CCBoot 
User Manual 
 
Youngzsoft 2019 

Quick Start 
 

   
  

Preparation for Quick Start 

Please use Windows 2008/2012 R2 Enterprise Edition 64 bit if you plan to use Windows 
Server OS as CCBoot server system platform. 

Please use 64 bit version of OS, if you plan to use other OS than Windows Server OS as 
CCBoot server system platform. (Windows 7, 8, 8.1, 10 are recommended, Windows XP 
and Window Server 2003’s support is ended by Microsoft so it is not recommended) 

1. All hard disks should be formatted as NTFS. When format drives, please set "Allocation 
unit size" as "Default" for server OS system drive, and set "Allocation unit size" as "32K" 
for other drives. 
2. Allocate hard disks for image, game (raid 0) and write back (2-3 hard disks). If you have 
an SSD disk, please format it to only one partition for cache. How to allocation hard 
disks? Please refer to S
​ erver Hardware Requirements​. 
3. Make sure that there is no other DHCP services on the LAN. Especially, please disable 
the DHCP service in the router. 
4. If you are using Windows 7 and above OS, please make sure you have enabled the 
"Enable write caching on the device" for every disk 

How to do "Enable write caching on the device" on disk? 

1. Click Start, right-click Computer and select Manage. 

2. In the left panel, click Device Manager. 
3. Expand Disk Drives and right-click on one of the disks. 
4. Click the Policies tab and check "Enable Write Caching on the device" to enable (it’s a 
default setting of Windows 7). 
5. To further improve the disk performance (needless to say, the higher the risk now), 
check the box "Turn off Windows write-cache buffer flushing on the device". 
6. Press "OK" to save (Figure 1-1). 
  

Figure 1-1 

1. Implement step 3 - 6 for other disks. 

 
 
 
  

 
Install CCBoot Server 

Download the latest version of CCBoot Setup Package from website. 

Installation process takes about a minute. 

Note: CCBoot trial works for 30 Days for 5 users. There are no other limitation in 
functions. 

If you try to boot more than 5 PCs in trial then clients will not be stable and may crash. 
5 PC trial is most stable, any more you want to boot, please purchase license. 

1. Open CCBoot setup, select “CCBoot Server installation” and click “Next” button 
(Figure 1). 

Figure 1 

2. Select Destination Location and click “Next” button (Figure 2). 

  

Figure 2 

3. Click “Next” button to continue (Figure 3).  

  

Figure 3 

4. Check and uncheck as required and click “Next” button (Figure 4). 
  

Figure 4 

5. Click Install button to start installation (Figure 5). 

  

Figure 5 

6. Once installation is complete, check the “Launch CCBoot” checkbox and click “Finish” 
button (Figure 6). 
  

Figure 6 

7. On the pop-up dialog box, click "Yes" button to reboot your server (Figure 7). 

Figure 7 

8. Once the server is rebooted, double click the CCBoot icon on the desktop to open 
the CCBoot main UI (Figure 8). 
  

Figure 8 

9. If you have purchased license already then lets register the license. Click "Help" 
menu then cboot "About and Register" option (Figure 9). 
  

Figure 9 

10. Now, on the "About CCBoot" dialog box, enter your license and click "Ok" (Figure 
10). 

 
  

Figure 10 

11, click on the “DHCP settings” tab in “CCBoot Options’ windows and Setup the DHCP 
settings as per your network configuration (Figure 11). 

Note:​ The CCBoot Server should have a static IP in the LAN. Do not set CCBoot server 
to get IP from DHCP. 

 
Figure 11 

13. To set disk, go to “Disk Manager”, right click on unused disk and select “Edit Disk” 
(Figure 12). 
  

Figure 12 

Note: ​Do not use for disks letters A and B, because by default Windows use drive letter 
A for floppy drive and drive letter B is for Zip drive, therefore, the disks will not be 
displayed in CCBoot. 

14. Select disk type, set RAM Cache, SSD Cache and click “OK” (Figure 13). 
  

Figure 13 

Note: 

You can set game disk, image disk, writeback disk etc in a same way. 

