Hot Topic: Multi-Bootable N-in-1 CD Howto

(You can view the Full Page of this topic at /http://members.rogers.com/khauyeung/nin1.htm)

To congratulate BetaOne's new opening, I am starting this new thread which is supposed to be of interest to a lot of people.

I shall talk about what is N-in-1, the cdimage and its simple use in making an ISO, cdimage advanced and its optimization magics, making CD Multi-Bootable with Loader and DiskEmulator, editing WinXP/Win2K boot-sector and boot-image files, and finally guilding you to make a "Corporated XP Professional & Home Edition 2in1 CD".

Obviously this is a very large topic which I cannot finish to talk in one single post nor one single day. In the coming couple of days, I will continuosly add new contents into the first post of this thread (the current post) and putting a date mark at the beginning of each new content segment. When you re-visit this thread, always check the first post to view my new stuffs, and then put your comments, questions, discussion contents as a new reply. Please actively join-in discussion and hope that we can generate more creative idea.

I hope this thread is to be handled as a pure discussion thread. I shall let you know if related programs/files are publicly available. But for proprietary programs like cdimage, you have to seek or share it yourselves. Do NOT try to ask me for a link by all means!

[12-18-2001] (Part 1)

About N-in-1:

My N-in-1 experience started 8 months ago when a friend came to me showing his new toy from China - A 3in1 CD which put Windows 2000 Professional, Server and Advanced Server together and integrate them into one single CD. I was very impressed on this amazing CD but did not understand why a single 650 MB normal CD can accomodate 1.5 GB (500 MB x 3) of contents of 3 CD's. Unfortunately, my friend did not understand neither. I was wondering in the next 2 months: What kind of magic compression programs was it made?

CDIMAGE.EXE

I did not get the answer until another friend brought me a piece of proprietary premastering utility CDIMAGE.EXE which was originated from M$ for internal use only. The basic purpose of CDIMAGE is simply to help generating an ISO CD-image for the contents which are previously put under a folder of a hard-drive or a CD-drive. There are options which can control various CD's properties like volume label, time stamp, long filenam, boot sector file and more. All these sounds like the other CD Buring software can do it: CDRWIN, ECDC, Nero. But what makes the N-in-1 possible? It is the -o option, "optimize storage by encoding duplicate files only once".

Optimization Magics

Starting from that moment, I understand the magics: It was not the Compression made the Windows 2000 3in1 CD, but the "optimization" process. It is true that when we extract the contents of the 3 Windows 2000 CD's onto the hard-drive, each of them will occupy about 500 MB adding up a total of around 1.5 GB of hard-drive space. However, when we run the CDIMAGE with the -o option to encode an ISO CD-image, it finds DRIVERS.CAB (a 50 MB file) exists in the i386 folder of all 3 individual versions (Professional, Server and Advanced Server) and these 3 files are duplicate files, so it store the 3 DRIVERS.CAB's only once in the final encoding CD-image and updating the file allocation table of the CD so that the 3 DRIVER.CAB's distributed in 3 individual directories will point to the same physical address on the CD. Now we save 100 MB of space by doing optimization on duplicate files of DRIVERS.CAB only, we should not be surprised that we can get 1.5 GB being squeezed into less than 650 MB after the whole optimization process is finished on the other duplicate files.

Obviously, the optimization magics of CDIMAGE is particularly useful in making somthing like Windows 2000 3in1 and Windows XP 6in1 where more than 95% of the contents in different OS's are of duplicate files. Beyonds the N-in-1, the -o option is also a good tool to bind more different applications, or different versions of application from the same software vendor onto a single CD. Example 1: Symantec System Works 2002 contains a basic version of Winfax Pro, but a Deluxe version of Winfax Pro and Talkwork Pro are also available and will be more powerful, they can be re-pack to one CD with CDIMAGE -o option without taking much of additional space. Example 2: The Adobe Acrobat 5.0 does accompany with different Adobe's applications on the Adobe Utimate Collection CD, we can use -o option to optimize the CD once again so that more space can now be spared for more Goodies. With your imagination, you can think about more situation where optimization magics can be applied. If you have any good idea, please post it to share.

