Author: Brain Posted on: 1/29/2001 Discuss: In the forums

Introduction This page is full of information that I felt made the original article too bloated. The sections are in the following order: Cabs What are they, and why the hell are they there? ============= WARNING ! ! ! ! ! ============ Create your own Cabs directory Explanation of the Format command line switches Explanation of Autoexec.bat Explanation of Config.sys Cabs What are they, and why the hell are they there? The .cab format was developed my Microsoft as part of Windows 95. The cab files are "compressed" files that contain many of the actual Windows setup files. When Win 95 shipped, many users still did not have CD-Roms. This means that they had to install Win95 from Floppy disk. If I recall correctly, the original Win95 Floppy set was 27 disks long with 21 of those disks being .Cab files. Normally, a floppy disk is formatted for a maximum of 1.44 meg of data. There is actually about 270k worth of "extra" space on a formatted floppy disk that is reserved for the boot sector and file system information. This 270K is almost 20% of the floppy disk's real total amount of space. What Microsoft did was find a way to utilize every single byte of a floppy disk for data. They took the total number of bytes on the floppy, and subtracted the number of bytes it took for the file allocation table to be created, and for the FAT to store the single cab file's name. They made the .cab files exactly the size of the remaining number of bytes. (1.72 meg) This allowed them to ship each set of disks with 4-5 fewer floppies used than if they had just used the 1.44 meg normally available. The .cab files continued to be used throughout the various revisions of Windows 95. The .cab files slowly began to grow in size with each successive version of Windows shipped (since Microsoft was no longer providing floppy disk setup as a purchase option.) For Win ME the average size of the .cab files has grown to just over 8 meg each. As I mentioned on page 1, many of you may already have a directory with .cab files in it on your computer. Most OEM's now create the Cabs directory as part of the default installation: C:\Windows\Options\Cabs This allows them to speed up reinstall times, because they do not have to wait on the CD-Rom to copy the files over whenever you use the "Restore CD" they provide you. As a general rule it is much slower for your CD-Rom to deliver data to your hard drive then it is for your hard drive to copy data from one place to another. Unfortunately, this method does not speed things up as much as it could, because most "Restore CD's" delete everything on your hard drive, and then copy all of the setup files from CD back into the newly created C:\Windows\Options\Cabs directory before beginning the custom install script that the OEM has designed for your machine. (the custom script installs all of the useless programs that come pre-loaded on your machine, as well as the OEM drivers) The problem with this is that it wastes a lot of time doing things that are redundant. As well, as the fact that many users would prefer not to have all of the "FILLER" that the OEM's pre-load onto their machine. That is why it is a lot more productive to create your \Options\Cabs directory on another drive letter. This allows you to reboot with your Boot Disk, and change to the \Options\Cabs directory and run setup.exe anytime you wish. It also allows you to install Windows without having to take all of the CRAP that your OEM stuck you with when you bought your machine ! ============= WARNING ! ! ! ! ! ============ If you own an OEM machine, there is a chance that your manufacturer never wanted you to be able to install windows yourself. They may have crippled your recovery CD so that it is not possible to use the .cab files it contains to do a self installation (the .cab files may be incomplete, or you may not have a "setup.exe" etc). You also may be prevented from reinstalling the individual applications that were part of the "Restore CD". You may not be able to extract the driver files for some or all of the hardware in your computer from the "Restore CD". My suggestion here is that you try to download newer driver files from the manufacturer's website (and locate those files in an Options\Drivers directory) and that you try out the Cab Install the next time you were going to use the "Restore CD" anyway. That way you will not have lost anything if the OEM has crippled your version of Windows. The other option is that you acquire a full version of Windows (for around $200 at the local electronics retailer of your choice). And use the files from your brand new Windows CD to perform your Cab Install. Create your own Cabs directory First thing you need is your windows CD. Put that sucker in the CD-Rom and turn off the annoying "browse this CD" window that opens when you do. OK, If you haven't already completed the steps from the Boot Disk article: You need to open an explorer window, and click on the button named "Tools" at the top of the explorer window. When the sub menu drops down, you want to choose the entry called "Folder Options". The folder options window will now be open, and there are a bunch of tabs along the top. Choose the tab labeled "View". When you're there, we need to look at some of the things that are checked in that window. Just make all of the entries in your "View" tab look like the entries in the Pic below: To finish up with this window we need to hit the "Like Current Window" button, then choose "OK" and we're back to our regular explorer window. One thing to remember is that the settings we just modified will not take affect for all of the folders until you close "Windows Explorer" and reopen it, so go ahead to do that before moving on to step 5. In