Refer to our wiki : S

​ erver Cache Settings 

Also Refer to our wiki : A

​ dd boot image ​to set image disk for booting client  

  

CCBoot Server Ports 

CCBoot uses the following ports - 67 (DHCP), 69 (TFTP), 3260 (iSCSI), 1000 (Image 
Upload),8001 (Service Control). Please open these ports on the server firewall to make 
sure client PC can diskless boot successfully. For CCBoot v3.0, you also need to open 
port 66. v3.0 using port 66 as DHCP backup. And after v3.0 20130871,CCBoot use port 
4011 instead of port 66 as DHCP backup. 

Note: In order to make sure that client's PCs can diskless boot well, please shut down 
the other DHCP services on the LAN, especially the DHCP service in the router.You can 
  

be rest assured that after you disabled other DHCP services on the LAN,it will not affect 
other computers' connecting to the Internet, because CCBoot will provide DHCP service 
which could also be used by the computers which boot from HDD.   
  

Install CCBoot Client 

Preparing Client 

1. Choose one client PC as master PC used for uploading boot image. 

2. Attach a hard disk on the PC. 
3. Delete all partitions firstly. Then allocate a small MBR partition about 40G size and leave the 
rest unallocated. Format the 40G partition with NTFS.  

Note: If you want to use Windows 7 or Windows 8 as client OS, when installing OS, you 
need to connect the boot disk to the SATA 0 interface of the motherboard. If you are not 
sure which is the SATA 0 interface, you can remove other hard disks on the client, just leave 
one HDD for installing OS. The reason is that, on Windows 7 and Windows 8, the boot data 
will always be written to the hard disk which is connected to the SATA0 interface. If the HDD 
on the SATA 0 interface is not the boot disk, the client will fail to boot from that image. 
Because CCBoot only uploads the boot disk data. 

1. Install Windows XP/ 7/10 on this partition. Install only NIC driver, main board chipset driver 
and other low level drivers on this master PC. 
2. Install the latest patches of Windows even the service patches are installed. (DO NOT skip 
this step) 
3. 3. Download and Install M
​ icrosoft Visual C++ 2015 Redistributable Update 3 RC 
(x86 and x64 versions). 
4. If ip is dynamic, set static ip in image. 

Why to set? 

a) If gateway is set in image, it always use that gateway. 

b) If gateway is not set in the image, the client will use the gateway settings from 
CCBoot server and set gateway by dynamic route. 

How to set? 

1. Open Network and Internet setting, click on "Change Adapter Option". 

2. Go to properties of network you use. 
3. Once properties window is opened. Select IPV4 and go to properties (Figure 1). 
  

Figure 1 

4. Now set static ip, and gateway and click on "OK" button (Figure 2). 
  

Figure 2 

 
2. Client Application Installation 

1. Open setup file, select “CCBoot Client installation” and click on “Next” button (Figure 
3). 
  

Figure 3 

2. Select start menu folder and click on “Next” button (Figure 4). 
  

Figure 4 

3. Click on “Install” button to continue installation.(Figure 5). 

  

Figure 5 

4. Check launch to launch and click on “Finish” button (Figure 6). 

  

Figure 6 

5. Once "Finish" button is clicked. Disable UAC and click on "OK" button (Figure 7). 
  

Figure 7 

6. Once UAC is disabled, select NIC from dropdown and click on "OK" button (Figure 8). 

Figure 8 
  

Note: 

if your ip is dynamic, then the window below pop up and stop installation (Figure 9). 

so set static ip before installation as mention above and start installation again. 

Figure 9 

7. Once NIC is choosed, select NIC drivers and click on "OK" button (Figure 10). 

 
  

Figure 10 

8. Once NIC drivers are selected, you need to reboot your PC (Figure 11), 

Figure 11 

9. After the installation is completed, UI of the ccboot client (Figure 12). 

Figure 12 

 
  

Now you can upload image. To upload image, refer to U

​ pload Windows 10 Image. 

1. Diskless Boot Client 

On CCBoot server, double click PC101 to open the master PC’s properties dialog box, 
uncheck "Enable Upload Image" and click "Save". 

Shutdown the master PC. Remove the HDD or disable HDD in BIOS (This step is 
necessary especially for WIndows 7). Set it firstly boot from LAN (or network, PXE rom, 
or some similar settings) in BIOS settings, so that it will start diskless boot. 

Boot the master PC; you will see the following picture. 

Figure 1-1 

The first time diskless booting the master PC, you can modify its computer name and IP 
address as you wish. And then press Enter key. The client will reboot again. 
  

