[syslinux] memdisk and winxp boot disk

[Giulio Orsero]

On Wed, 19 Jun 2002 10:18:43 -0700, "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa at zytor.com> wrote:

>I see.  Either way, there is nothing MEMDISK would have to do with 
>anything then, since I gather he's using a floppy image.

The above is because if you use a normal floppy image you shouldn't need to
use memdisk, because "kernel floppy.img" is sufficient, right?

The problem is that I found out that memdisk is preferable even for normal
floppy images:

A) winxp floppy image:
A1) kernel floppy.img
Says "there's a problem with winxp installaion or disk, reinstall windows"
A2)  memdisk + append initrd=floppy.img
Says "cannot find file <windows>\system32\x, reinstall file x"
So I assumed memdisk did something better.

B) another dos floppy image
B1) kernel floppy.img
error "drive a: is write protected  abort,retry,ignore", 
"ignore" allows to go on ok;
there's nothing in autoexec.bat or config.sys (the message is right after
"Starting MSDOS) writing to the image and the real floppy can be booted
write protected;
B2) memdisk + append initrd=floppy.img
no error, normal boot

The above cases are with vmware bios, ok, it is not real :-)

With Asus ACPI BIOS the memdisk method works perfectly, the "kernel
floppy.img" fails completely "invalid file name" or something similar (does
not even try to boot).

So it seems memdisk can overcome some bios problems, this is why I use
memdisk for floppy images too.

-- 
giulioo at pobox.com