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I noticed that BootBooster has not been discussed in detail (Other then it causing a few problems, and being the first thing people seem to disable).
I was curious what the state of things are now.
I was working with [mdm] on the irc channel, and we worked out the minimum needed for having the boot sector option appear in the bios (I am using bios revision 910).
A new partition has to be created (at least 1 cylinder wide, I only tested this at the end of the drive), and the type has to be changed to 0xEF.
I zero'd it out (dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda4), and enabled bootbooster (didn't have to do that, I just wanted to test it), and I noted that it seemed to populate sda4 with a copy of the bios, and videobios (I used strings /dev/sda4). The function of sda4 is most likely just a cache of the post process.
F2 still works (you just have to hit it a few times, before it hits the MBR part a 1/2 second later). Just thought I'd mention that, as it gets to the MBR very quickly.
This boots my LFS system (custom system, custom kernel options) just fine. I would expect that it would even work with a windows os.
I put the information on my webpage at http://www.nathancoulson.com/proj_eee.shtml (At the moment, just a unorganized list of what I figured out so far).
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oh, and I also wanted to mention that the SDA4 partition actually has nothing to do with EFI, as far as I can see. Especially since this is populated by the bios.
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Would be interesting to see if this works with windows, because that was one of the things I disabled since I noticed the effect of doing so was that the battery meter "works" with it off.
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try updating to the 910 bios, it said something about the battery meter in the changelog
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So the boot booster speeds up the boot process by using the cached data from sda4 instead of running the BIOS hardware check at startup ?
I assume the cached data is somewhat protected by a checksum, or this might be dangerous if the BIOS uses a damaged setup.
The partition identifier 0xef "EFI" is probably used to show the boot booster where to look for the cached data, since this identifier would not be used for anything else (as the EEE's BIOS itself is not EFI-based).
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there is a 0xASQB at the beginning (Asus QuickBoot?).
It seems that memory position 0 starts at 0x200 in /dev/sda4 (I found a copy of the VideoBios at 0xC0200). Also see a flag set to 0x7C01 for some reason in the first 0x200 bytes [the bootsector gets loaded at 0x7C00 (Making me wonder if this also has some register data in it)
The bios option does disappear if /dev/sda4 does not exist with the 0xEF flag (I never changed the partition location, or the partition number. so I dont know how variable that can be)
*shrug*, that's as far as I went. I never tried to modify the data.
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conathan wrote:
there is a 0xASQB at the beginning (Asus QuickBoot?).
It seems that memory position 0 starts at 0x200 in /dev/sda4 (I found a copy of the VideoBios at 0xC0200). Also see a flag set to 0x7C01 for some reason in the first 0x200 bytes [the bootsector gets loaded at 0x7C00 (Making me wonder if this also has some register data in it)
This might be interesting for the people who try to use grub2 to set the intelfb resolution to 800x480 at the console-level: Access to the VideoBIOS.
conathan wrote:
*shrug*, that's as far as I went. I never tried to modify the data.
Modifying may render the device un-bootable, but disabling the boot-booster should recover the problem. Looking for bold volunteers!
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Does it have to be sda4? Could I, for example, just have two partitions with the 0xef as sda2 and sda1 being the rest of the disk (for the OS)?
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Hey I just reflashed back to 0401 and i noticed I don't have boot booster anymore
I have quick boot though..
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SteveLawUK wrote:
Does it have to be sda4? Could I, for example, just have two partitions with the 0xef as sda2 and sda1 being the rest of the disk (for the OS)?
Probably yes. You are the elected volunteer to try it !
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Well, I set up an 0xef partition as the second partition. And BootBooster appears in my BIOS. And it skips the BIOS splash screen, so it looks like a success.
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So if I have installed windows XP on _one_ large partition. Can I make another partition on it after with a program and then call the second "0xef". Will bootbooster appear in my bios then? There are only 2 quickboot options now.
Last edited by UsernameWhat´sThat? (2008-05-10 10:04:03 am)
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SteveLawUK wrote:
Well, I set up an 0xef partition as the second partition. And BootBooster appears in my BIOS. And it skips the BIOS splash screen, so it looks like a success.
Thank you, that answers an old question :
http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=779
I assume your sda2 is a primary partition. It is still undecided whether the boot booster would work with an extented partition.Iit may well be restricted to the information it finds in the device's partition table.
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Engineer wrote:
SteveLawUK wrote:
Well, I set up an 0xef partition as the second partition. And BootBooster appears in my BIOS. And it skips the BIOS splash screen, so it looks like a success.
Thank you, that answers an old question :
http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=779
I assume your sda2 is a primary partition. It is still undecided whether the boot booster would work with an extented partition.Iit may well be restricted to the information it finds in the device's partition table.
Yes it's a primary. 8.23 or something in size (Basically the bit that Windows setup doesn't include when it creates a partition 
).
And yes, I always wondered about that last partition myself 
Last edited by SteveLawUK (2008-05-10 1:17:21 pm)
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Anyone make XP with boot booster enable successfully?
I use partition magic to create 2nd primary partition after XP partition, and it make XP fail to boot.
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I'm using XP with it atm.
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Another question would be if the EFI partition needs to be on the SSD or whether it may alternatively be on an USB device (including the SD card reader).
