GAG GRAPHICAL BOOT MANAGER GAG is a Boot Manager program, this is, a program that is loaded when the computer is turned on and allows to choose the operating system you want to use. Its main features are: -Allows to boot one of up to 9 different operating systems. -Can boot operating systems installed in primary and extended partitions. They can be installed in any hard disk too. -GAG doesn't need its own partition. It installs itself in the first track of the hard disk, which is reserved for this kind of programs. It can also be installed on a floppy disk, without using a hard disk. -Has a timer to boot a default operating system (selectable by the user). -The configuration menu can be protected with a password. Also, each operating system can be protected with its own password. -The program works in graphic mode (needs a VGA or better graphic card), and has a lot of icons. -Hides the primary partitions, allowing the installation of more than one DOS- and/or Windows-version on the same hard disk. -Can exchange disk drives, allowing to boot from the second, third... hard disk an operating system such as MS-DOS. -Has the SafeBoot system, that allows to boot your hard disk even if GAG is accidentally overwrited. DISCLAIMER GAG is a program distributed 'as is', without any warranty of any kind. The autor will not be responsible if there's loss of data in your hard disk or other problem. Use it on your own risk. GAG is distributed under a GPL license. Read COPYING file for more information. ABOUT THE LBA PARTITIONS SUPPORT LBA support has been added in the version 4.0. But it still relies on the BIOS, so you need a recent BIOS version that supports the INT13h extensions. Theses extensions were created in 1998, so if your BIOS was written before that year, GAG wont be able to boot operating systems allocated in a partition beyond the original limit of 8 Gigabytes. INSTALATION Just boot the disk that you have created, read the instructions (by pressing '1'), the FAQ (by pressing '2') and the license (by pressing '3'), if you want. After that, just press 4. The installation program will ask you what keyboard type you have (QWERTY, AZERTY or QWERTZ). Press the number that corresponds to your keyboard. Finally, the installation program will ask you for the language version that you want to install. Choose your own language. Finally, the installer will run GAG itself. Configure it and save it to your hard disk. USING GAG When GAG is started, the main menu will be shown on your screen. There are only two icons: boot from floppy and Setup. Below each description is the key you have to press to select that action. Press S (Setup) and the Setup Menu will be shown, with these options: ADD OPERATING SYSTEM The first option allows to add an operating system installed on one of your hard disks partitions to GAG's boot-menu. . A list with all partitions on your first hard disk is displayed (primary partitions, showed in black, and extended partitions, showed in blue). Choose the partition where the first OS you want to add is located by pressing the letter next to it (A for the floppy disk, B for the first primary partition...). If you have more than one hard disk, you can choose another by pressing 1 to 8. If you choose a partition from a hard disk different than the first, GAG will ask you if you want to swap the disk drives. If you answer YES, each time you boot with that icon a small resident program will be installed, which will swap that drive and the first hard disk, so the operating system will think that the second (or third...) hard disk is the first (C:) and the first is the second (or third...) (D:). This allows you to boot operating systems such as MS-DOS from a disk other than the first. WARNING: the resident program works at BIOS level, so it will not work with operating systems that uses specific drivers to access the hard disk. This resident driver will use up 1 KByte of conventional memory. The resident program is installed even if you choose from a hard disk different than the first the option 'Boot from floppy'. This allows you to create an icon that boots from floppy with the hard disks swapped, which allows you to install that operating systems in theses drives directly, without unmounting them. After that, you have to type a short description (up to 15 characters) of the Operating system. As an example: Linux, OS/2, Windows... Then, you have to type a password to protect this operating system. This password must be typed each time you want to boot this operating system. If you just press RETURN, no password is required. Finally, you choose the icon you want for that O.S. just by pressing a letter from A to Z (A for the first icon, B for the second...) Repeat this for all O.S. you have on your hard disk. DELETE OPERATING SYSTEM. This option deletes the entry of an operating system from GAG. When you press D, a list of the configured operating systems is shown. Press a number from 1 to 9 to eliminate it from the boot-menu. But WARNING: this option DOES NOT DELETE the operating system from the hard disk; it only deletes it from the GAG list, you can add it again. To eliminate an O.S. you have to use FDISK. If you don't want to delete an O.S., you can press ESC to return. BOOT TIMER This option allows us to select the time in seconds that GAG must wait before booting the default O.S. The maximum is 99 seconds. If we have the timer enabled and want to disable it, just press RETURN or type 0. The boot timer will be disabled if you delete the default O.S. After typing the number of seconds, GAG will show you the list of installed operating systems. You have to select the one you want to boot after the timer expires. SETUP PASSWORD With this option we can enter a password to avoid people to change the configuration when GAG is instaled in a 'public' computer. HIDE ALL PARTITIONS When this option is active (marked with an "OK" symbol), GAG will hide all primary partitions except the one that is booting. This avoids DOS/Windows system from interfering with another DOS/Windows installed in the same disk. This is the same behavior than versions lower or equal to 4.1. When this option is inactive, GAG will hide only the lower primary partitions, in order to ensure that the OS can boot, but it still can access the higher numbered partitions. This behavior is the same than GAG 4.2. RETURN With this option we return to the main menu. INSTALL ON FLOPPY With this option GAG and the actual configuration is saved on a floppy. This allows testing GAG without installing it on the hard disk. INSTALL ON HARD DISK This option allow us to save GAG and the actual configuration in the MBR of our hard disk, so it will be loaded every time we turn on the computer. As GAG is larger than 512 bytes, only a small loader is saved in the MBR, and the rest of the code is saved in the first 15 sectors of the first track, which are reserved for this kind of programs. But this has some little problems: -GAG can't be installed on a hard disk with less than 42 sectors per track. If you try to do it, GAG will return an error message. This isn't really a big problem, because today all hard disk have 63 sectors per track. Only very old hard disks (made before the year 1992) can have problems with this. In that case, GAG will return an error ('Disk error') and will not be installed. -Some old BIOSes (before 1992, aprox) can't recognize hard disks with more than 1024 cylinders. In these cases, there are a lot of programs that fixes this. The problem is that these programs store itself in the first track, so GAG is incompatible with them. -Some viruses install itself in the first track too, so if a day, instead of GAG, an O.S. is booted directly, it is possible that there's one in your hard disk. -I strongly recommend to test GAG first from a floppy, and only if it works correctly, install it on the Hard Disk. WARNING: each time you change the options or the list of O.S. to boot, you must use the INSTALL IN FLOPPY or INSTALL IN HARD DISK too, otherwise the changes the will not be saved. WHAT IS SAFEBOOT? SafeBoot is a new feature of GAG that allows to boot your hard disk always. If there is an error when GAG is loading, just reset your computer and hold down the SHIFT, ALT or CNTRL key. Instead of loading GAG, the MBR code will load the last operating system used, so you can reinstall GAG or fix the error. To avoid a 'security hole', SafeBoot is disabled if there is an entry with password. This is because SafeBoot doesn't use passwords, so a malicious person can use it to jump over them. But if you have password only for the Setup option, but not for booting the operating systems, SafeBoot will be available. Remember that you can have a floppy disk with GAG installed and configured for your hard disk, so you can use it as a rescue disk if some problem occurs. ERRORS RETURNED BY GAG WHEN IT BOOTS When GAG boots, it makes some tests. If it finds an error, it shows an error-number on the screen and halts the system. The errors are theses: GAG: 1 BAD SECTOR: there was a read error when trying to load GAG. If you were booting from floppy, reinstall it on another floppy without b...
Kot_Maciek