Hot Topic: Multi-bootable N-in-1 Cd Howto

[Badawg]

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

[[SiN]]

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

[Homie]

can't wait to next episode

Homie

[User Needs]

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.

[[SiN]]

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

[khauyeung]

[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

[[SiN]]

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

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

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

[Grzyb]

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.........

[[SiN]]

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

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

[screen]

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

thanks...
screen