Pe2usb: Installing Bartpe To Usb Flash Disk Options

[thibeact]

Ok, I answered my own question.

To make a multiboot USB drive using syslinux as a bootloader:

1. Format your USB drive and install syslinux. Syslinux can be download from http://syslinux.zytor.com/</a> The syslinux.exe is in the /win32 folder
syslinux [usb drive letter]:

2. Create a file named syslinux.cfg on the root of usb drive
the syslinux.cfg contains all the boot options. see http://syslinux.zytor.com/faq.php</a> for how to use.

To add a dos floppy image add the following lines to syslinux.cfg:

CODE

label dos
    kernel memdisk
    append initrd=dos.ima

- then also copy the memdisk file from the syslinux download.

To add XP PE2USB as described in thread : http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=10806</a>
- add the following lines to syslinux.cfg:

CODE

label XP
    kernel pe2usb.bss

- copy the file pe2usb.bin from http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/files/pe2usb101.zip</a>
- rename pe2usb.bin to pe2usb.bss * very important, this tells syslinux it is a Boot sector and to patch in the DOS superblock.
- then build bart pe2usb as normal on the usb drive. * PE2USB will overwrite the syslinux boot sector, so will need to run syslinux [usb drive letter]: again.
- If you recieve "Invalid System Disk" or similar error when booting you need to:
+ Copy the pe2usb.bin to the usbdrive bootsector using bart's mkbt utility: mkbt -x pe2usb.bin x:
+ Reinstall syslinux: syslinux [usb drive letter]:

To add boot XP directly from USB drive as described in thread http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?sho...amp;#entry97519</a></a>
- make a disk image using winimage and add only the three boot files ntdetect.com, boot.ini (last line doubelt), ntldr and start memdisk with this image.
-save image as xp.ima on root of usb drive

CODE

label XPPE
     kernel memdisk
     append xp.ima

- then build as described in thread.
* PE2USB will overwrite the syslinux boot sector, so will need to run syslinux [usb drive letter]: again.

*linux rescue / utility boot options can also be added in. From my one USB drive I can boot Dos, XPPE, Linux.

This post has been edited by thibeact: Oct 29 2007, 01:35 PM

[Skillz]

Yesterday I "updated" my Bart's PE bootable USB Stick to this latest version and... what a dissapointment, it's soooooo slow when booting!

How long does it take on your pc to boot up Bart's PE using an USB stick?

Yesterday, I turned my pc off after 8-10 minutes when I was still seeing the first bootscreen (the black one, with the white line building up at the bottom).

Using the older "Pe2Usb" Bart's PE was loaded in 1.30(!) minutes...

[jaclaz]

Ok, I answered my own question.

Good work!

I am not at all an expert in syslinux, and the only time I tried it to boot a non-dos image I missed the renaming to pe2usb.bss!

Thanks.

jaclaz

[Charleshun]

Hi!

I am just new in this forum!

I have been trying to make a bootable UFB since months. Recently, I have got a 1Gb Kingston Data Traveller - I had a SanDisk Cruzer Mini 128 MB before.

So now, I would like to have a Bart PE on my USB drive... But could not succeed yet. I read all this topic, and many others, the Toms HW article, and many USB articles including some of the "USB Pendrive HowTo", which was made by Jacopo Lazzari!

I think the BIOS and my MOBO is very critical, because maybe this is the source of my problem.
I have an Abit AV8, with VIA Kt800Pro chipset.

So I could boot from my former Pendrive only, if formatting it as 1,44MB floppy drive with "HP Drive Key boot utility". The other HP formatting tool did not help me. After I formatted it, and put "FreeDOS" image on it, it worked, and booted. But it is radicoulus to have a 1,44MB drive on a 128MB PenDrive, not to mention the 1GB version I have now.

So I tried several methods that was posted here - to have the Bart's PE iso working on my UFD. But I get "NON SYSTEM disk" error...

I would appriciate all help...

Thanks!

Any suggestions?