More contents are coming. Stay tuned and start your postings....

Because of the Length Limit of a message, I have to put the next new content segment in a new reply. Please read my new reply on 12-19-2001 under the current thread!



Last edited by khauyeung at Jul 20 2002, 10:03 AM

This will be a great thread! I have been wondering how to use that cdimage tool to make iso's for a while now :)

Look forward to it thanks :D

Later,
Lucky

looking forward to the 2in1 part :)

Seems to become an interesting thread, I'll stick around

Homie

I am awaiting any Tasty info you may have on this subject...
I always like to get more info on this because it can be kind of complex at times, especially when trying to make a CD bootable after opening it and inserting something or changing something...

SeeYa
:)

Very interesting on the part 1. I knew how you did it, just not what program to use...
Waiting for More...
Thanks...

Great idea khauyeung - I look forward to the entire post. Despite having read all the notes and readme's, I would appreciate seeing
the dates for the latest versions so that I can put everything I need on a CDRW to clear up my HD. I can wait to burn it later on a regular CDR that boots. Thanks.

How did you change the Windows XP menu then? i can't see how you managed to change it, don't see any files to change.

GREAT
Very interesting post
Looking forward for the 2nd
Thanks

hey khauyeung...

Great post! I knew it had something to do with the sharing of files but didn't know exactly how it was done. I have the 2k 3 in 1 and the XP 6 in 1 and it still amazes me how how all of it can be put on 1 cd. I look forward to reading your posts and thanks for the info.

I really like this thread. Thanks khauyeung for sharing your Nin1 experience, just can't wait to see your next discussion. :)

Well first question I had was answered before I got to ask, What you used to make your ISO? Thanks. Now to find a copy. Think this is going to pretty interesting.

HotRod

khauyeung I have admired your work for quite a while now and am looking forward to your schooling of this method of getting all the different OS's onto one CD. Thanks for sharing the information.

Badawg

Well I am trying a 2in1 disk of

Visual Studio 6.0 Enterprise ed
and
Visual Studio 6.0 Professional ed

Seems to made the image alright... Now I need to make a installer thing to point to the correct installer for each. Guess I will see lol

Later,
Lucky

can't wait to next episode :)

Homie

This is one "post" that I will "save".
Can't want for the next chapter!!
This is something that can help allot of people
understand what was beyond them (me).

Thanks and keep up the good work.

Hmmm... So does each application still use it's own installer (setup.exe)? Like for my CD Visual Studio Pro and Enterprise... Seperate folders, two different installers, and if it only copied files once - will the installer know where to look for the file?

Still trying to figure this thing out lol

[12-19-2001]

Cooking Time

It looks like that we do have real creative cooks here: Someone has started his cooking on the Visual Studio 6.0 Enterprise/Professional 2in1 resulting in a Yumi-Yumi dish. Let us start our cooking too (in several stages), targeting on a "Multi-Bootable Corporated Windows XP Professional/Home Edition 2in1 CD"!

The following materials are needed in our warm-up stage: DevilsOwn (XP-Professional with Corpfiles), BOOT.BIN (WXP/W2K Boot-Sector), CDIMAGE.EXE, 2.5 GB of Hard-drive space. If you have my 6in1 CD, it is a good source of materials except the CDIMAGE.EXE. Please note that the DevilsOwn is contained in my 6in1 CD under WXPVOL_EN. The warm-up stage aims to learn using CDIMAGE to encode an ISO CD-image of a bootable DevilsOwn (Volume License Version of XP Professional) CD.

