China DOS Union

Recently, I heard about a tool called bootflashdos that can directly extract DOS 8.0 from xp/2003's diskcopy.dll to make a bootable disk, which is quite interesting. I took a little look at the diskcopy.dll of xp and vista, and really found some secret stuff in them.

First, take the xp's diskcopy.dll. Drag it into winimage, and it can identify a 1.44MB floppy disk image, and the content is the files in the xp's DOS boot disk. Save this image. Open it with winhex and select "Interpret image as disk", and you can see that besides the visible files, there are many deleted or overwritten files. Among them, the ones with question marks in front are recoverable files, and the ones with crosses are overwritten files.

Recovering these files, it can be seen that this boot disk is modified based on the original winme boot disk. Also, you can see the figures of io.sys and command.com before modification, as well as himem.sys which was removed in ms-dos 8.0. You can specifically refer to this link for more detailed analysis:
http://mirror.href.com/thestarman/winxp/winxpsd.htm

I also had a look at the vista's diskcopy.dll. I found that winimage can't directly open it, but it's very easy to find the ms-dos 8.0 floppy disk image in it with winhex. After saving it, open it with winhex, and find that the DOS files in it are updated again, and there are more deleted and overwritten files. Besides some original winme boot disk files, there are several files from 2005 added. It's estimated that these are made during the development of winvista. Open?eame.txt (which is readme.txt), and the content is as follows:
DOS Boot Disk Readme ====================== May 25, 2001 Aidan Low (aidanl@microsoft.com) This directory contains the files that make up the DOS boot disk on whistler. 06/08/2000 05:00 PM 58,870 EGA2.CPI 06/08/2000 05:00 PM 58,753 EGA3.CPI 06/08/2000 05:00 PM 58,870 EGA.CPI 06/08/2000 05:00 PM 21,607 KEYB.COM 06/08/2000 05:00 PM 34,566 KEYBOARD.SYS 06/08/2000 05:00 PM 31,942 KEYBRD2.SYS 06/08/2000 05:00 PM 31,633 KEYBRD3.SYS 06/08/2000 05:00 PM 13,014 KEYBRD4.SYS 06/08/2000 05:00 PM 29,239 MODE.COM 06/08/2000 05:00 PM 93,040 COMMAND.COM 06/08/2000 05:00 PM 17,175 DISPLAY.SYS 04/07/2001 01:40 PM 9 MSDOS.SYS <-- should be system, readonly, hidden when copied to the floppy 05/15/2001 06:57 PM 116,736 IO.SYS <-- should be system, readonly, hidden when copied to the floppy To prepare the disk image for the DOS boot disk, create a system disk on a Win9X Machine so that the boot sector is created properly. Then copy these files over, setting the appropriate attributes. (the attributes are called out in the list above) Finally, use the imgtool.exe tool to create a disk image from the floppy. Typically this will be something like imgtool.exe \\.\a: c:\myimage.bin ======================
Actually, it's talking about the production process of the DOS 8.0 boot disk in winxp in May 2001, not the boot disk in vista. The producer is Aidan Low. The imgtool.exe used in it can also be recovered in the DOS 8.0 boot disk of vista.

[ Last edited by fujianabc on 2008-4-19 at 09:13 PM ]

Super powerful, actually out-excavated the secret of Microsoft making DOS 8.0.

Strong, support, keep working hard, first study

Great, heh heh, learned something

Hehe, great mind, you're in such a mood to study this stuff! Thanks for sharing!

Learning~~

Very good! Study hard, thank you.

The tool of flashbootdos can directly extract DOS 8.0 from diskcopy.dll of XP/2003 to make a bootable disk.
Study this, thank you the building - owner for sharing!

Great person, study quickly...

"Flashbootdos tool can directly extract DOS 8.0 from diskcopy.dll of XP/2003 to make a bootable disk."
Thanks for the landlord's guidance, I'll try it right away!

Are the diskcopy.dll files from 2008 and Vista the same?

Originally posted by infoer at 2008-4-18 03:04 PM:
Are the diskcopy.dll files from 2008 and Vista the same?

I have seen that there are two types of images in diskcopy.dll, with the year 2005 as the boundary. Those before 2005 are the first type I listed (such as XP SP2, 2003 SP1), and those after 2005 are the second type (including XP SP3, 2003 SP2, Vista, Vista SP1/2008)

It's really powerful,佩服......