LAST EDITED ON Apr-15-03 AT 04:07 AM (EDT)
 
Booters and "PROBLEM" cdrom readers
- My bootdisks do not recognise the CDromDrive when I boot off them. And it wasn't broken just before I formatted.

When EBD or setup floppy cannot read data from CDrom, and there is no proprietary cdromdriver on hard disk.
Yep, what if the standard win 98 start disk and EBD won't read your old drive?
This usually happens with older cdromdrives, and those connected to a soundcard.
One can try cdromgod or the ultimate boot disk.

cdromgod 5.0 (an elusive cdgod55.exe exists) and two variants of the ULTIMATE BOOT DISK (which has various utilities, and antivirus...) can be found at
http://www.cybertechhelp.com/html/downloads/index.php

The home site for the ultimate boot disk can be found at
http://www.startdisk.com/Web1/ubd/ubd.htm
UBD is Highly recommended by many folks...

and yes...
let's us not forget http://www.bootdisk.com
they have great tools and articles there...

About these downloads.
when it is an exe file, you run it to make the bootfloppy.
when it is a zip (an archive) it will usually contain a file you have to run to make the floppy.
simply copying these files to a floppy does not make you a bootable floppy

Please bear in mind that some downloaded floppies (usually with utilities, etc.. ) may still require you systemise the floppy to make them bootable.
you can do this in windows explorer, richtclick A:
properties of drive A: ( and copy system files )
or run sys A: from a dosprompt.
(the readme they have will explain this. This is quite common actually.)

Of course, when you do not have the driver floppy, you can try find the drivers install disk using hardware model info.
Worst case, you may have to open up that machine, and look on the CDrom-reader.

You want to know about the most tricky ones?
They are ancient by now, but they are still around.
When a cdrom reader's ribbon is connected to a soundcard, you'll most likely have to use whatever info you found on the card because you want to install the controller driver for that card. (Interfaces can be sony, panasonic, mitsumi, atapi.)

You may already have such an install floppy.
Or, you have an ancient systemdisk with the DOS driver properly working.
In the latter case, that floppy or hard drive has the drivers and configuration you need...
If it is a bootfloppy, you can copy your card's CDdriver.sys, and that floppy's config.sys and autoexec.bat to root of the newer version floppy.
If that systemdisk you booted off with cdrom support was your hard disk, you copy the files to floppy, and you will need to edit some lines in A:\config.sys and A:\autoexec.bat, so as to point to the files on A:
And then, you had better FIRST TEST the floppy...
If it works, it shows the letter it assigned to CDROM.
And then you run DIR : and find out wether it can see and copy files off the CDROM

Well, I thought win3.1 and win95 users already know this stuff, but not all users do.
-------

Let us assume you only have a cdrom driver install disk. (The way it was done long ago, and win98 nor these other booters want to play nice with that thing...)
Well, It's hard to come by, so make a diskcopy of it...
(Believe me, one day you'll learn how useful diskcopy on a floppy really is)

SINCE YOU WILL MAKE YOUR HARD DRIVE BOOTABLE, IT WOULD BE A GOOD THING IF YOUR BOOTER IS SAME VERSION AS THE Operating System YOU WANT TO INSTALL.

btw, for this here method, if you had already used format c: /s you are advised to again use format
like this
format C: /q /autotest
unlock C:

You see, this method assumes it is an EMPTY drive
(you would get overwrite Y/N messages if it isn't, and these messages may stop you from doing this right.)

Let's go...
Have you made that EBD or "start disk" with smartdrv.exe and diskcopy.com on it ?
make a diskcopy of it
delete A:config.sys
delete A:autoexec.bat

Then you open notepad (When you save, you need save with "all file types" option enabled.)
EDIT in DOS, you can use that too]

You create a file called
A:\autoexec.bat
All it really needs is (In notepad this is easy, paste the following into it.)

LH smartdrv

save it

Again open notepad (or edit in DOS) to create
A:\config.sys
this one needs;

device=himem.sys /testmemff
DEVICE=EMM386.EXE NOEMS
files=60
buffers=10
dos=high,umb
stacks=9,256
lastdrive=z

Save it (I'll repeat it, when you save, you need save with "all file types" option enabled)
Comment; when you're in a truly big fix, and no Dos based windows 9x machine is available, yes, you can do all this having nothing else than your EBD boot floppy.

Write protect that floppydisk by sliding the little plastic tab away from the hole.
Boot the formatted computer from it, and here we go

C:
cd\
md dos
cd dos
copy a:\*.*
cd\
copy C:\dos\*.* (this is where the overwrite messages would have occorred)
A:
sys C:
Remove floppy
and reboot

Pop that cdrom driver install disk in the floppydrive, and we go like this
A:
install

hmmm, you could get invalid command or filename...
if that happens, you have to change directory to the dos setup file (usually, but not always called install.exe)
dir install.exe /s should find it.
if not, try dir setup.exe /s
(you could also browse this floppy on your good puter)

Let's say install.exe is found in a folder called FORDOS.
Then you would type
cd FORDOS
install
When it finished, remove floppy, and reboot from hard disk.
With a bit of luck, you can read stuff on your CDROM.
Why luck?
Well, the adresses and dma you picked can be wrong.
If so, assuming it was in FORDOS, again run A:\FORDOS\install

I hear you wonder why I don't have you copy the floppy's content to hard drive.
Most times this does work, but every so often, the installer wants to get the files off A: despite having been launched from C:

(Lets hope you don't need do all this; after all, there are a good many sources for booters, and there is cdromgod, they truly did a great job.)

Anyway...
Once you can access your cdrom reader, FIRST copy the windows setup cabinets to a harddisk or partition.
In other words, please don't launch setup from the CDROM.
Why? Because you stand a real good chance you might not be able to continue after setup's first reboot...
(you see, windows setup rems out these lines in config.sys and autoexec.bat, and it is often not yet able to access the CDROM by itself.
IF that happened to you, you can still boot into SAFE mode, and run SYSEDIT, where you edit out the words
REM by Windows Setup you find before the cdrom driver install lines.
======

a few notes on working in MsDOS;

Why use Backslash stardotstar? \*.*
There are times you do not need the wildcards *.*
like copy A:\
There are times you do not need the \
like in copy E:\win98
There are times you DO need the \
because copy A: won't work
And there are times where \ without *.* will not work
like copy E:\win98\

Backslash stardotstar will always work in MsDOS's own commands.

(Odi's LFN tool works in MsDOS, but is not from M$, and the wildcards in LFN tools behave different.)
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If you are going to work on a NEW drive, I can tell you the following;
- Hard Drive manufactor utilities are often A LOT FASTER and for partitioning and fast formating.
Just don't use an overlay if your machine does not need it.
(That's a fairly common mistake people make.)

- I can also tell you that Operating systems like windows 2000 and XP have such fast drive formating tools of their own.

- Just remember that you have to be REALLY careful when you have data you cannot afford to lose.
(The process will warn you you are about to blow away data)

XP has one thing that annoys me.
For example, you boot off the CD, and when you chicken out, you cannot get to a "dosprompt" because it simply reboots.
In other words, I found no way to look at content of a drive while booting from an XP CD.
(If there is a way, I'd like to learn about it.)

Later on I learned there is a way to get to a command prompt by using recovery console. I haven't yet tried all the available commands, and still have not seen a way it can be used to look at hard disks the way I described. (it does have tools, but I am not yet familiar with them.)
I have discovered that one cannot run external commands from that prompt, tho.