[jaclaz]

Charleshun,
it seems like you are in one of the cases reported here:
http://home.graffiti.net/jaclaz:graffiti.n...SB/USBfaqs.html
under FAQ #10

Please try the troubleshooting path there, and report what options you have in your BIOS, with particular attention to the following:
1) Option USB-FD
2) Option USB-HD
3) Option USB-ZIP
4) "Generic" Option USB-Boot
5) Option Enable USB keyboard support in DOS or Enable USB Legacy support or Enable USB BIOS support

Make SURE you have the LATEST BIOS.

Also, if your motherboard has more than TWO USB ports, try with BOTH the ports that are directly attached to the motherboard (the ones on the BACK of the case), BEFORE trying the front ones.

jaclaz

[Former_Muppski_post]

Hey there

This worked great and without any problems...
Well now I ran into something I would like to do a bit different.

I did a quick BartPE build which was your standard stuff to install this to a portable Lacie USB Harddrive on a partition. Worked great!!

Then I took the build we need here and the size got a bit bigger so now we need machines with atleast 356ram
to boot up with this USB harddrive. The problem is all kind of computers come ni here and not all of them have that amount of ram. But then I thought , since this is a 250GB drive ... Why can't I run all these plugins from the harddrive? That way the ram imaging would maybe be faster too...

So is there a way?

Currently the drive looks like this
2GB FAT32 - <-- Here is BartPE
230GB NTFS - <-- Random stuff , mostly ghost images

There is plenty of space to use here... I look at the BartPE build dir to see its about 270mb. If the neccerly stuff could be loaded to the ramdisk and the rest be loaded of the partition it would be great , and it would be bootable on any crappy comp with less then 256ram

btw : Bart you saved us plenty of time with BartPE !!
Thanks

[uncaged347]

Hi all,

I've been playing around with the new setup loader that comes with server 2003 sp1 (release candidate) and this opens the door to load BartPE on USB sticks through a ramdisk loader (not to be confused as the ramdrive "b:" you have in BartPE). So I've created a simple script that helps you to install it.

Please check instructions below (piece from pe2usb.txt)

CODE

...
Installation of PE2USB:
You should copy the files pe2usb.cmd and pe2usb.bin to your <pebuilder>
directory.

For successful installing BartPE to a USB flash disk you need:

1) A USB flash disk with a capacity of 256MB or more
2) Server 2003 SP1 (or a release candidate). You can download this from
  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=02734CEA-7A4B-4D95-B220-8E1708C3ED46
  This file is large, about 350MB!!!
 Unpack the files from the service pack (this is not installing) with:
 sr1sp.exe -x, lets assume you extract it to c:\server2003sp1
 Create the folder <pebuilder>\srsp1
 Copy the file c:\server2003sp1\i386\setupldr.bin to the <pebuilder>\srsp1 folder
 Expand the file c:\server2003sp1\i386\ramdisk.sy_ to the <pebuilder>\srsp1 folder
 expand -r c:\server2003sp1\i386\ramdisk.sy_ <pebuilder>\srsp1
 You can now remove the c:\server2003sp1 folder, not needed anymore...
3) Build BartPE using pebuilder as normal, you must set the output folder to
  "BartPE", you do not need to generate an ISO image for now.
4) Run "pe2usb -f <drive:>" to format and install the files to your UFD.
  Formatting is only needed the first time, so next time you can run
  "pe2usb <drive:>" (without -f) to update the BartPE files.

For successful booting BartPE from a USB flash disk you need:
1) A PC that is capable of booting from a USB flash disk with 256MB memory
  or more.
...

Download: http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/files/pe2usb101.zip

Regards,
Bart.

[Mudge]

My usb stick is booting and I install Plugins as normal they work fine.

I want to run the programs from the usb rather than be loaded from an image to speed up the load proccess.

I run a batch file in my autorun.inf before the call to nu2menu that finds my usb stick drive letter.
I then use subst to give it a fixed drive letter, so that when I run n2umenu the program location is set to Y: for example.