Figure 1-2 

Now it will diskless boot successfully. 

  

Figure 1-3 

Note: For the first time you diskless boot Windows 7, you will get a startup list (also 
called "safe mode", it only happens when uploading image), normally just like has not 
shuting down computer. That’s just because we uploaded the Windows 7 image during 
its running. Bellow is how to prevent from this situation for future booting. 

1. On CCBoot server, double click PC101 to open the master PC’s properties dialog box, 
check "Keep Write-back" and click "Save". Boot the client diskless. 
2. Select "Start Windows 7 Normally" to boot. 
3. When this client boot is OK, shut it down.  
4. On the CCBoot server, double click PC101, press "Save to Image" in this client's 
properties and uncheck "Keep Write-back". 
5. Now, clients can boot Windows 7 from this image normally. 

Additional Instruction 
  

If the image you have uploaded from the master PC can be used to diskless boot 
Windows XP/7 for all the other client PCs, please install other drivers (display, sound 
etc), Windows updates, and various application level software’s to the image by update 
image. 

If you want to diskless boot Windows XP with a single image for client's computers with 
different hardware specifications, you need to implement PnP. Please refer to this 
article for more details -​Create a Single Image for All Specifications​. 

If the diskless booting stop at the Windows Logo for a long time and report BSOD error 
code such as 0x0000007b at last, please refer to ​Stuck in Windows Logo​. 

1. Update CCBoot older version to new 

1 Background 

The installation of the new version over the older one is straight forward. Just need to keep few 
things in check. Here is an example of updating from version 20160201. 

Here are the settings that is in version 20160201 (see Figure 1-1). 
  

Figure 1-1 

2 Installation 

Download the latest version of CCBoot installation package from our website. 

1) Execute the installation package, you will be asked if you want to uninstall old version or not (see 
Figure 1-2). 

 
  

Figure 1-2 

1) Click “Yes”. The program will uninstall the old version in the background. Once done, the setup 
wizard will open (see Figure 1-3). 

Figure 1-3 

2) Continue with the installation till you are prompt that the folder exists. Click “Yes” button to 
continue (see Figure 1-4). 
  

Figure 1-4 

3) Continue with the installation till you reach the last dialog, tick the “Launch CCBoot” checkbox 
and click “Finish” button (see Figure 1-5). 
  

Figure 1-5 

4) Go to “​ Help” and click on “About and Register” (Figure 1-6).

  

Figure 1-6

Enter the license from the email you got from the company and click on “Ok” button and it will be

registered (Figure 1-7).

Figure 1-7

 
  

3 Adding images and settings up disks. 

1) Once installation and sign in is complete, I will open CCBoot Interface. One the “CCBoot” lock 
dialog box click unlock to unlock CCBoot UI (see Figure 1-9). 

Figure 1-9 

2) Options and DHCP will be retained from the old version and does not need to be changed. But, 
disks need to be configured.Click on the “Disk Manager” from the sidebar, all the disk are in unused 
state(see Figure 1-10). 
  

Figure 1-10 

3) (Refer to Disk Management section of Quick Start Wiki.) Double click the disk to open its settings, 
specify the ‘Disk type’, ‘RAM cache’ and click OK. Setup image, writeback and game disk. After done 
you will see (Figure 1-11) 
  

Figure 1-11 

4) Now, let’s setup image file for clients to boot from. Click on the “Image Manager”, the click “Add 
image” icon, it will open “Image” dialog, type the image name and click the ‘Browse’ button (as Figure 
1-12). 
  

Figure 1-12 

5) Once image is chosen, click the “OK” button to add the image to CCBoot (see Figure 1-13). 
  

Figure 1-13 

4 Client Settings 

One the client we have to set two things, Image and Cache. 

1) Select all the client and open the “Client Details” dialog box, there click on image drop down 
menu and select the previously created image (see Figure 1-14). 
  

Figure 1-14 

2) Once image is selected, check the enable Cache checkbox and set client RAM cache, once done 
click “OK” button to save the settings (see Figure 1-15). 
  

Figure 1-15 

  

3) Congratulation, you have updated to latest version. We are always improving our software so 
stay tuned for future releases. 