Explorer you need to create a folder called: Options Then you should create 2 sub folders under options: The first one should be named:  Cabs The second should be named:  Bootdisk As I mentioned earlier. you should create these directories on a drive letter that has free space OTHER THAN drive C. Then you'll use explorer to look at the win 9x cd. When you look at the CD you want to look at all of the files in the win9x directory Now I'm going to present you with a choice: Copy only the .cab files and the setup.exe file or Copy everything from the win9x directory of your CD straight into the Cabs directory you created NOTE: You don't NEED every file, to install Windows, but in some circumstances it's nicer to have them all there for convenience. If you made choice A: The next thing you want to do is open another explorer window and use it to look at the Options/cabs directory you created. In the first explorer window keep looking at the win9x directory on the CD. If you hit the F3 key a "find" window will open and it will already looking at the win9x directory. Just type:  *.cab  into the "search for files or folders" blank and hit the search button. In the right part of the find window you will have a list of all of the .cab files. Click on one of these files to highlight it, then use the [CTRL]+A trick to select all of the files on the right side. Now all you need to do is right click on the highlighted files, and while holding the right click down drag over to your options/cabs directory and release. You'll be presented with 4 choices: Copy here Move here Create Shortcut(s) here Cancel Choose "Copy here" and watch as all the files get copied across. After all of the .cab files have been copied across you need to go back to the win9x directory on your CD and copy setup.exe into your options\cabs directory then skip down to the paragraph right below CHOICE B. If you made choice B: All you need to do is click on one of the files in the Win9x directory to highlight it Use the [CTRL]+A trick to select all of the files in the directory. Now all you need to do is right click on the highlighted files, and while holding the right click down drag over to your options\cabs directory and release. You'll be presented with 4 choices: Copy here Move here Create Shortcut(s) here Cancel Choose "Copy here" and watch as all of the files get copied across. After all of the .cab files have been copied across you should be all set. At this point, you've completed Steps 2 and 3 on the first page. You can head back to page one now, to create your Boot Disk. You can safely skip from the end of Step 1 down to the section labeled "New Tricks". Explanation of Format switches I stated earlier that I'd provide a quick explanation of some of the switches you can use with the Format command on your Boot Disk. If you type: format /? You will get a list that includes the following switches: /v:[label] - specifies new volume label /q - quick format /s - copies system files to disk (removed under Win ME) /c - tests clusters that are currently marked bad Here are more switches which are being separated because you will probably never need any of these: /f:size - specifies the size of the floppy. /b: - allocates space on the formatted floppy for system files /t:tracks - specifies number of tracks per disk side /n:sectors - specifies number of sectors per track /1 - formats single side of floppy /4 - formats a 5.25 inch 360k floppy in a high density drive /8 - formats 8 sectors per track Explanation of Autoexec.bat REM ------------------- IDE BOOT --------------------- a:\MSCDEX.EXE /D:MSCD001 /V /M:15 /L:P The first line, which begins with the word REM, is a remark line. Rem is a command that allows you to insert comments which have no actual effect in the file. Remarks allow you to insert comments to help you keep track of the actions you are programming into the file. Thus the whole first line does nothing except explain what the next line is meant for. a:\ - is the location of the file MSCDEX.EXE - is the Microsoft DOS CD-Rom extensions program /D:MSCD001 - is the "name" of the CD-Rom we are looking for with this instance of the executable, usually they go in numeric order (the next one would be /D:MSCD002 etc). /V - displays a summary of ram allocation at booting /M:15 - number of buffers (between 2 and 30) to be used for temporary storage. each buffer uses about 2k of memory, if you set this to high it could interfere with running other programs /L:P - assigns this CD-Rom to be drive letter P (you can replace the "P" with whatever drive letter you would like it to be as long as that letter comes after your existing drive letters) Explanation of Config.sys REM --------------------IDE CD ROM ---------------------- DEVICE=A:\OAKCDROM.SYS /D:MSCD001 /P:170,15 REM DEVICE=A:\OAKCDROM.SYS /D:MSCD001 /P:1F0,14 REM - just like in the Autoexec.bat, any line that begins with a Rem statement is a line that the DOS does not act upon DEVICE= - specifies that we are creating a new device entry(location, DOS driver name, device name and memory location, for this specific device) A:\ - is the location of the file OAKCDROM.SYS - DOS CD-Rom driver file /D:MSCD001 - is the "name" of the CD-ROM /P: - is the switch to assign base memory address for the CD-Rom driver file to communicate with the hardware 170,15 - 170 is the hexadecimal address in memory, and 15 is the IRQ that this address associates with. This combination is used when the CD-Rom is located on the secondary IDE controller 1F0,14 - 1F0 is the hexadecimal address in memory, and 14 is the IRQ that this address associates with. This combination is used when the CD-Rom is located on the primary IDE controller

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Published on: 2004-02-22 (7897 reads)