fragmented plpbt.bin?

[Gaara]

First of all thank you for this wonderful program

My problem is the plpbt.bin is supposedly fragmented. plpgenbtldr says that. But I defragmented the full C: with Diskeeper as well just the plpbt.bin file with Contig. Contig says either the file is not fragmented or it is unable to (defragment).

??

What should I do? I really need to boot from USB.

Thanks.

[Elmar]

hi,
please post the output of plpgenbtldr

regards
elmar

[Gaara]

Thank you the prompt reply.

Here is the output:

[Elmar]

plpgenbtldr is not perfect.

try this:
Download and run DiskView from http://www.milannemec.com/diskview.html, run it and use location of file, select c:\plpbt.bin, use the value at LCN and run plpgenbtldr lcn=[your value].

[Gaara]

Success! You my friend are a life saver

btw, that link doesn't work. You accidentally included the comma in the link.

[Elmar]

i am happy to hear that it works now

you are right, the comma is the problem with the link
for others, here is the link without the comma http://www.milannemec.com/diskview.html

[Gaara]

My big mouth. So now when I select "PLoP Boot Manager" and hit enter, my PC restarts...

Any ideas?

[Elmar]

hmm, did you move the plpbt.bin file?

please post the output of diskview and the lcn value

[Gaara]

No. I had not moved the file but now I've done it all again. Tried regular method > fragmentation error. So DiskView gives me LCN and then plpbtldr lcn=value

Here is the output screen of both:


Oh and btw, my "system drive" is indeed C (boot.ini is in C and that's where I added the line) but the current in-use OS is in D. Does that affect anything?

[Elmar]

the only important thing is that plpbt.bin is on the first harddisk

a workaround is to use grub4dos and plpbt.bin. then no plpgenbtldr and plpbtldr.bin is required

[Gaara]

Okay this is going a bit over my head now. I'm gonna give it one more go. I got Grub4DOS and installed it on the "whole MBR" of hd0 using Grub4DOS Installer. I'm actually a little concerned I jumped into it and my PC won't reboot the next time Let's see.

1. plpbt.bin is in C.
2. menu.lst contains grub4dos's menu?
3. Definitely need to add grldr? or grldr.mbr?
4. Don't I have to add something to boot.ini?

My basic idea of a menu.lst

Code Select Expand


color blue/green yellow/red white/magenta white/magenta
timeout 30
default /default

title PLoP Boot Manager
fallback 1
<What goes here?>



*EDIT: haha! Just what I thought. It didn't boot up. Fortunately, it asked me to boot from the previous mbr.

[Elmar]

installing grub4dos to the mbr was not required. its possible to start grub4dos with the boot.ini.

for menu.lst see here http://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager.html#rungrub

[Gaara]

Grub started okay but when I hit enter on "Start PLoP Boot Manager", it said

Error 1: Filename must be an absolute pathname or blocklist.

[Gaara]

I know I'm good 
Finally got PLoP to work. I was using kernel plpbt.bin but Grub4DOS needs absolute path (Error 1).

Did some Googling and found a great step by step guide by Diddy @ Boot-Land for absolute beginners like myself.

Changed to kernel (hd0,0)/plpbt.bin and wallah! PLoP started, showed all the booting options. Now I'm gonna go make a bootable pen drive.

A BIG Thanks for the tremendous help.