Configuring a Hard Disk Drive with the BIOS Boot Loader
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8/27/2008
Use the two formatted floppy disks, the Setupdisk.144 disk image, and the Bootdisk.144 disk image to configure the hard disk drive with an active partition so you can boot a run-time image on a hard disk drive with the BIOS boot loader.
To configure a hard disk drive with the BIOS boot loader
In %SystemRoot%\Program Files\Windows CE Platform Builder\6.00\CEPB\Utilities, run MakeImageDisk.exe from Windows Explorer or the command line.
With this utility, you can create boot disks from image files. You only need to install this utility once on your development workstation.
On your development workstation, insert a floppy disk, and open %_WINCEROOT%\<operating system>\CEPC\src\bootloader\BIOSLoader\DiskImages\Setupdisk.144, using the MakeImageDisk utility.
This creates a BIOS boot loader setup disk that prepares the hard disk with the BIOS boot loader.
On the CEPC, insert the 3.5-inch floppy disk that contains the Setupdisk.144 disk image, and restart the CEPC.
After the CEPC starts, at the MS-DOS prompt, type fdisk. Use the Fdisk utility to delete all existing partition information from the hard disk, and then create and activate a new partition.
When prompted to specify a volume label, press ENTER to specify no label.
The volume label must not contain any characters.
The BIOS boot loader recognizes FAT12 and FAT16 partitions. The Format utility provided with the Setupdisk.144 disk formats a partition as FAT16.
Restart the CEPC.
At the command prompt, type format <drive letter>:
This formats the hard disk.
When prompted to specify a volume label, press ENTER to specify no label.
The volume label must not contain any characters.
On the CEPC, run Mkdisk.bat from the Setupdisk.144 boot disk.
Pass Mkdisk.bat the drive letter of the hard disk you formatted in the previous procedure. For example, if the letter of your hard disk letter is C, type mkdisk c:.
If you run Mkdisk with no parameters, it hides an important file on the setup disk, and you must redo step 1 to correct this.
The hard disk is now prepared to boot a Windows Embedded CE image.
The Boot.ini file contains the name of the binary image to load. By default, the BinFile tag specifies NK.bin as the binary image, and the BakBinFile tag specifies Eboot.bix as the secondary binary image. If the Eboot.bix is not compressed, use the .bin file extension. By default, Mkdisk copies Eboot.bix to the hard disk.
Use Eboot.bix to boot your Windows Embedded CE image over Ethernet, and then use the booted Windows Embedded CE image to copy a full run-time image to the hard disk.
Note
There is more than one way to copy a run-time image to a hard disk. For information about a way to copy a run-time image to a hard disk, see Building and Transferring a Run-Time Image to a Hard Disk Drive.