I read through the instructions briefly, haven't tried it yet, but the idea is pretty good
Instructions:
Virtual Floppy
by lyh728
This is a virtual floppy system similar to pqmagic's vfloppy.sys,
which I implemented after referring to the grub source code and the
disassembled code of pqmagic's vfloppy.sys.
See the post written by brother vx_xsj at the end.
Since there is already pqmagic's vfloppy.sys, why did I still want to modify it?
Mainly because pqmagic's vfloppy.sys stores its boot loader in the MBR
and also occupies the first 3 sectors of the disk, which means that when
vfloppy.sys is installed, it needs to write data to the 3 sectors starting
from the MBR. If an error occurs at that time,
the system may become unbootable.
So is there any other boot loader that can do similar work?
lilo needs to be installed under linux, and it cannot emulate a floppy
nu2.nu's diskemu is on CD, and does not support fat, ntfs
BootScriptor is also on CD, and does not support fat, ntfs
isolinux is also on CD, and does not support fat, ntfs
syslinux can support fat16, fat12, but does not support fat32, ntfs
grub supports the most formats. Someone is working in this direction, but it is still not easy to use at present (meaning emulating a floppy on a hard disk), though it is the most likely to achieve this goal soon.
............
So I combined grub's source code and the binary file of vfloppy.sys to make this thing.
Usage:
Suppose vfloppy is placed in c:\boot, and drive C can be in fat16 fat32 ntfs partition format
Run vfloppy -1 vloader.bin -2 vmemdsk.bin -i dos.img ，
Add an item in c:\boot.ini: c:\boot\vloader.bin ="virtual floopy "
After restarting the system, choose virtual floopy from the ntloader menu
and it will load the image c:\boot\dos.img and run it
Features:
Safe, it does not write code to the boot area, will not damage the system, and there is no need to restore the MBR
Convenient, you can restart the system at any time and enter the DOS environment
On systems with no CD-ROM drive, no floppy drive, only windows NT, windows 2k, windows xp, win2k3,
it is very convenient for running other OSes.
Testing:
Tested successfully in a win2k3 English Standard environment, supports ntfs, fat32, fat16 partitions.
The MS DOS7.10 boot disk made by DOS Forum moderator Wengier
Reference:
calV's question:
My CD-ROM and floppy drive are both broken, but I want to reinstall 2000 under DOS. Is there any way? Please help me, any way is fine. Can I delete some 2000 system files so that at boot it can't enter 2000 and jumps directly into DOS mode?
The post written by brother vx_xsj:
_________ vx_xsj's release preview! ! ! ! _________
I've already solved calV's problem for him. Since I said it can be done, then naturally it can be done, because I'm not good at deceiving people, so this
can be achieved ( strange logic )
I had already discovered this method before, I just wanted to make it better ( mainly to make the boot disk better ), so during this period I have been
writing this boot disk, and planned to announce this discovery when it was relatively complete
But while helping calV I ran into something strange. At first I found that this method could not succeed! But later it worked again.
To find the reason for this, I decided to announce it early
Anyone who has used Drive Image 5 knows that it only starts working after a reboot. On NT-kernel systems
this is very obvious. Since PQDI cannot run under the NT kernel, then after reboot it naturally enters a system it can run under
—DOS. But many people don't have any other system installed besides 2000/XP, so where does this DOS come from?
According to analysis, it has a program that can boot the system into a virtual floppy ( omitting a lot here ), and this virtual floppy
actually uses a VFD-format image ( omitting more ), and another program it includes, VFeditor.exe,
which is the PowerQuest OEM edition of WinImage, is used to edit what it uses. My inspiration came from this
Since it can make the system boot into a virtual floppy, then future boot disks can be replaced by it. When the local machine
cannot use a floppy/CD-ROM for some reason, such as an ultra-thin notebook, when you happen not to have an external floppy or CD drive,
and yet need to boot into DOS to do some operations ( such as reinstalling the system, killing viruses ),
it becomes very convenient ( because it seems no virus can infect a VFD image, so
its safety is just like a CDRW )
That's enough for the introduction, let everyone try the actual thing themselves. This time I gave calV a temporary version,
and the improved version of the image will probably be announced in a few days
Those whose system kernel is NT, and who are interested,
go get it and try it. Remember, if it runs successfully it will automatically reboot,
and then you'll see the effect of this temporary version
If it doesn't succeed, you're welcome to bring it up and I'll improve it
THX
Quoted from a post by 8cat:
******************************************
Is the usage like this:
Run the main program vfinstnt.exe under win2k (automatically backs up the partition table), reboot, enter DOS, then do the related operations. After finishing, reboot again, and the normal partition table can be restored
Question:
If 2000 is reinstalled after entering DOS, will some boot-area operations performed by 2000 during installation affect this software's partition table? Will it fail to recognize the original partition table after BOOT?
If there are no problems with that, then can PQ be used?
BTW, I want one too
*********************************************************************
Sent by PM,
I guess it should be like this. To add, the partition table should be restored immediately after booting DOS
Of course not. The program in that image was originally PowerQuest Drive Image 5. Could it not modify the partition table? Naturally that's not the case
Of course PQ can be used
