1 Topic by gallind

  • gallind
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Topic: Boot to GParted from DOS?

Hello there.
I'm using GParted few years, and I'm spreading the praise around.
I'm windows user. Linux is not my league.
So I'd like to get some help with my problem.
I want to make boot USB stick with some dos utilities (Norton Ghost, some disk wipe tools,...) and with latest gparted (0.11.0).
I was googling and found that loadlin could be used somehow for this purpose. I should copy folders and files to my usb stick, put loadlin.exe to root dir, create some loadlin.par and put loadlin.exe @loadlin.par to my autoexec.bat

What should I put to loadlin.par file, please.
Or can someone post the other solution. (using windows, i don't want to install linux/virtual machine to make one bootable usb).

Good night and wish u luck.

P.S. I wanted make multipartition usb stick but Win suxs... Removable drive can have only one partition visible under win.
P.S.S. I used XBoot to make multiboot, but i was not able to make good iso image with my own contents on DOS iso image. (Only original win98 bootimage loaded)

2 Reply by gedakc

  • gedakc
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Re: Boot to GParted from DOS?

Unfortunately I am unfamiliar with loadlin.exe.

If you learn how to do this, then posting your findings back here would be very informative.

3 Reply by PrinzVonBillAir (edited by PrinzVonBillAir 2012-04-23 11:03:38)

  • PrinzVonBillAir
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Re: Boot to GParted from DOS?

Hello guys,

I use a bootable USB stick with GParted and loadlin for 2 years now.
I'm at work right now so can't post my loadlin.par but it's quite simple.

You have to put "/live/vmlinuz initrd=/live/initrd.img boot=live config  noswap noprompt  toram=filesystem.squashfs ip=frommedia  nosplash"
(without quotation marks) inside the loadlin.par. (Of course you have to put GParted, loadlin.exe (version 1.6e) and loadlin.par in the root
dir of your bootable USB device). You may also create a bat file with "loadlin.exe @loadlin.par" (without quotation marks) in it so you can start
GParted in DOS by entering the name of the bat file.

So when entering the bat file name, loadlin is started and begins to load. A message will be displayed that loading over 16MB is needed and
loading continues. This works quite well however without seeing the Gnome Partition Editor splash screen after finishing loading. I didn't
manage to create a proper loadlin.par config file which lets me see that splash screen and select the desired option, as deleting "nosplash"
doesn't work for me. You will get directly to the Keymap Question Screen of GParted.

Problem is it only seems to work up to GParted live 0.10.0-3. I wanted to upgrade to the latest version yesterday but couldn't get it to work.
loadlin seems to load like normal but the system reboots before getting to the Keymap Question Screen. I also tried using earlier versions
like GParted live 0.12.x and 0.11.x but the latest working version seems to be GParted live 0.10.0-3.

I absolutly have no (even basic) knowledge of linux commands or programming at all so maybe someone knows a way to get it to work?

Anyway thanks for this great tool.

PS.: When I get home from work I'll upload loadlin.exe, loadlin.par and GParted.bat file which works up to version 0.10.0-3.

4 Reply by gallind

  • gallind
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Re: Boot to GParted from DOS?

gallind wrote:

...
P.S.S. I used XBoot to make multiboot, but i was not able to make good iso image with my own contents on DOS iso image. (Only original win98 bootimage loaded)

I was succesfull with whis way. I made custom DOS bootable image with some free virtual floppy drive software. I have to put multiple dos images to XBoot, because of 2MB floppy limitation, but it works.

5 Reply by PrinzVonBillAir

  • PrinzVonBillAir
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Re: Boot to GParted from DOS?

Here are the files needed to use loadlin with GParted 0.10.0-3: click

You need GParted image (up to version 0.10.0-3) unpacked to the root dir of a bootlable USB Stick and these files.
Now you can boot your USB Stick to DOS and enter "gparted" (without quotation marks).

6 Reply by gedakc

  • gedakc
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Re: Boot to GParted from DOS?

Thank you PrinzVonBillAir for replying with an answer to this post.  smile