Reboot win2k into dos on ramdisk?

mike · Joined: 19 Jan 2008 Posts: 29

I have an application that won't run in a dos box under win2k.
The HD is the only bootable device.
I'd like to have win2k reboot into dos mode and run it
from a ramdisk.
Ghost and other disk imaging programs do this.
Ghost even gives the option to add files to the ramdisk
before the reboot. But it's cumbersome and there are licensing issues
if I want to do this on multiple machines.

Is there a tutorial on how to accomplish creating and rebooting to
a ramdisk file system?

Dual-boot would work for this task, but I have other ideas
that would require the ramdisk boot solution.
Thanks, mike
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MikeD · Joined: 04 Oct 2007 Posts: 3348

"mike" wrote in message $R_5.4458@trnddc08...
>I have an application that won't run in a dos box under win2k.
> The HD is the only bootable device.
> I'd like to have win2k reboot into dos mode and run it
> from a ramdisk.
> Ghost and other disk imaging programs do this.
> Ghost even gives the option to add files to the ramdisk
> before the reboot. But it's cumbersome and there are licensing issues
> if I want to do this on multiple machines.
>
> Is there a tutorial on how to accomplish creating and rebooting to
> a ramdisk file system?
>
> Dual-boot would work for this task, but I have other ideas
> that would require the ramdisk boot solution.
> Thanks, mike

What does this have to do with VB?

mike · Joined: 19 Jan 2008 Posts: 29

MikeD wrote:
> "mike" wrote in message
> $R_5.4458@trnddc08...
>> I have an application that won't run in a dos box under win2k.
>> The HD is the only bootable device.
>> I'd like to have win2k reboot into dos mode and run it
>> from a ramdisk.
>> Ghost and other disk imaging programs do this.
>> Ghost even gives the option to add files to the ramdisk
>> before the reboot. But it's cumbersome and there are licensing issues
>> if I want to do this on multiple machines.
>>
>> Is there a tutorial on how to accomplish creating and rebooting to
>> a ramdisk file system?
>>
>> Dual-boot would work for this task, but I have other ideas
>> that would require the ramdisk boot solution.
>> Thanks, mike
>
>
> What does this have to do with VB?
>
>
If I can't program it in VB, it ain't gonna get done.

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Dave O. · Joined: 04 Oct 2007 Posts: 580

"mike" wrote in message $v57.20711@trnddc05...
-boot would work for this task, but I have other ideas
>>> that would require the ramdisk boot solution.
>>> Thanks, mike
>>
>>
>> What does this have to do with VB?
>>
>>
> If I can't program it in VB, it ain't gonna get done.
>

In which case it ain't gonna happen. At least not the way you are
suggesting.

Unless you tell us what the DOS application is doing. It might be easier to
re-write the DOS app for win32 or somebody might know of a loadable
environment which supports the DOS app.

Regards
Dave O.

Karl E. Peterson · Joined: 04 Oct 2007 Posts: 4836

mike wrote:
>I have an application that won't run in a dos box under win2k.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/virtualpc/default.mspx

Actually, there's better DOS support in VPC2004...

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=6D58729D-DFA8-40BF-AFAF-20BCB7F01CD1&displaylang=en

Best group for followup: microsoft.public.virtualpc
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mike · Joined: 19 Jan 2008 Posts: 29

Karl E. Peterson wrote:
> mike wrote:
>> I have an application that won't run in a dos box under win2k.
>
> http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/virtualpc/default.mspx
>
> Actually, there's better DOS support in VPC2004...
>
> http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=6D58729D-DFA8-40BF-AFAF-20BCB7F01CD1&displaylang=en
>
> Best group for followup: microsoft.public.virtualpc
Thanks, but VPC is worse than a dosbox.
It doesn't support the hardware at all. You only get what it emulates,
one step removed.
The reason I can't use a dosbox is cause I want to directly bit-bang the
hardware without restriction.

I really don't want to discuss alternative ways to access the hardware
while running win2k. What I want is to reboot to a ramdisk in dos.

I was hoping I could create a ramdisk, populate it and reboot. But
there's likely a bunch of "housekeeping" that needs to happen.