Add boot image 

1. Open CCBoot UI and click on the "Image Manager" node. 

2. Right click on the right pane and choose "Add Image" (Figure 1) 
  

Figure 1 

3. Image dialog box opens, in "Image Name" box enter the name of the image and then click browse 

button " ... " (Figure 2) 

  

Figure 2 

4. Now, browse to where you image is and select it and click "Open" button (Figure 3). 
  

Figure 3 

5. Now, in the image dialog box, you will see the "Image Path", click "OK" button to add the image 

(Figure 4). 
  

Figure 4 

6. Now, in the image manager, you will see the image you just added (Figure 5). 
  

Figure 5 

You can add many images in CCBoot and assign them to client. 

To assign the image, double click the client and then in "Client Details" click the "Image" drop down 

and select your image "Windows 7" and click "OK" (Figure 6). 
  

Figure 6 

You can assign any image to client that you have added in the "Image Manager". 

Note: 

1) In some cases, if image is not located on game disk it can cause issues with booting. 
So please move your image to image disk. 

2) Auto refresh client desktop icons when boot up. 

3) Image that does not exist appear in red color in the image list (Figure 7). 
  

Figure 7 

4) When the image disk is full or going to be full, it warns by appearing red in disk list 
(Figure 8). 
  

Figure 8 

   
  

Install CCBoot step by step 

Prepare Server 

1. CPU: 4 cores Intel CPU 

2. RAM : 32 GB 

3. Hard Disk: 3 x 2T SATA hard disks and 4 x 256G SSD disks (recommended to use Samsung Evo SSD 
for best performance and reliability) 

a. 1 SATA HDD, split to two partitions. one for Server OS installation and one for CCBoot 
installation. 

b. 1 SSD for boot images. 

c. 2 SATA HDDs in R
​ AID0 ​for game disks, refer R
​ AID0 setup  

d. 2 SSD for writeback disk  

e. 1 SSD for SSD cache  

4. The motherboard should have at least 8 SATA ports as at least 7 disks are used at any given time. 

5. Casing: Any casing big enough to accommodate your boards and hard disk. Typically and EATX 
casing is recommended as it has more hard disk bays and cooling option with fans. 

6. Power Supply - True rated 500-650 Watts PSU for best reliability and power delivery for your 
system 

7. You need to format all disk in 64K allocation unit, except the OS HDD. 

8. ​Windows Server 2008 R2​ enterprise. 

Last but not list: an UPS for your system in case of power failure, to prevent the server from shutting 
down while in operation. - 1.2 KVA or higher rated UPS for longer backup 

If you prefer to use branded servers then here are some recommendations 

Dell Servers 
  

1. ​Dell PowerEdge T330 Tower Servers 

2. ​Dell PowerEdge T430 Tower Servers 

Super Micro Servers 

1. ​SuperServer 5018D8-AR12L​ - 1U Rack Server with up to 16 SATA3 port and up to 128 GB RAM 

2. ​SuperServer E200-8D​ - Mini PC system with 6 SATA3 up to 128 GB RAM 

Notes:  

a. CCBoot support M.2 SSD as well. You can use it for SSD cache or image disk depending on the 
requirement 

b. If you are using SSD for game disk, then there is no need to use SSD Cache disk. 

c. Its recommended to use same size SSD for writeback disk. Also, do not use combination of HDD 
and SSD for writeback disk. The performance will not be as good as will SSD only writeback disk. 

d. DO NOT in any case use partition for disk in CCBoot. It will lower the performance as well as wear 
out your disks faster. Boot time will be slow for clients as well 

e. ​CCBoot trial works for 30 Days for 5 users. There are no other limitation in functions. If you 
try to boot more than 5 PCs in trial then clients will not be stable and may crash. 5 PC trial is 
most stable, any more you want to boot, please purchase license. 

Notes: Do not install any antivirus program on the CCBoot server as antivirus they scan disk 
while the server is idle and cause the clients to lag. So it is not recommended to install antivirus 
on the CCBoot server. 

Refer "​Server Cache Settings​" to set the server disks, RAM cache and SSD cache 

   
  

CCBoot installation and configuration 

Download super image 

1. Download and install u

​ torrent​. 

2. Go to o
​ ur forum​ for windows 7 super image or download the ​torrent file 

3. Download Windows 7 image. 

4. Once the download is finished, then extract the image from the compressed file and copy it to 
your image disk (which you will set later). 

