[spacemonkey]

long story short: i deployed a tftp server with pxelinux on it to support network booting. one of my accomplishments was using memdisk to boot from a windows PE 3.0 iso image, appending options "iso raw".
premise: my nickname is not random, i'm doing this in my spare time and i have no real background in programming other than my spare time (my career is in the medical field). i may know what a command or a program does, but more often than not i just ignore how it's done. however, i watch and learn: i just might need some (a lot) more documentation.
what i want to do: i have these two ISOs on the tftp server (shared with samba and mounted with "net use"), one is win7 32 bit and the other is windows XP. two problems have arisen.

1) i still cannot find a working way to mount the aforementioned isos by command line (so it can be mounted by a simple cmd/bat file). i tried with filedisk17 and messed up PE's registry before learning not to put my hands on HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet, but even after that it still did not work. i also tried imdisk by adding it with the "dism" command (from windows AIK), to no avail, as once booted the imdisk command was not there. is there another, tested way?

2) about the choice between XP and 7 (admitting i could install XP from PE3). one could put that choice once PE has booted, by means of a simple choice command. however i have a severe problem of stubbornness and as such i want to shift the choice to the pxelinux boot menu, benefiting from the "ubcdcmd=" command line parameter, which (theoretically) could be passed to memdisk to be read by means of an interrupt 13h (see here under "additional information"). recompiling the 16-bit tools to do that was fine, however i learned soon afterwards that windows 7 does not quite like interrupts, at least not the 13h. question is if there was a way to trigger interrupt 13h, even indirectly, so that memdisk would hand me its command line.

3) very trivial but still: what's the difference between *.cmd and *.bat? i was left behind to old dos 6 batches.

thanks for everything. if this is the wrong section, please move it and forgive me.

This post has been edited by spacemonkey: 20 April 2012 - 05:57 PM

[Tripredacus]

spacemonkey, on 20 April 2012 - 05:56 PM, said:

3) very trivial but still: what's the difference between *.cmd and *.bat? i was left behind to old dos 6 batches.

thanks for everything. if this is the wrong section, please move it and forgive me.

.cmd files will only execute with cmd.exe. So as an example, if you have an older OS that has its command interpreter set to COMMAND.COM, a .cmd file will not (supposedly) execute. .bat files will work with either command interpreter. This change came about when NT systems dropped support for DOS' COMMAND.COM and added support for cmd.exe. Typically, .bat files will always work on a current system, but as a matter of practice I always create or rename to .cmd.

As for thread location, it depends. Are you having trouble mounting an ISO from within WinPE?

[spacemonkey]

Tripredacus, on 23 April 2012 - 09:04 AM, said:

As for thread location, it depends. Are you having trouble mounting an ISO from within WinPE?

yes i do, that was the first point. and i'd prefer to do that from the command line, so that i could do it from a batch/cmd file.
the second point concerns interrupt 13h and how to execute/simulate it from inside windows pe.

This post has been edited by spacemonkey: 23 April 2012 - 09:11 AM

[Tripredacus]

I'm not sure exactly what Memdisk is, but it looks like a DOS program? If it contains 16bit binaries, it won't run in WinPE. Or have you been able to test it?

As far as ISOs, I see that some projects (Make_PE3, Win7 PE SE) use a program called IMDISK to mount ISO files.

[jaclaz]

Tripredacus, on 23 April 2012 - 09:24 AM, said:

I'm not sure exactly what Memdisk is, but it looks like a DOS program? If it contains 16bit binaries, it won't run in WinPE. Or have you been able to test it?

As far as ISOs, I see that some projects (Make_PE3, Win7 PE SE) use a program called IMDISK to mount ISO files.

Memdisk is part of Syslinux.

@spacemonkey
I do not understand what your GOAL is.
If PXE booting a .iso file ir if mounting a .iso file AFTER booting.
In my experience "vague GOAL"+"declared stubborness"="Issues".

If you want help for pxeboot/memdisk, you may possibly get it here:
http://reboot.pro/forum/92/
http://reboot.pro/forum/12/
or here:
http://www.syslinux....yslinux_Project

If you want help for your GOAL (and NOT for the way you think you should reach it), maybe I can help

jaclaz