Close but not exactly. First, GRUB is a Multiboot boot loader. The correct order of operation is: 1. grub mbr - mbr code that executes grldr 2. grldr emulates then boots a "floppy" drive it links to wow.img 3. MS-DOS runs from wow.img 4. wow.exe is executed - patches ACPI tables in RAM, no emulation 5. grub.exe is executed - it releases floppy, finds vista partition and runs vista note: Yen also has a version that does not touch mbr, instead renames some vista files to load grldr. note: WOW.EXE is a Dos program written in 32-bit assembly, compiled with MASM. Checkout attached pdf's to get a general idea what it does. Yes you can put WOW on a small fat16/fat32 partition. You then can make this partition active so it boots and runs WOW. But you will still have to use grub.exe or other boot manager to boot Vista partition from DOS.. The messages you see are from grldr and grub. Currently we don't know how to suppress them. If you find a way, please let us know.
nothing I burnt WOWBootCD_5.1_auto_HP booted from cd and it loged in vista but nothing new i still have 28 days for activation plzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz help me but in english words
*Dreams* May be, just maybe, since grub has the open source code, you guys could somehow follow the vistaloader v2 road and compile your code right into grub, rather than into the standalone DOS exe-file? *More dreams* Always wondered, how a NTFS partition boot sector, being 8 KBytes long, has so much empty space inside, not used by the code... idk if it's possible to at least partially decompile it with the aim to insert some SLIC emulation code ?
Flagmax is the coder of the wow patch. He can give an answer. For me the next goal is to make it totally invisible.
Personally i think this thread should be locked or separate thread to developers and any one inputting into the development of WOW, things happen and peeps end up going of the real thread.
As far development goes, I think we did a great job covering many scenarios and made WOW pretty universal, not much to add right now. However, I don't see much feedback after 94 downloads, not sure what to take of it. I don't know how to add WOW to grldr.
For me there is no advantage to combine grldr code with WoW. What advantage should it be? No WoW file / folder? It doesn't matter where the patch is located. At a new file (WoW) or at additional code (grldr). The code must be somewhere. Next step regarding WoW is to research how to make it invisible at boot. Will have a look at grub forums if I find the time therefore..... Yes, no feedback so far....IMO no feedback is usually positive. But it would be nice to get some......
Yen, from what i've read on grub forums, to remove text means to play with print function in the source code... As i'm not any kind of a programmer, i just edited grldr and grub.exe in ultraedit, substituting text, that i caught on screen (long live the Pause button!), with spaces... grldr became completely clean, in grub.exe processing the only thing remaining are some "00 01 ...2?"... did the same with IO.SYS to make it also silent... no need to load command com + autoexec.bat during DOS session, just used config.sys instead, with these lines inside: install=acpiwow.exe install=grub.exe (renamed wow.exe to acpiwow.exe, so that it should be alphabetically before grub). Another approach for grub is to make text color black, i've read this was realised in loader 3.0.0.1 if it's true...
frwil That sounds like progress, thank you for coming along for the ride. Love it when others join in on the fun. Does the screen cursor jump around? Here is grub.exe that I patched that seems to not print those numbers. Let me know if you get same results. edit: Ok killed 2 different printf functions. Still see some messages but to fast to read them.
flagmax Yes, cursor is still jumping around in grldr. Interesting how you did grub.exe, those numbers are gone indeed, cool... Here are the text lines that i managed to catch on screen in grub.exe: ----------------------------------------------- Turning on gate A20 ... Starting cmain () ... (hd0,2) Will boot ntldr from drive=0x80, partition=0x2 (hidden sectors=0xdigits) -------------------------------------------------- Also, when i press Pause button, i sometimes catch the menu screen of grub.exe with the title: GRUB4DOS 0.4.3 2008-05-07 Memory 638 (Even though the "hiddenmenu" is pesent in menu.lst). This topic is really interesting, i'd be glad to help with what i can...
Here is how I disabled the numbers printing in grub.exe. From source inside dosstart.S I found a function that prints a byte in CL register. By inserting C3 - return command as the first byte of the function, disables it. Source code Code: print_cl: pushw%ds pushw%es pushal xchgw%ax, %cx# move CL to AL xorb%ah, %ah movb$16, %cl divb%cl# quo=AL, rem=AH orw$0x3030, %ax cmpb$0x39, %ah jbe1f in IDA pro Code: print_cl sub_14D21 proc near ; CODE XREF: sub_141AE:loc_14252p seg001:4B41 push ds seg001:4B42 push es seg001:4B43 pushad ; Push all General Registers (use32) seg001:4B45 xchg ax, cx ; Exchange Register/Memory with Register seg001:4B46 xor ah, ah ; Logical Exclusive OR seg001:4B48 mov cl, 10h seg001:4B4A div cl ; Unsigned Divide seg001:4B4C or ax, 3030h ; Logical Inclusive OR seg001:4B4F cmp ah, 39h ; '9' ; Compare Two Operands seg001:4B52 jbe short loc_14D37 ; Jump if Below or Equal (CF=1 | ZF=1) In Hex editor after patch - 4d41h has C3=ret Code: Offset 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F 00004D40 CF C3 06 66 60 91 30 E4 B1 10 F6 F1 0D 30 30 80 ÏÃ.f`‘0ä±.öñ.00€
Super job offon7544 !!! I counted 51 total Int10 you disabled Its truely is silent now. Can you take a look at grldr. Its not disassembling in IDA for me. P.S. Thanks for taking on this task. I speak for all as this been requested for long time.