1. Extract or copy all files from your source of DevilsOwn to a directory (sourceroot) of the HD (e.g. E:CORP2IN1_EN)
2. Copy the popular WXP/W2K Boot-Sector file BOOT.BIN to the sourceroot. (BOOT.BIN can be found at of the 6in1)
3. In a minute, we shall be using CDIMAGE.EXE (Version 2.39, 72,464 Bytes) which has been put in a path available to be run in DOS Window. Let us learn its Usage and Options: (To make it simple, I only have listed Options of GROUP1 here which are used more frequently, you can view the full content of CDIMAGE.TXT at /http://members.rogers.com/khayftp1/cdimage.txt)

Usage: CDIMAGE [options] sourceroot targetfile

Available Options:

GROUP1:
-l volume label, no spaces (e.g. -lMYLABEL)
-t time stamp for all files and directories, no spaces, any delimiter (e.g. -t12/31/91,15:01:00)
-b "El Torito" boot sector file, no spaces (e.g. -c:locationcdboot.bin)
-h include hidden files and directories
-n allow long filenames (longer than DOS 8.3 names)
-m ignore maximum image size of 681,984,000 bytes
-o optimize storage by encoding duplicate files only once

4. In DOS Window, Enter the following command:

cdimage -lCORP2IN1_EN -t08/23/2001,12:00:00 -bE:CORP2IN1_ENBOOT.BIN -h -n -m E:CORP2IN1_EN E:CORP2IN1.ISO

In about 3 minutes, CDIMAGE will generate a CORP2IN1.ISO in the root directory of the E: drive. If you use something like daemon tools (recommended), winimage or isobuster to check the generated CORP2IN1.ISO, you will find the following properties which were set by the options: Volume Label is CORP2IN1_EN (-lCORP2IN1_EN); Time Stamp is 02/23/2001 at 12:00:00 GMT time (-t08/23/2001,12:00:00); the CD is bootable because a boot-image was specified (-bE:CORP2IN1_ENBOOT.BIN); Options -h -n -m were selected as STANDARD. CDIMAGE looked at the sourceroot E:CORP2IN1_EN and generate the target ISO as E:CORP2IN1.ISO. Please note that when CDIMAGE is in the ENCODING process, it expects the target drive (where the targetfile is generated) has at least the same size of freespace as the size of contents under the sourceroot.

Isn't it simpler to make a bootable ISO with CDIMAGE than all the other Burning software?

More new contents have been posted at [12-19-2001] (Part 3)



Last edited by khauyeung at Jul 20 2002, 10:05 AM

That's about what I did for the VS 2in1... Had some time trying to figure out the BOOT.BIN though lol, I have no boot.bin, nor did I need that one (being it is not bootable). But it still took me like an hr to figure that one out :mad:

Have you ever encountered any errors when making a Nin1 CD? Does the cdimage.exe check for errors - Cuz I seen no errors, just curious if it even checks for them.

What I am trying to figure out now is how to make it so it can be installed. cdimage.exe just get's rid of exact same files right? But the installer is going to look for a specific file in a particular place and it may not be there cuz it was a duplicate and one was not added to the final image. Does cdimage re-route the installer to the correct place or something? I am making up a setup.exe in the root directory with a autorun.inf pointing to that where the user can choose the version they want installed, and spits out a key for them to write down. I would then just point the installer (my setup.exe) to the correct installer for the particular version being installed right? Or am I just making this harder then it really is lol

Almost got this done, now if I only had some CD's to test it lol :D

Thanks for all the help on this khauyeung, this thread has helped a lot :)

*edit*
Well come to think of it... One way to make it choose the install, would be by adding a shell to the autorun.inf - so when the user right clicks the CD drive both enterprise and pro show up. I will have to mess with that one too. Found a old disk (CD-RW, but should still work) and am going to see if it works :)

This looks like a thread well worth saving to your hard disk......

Following it with great interest........

It's fascinating to see how it was all done........

Congratulations to all involved.........

