UBCD4Win Forums: Rambharose - Viewing Profile

Greenknight, on May 1 2009, 08:05 AM, said:

That is because this thread you are looking in is about 2 years old ... the internet is not static and things such as that do move all of the time.

@Rambharose
No, you didn't made a error.
Maybe I made a false assumption, fixing Dell CD is difficult without a Dell CD.
Apperantly there are different Dell CD versions out there.

Does exist a file \I386\IASTOR.SYS at your Dell CD?

Do you get at UBCD4Win a file \CMDC\IASTOR.SYS ?
Case is importand isastor.sys is not IASTOR.SYS.

Navigate to UBCD4WIN>\plugin\ Drivers
Right-click on the right side of explirer in an empty space and choose "NEW-Text document" (.txt)
Rename the file "New Text document.txt" to fixdell.inf
* To change the file extension you must have file extensions visible. in explorer choose "View - Folder options - view" and uncheck the box for "Hide known file extensions."

Now open the .inf file in notepad and copy/paste the data provided above to the new file and save it.

Wow! I now have a UBCD4Win boot disk that allows me to use the standard "Launch" as well as the "Recovery". Haven't tested the others but will later on.

Thanks Hilander999 and cdob as well as d4vr0s and ed P who provided the technical info for the first 2 Dell changes, and m barnes who provided a very straight forward explanation of how to accomplish the 1st of the needed Dell changes. Later found their info incorporated into a nice set of instructions in the faq.

To recap, I tried the suggestions from hilander999 (sorry about the previous typo on your handle) and got an error that stopped the build associated with the cercsr6 file. Noticed it was the only entry that ended in a 1 and changed it to 4 like all the rest of the files and was able to generate a bootable CD. However, it still got the same error as before (Can't find the IASTOR.SYS file when trying to go into the "recovery mode").

Changed to cdob's suggestion to use the standard <UBCD4WIN>\oem1\ !System-Core(022)\ SystemCore.inf and <UBCD4WIN>\plugin\ Multiboot-003\WindowsCMDC\ CMDC.inf files as well as adding a fixdell.inf file containing the code provided to <UBCD4WIN>\plugin\ Drivers\. It worked!!

FYI

As cdob pointed out most of the load files are compressed, xxx.xx_. However, on the Dell OEM, and probably on other proprietary modified OEM CD's there's more than just a few files that are uncompressed. Scanning through the list of the 5,350 objects in the i386 folder on my Dell OEM disk, I'd guess there's a few dozen, maybe more. The consistency seems to be that when it occurs there are 2 or more types of files associated with that one file name. For example, my Dell CD contains IASTOR.CAT, IASTOR.INF, IASTOR.SYS, SYMMPI.INF, SYMMPI.PDB, SYMMPI.SYS, AND SYMMPI.TAG files in the i386 folder.

Thanks. Now all I have to do is use the tools you've made available to fix my problem. It's an mbr problem but so far none of the partitioning tools have solved the riddle. Oh well, I'll keep trying. Glad to have this tool available. All data on the disk is good and the user data has been captured to another disk. Just can't boot from it any more. If you'd like me to try something else, let me know.

daveh said:

Windows XP and 2003 source files are compressed *.sy_ at default.

There are only a few I386\*.sys files.

Quote

I don't use Dell source files, I have to guess.
Dell released different OEM versions in the past.

However if Dell add some driver I386\*.sys files, a generic solution maybe possible.

Can you do a favour?

Use default files:
<UBCD4WIN>\oem1\ !System-Core(022)\ SystemCore.inf
<UBCD4WIN>\plugin\ Multiboot-003\WindowsCMDC\ CMDC.inf

Add a file <UBCD4WIN>\plugin\ Drivers\fixdell.inf

[Version]
Signature= "$Windows NT$"

[PEBuilder]
Name="Driver: Fix Dell Windows XP OEM boot problems"
Enable=1

[WinntDirectories]

a="CMDC",2

[SourceDisksFiles]

@SourcePath@I386\*.sys=a
@SourcePath@I386\*.sys=4