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Boot PE from USB Flash Drive


FloDiggs

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Well with the key I've created I've tested them successfully on these systems (due to my work environment, I'm responsible for ensuring compatibility). The keys I used was a 2Gb Lexar Jumpdrive Pro, 1Gb Viking USB2, 512mb Viking USB2

It worked on the following systems:

IBM: T30, X31, T40, T41, T42, X40, M50, S50, Zpro, Mpro

Dell: D400, D600, Inspiron 8000, X300, Sx270, sx 280, and a few other desktop systems

This also worked on a handful of tablets that I could get, including Acer, Motion Computing, Fujitsu, Toshiba, and the Compaq/HP ones.

The biggest trick is that you really have to check the BIOSes carefully. Some will allow boot order to put USB ahead of others. However, on ones such as Dell, you have to plug the USB key in PRIOR to booting cold, then go in to the bios, and the key shows up as a hard drive. Bring the key higher up on the hard drive boot up list so that it boots BEFORE the actual IDE/SCSI/SATA drive that has the actual OS, and it will boot to the key no problem.

I've thrown this thing at every **** machine I could find (including my homebrew machines) and it worked fine as long as it supports USB boot. As long as it supports USB boot it'll work fine since it boots exactly as it would from a hard drive due to the ntldr which it expects on XP based installs.

Hope this helps!

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one last thing, to get SATA/SCSI drivers in PE, just follow the guide posted somewhere here earlier, and borrow the drivers and procedure from the mass storage driver packs for a quick fix with all the sys files and the appropriate inf updates. :)

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SD card? This should be interesting. Just make sure its 180 mb.

Anyone know if there's a utility out there that'll allow multi-booting / dual booting of WinPE and DOS on a usb key/hard drive? I know there's there's a nice one for CD called Ultimate Boot CD which lets you boot to any img file. Some guy out there made a sick CD which boots into PE, DOS, ERD Commander, BartPE all from one CD. I'm trying to do something similar but with just WinPE and DOS.

I know there's the hard way to do it with a laptop (since I did it before). Essentially the "hard" way to do it is take a laptop with a floppy drive, and yank out the hard drive (yes this you have to do). Take a bootable floppy say DOS, and boot the computer up with the USB key in it (formatted). Boot to DOS on the floppy, and run fdisk on the usb key, make partition active.

This is what the HP utility does, skipping this tedious step.

From there, you can format c: /s to get it bootable in dos.

(that was the old way to make bootable usb keys)

To get the dual boot, yank the hard drive out, run winxp console recovery (winnt32.exe /cmdcons) which will set it up nicely for you.

Then follow my directions to get WinPE on the usb (renaming i386 to minint and all that wonderful stuff).

I guess my real question is, if there is any util or bootloader that'll allow you to boot off dos img files so that I don't have to do this tedious process? Kinda overkill to have windows dual boot on a usb key. LOL

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One last thing... I forgot to mention that WinPE CAN'T boot from USB1, it must boot from USB2, due to the issue where WinPE will actually RESET the connections on USB1 as it finds devices (thus severing it's own kernel). This is why you will get failures. I have confirmed this with Microsoft's own PE dev team. USB2 works fine though.

Also when using the HP format utility set it as FAT not FAT32 nor NTFS or you WILL have issues. ;)

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Saw that this thread was still open, so thought I would comment in and tell you my success.  The PE source I used is the WinPE 2004 (Microsoft OEM issue which is based on WinXP SP2), which has WMI support and parts of the windows firewall built in.

1. Use the HP DriveKey util and format the usb key as FAT16 (no system files)

2. create a folder on the key called "minint" and copy the contents of i386 from your WinPE source into it.

3. in the WinPE source folder i386, copy "setupldr.bin" to the root of your usb key, rename this file to "ntldr" (no extension)

4. copy from the WinPE source folder i386 the file "ntdetect.com" to the root of your usb key.

Make sure your bios supports booting from usb.  Some computer's bios, especially dell or IBM, you have to plug the usb key in PRIOR to booting.  Go to the bios, select the boot order, click on hard drives, and expand the folder.  Under there you'll see both your hard drive, and the USB key.  Make sure you give priority to the USB key over the hard drive.  Save settings and reboot.

