Syslinux - May 2003 - need help creating hd image for memdisk for m$windows user

hello and thanks for reading this,

with the help of this group so far,
i am using bootscriptor from bootscriptor.org combined with memdisk to boot a
win98 boot disk. it
boot into the windows98 version of dos.
the cool thing about the floppy is that it has a compressed image that mounts as
a drive letter.
much like linux.

i can create floppy images no problem.

what i am trying to do is create a hd image that could be used with memdisk or
perhaps isolinux.
of course, the image will have windows98.
being a windows user, i am not sure how to do it.



any advice?

thanks,
dave

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David Meltzer wrote:
> what i am trying to do is create a hd image that could be used with
memdisk or perhaps isolinux.
> of course, the image will have windows98.
I mailed some info about how I did it once and how perhaps he could do
it, but since it seems to be Off-Topic I didn't post it to the list.

bye
Christian
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> with the help of this group so far,
> i am using bootscriptor from bootscriptor.org combined with 
> memdisk to boot a win98 boot disk. it
> boot into the windows98 version of dos.
> the cool thing about the floppy is that it has a compressed 
> image that mounts as a drive letter.
> much like linux.
> 
> i can create floppy images no problem.
> 
> what i am trying to do is create a hd image that could be 
> used with memdisk or perhaps isolinux.
> of course, the image will have windows98.
> being a windows user, i am not sure how to do it.
> 
> 
> 
> any advice?
> 
> thanks,
> dave
Hello Dave,

Windows 9x uses win.com to support 32 bit Windows from 16 bit DOS. As
Christian already pointed out, there is a brief description here:
http://www.nelliott.demon.co.uk/distributed/windows_diskless

So yes, you can boot Win9x using memdisk (it has been done before : )

memdisk needs HD images, though, not partition images!
You need the MBR (partition table etc), a 63 sector offset and the
partition containing your DOS/Win9x. 

Here is a quick how to:
The easiest way is using dd (ie from Cygwin) and a small bootable
primary Win9x partition. The partition should be at the very beginning
of the drive, to keep the memdisk image as small as possible.
Figure out exactly how big the partition is (in bytes), devide by 512.
This is the number of sectors in your partition. Add 63 to that number
and raw-read the drive with dd:
dd if=\\.\PhysicalDrive0 of=Win9x.img bs=512 count=<Number of Sectors>

Replace PhysicalDrive0 with PhysicalDriveX, if the drive is not the
first one. <Num of Sec> is the number of sectors in the partiton + 63.
You can use a hex editor to verify the image, ie. Diskprobe from the NT
Resource Kit.

Again, keep in mind, that the image needs to be completely copied to
memory. You'll probably need at least 512 MB and it's going to take
quite a while to load.

If all stations are identical, Christian's LanMan solution mentioned in
your previous thread might be a lot smarter.

 Oliver.