I wondered it there is a better solution within nu2menu using variables?

Cheers

[Charleshun]

Charleshun,
it seems like you are in one of the cases reported here:
http://home.graffiti.net/jaclaz:graffiti.n...SB/USBfaqs.html
under FAQ #10

Please try the troubleshooting path there, and report what options you have in your BIOS, with particular attention to the following:
1) Option USB-FD
2) Option USB-HD
3) Option USB-ZIP
4) "Generic" Option USB-Boot
5) Option Enable USB keyboard support in DOS or Enable USB Legacy support or Enable USB BIOS support

Make SURE you have the LATEST BIOS.

Also, if your motherboard has more than TWO USB ports, try with BOTH the ports that are directly attached to the motherboard (the ones on the BACK of the case), BEFORE trying the front ones.

jaclaz

Hi, thanks for trying to help!

For me only the USB-FD works, if the PenDrive is formatted as a floppy. It works form a FRONT USB plug. My BIOS version is the latest stable.

I will try in the back, though. I am not sure, if it will help... I think there is a problem maybe with the formatting or something. I will try it on an other PC later...

[jaclaz]

Charleshun,
it is possible that your motherboard only supports USB-FD format, in this case you could/should try the "special" MBR makebootfat makes, read here:
http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=13784&st=44

Or, if it is over your head, you can post the EXACT size (in bytes and Kbytes) of your key, I could make an image of it to be tested.
To deterrmine EXACTLY the size of your key proceed as follows:
1) Download Roadkil's Diskimage:
http://www.roadkil.net/
2) Run it selecting as SOURCE your Key (HARD DISK0 is your FIRST disk) and a file such as "myimage.img" as TARGET (make sure you have enough - same size of the keydrive - spaceon TARGET drive)
3) Ignore (if any) errors from DiskImage
4) once the imaging is finished, right click on TARGET file and jolt down size in bytes and Kbytes, typically:
for a "128 Mb" stick: 128,000 Kbytes= 131.072.000 bytes
for a "256 Mb" stick: 256,000 Kbytes= 262.144.000 bytes
for a "512 Mb" stick: 512,000 Kbytes= 524.288.000 bytes


The image I can make, once compressed, should be around 1 Mb or less (sparse file) so that I can send it to you via e-mail.

jaclaz

[Former_timbish02_post]

Why can't those two files included with the zip file?
350MB can be a bit much for some users to download for just 2 files..

So did you install Win XP pro SP1 onto a USB flash drive? And did it work

I have run through the whole PE builder process and was attempting to do the USB copy and i'm getting --"c:\pebuilder319\srsp1\ramdisk.sys" not found! but I'm trying to copy XP pro not Server 2003. Is there any way around this?? Help

[jaclaz]

@timbish02

NO, you can BUILD from XP2 files, but you NEED to have the files from Server2003 ServicePack 1.
Re-read first post:

For successful installing BartPE to a USB flash disk you need:

1) A USB flash disk with a capacity of 256MB or more
2) Server 2003 SP1 (or a release candidate). You can download this from
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details...20-8E1708C3ED46
This file is large, about 350MB!!!
Unpack the files from the service pack (this is not installing) with:
sr1sp.exe -x, lets assume you extract it to c:\server2003sp1
Create the folder <pebuilder>\srsp1
Copy the file c:\server2003sp1\i386\setupldr.bin to the <pebuilder>\srsp1 folder
Expand the file c:\server2003sp1\i386\ramdisk.sy_ to the <pebuilder>\srsp1 folder
expand -r c:\server2003sp1\i386\ramdisk.sy_ <pebuilder>\srsp1
You can now remove the c:\server2003sp1 folder, not needed anymore...

jaclaz

[Svenska]

I have run through the whole PE builder process and was attempting to do the USB copy and i'm getting --"c:\pebuilder319\srsp1\ramdisk.sys" not found! but I'm trying to copy XP pro not Server 2003. Is there any way around this?? Help

Shouldn't the folder layout be "[drive]:\pebuilder\srsp1\ramdisk.sys"

Also it sounds like you didn't expand the ramdisk.sy_ file as per pe2usb.txt

"expand -r c:\server2003sp1\i386\ramdisk.sy_ <pebuilder>\srsp1"

[Former_Muppski_post]

So there is no way to load your programdrive off another disk instead of making it all on a ramdisk?