This should allow you to boot up in WinPE nicely.  You can also add shells like XPE or pull's BartPE's menu thingy and load all the tools from there.

Just an FYI - not a good idea to use this method to flash the bios of your computer.  Use a DOS based key to do that.

per my original post...

In other words, on the PE cd, copy /i386/ntdetect.com and /i386/setupldr.bin to the root of the usb key. Then rename setupldr.bin to "ntldr" (no extension)

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I have found 3 of them:

sp27213 HP Windows Format Utility for USB Drive Key or DiskOnKey

sp27214 DOS-based Format Utility for HP Drive Key or DiskOnKey USB Device

sp27608 Windows-based Format Utility for HP Drive Key or DiskOnKey USB Device

(substitutes 27213)

Just make a google search for sp27xxx where x is the number and you will find the hp page for download.

Dell has a utility to make their keys bootable. R69131.EXE

ftp://ftp.dell.com/rmsd/R69131.exe

There is another one from hp called

cp004916

that includes syslinux.

And yet another one apparently from Smart Modular, known to be Lexar compatible, called

usb_memory_boot_setup.exe

(just google for the filename)

jaclaz

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i got a jetflash 512mb usb2 key in bios configured as hispeed and am trying to get bartpe working.

i did the following (using instructions in this thread):

- downloaded and installed the hp utility (SP27608.exe);

- formatted the usb stick (fat), options 'create dos startup disk', 'quick format' off;

- i copied the by pebuilder created build dir to the usb stick;

- renamed the i386 dir to minint;

- copied ntdetect.com from minint dir to root dir;

- copied setupldr.bin from minint dir to root dir;

- renamed setupldr.bin in root dir to ntldr (no extension);

- copied winbom.ini from minint dir to root dir.

whatever bios setting i use, emulate usb as floppy/hdd/cdrom/auto and setting the first boot priority to the usb device, it won't boot.

i think it has something to do with the partition not being active, wrong bootsector or no mbr, because if i use the in this thread mentioned other tool from hp (cp004916.exe) with the ability to create a linux boot disk, it boots from usb into the linux which the hp tool installed on the stick. at least proof booting from usb must be possible! for the linux boot, whatever usb emulation i set in the bios, it boots everytime!

so it has to be something with the formatting or files copied wrong or whatever.

please help!

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i did the following (using instructions in this thread):

1- downloaded and installed the hp utility (SP27608.exe);

2- formatted the usb stick (fat), options 'create dos startup disk', 'quick format' off;

3- i copied the by pebuilder created build dir to the usb stick;

4- renamed the i386 dir to minint;

5- copied ntdetect.com from minint dir to root dir;

6- copied setupldr.bin from minint dir to root dir;

7- renamed setupldr.bin in root dir to ntldr (no extension);

8- copied winbom.ini from minint dir to root dir.

If you did EXACTLY the above, you have a boot record that tries to load the DOS COMMAND.COM and you miss the boot.ini file.

You can do it again, this time:

after step 1, copy to the USB stick BOOTPART, which you can find here:

http://www.winimage.com/bootpart.htm

after step 2, reboot and see if it boots to the DOS now on the USB stick.

If yes, reboot normally.

-copy the files as in steps 3 to 8 WITHOUT deleting the DOS files and/or bootpart.

- reboot to the DOS on the USB stick

- use BOOTPART to fix boot record AND generate BOOT.ini

(read the info on BOOTPART help txt file as you were trying to dual-boot DOS and Windows NT)

- try re-booting from the USB stick

- if ok, you can now delete the DOS files on the stick and remove the boot. ini DOS entry (if really needed, personally I would leave it there and add NTFS4DOS for recovery purposes)

(or you can format it NTFS as suggested above)

jaclaz

P.S. the direct link muevelonyc gave is for SP27213, the one for the updated version SP27608 is this:

http://h18007.www1.hp.com/support/files/hp...load/21284.html

PLEASE NOTE HOW HP, to simplify things always give a page name that is similar(but different) from the actual SP you are looking for! :whistle:

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