Anyone know?

Wouldn't mind knowing the answer to this one myself...

This is my first post here, and this is exactly the question I needed to ask. But not on a multiboot CD. I just wanted to know how to get a bootable CD that can go right into Recovery Console.

There is already a discussion of this on another forum I'm on:
http://www.techspot.com/vb/showthread.php?...4312#post254312

I'm so close, but need to know any more details about RC I might be missing.

Well, hopefully someone figures it out

Here is my method

1- Download the Boot Disk here using the proper language: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310994/en-us

2- Create a folder named i386 at the root of your CD-ROM (you can change the name if you want BUT you'll have to Hex Edit the same way as you would with a OS)

3- Extract the content of the Disk Setup Set and open each floppy images (with WinImage) and extract the content to the i386 folder you just created

4- Now you can boot this i386 folder like you do with any other OS (In EasyBoot, you would call the w2ksect.bin to boot this recovery console... and this is the file you would Hex Edit to change the name of the folder i386 to something else)

If you are using dvd why not put a bart pe on it instead of just recovery console

Bart PE can take a while to boot and is overkill when someone needs to do simple, quick things like fixmbr, fixboot, sfc scans, etc.

There is no way to get to RecCons to start automatically (w/o pressing 'r') unless you alter files.
If this is really something you want to do, I would suggest looking at O&O BlueCon XXL Administrator's Suite, which can boot directly into RecCons and includes more robust features.

I'm posting this here for two reasons... I figure the following information is relavent to the discussion, and since it's something I want to do, and I'm at home right now, I'm posting it so that when I get to work I don't forget where it's all located....

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...kb;en-us;307654

KB Article discussing how to add Recovery Console to boot.ini

Note: When using the command displayed above in conjunction with an x64 copy of XP i386 should be changed to amd64



Boot.ini after cmdcons installed...

On %systemroot% a HIDDEN directory called cmdcons appears with all necesary files to start recovery console on boot from boot.ini. 64-bit directory is about 10mb, 32-bit directory is about 8mb...

This concludes my 'Notes out loud', sorry if it's not a complete thought, but I intend to see what I can do with this in terms of adding it to a Multi-boot environment when I get to work... Should be around 9:30ish EST....

Edit: I'm at work now..... It would appear as though doing the command listed in the KB article above is the equivalent of copying the BT directory to the hard drive, the directory sizes and content appear to be the same...

Based on this information, and looking at the boot.ini file it's ,my belief that all of our Multiboot CD/DVDs ARE Recovery console ready, we just need to be able to excute the '/cmdcons' parameter when loading the thing....

Edit 2: I can pretty much confirm now that when doing "%XPSOURCE%\i386\winnt32.exe /cmdcons" the cmdcons directory it creates IS the equivalent of the BT directory that we make when we grab it from doing winnt32.exe 'upgrade' to get it in the first place. I know this because I took the cmdcons directory and stuck it on the CD and treated it like a BT directory, so I made CMD1 directory and .dat file from a boot sector, deleted bootsect.dat and migrate.inf from the directory, then made the changes in the setupldr.bin file, and when execute it goes straight into text setup mode....

With that in mind, in order to load the recovery console from CDShell (What I use) we'd basically need to add the /cmdcons modifyer for when we execute it...

Edit 3: I've got a theory on how to do it now, but my method is going to be a bit moronic in doing it because I don't know how else to do it... So yeah... Should take more than a couple moments to do though....

Edit 4:: This KB article tells us that when starting the text setup, pressing F10 instead of F6 at the time when it says "Press F6" will make the setup boot directly into the recovery console. AFTER it loads drivers and such though, so basically rather than stop and ask you if you want to boot to recovery console, hitting F10 will tell the system to just boot to the recovery console automatically when it's done...

I know DreamPackPL loads the recovery console at boot for Windows 2000 and XP, maybe this will help. Sorry I can insert a link because I am not sure if this it allowed in this forum. Google DreamPackPL.

No, I'm after being able to stick the CD in the drive and then letting boot straight into the recovery console. The method it's describing, if I interpret correctly is to add it as a boot option on that system. I don't want to have to make modifications from system to system, I want to be ale to pop in the CD, push a couple keys and have it boot off of any system...


Currently I'm getting an error that says "Sorry, but I placed files here that aren't here anymore, so I'm not going to work"

I've tried various things and I'm drawing a blank on this one....

