GTOOOOOH Posted July 31, 2007 Share Posted July 31, 2007 Much like a JO.SYS for CD/DVD... how would I have my USB stick offer a choice when booting? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zorphnog Posted July 31, 2007 Share Posted July 31, 2007 (edited) I use pxelinux, part of the syslinux suite, to offer different boot options from pxe boot (mainly two choices: WinPE 2.0 and WinPE 2005). You could use syslinux to create a bootable floppy on your USB stick with a menu of choices. Check out http://syslinux.zytor.com/faq.php. Edited July 31, 2007 by zorphnog Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GTOOOOOH Posted July 31, 2007 Author Share Posted July 31, 2007 What I've got so far is just setting the USB to boot after the hard drive, and selecting the usb out of boot menu from the bios before the hard drive loads. After it does PE, it loads off the hard drive. I'd still like to try a more elegant solution. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tap52384 Posted July 31, 2007 Share Posted July 31, 2007 Here is a link to a page that explains how to boot WinPE 2.0 from the USB flash drive:http://www.svrops.com/svrops/articles/winvistape2.htmI have used this myself and it works beautifully. This webpage explains how to reduce the size of your WinPE 2.0 WIM file significantly:http://blogs.msdn.com/winpe/archive/2007/0...mple-steps.aspxThis is good for smaller USB drives.Personally, I also add Portable ImgBurn, ImageX, and Notepad2 to the image (do this when the wim file is mounted).How to boot WinPE 2.0 from the hard drive? That would require changing Windows XP's bootloader to Vista's, and I have been unsuccessful thus far. However, you can definitely boot XP using Vista's Bootloader, so it should definitely be possible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zorphnog Posted August 1, 2007 Share Posted August 1, 2007 What I've got so far is just setting the USB to boot after the hard drive, and selecting the usb out of boot menu from the bios before the hard drive loads. After it does PE, it loads off the hard drive. I'd still like to try a more elegant solution.I would set USB to be the first device in the boot order followed by HDD. Put the SYSLINUX boot loader on the USB. Using the built-in menu for SYSLINUX you can make two boot options: USB or HDD. Set a default boot option, perhaps HDD, and a timeout for the menu, say 10-15 seconds.Now, if your USB drive is plugged in, the SYSLINUX menu will boot and wait for user input until the timeout expires. If there is not user input, the system boots to HDD. If the user specifies to boot the USB drive then it is booted. If the USB drive is not plugged in at all, then the BIOS boots to HDD. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GTOOOOOH Posted August 1, 2007 Author Share Posted August 1, 2007 Zorph, I'll give it a try. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GTOOOOOH Posted August 1, 2007 Author Share Posted August 1, 2007 Man, I'm lost with syslinux... I made a dos boot floppy as instructed, added the syslinux.com to the root of a: and ran syslinux a: it added LDLINUX.sys to the root of A:... but when I try to boot from a: it says could not find kernel image : linux... and I end up at a boot: prompt.This doesn't really seem as easy as I had hoped... I would LOVE for it to work as you suggested, but I'm a total noob with linux. I'm also not sure if I should be using the win32 version or not? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zorphnog Posted August 1, 2007 Share Posted August 1, 2007 Well, I've used syslinux before, but not for this particular situation. Let me see if I can figure out some steps for you to follow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GTOOOOOH Posted August 1, 2007 Author Share Posted August 1, 2007 Yeah I don't know how this will work because to boot into PE, I thought you had to boot using a specific boot sector that then points to the bootmgr file... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chintue Posted September 8, 2007 Share Posted September 8, 2007 Hi Guys,I understand (quite well) the process for making the bootable USB key and putting BartPE / WinPE on it. I also understand the necessity of being able to boot from USB via BIOS support. However, I am trying to figure out if there is any boot CD that exists (or that can be made) such that I can boot from it and then have it load the BartPE envrionment on the USB drive. There is something that does this for Linux, inparticular one example is called WakePUP. However, I am not smart enough to being to unlock how it works, or how to make it work for BartPE. This would allow me to run BartPE from USB on older machines that do not support USB booting in their BIOS. Since I repair a lot of machines for work, I actually run into this a lot, and it would please me to no end to be able to do this.I'd like to think of this boot CD as a "jump start" for the USB boot, and a jumpstart vs not being able to do it at all is practically miraculous.Thank you in advance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaclaz Posted September 8, 2007 Share Posted September 8, 2007 Unfortunately, there is not (yet) a solution for motherboards that do not support USB in BIOS. Do read this:http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?sho...650&hl=BCDLAlso, DO NOT double post:http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showto...14316&st=26See rules:http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=18408#2.aSince you are a technician, you might want to try with an add-on USB card, there have been interesting reports from Dietmar about this in the "monstruous" thread here:http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=14181(sorry I cannot give you a specific link, and the thread is 100 pages long )jaclaz Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chintue Posted September 8, 2007 Share Posted September 8, 2007 Uhm sorry, WakePUP doesnt seem to need support from the bios. it loads a driver and then passes control over to the USB image. Care to rephrase your response? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaclaz Posted September 8, 2007 Share Posted September 8, 2007 (edited) Well, wakepup is Linux, BartPE is NT based.There is not a program or driver (yet) able to "hook" the USB stick during second stage of NT booting if there is not support from BIOS.In other words, you can have a (for example using grub4dos) DOS based "kickstart" floppy, but as soon as you get past the BOOT.INI choices (if using NTLDR) or SETUPLDR.BIN starts, you will get a STOP 0x0000007b - Inaccessible boot device.The topic is discussed widely in the given links.The alternative is using RAMdisk booting, but usually it is not an option on elder machines, that simply lack the needed amount of RAM.Maybe with a VERY small build jaclaz Edited September 8, 2007 by jaclaz Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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