I suspect it needs to be on the boot disk. When I experimented with different grub configurations, I noticed that if the BIOS is set to boot from the SSD, it does not look for other disks (at least does not tell the boot loader about it). So when grub is loaded from the SSD, it cannot load a kernel from SD cards or from USB disks, since it cannot see them, it only sees the SSD as hd0.
But if grub is loaded from e.g. an SD card, it is able to load a kernel from this card as well as from the SSD, which in this case is hd1 while the SD card is hd0.
So if the BIOS boots from the SSD as first boot device (and finds an active partition) it does not look for other devices and would probably ignore any EFI partition on them.
I did my experiments on BIOS revision 801.
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Hi all,
I just tried to restore an XPSP3 and an EFI partition on my SSD (XPSP3) with TrueImage (First Partition XP FAT32, Second EFI).
And yes, BootBoster work.
Don't know why but I had to change my boot.ini from
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2) to multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1) because of ntkernl not found error
strange...
Also, I flashed my EeePC 4G to the last v910 bios because of freeze problem when battery is going below 10%
Hope this will be solved now...
bye!
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it's not an EFI partition, it's just a place for the bios to dump ibootbooster nformation to. (I filled it full of 0's and it still worked)
The actual contents starting at 0x200 seem to be a cache of the system ram, probably just the first 1MB
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ive been trying to create an efi partition using Diskpart in windows with little success, how are you guys doing it?
lorier, did you use trueimage to make a backup of the original efi and a SP3 Partition? and then restore an sp3 partition along with the efi partition with true image?
My first thought was to restore linux, delete all the partitions but the efi, then creat one large partition on the ssd for windows.. but that didnt work , i think because the efi is assigned the C letter and the system attempts to boot there (is this assumption wrong?) Im going to try to restore linux again and see if i can change the drive letters in linux, and then delete all the partitions.. something tells me this wont work but it wont take too long to try so ill give it a shot..
thanks for any tips you guys can give me!
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vicko5000 wrote:
ive been trying to create an efi partition using Diskpart in windows with little success, how are you guys doing it?
I use a Parted Magic Live USB/CD and fdisk/cfdisk.
Last edited by SteveLawUK (2008-06-17 2:32:16 am)
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Thanks Steve, I wasnt able to use fdisk nor cfdisk (couldnt quite find a set of commands) but I did use Parted magic (off of a USB thumb drive).
In case anyone is trying to get this done, here the backwards way I did it:
-after restoring xandros from the asus restore disc, I used parted magic to delete the all partitions on the ssd except the EFI partition
-I then created a windows partition on the unused space after deleting (I used fat32)
-I then ran the windows install and chose the fat32 partition (sd0). when it asked, I had it do a quick format into NTFS (even if I wanted fat32 I would have had the windows installer do a quick format in fat 32)
-I let windows finish installing and rebooted. went into the bios and enabled Boot Booster and thats it! I now enjoy a slightly faster boot (is it about 3 or 4 seconds or so?)
also this didnt take any additional space, it just uses the 8mb that the windows installer normally throws away
thanks for the help guys!
now to see if I can make this a dual boot system (xp and ubuntu 8.0.4) without losing my efi partition/boot booster option!
Last edited by vicko5000 (2008-06-18 2:18:46 am)
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I tried this last night (well, I tried something!) and rendered my partition table useless and couldn't boot my eeepc!! Luckily I booted to BartPE and after some trawling on my very handy second laptop I managed to find a MBR tool which fixed the problem I had created.
Shaving some boot time off appeals to me and since I've done everything I can think of to speed it up I would like to try Boot Boost to at least save some time on bios checks etc.
I got the idea from this thread http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=35734 and no where in Partition Magic could I find change partition id. I found PTedit and entered 0xEF into the first two empty boxes in the correct partition and ended up ruining the partition table hehe.
Can anybody run me through creating the correct partition type step by step? I am using bios 601 and run XP and have the spare 8Mb partition at the end of the drive that XP creates. I have Parted Magic so if anybody could guide me through it using that (or a simpler method) that would be great...I couldn't quite get my head around making the partition type 0xef :s
Last edited by mc0de (2008-07-15 3:37:04 am)
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yep, it works for me as well. first, run any distrubtions of linux (even bootable live ubuntus or anything for that matter)
run cfdisk
resize any partition on your existing disk and reduce roughly 8mb of space, (i haven't tried any other size)
create a partition on that empty space, with type "EF" - EFI (FAT-12/16/32)
write the changes and reboot your EeePC
once you're rebooted, boot into windows (or whatever your choice of OS)
shutdown your OS
now your bios will have the boot boost menu! 
p.s. it does boot a lot faster!
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mc0de wrote:
Can anybody run me through creating the correct partition type step by step? I am using bios 601 and run XP and have the spare 8Mb partition at the end of the drive that XP creates. I have Parted Magic so if anybody could guide me through it using that (or a simpler method) that would be great...I couldn't quite get my head around making the partition type 0xef :s
Here are the steps I took to restore Boot Booster to my XP installation:
1. Boot PartedMagic - I used live USB
2. Launch GParted and create a partition out of the 8Mb at the end of the disk (primary partition & unformatted)
3. Note the location of this new partition - mine was /dev/sda2
4. Launch terminal and use sfdisk to change partition type
sfdisk --change-id /dev/sda 2 ef
sfdisk --print-id /dev/sda 2
5. Reboot and F2 to enter BIOS to enable Boot Booster
Hope this helps
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