winimage Self Extractor
Micro2000 memscope 1.10
-Based on Towodo (formerly rundegren) Floppy Self-Extractor
Seagate Seatools 2.20
There are several points worth mentioning.
-I only tried VFD under the guest OS, not ImDisk.
-VFD was ran as Administrator
-The floppy creator programs were ran as "User", which has administrator privileges (permissions), but not as the "Administrator" user.
-Seagate Seatools 2.20 (based on Towodo Floppy Self-Extractor) also successfully creates the floppy under Vista.
-Under Vista, all Ontrack Floppy Creators stop at the same message "Diskette write-protect tab must be closed", even in compatibility mode (XPwSP2, 2k, NT...).
-Under Vista, Ontrack Floppy Creators work with a real physical floppy, but not with a VFD/ImDisk.
Moreover, under Vista, memscope 1.10 (based on Winimage Self Extractor) stops at the message:
Code: Select all
Windows Error N. 5
Access is denied
and then the following message is displayed:
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Disk error n° 69 on track 0, head 0
Access Is denied
with 3 options in the same dialog:
Looking at the content of the virtual floppy after running memscope 1.10 floppy creator, there are several folders written to it, so the error is different from not being able to write to the virtual floppy at all.
So Winimage Self-Extractor (version 8.00) also fails with a virtual floppy (VFD/ImDisk) under Vista.
Additionally, I have 1 Futjitsu Disk Manager 9.52 Floppy Creator (which apparently is
NOT based on Ontrack Floppy Creator), which failed under VirtualBox guest OS - XPwSP3 - , but the reason could be something else so I don't worry about this one.
So, in general, VFD running as Administrator under XP with SP3 as the VirtualBox guest OS and Vista as the host OS, worked successfully.
You could assume that now I have some floppy images created successfully, and the issue is resolved. Well, not exactly.
I still want VFD (or ImDisk or some other virtual floppy / ramdisk tool) to work under Vista.
Since ImDisk specifies it works under Vista, I would like to find out what I am doing wrong, or to find out how to make it work successfully.
Just compare time and resources. Using a virtual floppy / ramdisk tool under Vista should take less than 5 minutes and several few MB.
Downloading VirtualBox (about 75 MB download), install it, install XP as guest and configure it (about an hour or more in my particular system, and several GB's of hard disk space), copying the programs to the guest OS, so to finally run VFD and create the floppy images, and then copying the resulting floppy images back to the Vista host OS.
So now I have those floppy images created. If I want to create a new one a year from now (or others I didn't tried in VirtualBox yet), I would have to do the VirtualBox method again, since I don't use it for anything else, and leaving it there just for some future floppy image doesn't seem to be wise. Still, I'll leave VirtualBox installed for now.
So, if you are so kind, please keep advising and helping to make VFD/ImDisk/other virtual floppy tool/other ramdisk tool to work under Vista (besides copying files from Windows Explorer).
Maybe, finding another ramdisk tool capable of 1440K virtual disks and compatible with Vista would be easier, but I don't know any.
Thank you in advance.