Well it seems to work good, installed enterprise with only one minor problem... Said it could not read a file, but it was there so I clicked retry and it went on along no other problems. Now to just finish up the setup screen and I can call this a release :D

Well a little more testing to see if there are any errors, or that one comes up. But yeah, after that I can release it ;)

Hi..
Khauyeung, where I can find cdimage.exe ?

thanks...
screen

Lucky, just a short answer to your question:

Since your VS6 2in1 does not need to be bootable, the -b option, BOOT.BIN or other boot-image things are not necessary. Instead a good Autorun CD-Menu is preferred. You should not make changes to the original installers (setup.exe), instead you should employ a good CD-Menu maker to generate new Autorun.inf and/or Autorun.exe which provide the new CD-Menu to redirect your mouse/keyboard selection to execute the appropriate installer (setup.exe).

(I use MakeCDROM v4.21 from KillerSoftware at /www.makecdrom.com but it is not simple to use! May be the other members will have a better choice?)

screen, as I have mentioned, you have to find the cdimage yourselves or see if someone will share. I will keep my promise to my friend: not to leak it to public.



Last edited by khauyeung at Jul 20 2002, 10:06 AM

[quote:3a2dec3034][i:3a2dec3034]Originally posted by khauyeung [/i:3a2dec3034]
[b:3a2dec3034][b]Lucky[/b:3a2dec3034], just a short answer to your question:

Since your VS6 2in1 does not need to be bootable, the -b option, BOOT.BIN or other boot-image things are not necessary. Instead a good Autorun CD-Menu is preferred. You should not make changes to the original installers (setup.exe), instead you should employ a good CD-Menu maker to generate new Autorun.inf and/or Autorun.exe which provide the new CD-Menu to redirect your mouse/keyboard selection to execute the appropriate installer (setup.exe).

(I use MakeCDROM v4.21 from KillerSoftware at /www.makecdrom.com but it is not simple to use! May be the other members will have a better choice?)

[b:3a2dec3034]screen[/b:3a2dec3034], as I have mentioned, you have to find the cdimage yourselves or see if someone will share. I will keep my promise to my friend: not to leak it to public. [/quote:3a2dec3034]

Yep, after the hr I found that out lol.
And yeah, I wasn't changing any of the installers for the program, I was making my own in VB pointing to the install files. But I will try that app you said, sounds good.

And about keeping the promise to your friend, I think they can all respect that. :)

Thanks,
Lucky

khauyeung, I respect your decision[quote:95b8e586cc]I will keep my promise to my friend: not to leak it to public.[/quote:95b8e586cc].

Lucky, can you post a link for this wonderful little program?

Hi, nice post thx for sharing.

[b:f3c19ae589]screen[/b:f3c19ae589] just 'google' yourself for a dozen pages and learn chinese !! You will find it.

Greetings
Req

Here is a link to cdimage:

/http://www.chosun.ac.kr/cgi-bin/crbbs/upload/computer13/cdimage.exe

Side Orders

Before we go further, I would like to bring you some side orders. I have seen people who have obtained ISO CD-Image of a Bootable CD, they can easily extract all files/dirctories onto hard-drive with isobuster, winimage or daemon tools and make changes to it. But when they come to the burning time, they do not find a proper boot-image to burn the CD Bootable. But the correct boot-image is already right there in your original ISO, can we locate it in the ISO and then take it out? The answer is YES, but with proper tools (freewares): /http://members.rogers.com/khayftp1/mkbootcd.exe and /http://members.rogers.com/khayftp1/dd.exe)

Now you have got the tools, let us use the ISO we have just generated (E:CORP2IN1.ISO, Bootable CD Image) to learn how the boot-image can be located and extracted. Ready? Let's go:

In DOS Window, Enter the following command to locate the boot-image:

mkbootcd E:CORP2IN1.ISO

This is the output from mkbootcd:

mkbootcd - make bootable CD image(El Torito specification)
30-Mar-98 gigo@yk.rim.or.jp|imaizumi@nisiq.net V1.02
21-May-98 *BETA* Joliet Extensions petry@rbg.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de
26-Oct-00 fix/eltorito emulator support by Bart Lagerweij, bart@nu2.nu V1.02c

== Boot Record Volume Descriptor ==
Indicator:0
Identifier:'CD001'
Version:1
BSIdentifier:'EL TORITO SPECIFICATION'
BootCatLbn:0x00000013(Loc:0x00009800)
*Warnning - Some Garbage in stab1.