Can I do anything in the runonce registry key? I suspect windows is too
far along by then, but not sure???

Can you suggest a better newsgroup than winapi to ask this question?
Or even a relevant search term?
Google has gotten me nowhere.
Thanks, mike

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Scott Seligman · Joined: 04 Oct 2007 Posts: 12

mike wrote:
>I have an application that won't run in a dos box under win2k. The HD
>is the only bootable device. I'd like to have win2k reboot into dos
>mode and run it from a ramdisk. Ghost and other disk imaging programs
>do this.

They do? I haven't seen such a feature. I've seen mention of it for the
Mac side, but I didn't know something like that was possible in Windows.
It makes sense on the Mac side since there's built in support for this
sort of functionality.

>Ghost even gives the option to add files to the ramdisk before the
>reboot. But it's cumbersome and there are licensing issues if I want to
>do this on multiple machines.

Unless I'm missing some big piece of this puzzle, to do something like
this, you're going to need to alloc physical RAM, and somehow either
instruct the BIOS to boot off of it, or do some fiddling with the boot
loader to load a ram driver and launch your RAM drive wherever it's been
loaded into memory.

In other words, not something for the faint of heart, and not something
I think you'll find sample code to do, much less code in VB to do.

If I had to do this, I'd look into using something like GRUB to do the
booting for me, and see if there's any way I could point GRUB to use a
configuration file on a FAT drive that can be easily changed as needed
by either the DOS or Win2K side of things.

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MikeD · Joined: 04 Oct 2007 Posts: 3348

"mike" wrote in message $Hd.14633@trnddc02...

> I was hoping I could create a ramdisk, populate it and reboot. But
> there's likely a bunch of "housekeeping" that needs to happen.

No housekeeping in the world is going to accomplish that. Go ahead and
create the Ramdisk. As soon as you reboot, it's gone.

> Can I do anything in the runonce registry key? I suspect windows is too
> far along by then, but not sure???
>
> Can you suggest a better newsgroup than winapi to ask this question?
> Or even a relevant search term?

I really don't see this as being a programming issue at all (regardless of
what programming language you use). You just gotta configure the system(s)
to do what you need, if you even can.

--
Mike
Microsoft MVP Visual Basic

Karl E. Peterson · Joined: 04 Oct 2007 Posts: 4836

mike wrote:
> Karl E. Peterson wrote:
>> mike wrote:
>>> I have an application that won't run in a dos box under win2k.
>>
>> http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/virtualpc/default.mspx
>>
>> Actually, there's better DOS support in VPC2004...
>>
>> http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=6D58729D-DFA8-40BF-AFAF-20BCB7F01CD1&displaylang=en
>>
>> Best group for followup: microsoft.public.virtualpc
>
> Thanks, but VPC is worse than a dosbox.
> It doesn't support the hardware at all.

Ah, shoulda known. Hardware dependency. Yep, that's a non-starter then.

> The reason I can't use a dosbox is cause I want to directly bit-bang the
> hardware without restriction.

We keep an old box that dual-boots between DOS 6.22 and Win95 here, for that sort of
thing. Win95 is there just so it can connect to the network and transfer files
around, then it's rebooted to DOS for the real work.

> I really don't want to discuss alternative ways to access the hardware
> while running win2k. What I want is to reboot to a ramdisk in dos.

Why a ramdisk, specifically?

> I was hoping I could create a ramdisk, populate it and reboot. But
> there's likely a bunch of "housekeeping" that needs to happen.

You might find something useful, here: http://www.bootdisk.org (and/or bootdisk.com)

The ones with "universal cdrom drivers" usually also setup ramdisks.

> Can I do anything in the runonce registry key? I suspect windows is too
> far along by then, but not sure???

Yep, after it goes graphical, DOS is out of the picture.

> Can you suggest a better newsgroup than winapi to ask this question?
> Or even a relevant search term?
> Google has gotten me nowhere.

Try that link above. I'd also be using "dual-boot" in your searches. Example:

http://www.google.com/search?q=dual+boot+windows+2000+dos
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