Maybe we didn't understand each other but, I have the console on my Muilt DVD and I select this from my dvd boot menu and the recovery console loads off the DVD. So I pop my DVD in any computer and I can load the recovery console without making any changes or adding any files to that system.

If I understand that correctly, then yes that's what we're trying to do...

However, if you used the software to do it, what I'd like to know is how to do it manually...

I've found the while having something do it for you is great, knowing how to do it manually is better because you tend to learn more about how the OS works, and the method you used there could be applied elsewhere...

This is how I did it,
Everything was done in VMware, then I burn the CD/DVD.

1- What I did was install the RC, then copy the folder and rename it RCXP
2- Hex edit SETUPLDR.BIN and replace i386 with RCXP.
3- Hex edit my .dat file and change i386 to RCXP
3- Since I have a Muilt DVD, I use Ezboot to create my DVD boot menu
and call my .dat file to load the RC.

I am at work right now and I wrote these steps by memory, when I go home tonight I will edit this post if necessary.

Odd, I tried that and it didn't work.... Which .dat are you hex editing?

Seems to me it aught to be simpler then using a special boot loader and hexing files. And why hex and not just leave it i386 anyway? For those of us who want a boot CD with ONLY RC on it.

Seems to me that if RC can be installed to your hard drive with no more then a folder and an entry in boot.ini, it should be similarly easy to place those same files on a CD and call it somehow? Can someone explain how that might be done?

After reading these threads, are we supposed to take the bootsect.dat and make that the cd-rom boot sector or something? Or instead use a normal boot sectore from anything, and then call that file somehow?

Because when RC is installed to the hard drive, all the boot.ini does is point to bootsect.dat /cmdcons. From what I've played with, thist just can't work from a CD.

So I'm still trying to find out how to just put RC on a CD and boot strait to it, no pressing keys, not questions or menus, just a strait RC boot disk.
Getting there though!

The closest you can get is booting the XP/2003 Recovery Console and pressing F10 when it asks you if you want to press F6. This will take you straight to the Recovery Console without asking anymore questions. Look on the 911CD.net forums, there was a very long and exhaustive thread about it last year or maybe the year before.

Cheers

That can't be the "only" way. As Mazarul has R.C. as an option on his DVD boot menu.

To Mazarul- If I get you right, basically you pop in your dvd, the system boots off the disk and presents you with a menu (this takes a few seconds to get here?). You then select R.C. from your menu and a few seconds later it asks you which install to log in to to RC. Right?

What I'm asking is, at any point, before or after you choose the menu, does XP have to load all the drivers and utilities and such like it does when you want to go to RC from a regular XP CD? Or does none of that preloading take place and you just go strait to RC?
Hope those questions make sense.

I'm trying to figure out if RC REQUIRES loads of drivers and utils and ram drive and all that to be able to run. I'd like to know just how this DVD of yours is laid out and how it works.
Or can you give us a link to a tutorial or something that explains how to make the same DVD you have?

Let's not give up fellas, if somebody creates a boot disk just with RC, it'll be the first one on the net!

Sorry for the late reply but I was busy at work.
@ Vigilante to answer your questions, yes I pop my DVD in it loads the ezboot menu and then if I want to load the RC then I choose that option on the list. The RC is only 6.7MB, so it loads under 30 seconds. It does have to loads some drivers and files in ram then I enter "r", then it present me with the options to which windows folder to log into. Some hex editing is required because the RC on harddrive is call differently than on CD/DVD. email me if you still need help on this.

The files that comprise the Recovery Console are just the files that are included in the Windows Boot Floppys that you can download from Microsoft. In order to get to the Recovery Console, it needs to load all the drivers that it normally would for setup. Now you can remove some of these drivers and it will load faster or you can add your own mass storage drivers so it will support certain RAID/SATA/SCSI configurations. Even when run from the hard disk, the Recovery Console still loads all the drivers, you just don't see it doing so (also its doing it faster since its on a hard disk).

It would appear that Mazarul is just using a similar technique to what has already been used to boot the Recovery Console from his DVD. He still has to press "R" to get to the Recvoery Console after it loads all the drivers. If a way could be found to go straight to the Recovery Console, that would be fantastic, but it probably involves the bootsect.dat file (unique to each machine the Recovery Console is installed on) and maybe hex editing the spcmdcon.sys file.

The link to the thread I mentioned previously (3 years old... yikes!) is here.

You can download an XP Recovery Console CD that was created about 2/3 years ago here.

Cheers