== Validation Entry ==
HeaderID:1
PlatformID:0x00 - 80x86
ID String:'Microsoft Corporation'
CheckSum:0x494c

== Default/Initial Boot Entry ==
BootIndicator:0x88 - Bootable
MediaType:0x00 - No Emulation
LoadSegment:0x0000 - 0x7C0
SystemType:0x00
SectorCount:4
LoadRBA:0x00000014(Loc:0x0000a000)

== Direct Mode Boot Image ==

1 Warning(s)
=== Verification Success ===

Watch the "LoadRBA" entry. It says the boot-image is at "Relative Block Address" 0x14 hex (=20 Decimal)

Now enter the following command to extract the boot-image from the ISO:

dd if=E:CORP2IN1.ISO of=E:CORP2IN1_ENBOOTWXP.BIN bs=2k count=1 skip=20

Within seconds, a boot-image BOOTWXP.BIN is generated in E:CORP2IN1_EN which is identical to the BOOT.BIN we previously used. In the above command, "bs' stands for Block Size, "count" stands for Total Number of Block occupied by the boot-image (1 for NT-type boot sector and 720 for Win9X-type floppy image) and skip is the Number of Block to Skip reading before the boot-image.

With these 2 Side Orders, you should be able to have the most updated boot-image coming along with your downloaded ISO. Smile!

New content segment has been put in [12-19-2001] (Part 4), Check it out...



Last edited by khauyeung at Jul 20 2002, 10:09 AM

Congratulations
the best thread I ever saw :)

You have lost me now, for the moment at least, [b:32d3a2b21f]khauyeung[/b:32d3a2b21f] , but it is still very interesting reading nonetheless.

Thanks again, excellent information.
I tried using CDimage before but had trouble figuring out the combination of switches to use since there is so little information given.
Your explaination is quite helpfull.

I would also be interested in an easy to use utility to make autorun menu's. Tried using auto play menu studio but it seems like a little to much then I really need.
Dave

[quote:7b4f6f9e19][i:7b4f6f9e19]Originally posted by khauyeung [/i:7b4f6f9e19]
[b:7b4f6f9e19][b]Lucky[/b:7b4f6f9e19],
(I use MakeCDROM v4.21 from KillerSoftware at /www.makecdrom.com but it is not simple to use! May be the other members will have a better choice?)
[/quote:7b4f6f9e19]

Well that one be too much stuff for me to do lol... Too many graphics to make, but none of the less a very good program to have (thanks)

Well my installer don't look as pretty as yours do, but they work. Was simple too, maybe you should look into it - you can get a lot fancier then what I did (I am lazy lol)

But you can take a look at what the UI looks like here:
hxtp://home.attbi.com/~tonyn2002/installer.jpg

And you can see the code if you are interested. Very simple, I did not add anything fancy. If you keep the code general and not to specific, you can use the code over and over (That is the reason for the amount of functions on mine). You can see that here:
hxtp://home.attbi.com/~tonyn2002/Code.txt

(copy and paste x=t)


And thanks for this thread, very helpful - I look forward to what you have in store for us next.

Hot-Temptation

Well, warm-up time is over, we soon shall be going to taste the Hot Stuffs (N-in-1). To free some hard-drive space, let us delete the E:CORP2IN1.ISO which was generated in the previous stage, we shall generate a even tasteful one.

We need to use some more materials in this Hot-Temptation stage: The untouched Windows XP Home Edition (contained in my 6in1 CD under WXH_OEM_EN) and the 8 Corporate Files for Home Edition (setupreg.hiv, setupp.ini, pidgen.dll, dpcdll.dl_, oembios.ca_, oembios.da_, oembios.bi_ and oembios.si_) which are all in the i386 folder under our sourceroot (E:CORP2IN1_ENi386). The aim of our Hot-Temptation stage is to add one more OS (Corporated XP Home Edition) on the Top of the previous DevilsOwn (Corporated XP Professional) and use CDIMAGE with the -o option to generate our first 2in1 ISO CD-Image.

