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Boot PE from USB Flash Drive


FloDiggs

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for the hard drives it's the same way, but I used a Ghost image of the USB image and loaded it on a partition on the USB2 hard drive in a 2Gb partition. I tested it on the Archos ArcDisk20 (20 Gb HD, USB2), Lacie 80MB USB2, and the an IBM 40 Gb External USB2 hard drive (the one they bundle with rapid restore). If you use FAT16, remember there's a 2Gb limit, so don't try to go over it.

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An even easier way is to use the windows cmdcons from your XP cd.

(in this example we'll assume D: is your CD drive, and X you assigned to your usb drive)

Put your XP cd in the cd drive, open a command line, and on the cd run:

"d:\i386\winnt32.exe /cmdcons"

Follow the instructions. This step will put a boot.ini file under the X: hard drive so that you have the option of booting into the command console (PE will be used instead for this instance)

Take the cd out and grab your PE source CD and put it in the drive. Copy d:\i386 and copy it to the usb drive as X:\minint

On your usb key Copy X:\MININT\TXTSETUP.SIF to X:\cmdcons

If your hard drive has ntldr and the other files needed in the root, don't do anything. you're done. If not, follow the directions for copying these files from the PE source and drop them to the usb drive. Go to your bios let it boot prior to your IDE drive and you should be good to go.

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2- formatted the usb stick (fat), options 'create dos startup disk', 'quick format' off;
sorry, to be clear, both options were OFF (startup disk and quick format)
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.

sorry again, i don't understand, so you say i have to do nothing (step 1 was only downloading the util), copy bootpart to usb stick, format the stick (which was step 2, so isn't diskpart and anything else gone now?), now there should be dos on it (how? i didn't copy the files or format it the right way)

other things i tried meanwhile are my own steps with the exception of formatting to ntfs and adding boot.ini file (although i don't know i added the lines right in boot.ini), all with no success...

my own feeling says i just haven't got the combination right, there's probably a simple thing i'm missing while looking the situation over... :(

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cvgeldern,

sorry, I misunderstood your step #2, I read it like

Option 'create dos startup disk'

COMMA

'quick format' OFF

I thought that 'create dos startup disk' was ON!

If you had it off, you DID not have:

1) the partition ACTIVE

2) the DOS boot record written to the partition

i.e. no booting info at all!

If you don't want to reformat with the 'create dos startup disk' enabled, you need to use a partition utility to make sure the partition on the stick is:

1) primary

2) active

You can then boot from a DOS floppy, use SYS to copy the dos system files to the stick and get back at (after step2) in my previous post.

Sorry for the misunderstanding.

jaclaz

P.S.:

Have a look at my post in this thread

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=33030

(and linked other posts) for a simple explanation on how NT based osses boot, including the boot.ini part

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yeah I had the feeling that the SD card method won't work because it's an adaptation of the usb universal storage driver, and not a "true" usb storage driver. I tried this with a cruser 256mb sd card/usb and it did fail. Looks like it has to be a true usb key.

As for the tutorial, please give me time, I'm dealing with a lot of relatives at my place and one cousin already downloaded enough pr0n/malware/spyware that I'm going out of my mind. I'll try to do it over the holidays, maybe as a pdf and host it off of one of my servers for all to use. :thumbup

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  • 1 month later...

This might be good (or bad $$) news:

http://www.prime-expert.com/flashboot/features.php

FlashBoot is a tool that makes USB disks bootable. It was specially designed to work with USB Flash devices. It is used to reformat flash disk (that's optional) and transfer system files to it. You have many options for your choice:

transfer DOS kernel only (you may get the files from installed Windows 9x, from Windows 9x setup folder, or use built-in FreeDOS)

convert floppy disk to USB Flash disk (a diskette or an image file may be used)

convert a bootable CD-ROM to USB Flash disk (again images are supported). There are some technical difficulties with supporting any type of CD-ROM here, see details below. But there should be no troubles with the most real file cases. You may convert Knoppix and EBCD, for instance.

create Windows NT/2000/XP password recovery disk

create disk with NT/2000/XP bootloader. It would be useful when you have mistakenly configured it, and boot.ini file was left on unreachable disk (NTFS).

duplicate USB flash disk. Just creates a copy of existing disk USB flash disk, different sizes of source and destination medias are OK.

Types of convertible CD-ROMs include so-called 1.44-floppy emulation bootable CD-ROMs and no-emulation CD-ROMs based on ISOLinux.

FlashBoot is designed to be compatible with all types of bootable USB Flash disks, i.e. it is not binded to Transend, Kingston, HP, or to any other particular manufacturer of USB Flash disks.

BUT:
The price of full-featured version of FlashBoot is 50 euro, that's about 66 USD by current exchange rate.

jaclaz

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Don't pay for it, just wait a bit. Server Sp1 will release and anyone with access to the OPK will get a copy of formatufd.exe, which creates bootable Usb Flash devices.

I actually booted my computer from a USB link to my Nikon camera (formatted the compact flash card in there with formatufd).

It was kinda cool. :)

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  • 2 weeks later...

HI Guys,

You might want to check our this thread on booting BartPE from USB Flash Drives:

http://www.911cd.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=10806

Using Files from the Windows 2003 Server Beta (RAMDRIVE.SYS and SETUPLDR.BIN) it is apparently possible to use a RAMDISK loader to copy the PE Image into memory and boot it from there.

This avoids the issues when PE resets the USB port and crashes the boot process.

Kind Regards

Simon

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I've tried everything suggested here more than once and I still am unable to get BartPE or WinPE to boot from my usb SanDisk cruzer micro which is 512mb. Does anyone have or could some capture a ghost image or image their stick and contact me. Thanks!

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  • 3 weeks later...

I just found this:

This part deals with a problem that the HP utility has; it sets the partition ID of the partition it creates to HEX code 'e', which means "W95 FAT16 LBA"; this doesn't work on many machines because the BIOS expects HEX code '6' ("FAT16"), like for instance, all three of my machines. The goal of this part is to change the partition ID. Historically this has proven the hardest part of this whole webpage for some users, so I've spent almost a full week working out how to make it all possible without having to download and install Linux. Basically, I couldn't find a windows-native utility that allows you to change the partition ID of a USB keyfob, *while still booted in Windows*. Read on...

here:

http://fuzzymunchkin.dyndns.org/tdot/usbkeyfob/index.php3

If this is the problem, you can change the partition type with tools and methods you can find here:

http://therdcom.com/asm/mbr/BootToolsRefs.htm

or using mbrfix:

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=30378

http://www.911cd.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=10956

to copy the MBR to a file, then hexedit it and save it back.

jaclaz

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