Creating a bootable El Torito CD

  • Thread starter Thread starter Carl Anuszczyk
  • Start date Start date
C

Carl Anuszczyk

Hi,

We're trying to create a bootable cd and not having much luck. We've
followed the steps and are a little confused as to how to interpret the
initial target system design requirements.

For our target system we would like one of the following setups:

1) OS boots from a CD
2) OS boots from a CF

With both of these systems we do not want a hard drive in the system at all.
That doesn't seem too unreasonable given what XP embedded is suppose to be
for.

However, according to the instructions (as we understand it) for creating an
El Torito CD, a partition on the target machine is created with an image of
the pre-fab OS on it. A second copy of the image is also placed on a
pre-fab CD. You then boot from the CD and allow the FBA to boot and run
it's course. You then must create a second bootable disk from the post-fba
image on the hard disk and then use this for cloning (after a few more
steps). My problem is understanding how the final target system is not
going to have the hard drive yet it is required to create the cd to begin
with.

I guess my question in a nut shell is what the basic steps for creating a cd
(or CF) are for a system that doesn't have a hard drive?

Frustrated to no end,

Carl Anuszczyk
 
Hey Carl,

I'm pretty new at this stuff, but I have managed to create a bootable
system. I can only pass along to you what I did to get it going.

First, I've started with:


http://www.msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/dnxpesp1/html/XPESP1_Build_Deploy_Img.asp?frame=true

then I followed:


http://www.msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/xpehelp/html/xehowHowToConfigureElTorito.asp?frame=true

I know the two documents have some overlap, but they were both helpful to
me.

I have read some discussion regarding using TAP under WinPE, but I simply
ran it under WinXP and worked from there. Supposedly, if you run TAP under
WinPE, you'll get a component list of only the required.

I imported the output from tap into Component Designer and saved the .sld (I
didn't release the component the first go round). I follow the first
document on "Creating a Hardware Macro."

Through the Component Database Manager, I imported the .sld file, producing
a log file of the missing components.

I then went and found the .inf's (where they existed) for the missing
components and imported them into Component Designer, Released them, saved
them, and imported their .sld's into Component Database Manager.

Then I opened and released the .sld from the TAP output, imported it, and
verified that no errors were produced.

I should mention that there were some warnings, but they didn't look so bad
and I wanted to see if it would work. You may not be able to find all of the
necessary .inf's, or the .inf's produced by your vendors may not work, so
you may have to create some components on your own (this part I'm really
green at).

From Target Designer, I simply added the components that were suggested in
the first document, as well as the El Torito components discussed in the
second, and bada-bing, bada-boom - it built and it worked. Actually, I was
hoping it would be a setup disk that I could use to configure a new system,
but hey - it worked.

Hope this helps,
-Bobby
 
Back
Top