Bootable Recovery Partition

Hello, I am trying to create a recovery partition that will be dual booting with a copy of vista. The end user will have almost 0 computer knowledge and will not be able to change boot devices. Basically I need them to select "Recover My Computer" from the boot options and answer a single "Yes I know its going to wipe my computer" question and from that point on the system will run unattended.

I have a CD bootable version of this partition; Autoexec.bat, Command.com, Drvspace.bin, IO.sys, Mouse.com, MSDOS.sys, and the files for running the recovery. I need to know what I need to do to make a partition containing these files dual-bootable with Vista.

 

TheUnspeakable,

I can't help with that scenario but how about this? Your user double clicks an icon, the computer restarts, restores an image and boots into the restored OS. The only thing your user has to do is a double click.

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/howto/howto-ifd-bootfile.htm

 

- What program do you use?
- It seems to be a dos based recovery cd, but you do not have all the necessary files. You must extract the missing files from the boot track (is a bootable floppy image) of the recovery cd. Magiciso, ultraiso, etc. can extract the cd's boot track to a file and then use winimage to load that one and then extracting them to a folder.
- Then you will need to create a bootable partition on the disk and put all the necessary files and images there.
- At the end you will have to add an entry to your bootloader to point to that partition.

Panagiotis

 

Thanks for the replies, the first option would be quite impossible, as we are hoping to be able to recover if the main OS is not bootable.

As to the second, that is the entire boot track as extracted via Magic ISO. The partiton is made active in Vista, but the problem is that it appears as if vista's bootloader does not directly suppport a DOS based OS, at least as far as I can find. If it is possible how do I do it. Note, bootcfg confuses me, so I would need a step by step on this.

Also, its one of those dos-like OSs that have came out, with long file name, ntfs, newer drives, etc etc...

 

If it is a DOS OS like the one that Image for Dos uses, you should run it form a primary FAT16/32 partition placed in the first 2 gb and 1024 cylinders of the hard drive. The partition can be bigger than 2 gb but should start at the first 2gb of the disk. (At least MS-DOS boots like that.)

Then use EasyBCD to add it in the bootloader.

Panagiotis

 

TheUnspeakable,

That's true. But if the HD fails none of these boot menu restore methods will work.

This is a canned boot menu that can be used if the OS won't boot due to file system corruption. When the computer starts there are two options, boot Windows or Restore the Win OS. If nothing is pressed in 5 seconds, Windows boots. If you press Restore the Win OS by mistake, you have a minute or two to press ESC to prevent the restore commencing.

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/article.php?id=363

 

Pandlouk,

Since the boot sector of the CD I am using does not have a BOOTSEC.DOS, would it be possible to add it as a vista boot option? If not how do I create one?

Also, specifically, I do not want the DOS partition to be mounted in windows? Will this be possible with the vista bootloader?

TheUnspeakable

 

-Check the following links for how tp format a partition for dos and to grub the dos bootsector to a file.
http://www.techtalkz.com/windows-xp/14365-set-up-dos-dual-boot-winxp.html
http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm


-Yes, after you create the partition and put all the necessary files in it you can use the diskpart utility of windows to change the id of the partition; I would change it to id "12" or id "27".
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc766465(WS.10).aspx
http://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/partitions/partition_types-1.html

Panagiotis