GRUB4DOS Toolbox for Windows 0.2 Documentation

Note: This is a testing version that has not been extensively tested. You are encouraged to use this version and give feedback, but always be careful and make necessary backups.


GRUB4DOS Toolbox for Windows

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GRUB4DOS Toolbox for Windows 0.23

GRUB4DOS Toolbox for Windows

Usage Info

This software provides an easy way for installing and tweaking GRUB4DOS boot manager in Windows. You need a latest GRUB4DOS distribution (linked in the ‘Useful Links’ sidebar section on the right of this page) and administrator privilege for most of the tasks. Some of the tasks will write log messages to ‘GRUB4DOS Toolbox for Windows.log’.

After obtaining the zip file from the link above, extract the exe file into the folder where your downloaded GRUB4DOS files have been extracted and run it as administrator.

Grub4DOS Toolbox for Windows 0.2 Main UI

Grub4DOS Toolbox for Windows 0.2 Main UI

You will be presented with a GUI allowing you to choose from the drop-down list one of the following tasks to perform:

GRUB4DOS Toolbox for Windsdows

1. Install GRUB4DOS to disk/partition using bootlace.com

This will install GRUB4DOS mbr/boot sector to selected disk/partition. For more detailed info on bootlace.com and its commandline options, please consult GRUB4DOS readme.

Grub4DOS Toolbox for Windows 0.2 Task 1

Install GRUB4DOS to disk/partition using bootlace.com

First select the target disk/partition to operate on. If disks/partitions are displayed but not selectable, it could be because that some other program is holding exclusive access to the device in question. If you want to install GRUB4DOS to the MBR of a partitioned disk, do not select anything in the partition dropdown list. Click on ‘Refresh’ to cancel any selections.

If necessary, you can change the target file name (default is grldr). This is the file that the installed GRUB4DOS mbr/boot sector will try to look for. Change is almost never needed for most users and it is always a good idea to just leave it untouched.

You can specify the bootlace.com commandline options you wish to use by directly inputting in the text area or using the dropdown list. Some options will be automatically inserted for you.

After all necessary input is done, click the ‘Do It!’ button. The software will call bootlace.com in the same folder and test whether installation with specified options can be performed. If the test result is negative, you will be presented with the error message from bootlace.com and you can modify the commandline options accordingly. Otherwise, you will be presented with the success message from bootlace.com and asked if you want to the program to perform the actual writing to device. If your answer is yes and the operation is successful, details of the installation will be written to the log file and a backup image file of the target device boot sectors will be saved.

Important: you have to manually copy the specified target file (grldr by default) to the selected disk/partition.

GRUB4DOS Toolbox for Windows

2. Install GRUB4DOS to disk image using bootlace.com

This is a newly introduced task in this version. This basically does the same thing as the above task, the only difference being that this task installs to a disk/partition image file, instead of an actual disk/partition. For instance, it is possible to install GRUB4DOS to a VMware virtual disk flat file and boot the disk in VMware virtualization applications into GRUB4DOS.

Grub4DOS Toolbox for Windows 0.2 Task 2

Install GRUB4DOS to disk image using bootlace.com

To perform the task, just use the ‘Browse’ button to locate the desired image file and everything else is the same as in task 1.

Note 1: this function only works on normal raw image files, ‘normal’ meaning no compression, no encryption, no other fancy stuff, just plain byte-for-byte raw image.

Note 2: since this program does not attempt to do partition analysis of the target image file, you can only install GRUB4DOS to the MBR of a partitioned disk image file. If installation to partition is really needed, you will have to manually calculate the offset of the target partition within the image file and use this task in combination with the DD tasks (see below).

Important: you have to manually copy the specified target file (grldr by default) to the selected disk/partition.

GRUB4DOS Toolbox for Windows

4 Responses to GRUB4DOS Toolbox for Windows 0.2 Documentation

  1. ljg says:

    GRUB4DOS Toolbox for Windows0.23:for USB disk ,first install syslinux4.05,second install grub4dos 0.46a,but only one of them can work,

  2. ljg says:

    only grub4dos can work,

    • farter says:

      Hi, you will have to use g4d to load syslinux, or the other way around. Or if syslinux can be installed to MBR (i don’t know), and you have MBR on usb disk, you can use syslinux as prev-mbr.

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