"The annagram lover's Tokyo"

I'm so glad I'm writing in this so relatively often. Looks like my number of hits has gone up significantly the past couple days. I hope the more frequent updates has something to do with that. You don't email though, do you.

The past few days I've been working on a bootable Windows98 CD. To such an obsessive degree I didn't eat enough and couldn't sleep for pretty much the whole night. The good news is I now know how to do it...but can't due to various minor details. Also I was trying to optimize the install for my sister's computer hardware and in doing so decided to scan her HDD for viruses (first time since we got it: about 18 months or so). Oh look SHE HAS MORE THAN 900 VIRUSES! Well I managed to clean every one of them. Actually she only had a few viruses infecting all those hundreds of files as different instances. The anti-virus caught and cleaned them all however. Then when I hooked up the HDD I'd been operating on all this time to my own computer I got a notice I had a bunch of viruses. I guess my sister?s computer had spread through my network or something. So I cleaned it out. I should probably format and start over. But lets not get off track.

I now know the article Booting Windows From CD-ROM a lot better than I ever wanted to know everything. I pasted it into a word document and started re-arranging the information to make sense, inserting bullets and making tables to keep all the steps straight. Then I opened notepad and started taking notes and putting it all in my own words. And now, finally, after at least 4 days of continuous attempts I actually know how to do it. Boot Windows98 off a CD I mean. I still haven't actually done it yet though. For one thing everything has to go perfectly or the registry will get hosed and you have to start over. Doh! Then once you get it write you're actually booting using just the system files that require write access in Windows98: system.ini, system.dat, user.dat, and win.ini. Also I learned the hard way the order files are loaded in win98: io.sys, system registry, config.sys, autoexec.bat, then win.com and associated Windows drivers.

So I remove the above stated system files (the ones that require write access) from an existing windows98 install and re-install to a new directory, like c:\cdrom\win. Can't have more than one copy of those files or the system will always default to the \windows copy. But the c:\cdrom directory is actually "subst" to another letter, like x:\. So you then have a real install of win98 at x:\win. Problem is keeping all the paths straight. Ya see that directory is aliased as x:\ via the autoexec.bat, which is processed after the config.sys (as stated above). So you have to remember to NOT use x:\ in the config.sys until you're ready. Once you boot via the x:\ install you make a new subst for w:\ pointing to something like c:\cdrom\ramdisk, which will also have a win directory. The copy those relevant write-access-required system files (and only those) to that ramdisk\win directory. Now edit a few system files to point to w:\win instead of x:\win and use the registry to point the "system root" to the w:\ drive. In the autoexec.bat an xcopy command is used to copy from x:\ramdisk\win to w:\win. If everything is done write windows boots from the x:\ drive but gets the system files from w:\win.

Now that I think about it you would have to re-name the existing files in x:\win before rebooting to use those found in w:\win. Why I didn't think of that sooner I don't know.

So that's about as far as I've come thus far. May not sound like much but there is a lot of rebooting, re-installing and possible cursing going on in all that. Took forever to get that down.

The next step would be to create an image of the whole HDD and use the boot sector image of a bootable floppy. Then burn this image to a CD some how. That's the part I'm still working on. Because just dragging-and-dropping surely doesn't work.

Wow, I hope all that wasn't too exciting for anyone. Stay on the edge of your seat!

I'm now going to make a backup of all the files and utilities I've collected via this trip and format and try again. I think writing all this stuff down is actually helping! Helps me to think out everything as I go along here. So annoying being so close! I also found an article at Microsoft’s site called How to Create an El Torito Bootable CD-ROM. Looks to require a little "sector editing" though. Wuhoo! I think I’ll stick to my alternative, poor man’s version. Poor man-unwilling-to-sector edit...

I've actually been writing this entry on and off for the past 24 hours. So far I can actually boot using a registry located in the RAM disk, however for some reason the system swap file isn't created when I boot that way and I don't know why. And what happens when Win98's swap file is 0 bytes? The system is pretty freakin' hosed that's what. I can actually use it at least for a little while before it blue screens. No My Computer and I can't open IE however. And no networking support. Less than I would get via safe mode really. I can't even run a command prompt. Why was I doing this again? Bah. But I guess I'll give a try. I downloaded free suite of tools called cdrtools. Do a Google on it if you're interested. It'll be hard to setup though unless you're a weird CL guy like I almost am.

So I just have to create the bootable ISO image and burn it to a CD to give it a try. I even found a front end for the ISO maker and CD burner in cdrtools. See? Almost a CL guy. Also I'll spend about 12 fewer hours trying to get it to work! So I'll do that tomorrow.

For any other information I didn't get the part time job at the ISP. This is really annoying! What the hell am I doing wrong? Bah! I don't know what I'm going to do now.

Bye the way the title of the last entry I just made up. Can't think of anything. Except today's title. That one I found.

  ¶ 12:37 AM