Ananda Ibu Pertiwi

FiraDisk: Driver for Running Windows from RAM

Because of my internet connection problem, it’s very low speed, I can’t access more websites or check my emails. Tonight I have to download my email messages to prevent overquota. I get the most important message, I think, from boot-land.net introducing FiraDisk driver for running Windows from RAM.

We know that most peoples have probably heard a lot about running Windows PE from ramdisk in the past. In some cases, it would be limited, require specific files from Windows 2003 like SDI method. Several months ago, I’ve tried booting method from USB, from disk image, and from mapped ISO as boot drive with no luck. I’ve used some different methods, like booting with Grub4Dos, BCD that come with Windows Vista (BOOTMGR), and other boot utilities that I can’t remember one by one.

As we know, newer Windows based on Windows NT cannot use RAM drive or boot from USB unless we have driver for it and loaded at booting time. In my case, I’ve tried to boot Windows installation and it’s can be booted only for the first time and cannot boot on the second reboot. It’s also true when we try to boot from disk image or ISO mapping technique. The reason is Windows take over the control on kernel protected mode when boot system has been loaded, so loosing access to mapped image unless Windows itself has loaded the specific driver to access it.

With FiraDisk, there are a chance to boot Windows while it’s running from RAM as indroduced. The email message that comes to my inbox said: FiraDisk is a driver kindly made available on Boot Land by Karyonix. If you’ve heard about Grub4Dos before – this driver allows you directly load onto RAM an .ISO image or similar of your windows install and then boot from there. This means you can have several different windows images and boot the one you prefer.

Of course that Windows typically resets RAM when booting up but this driver ensures that no such thing occurs and allows the rest of the windows boot process to take place as it would be expected from a normal windows running from the HDD. So, imagine this as your personal virtual hard drive to run windows from.

Best of all.. It’s free for everyone. You can read the details and give direct feedback to the author, I’m sure he would like that – especially if you have suggestions for new functionality or just motivate him to keep up the good work. [email message].

Unfortunately, I’ve stopped my work (making an unattended installation and Windows running from disk image) for a while because of some other works and can’t try it for now. Maybe I will try it later after finishing my current work. But, you can read the details about this driver on FiraDisk Discussion.

Tags: boot drivers, ramdisk, USB, Window