Install CCBoot Server 

Configure client PC for diskless boot 

For new motherboard - 

1. Turn on the client PC and go into the BIOS by pressing "F2 or Del or ESC key 

2. Go to "Advanced" tab, and select the "Integrated Peripherals" option and press "Enter" (Figure 1). 
  

Figure 1 

3. In "Integrated Peripherals", look for "Lan Option ROM" or "Boot from LAN" and then change the 
option to "Enabled". (Figure 2) 
  

Figure 2 

4. After that, go to "Boot" tab and then select "Boot Sequence" or "Boot Priority". 

5. You need to set the "Network" to be the first priority (Figure 3). 
  

Figure 3 

Important: Keep in mind that in new motherboard with UEFI BIOS, you need to set the Boot Mode to 
either “Legacy” or “Legacy+UEFI” in order for the boot to work 

For old motherboard - 

1. Turn on the client PC and go into the BIOS by pressing "F2" or "Del" or "ESC" key 

2. Select "Integrated Peripherals" and press "Enter" key (Figure 4). 

  

Figure 4 

3. Look for “LAN Option ROM” (Figure 5) 

  

Figure 5 

4. Highlight the “Disabled” option beside the “LAN Option ROM” and then change it to “Enabled” 
(Figure 6)  

 
  

Figure 6 

5. Now, “Lan Option ROM” is enabled (Figure 7). 

 
  

Figure 7 

6. Save the BIOS settings and reboot and then enter the BIOS again. 

7. Select “Advanced BIOS Features” option and press "Enter" (Figure 8). 

 
  

Figure 8 

8. In “Advanced BIOS Feature”, highlight and open “Boot Sequence” (Figure 9) 

 
  

Figure 9 

9. In the “Boot Sequence” or “Boot Priorities” make sure that 1st Boot Device is “Network:” (Figure 
10) 

 
  

Figure 10 

10. Once the above settings are set, save bios settings and reboot the client, it will now boot from 
CCBoot 

Updating image and game disk using superclient 

After you have successfully booted you clients, you need to install any application or 
update the windows. So that is performs at 100% capacity. 

Update CCBoot Server and Client application 

We release new version regularly and recommend that when a new version is available, 
you need to update to the latest version as they are more stable and have bug fixes 
and new functions.   
  

Setup your network for CCBoot 

We all have setup the CCBoot server and clients many times but we didn't get it right 
the first time. So, refer our simple layout diagram for CCBoot to setup the CCBoot and 
network right for the first time. 

You can use the following layouts as your base to setup your network for CCBoot. 

Case 1: CCBoot Server with just 1 NIC (Total 1.0 Gbps) 

Figure 1 

 
  

Case 2: CCBoot Server with 2 NICs in Teaming (Total 2.0 Gbps) 

Figure 2 

Case 3: CCBoot Server with 4 NICs in Teaming (Total 4.0 Gbps) 

  

Figure 3 

Case 4: CCBoot Server with 2 switches and 4 NICs in Teaming (Total 4.0 Gbps) 
  

Figure 4 

Notes:  

2 cables in LACP mode allows each switch users to be able to share 4.0 Gbps of 
bandwidth between 2 switches. DO NOT use more than 1 cables without ​LACP 
between the switches. 

You can use 1 cable between the switches if you do not have manageable switch 
however, max usable bandwidth for clients will be 3.0 Gbps only. 

Case 5: Two CCBoot Server with 2 switches with 4 NICs in Teaming on each server 
  

Figure 5 

Notes: 

DO NOT use more than 1 cables without ​LACP​ between the switches. 

Case 6: Two CCBoot Server with 2 switches with 10 Gbps NICs each server 
  

Figure 6 

Notes: 

The switches should have at least 2 x 10gbps ports (can be sfp or RJ45) 

Use this layout when you have more than 100 PCs in same location  

 
  

Difference between CCBoot and CCDisk 

2017/11/06 00:34 

CCBoot is a diskless solution for your computers while CCDisk is a virtual game disk 
server application. 

CCDisk has similar functions as CCBoot but is limited to making Game disk diskless. 

So, the major differences between CCBoot and CCDisk are 

1. CCDisk can not boot clients diskless only provides game disk. 

2. CCDisk requires less number of disks than CCBoot (CCDisk doesnot need image disk 
and separate writeback disk). 

3. CCDisk required less RAM than CCBoot - a 32GB CCDisk server is enough for 100 PCs