[Former_Muppski_post]

So there is no way to load your programdrive off another disk instead of making it all on a ramdisk?

Nevermind that I found I way
Just a quick edit in nu2menu.xml ...

But here is my next problem , Anyway I can define my partition to always be lets say Z: just like BartPE always gets to be X: when I boot this up?

Then I could use it in the XML file to always get the correct path >_> ,if there are 1 or 2 existing harddrives my other partiton on the USB disk will just switch unit

[Radimus]

I'm using batcher to strip BartPE to as small as possible but leave USB mass storage enabled.

The original vanilla bartPE is about 170mb, and my USB broken version is about 60mb.

As far as apps are concerned, there are a number of "Portable Apps" that will run just fine from USB drives, so they will not need to be in the Bart ISO. Just perhaps a shortcut to pstart or just navigate manually to it.

[jaclaz]

As far as apps are concerned, there are a number of "Portable Apps" that will run just fine from USB drives, so they will not need to be in the Bart ISO. Just perhaps a shortcut to pstart or just navigate manually to it.

Yep, PSTART has proved itself to be quite handy:
http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=13719

jaclaz

[johnnyc]

I created a USB image folowing the instructions here

http://www.informationweek.com/windows/sho...cleID=177102101

The only diffrence is i got the 2 files from a Win XP service Pack 2 instead of server 2003 service pack

It looked like it worked fine. But when I go to boot from the USB key I get a message saying

inf file txtsetup.sif is corrupt or missing status 18. Do i ahve to make my USB thumb drive bootable first?

On my USB drive right now I have a Bartpe.iso, ntdetect.com, ntdlr and winnt.sif file. Any help?

Thanks

[Radimus]

I created a USB image folowing the instructions here

http://www.informationweek.com/windows/sho...cleID=177102101

The only diffrence is i got the 2 files from a Win XP service Pack 2 instead of server 2003 service pack

It looked like it worked fine. But when I go to boot from the USB key I get a message saying

inf file txtsetup.sif is corrupt or missing status 18. Do i ahve to make my USB thumb drive bootable first?

On my USB drive right now I have a Bartpe.iso, ntdetect.com, ntdlr and winnt.sif file. Any help?

Thanks

follow the instructions in the PE2USB in pebuilder, you NEED the 2 files from server2k3 sp1

[SkyWalker]

Hi All,

I've been following this thread for about a week now and have tried to install BartPE on my USB flash drive with success.

My UFD is a Packard Bell FM-Key with 512 MB memory size. I have tested it on several HP-Compaq PC's and it works without a prob.

Initially I used to get the error message: inf file txtsetup.sif is corrupt or missing status 18.
The cause was that I was using the XP SP2 files instead of the w2k3 SP1 files. The UFD did not have to be formatted as a startup disk but only FAT (BTW,it also worked with NTFS) using the HP format utility. Also, I used the peinst.cmd to copy the files onto the UFD instead of using the pe2usb.cmd which creates an ISO image and copies it to the UFD.

The only downside is that it takes rather long (approx 3-5min) to boot up. This, I believe is due to the Flash Disk as the PC's support USB 2.0. Probably there are faster UFD's out there but the main thing is that it works.

While writing this I am using BartPe with the Firefox 2.3 plugin, connected to the office network with DHCP enabled. Now that I have solved this issue I will be testing BartPE with different kinds of plugins to verify functionality.

Lastly, thanks to all who have contributed (and will) to this forum and of course to Bart Lagerweij & co for their immense efforts.

SkyWalker