ESTool not working?

[watercooled]

Hi again. I've been trying to use Samsung's ESTool on my PC (bootable .iso version since I don't have a floppy drive) and I get this error:

Sorry about the flash but I think it's readable. I've tried it on another PC and it works fine. Googled for the error and not found much about it - any idea what's causing it? PC specs in the list to the left of this post.
Thanks again

[4444405]

can you type the error out in this page? I cannot make out from the pic what is wrong.

[watercooled]

OK sorry about the quality, it says:

Can't open CD driver CD001. SHSUCDX can't install.

(that blue box here)

your ram drive is loaded at C:
Out of memory error.
Bad command or filename.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
SAMSUNG HDD UTILITY
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

[CaptainCrash]

I had a similar problem booting from the ESTool ISO, and after a great deal of deliberation, I came to the conclusion that "it doesn't work."

In the end I just gave up and connected a floppy drive, but if you don't have one kicking around you could create a bootable DOS USB drive as per the instructions here, and copy the ESTool executable from the ISO to it.

[watercooled]

Ah, good idea booting from a flash drive. I'll give it a shot. Thanks

Edit: Works perfectly, thanks very much!

[breuner]

Can't open CD driver CD001. SHSUCDX can't install.

(that blue box here)

your ram drive is loaded at C:
Out of memory error.
Bad command or filename.

I had the same problem with the Samsung ES-Tool CD. After changing the BIOS setting of the CD drive IDE mode to "compatible", all errors magically disappeared and the ES-Tool worked just fine.

[Drag]

hey guys... I have the same problem with the bootable cd. I dont think i can do the dvd drives IDE mode thing coz mine is a SATA.

but what i want to ask is how to get the bootable flash drive working?? I tried what the link said to do and did the win98 bootable flash. that didnt work. didnt boot and the flash drive was empty. i also tried putting the EStools.exe to the win98 folder and making it a bootable flash. that didnt work either. (also ended up empty)

I did all that after trying to give the DOS system file location as the EStools.exe's folder but that gave an error saying that it was not a valid DOS system file....

What should i do?? please help me.
thanks

[watercooled]

After following the instructions to make the flash drive bootable it's normal for it to look empty in explorer. Just copy ESTool.exe (the one for floppy disks, not the iso) to the drive then boot from it. Bear in mind some PCs don't support booting from USB and even if it does you will probably need to change boot order in BIOS or hold a specified F key during boot to select boot device. When you get to the command prompt, type estool.exe and hit enter to start the program.

[CaptainCrash]

Also bear in mind that with some motherboards (usually more recent ones) you need to specify your bootable USB drive as a *hard drive*. For instance, my Abit IP-35 Pro gives you the option to specify a USB drive as the first boot device in the main "Advanced BIOS Features" menu, but this doesn't work with a flash drive - you need to set "Hard Disk" as the first boot device, then go into the "Hard Disk Boot Priority" submenu, and bump the USB flash drive to the top. Needless to say, the first time I encountered this "feature" there was a fair amount of colourful language before I eventually worked it out.

You *might* be able to use a SATA CD drive anyway if your disk controller is operating in IDE emulation mode as opposed to AHCI or RAID modes, as in the suggestion by "breuner" above, but I think the ESTool ISO's embedded DOS CD driver is probably a bit restricted in the number of drives supported (I've had no success with it either way, on several different systems).

[Drag]

Thank you watercooled and CaptainCrash.. finally got it working. My MB did specify the USB drive as a HD... never would have guessed it.
It ran and gave some errors on my HD. looks like i'm screwed anyway.

[ianmcw]

I've been trying to get ESTools to work on my Dell XPS420 desktop for ages, but finally managed it. I used the instructions above (thanks guys) to create a bootable flash drive, then copied ESTool.exe to it as suggested. When I tried to boot to it I got MBR errors. Eventually I discovered that the problem was that in the BIOS I had 'virtualization' turned on. I simply selected the BIOS option: Performance - Virtualization to off, then I could boot from USB and run ESTool.exe without problems.