I've been using this "clean boot CD" for awhile now to do my BIOS updates:

http://www.nu2.nu/bootcd/#clean


Recently, I switched to a SATA optical drive and now whenever I boot with this CD it says that it can't find any optical drive. Is there any way to get it to work with SATA optical drives? If not is there any way to make a "clean boot USB flash drive" that works exactly like this clean boot CD except for it being a USB flash drive instead of a CD?

By clean you mean just a simple OS? Or do you just want a bootable flash drive?

http://ucsu.colorado.edu/~shaher/Bootable_USB.html

Has a decent guide of how to make a bootable flash drive.

Not sure what you mean by clean, but this creates a flash drive that works on most boards. There are some NEWER boards that don't like this method, but it has only been a select few. Hope this helps. Not quite sure if this is a "clean" boot. But I hope it helps.

I know what your talking about, there's a similar image at bootdisk.com.

Basically your looking at the most minimalistic DOS boot disk you can have that has no drivers or TSR's to screw up your BIOS flash.

I'm afraid that if your BIOS doesn't support a SATA to EIDE bridge (SATA devices appearing as EIDE) then your gonna have to load a driver.

Thankfully one does exist although I have had no experience with SATA CD/DVD drives so I can't comment on how good it is.

Your first port of call should be to the NwDsk project site. NwDsk is basically a modular boot disc that you can add or remove different cab files to load different drivers and utils during boot. All you need is the cab file that contains the sata drivers.

If you want to test this out first download the Ultimate Boot CD and boot the FreeDOS boot disc from the Boot Discs menu (note: this may fail also if isolinux can't see your drive either). During boot you should see the SATA drivers loading


I hope this helps some how. Good luck.

-kof94

I found the driver I need to add to that "Clean Boot CD": http://www.nu2.nu/bootcd/#clean

It's GCDROM.sys
http://marktsai0316.googlepages.com/gcdromfordos


How do I add GCDROM.sys to that "Clean Boot CD" I linked to ( http://marktsai0316.googlepages.com/gcdromfordos )?

You should substitute the whatever driver you currently have in CONFIG.SYS, see this for reference:
http://www.techadvice.com/tech/C/CDROM_DOSSU.htm
i.e.:




@justas
The link you gave is a rather oldish one, and the procedure is a bit complex and not guaranteed to work on any hardware, my FAQ page:
http://home.graffiti.net/jaclaz:graffiti.n...SB/USBfaqs.html
in FAQ#4 has a link to a graphical, simple howto with the HP format utility:
http://www.bay-wolf.com/usbmemstick.htm

jaclaz

Right now there are only two files on the "Clean Boot CD" when I open it in explorer:

BOOTCAT.BIN
BOOTIMG.BIN


I tried extracting the contents of both files and only BOOTIMG.BIN will extract. These files are in BOOTIMG.BIN:

attrib.exe
chkdsk.ex
debug.exe
deltree.exe
ext.exe
extract.exe
fdisk.exe
findramd.exe
hibinv.exe
label.exe
mem.exe
move.exe
mscdex.exe
scandisk.exe
scanreg.exe
xcopy32.exe
xcopy.exe
scandisk.ini
xcopy32.mod
command.com
edit.com
format.com
mode.com
sys.com
autoexec.bat
fixit.bat
help.bat
cd1.sys
cd2.sys
cd3.sys
cd4.sys
config.sys
country.cs
display.sys
flashpt.sys
himem.sys
io.sys
msdos.sys
readme.txt

--------------------

When I open config.sys in notepad, this is what's in it:

rem DEVICE=HIMEM.SYS /testmem:off
FILES=30
BUFFERS=20

DEVICE=cd1.SYS /D:tomato

rem DEVICE=cd1.SYS /D:tomato /P:1f0,14
rem DEVICE=cd1.SYS /D:tomato /P:170,15
rem DEVICE=cd1.SYS /D:tomato /P:170,10
rem DEVICE=cd1.SYS /D:tomato /P:1e8,12
rem DEVICE=cd1.SYS /D:tomato /P:1e8,11
rem DEVICE=cd1.SYS /D:tomato /P:168,10
rem DEVICE=cd1.SYS /D:tomato /P:168,9

LASTDRIVE=Z

---------------


So I would just replace:

DEVICE=cd1.SYS /D:tomato


with:

DEVICE=GCDROM.SYS /D:tomato


?

I'm guessing I add the GCDROM.SYS to the same directory all of these files are in. Once I add GCDROM.SYS though, how do I pack them all back up into that single BOOTIMG.BIN file? Also, do I need to delete the cd1-4.sys files?

Yes.
And yes, you can delete the "old" CD Rom driver as it won't be used anymore.

Actually, the BOOTIMG.BIN is a 1,44 or 2,88 Mb Floppy disk image, you need a tool to manage this kind of files.

Easiest would probably be using VFD:
http://chitchat.at.infoseek.co.jp/vmware/vfd.html

with it the image will be seen as a normal floppy drive and you can make all the changes you need.

Once you have your edited image ready, you use whatever app you normally use to make a bootable CD using it as El-Torito Floppy Emulation image, and adding the BIOS update files on the CDFS part.

On the other hand, you could start from the beginning, using Bart's package you mentioned:
http://www.nu2.nu/bootcd/#clean
(the files you listed do not belong to it, though)

The idea behind Bart's CleanCD is to have ALL files (including the BIOS update ones) inside the bootable floppy image, this way there is NO need whatsoever to have a CD Rom driver as all the files are directly accessible.

jaclaz

Ok, I've never gotten this to work. If anyone can make a version of this clean boot CD that works with any SATA optical drive, I'll pay you.

Go into the BIOS and set SATA Mode to IDE instead of AHCI. Done.

Tried that already.