This is a very urgent situation. We have a network down situation. I went to rebuild my Cisco CallManager server and only after I wiped the drives did I discover that my copy of the CM software boot cd is not bootable...
This is a copy of the CD I'm working with, and I think what happened is that some schmuck copied the CD to a hard drive, then burned it to CD - thereby making it unbootable.
I know that the boot.bin file needs to be located at sector 20 on the CD in order for it to properly boot up the bootimg.bin file. When the CD was copied it (of course) put the boot.bin file wherever it wanted (not at sector 20)
Educational Background - Important to understanding my predicament:
What the BIOS does when booting from CD is it "Unzips" the bootimg.bin file and expands it into a "Virtual Floppy" and runs the boot process off that Virtual Floppy. The VF contains cdrom drivers et al, and will kick off the rest of the CallManager installation.
The way to create a Bootable CD is to create a bootable floppy disk with all the bells and whistles on it that you use to boot the CD. Then you go over to Nero, or Roxio, or whatever burn utility you use and you say "I want to create a bootable CD". You then create your CD image as you normally would - click next - and the software will ask to see your boot floppy, which it will read and create a boot image which it then bundles into a bootimg.bin file and places it with the rest of the data you put on your CD. It then creates the Boot.bin file and places both .bin files on special places on your CD - making it bootable.
--- I can see only three solutions to the problem ---
1) Get a good copy of the CD from Cisco - I've contacted my Cisco rep and he's working on it. Cisco TAC is of no help because we purchased the hardware too long ago and the CD's aren't covered under our smartnet contract. The orignals were lost long ago and all we have are copies.
2) Get some software that will take the bootimg.bin file and use it as it is, just placing it into the right location on the CD and creating the boot.bin file. (Find the software, you get 2000 points)
3) Use some sort of software to decompose the bootimg.bin file so that I can put it back onto a floppy and recreate the boot CD that way.
4) If anyone has CallManager 3.3(2) or even 3.2, or 3.1 - All I need is the first CD. If you have a copy of the CD and you can create an .ISO image from it that I can download, you get 2000 pts.
I know, option #3 is like trying to run a sausage mill backwards to manufacture pigs. Don't even go there. But if theres a way for it to be done, I'm sure the fellow technicians here on EE will figure it out.
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Could you mount the image using a virtualdrive (Daemon tools, Clone CD, etc.)?
Or open/extract it with Isobuster or something?
Hypothetically, if you know where all the files are supposed to be and you can find the (intact) right boot file you could easily create a bootable cd with Nero 5.5.10.7.
Try looking up "Slipstreaming XPSP1 bootable cd", 'cause the process could be of assistance, if the files are just out of order or something.
Hope this helps.
I had Roxio v5.x installed. My coworker had a current version of Nero that wouldn't do what we needed.
Upon your suggestion, I purchased and downloaded the Roxio Easy CD Creator v6 online (480mb download). Once I installed it, I did as you suggested. I created the CD using the current boot image and the CD booted perfectly!
Thank you,
That was the direction I needed.
Regards,
Joel R. Helgeson
Business Accounts
Answer for Membership
by: MSGeekPosted on 2003-03-26 at 06:46:19ID: 8210714
Easy CD Creator allows you to use an existing image file that you can browse to and select (not a floppy). I would recommend copying the existing file bootimg.bin from your CD to your hard drive of your workstation with the burner (if you have Easy CD Creator). Copy it to it's own location. Then copy the rest of the cd to another location on the hard drive, excluding the bootimg.bin and boot.bin files. When you launch Easy CD Creator, right-click the CD, select new, then bootable CD, a window will pop up. At the bottom of the window it gives you the option to select "use existing image file" versus generating one from a floppy. Select this and browse to the location of you bootimg.bin file. Then add the rest of the files you previously copied to your hard drive, excluding the bootimg.bin and the Boot.bin files (which Easy CD will create from ones previously provided.) Burn your cD and you should be all set.
Otherwise, I would open a TAC call and see if they can provide you with the files to create a boot disk. This would be a bootable floppy, instaed of the virtual floppy created by the CD. It should call the appropriate processes from the CD by it's drive letter.
This is a tough one. We had a publisher, subscriber and unity running all on Compaq servers. Cisco never told us whether Compaq's SmartStart was included on their CDs or not. Trying to make the non bootable cd Bootable may take longer than getting a response from TAC or your rep. Cisco is really trying to push it's VOIP hard and given your one of the older customers, I would imagine they would want to keep you happy.
Hope my first suggestion works, good luck. MSGeek.