1. Extract or copy all files from your source of untouched Home Edition to a sub-directory under the sourceroot of the HD (E:CORP2IN1_ENWXHVOL_EN)
2. Copy the file WIN511C from root of Home Edition to sourceroot (Copy E:CORP2IN1_ENWXHVOL_ENWIN511C E:CORP2IN1_EN)
3. Copy the 8 Corporate Files from the i386 folder of DevilsOwn (E:CORP2IN1_ENi386) to the i386 folder of Home Edition (E:CORP2IN1_ENWXHVOL_ENi386), over-write existing files.
4. In DOS Window, Enter the following command to play the optimization magics (-o option):

cdimage -lCORP2IN1_EN -t08/23/2001,12:00:00 -bE:CORP2IN1_ENBOOT.BIN -h -n -m -o E:CORP2IN1_EN E:CORP2IN1.ISO

In about 4 minutes, CDIMAGE will generate our first real 2in1 ISO CORP2IN1.ISO in the root directory of the E: drive. The new generated CORP2IN1.ISO is about 545 MB in size when it is compared with the total size of 1 GB under the sourceroot E:CORP2IN1_EN, and this is the result of the optimization magics.

Now try playing the ISO with daemol tools or alike, what do you feel? Is it hot enough? If not, what stuffs should be added to make it more spicy?

Think about it while I am now taking a break to sleep (and work tomorrow). Post your thinking, questions, idea and suggestion!

More new contents will be coming. Stay tuned...

new content is now in [12-20-2001] (Part 5), Check it out!



Last edited by khauyeung at Jul 20 2002, 10:10 AM

I have learned More and Understand more about the complicated Art of this CD programing in this thread, than I have in the last 6-8 months of serching around the net to try and teach myself how to do some of this....

Very interesting reading, one of the best threads I have ever stumbled on..
Thanks for this Valuable Info..
I am waiting for more, as I know others are...
SeeYa
:)

Terrific thread, highly informative. Thanks for sharing your knowledge with us, khauyeung.

g-string.

thanks khauyeung ... but what about that second edition of the 6-in-1 iso you were considering??? Just letting you know you have all my support on that if you decide to do it...

I also want to thank you for this great tutorial. I have to admit to being a little lost, but I will eventually catch up. Thanks again and keep up the fantastic work.

:D :D :D

HEY khauyeung

I have a great idea....

there's lots of different language Windows XP's on the Warez market....


AND microsoft yet haven't released the MULTI LANGUAGE PACK....



SO it would be "easy" to try to do it ourselves, right before Microsoft....



I have the english and the spanish versions of XP ....



As soon as I find the portuguese/brazilian I WILL definitely do a multi language pack with the 3 languages


Someone else could try to do swedish/danish and german, etc....

How difficult it would be khauyeung???

Lets get ahead of the Microsoft


LETS DO A MULTI LANGUAGE PACK AND RELEASE IT BEFORE MICROSOFT


vive la revolucion!!!!!

hehehe, although I love the idea of a multi-pack... I dont think it is wise to release it before micro$oft. I dunno, i can just smell trouble on it. But it would be awesome to create the multi-pack :D

By releasing a Multi-Pack we'd show M$ a thing or 2...You never know...they might even make us an offer,lol

Good Luck Voix and big thanks to khauyeung for the tutorial!

Thank a lot khauyeung,
Very informative posts. I found cdimage a few time ago but all available info was in chenese !

Nice time to all of you ,:p

khauyeung, I have one question for you. Your 6 in 1 is bootable. When you boot up from the CD then you are given a menu to choose from the different versions of XP. Could you teach us how to make a boot menu?

By the way, love the topic!