Hi

I have tried 2 separate USB sticks - both Sandisk Cruzer 1GB but it does not detect them.  Is a 1Gb stick too large?  They are mapping as drive J: as I have a bunch of network drives.  Could the drive letter be the problem?

Thanks - this looks really promising.

Matt

yeah i can see where that would be a problem.  perhaps add a block on the c:\

I like the "overwrite if newer"  i can put a load on the key in a few mins instead of the 15-20 it takes now

No joy on W2K still - i'm gonna build an xp machine and use that but am willing to help test further on W2K.

@CodeBeetle

This looks great but it doesn't work for me on a USB that works with Fafot's update Bart method.

With your method i get a USB that gives the following error immediately upon bootup

Remove disks or other media.
Press any key to restart

Any ideas?

um is the method that using the ramdisk.sys from w2k3?

Thanks mat ill keep looking into it.

great now when and whee can we get it
SaGE

umm it didn't format the hdd.  it said it was going to but nothing happened.  it did however format my key when i told it to..  my hdd is a 20g with a fat16 parition of 1.5g.

SaGE

First we want to get the path to our BartPE installation.
Click the [...]button and choose the path. The 'OK' on
the Browse Dialog will not display until you select
the correct folder.

@CodeBeetle
I’m unable to select the proper source directory. I’m the following configuration

PE-Builder  3,14 Beta in drive
                  C:\Projects\PeBuilder
                  Build on Windows 2003
XPE  1.04
BartPE        C:\Projects\PeBuilder\BartPE
OS              Windows XP

Doesn’t matter where the BartPE folder is stored

/winbom.ini

okay did another test. it won't do anything with my hdd.  the light blinks once and that's it.  i even tried lba 16 mode.  Could it be because it was already set up with the hp utility?  perhaps it thinks the hdd is bad like most other partition tools do
SaGE

@CodeBeetle

Oke, This tool is not work with the XPE plugin, because this plugin reset the USB bus while booting.

Oke, This tool is not work with the XPE plugin, because this plugin reset the USB bus while booting.

hp tool never worked it wants to format the whole disk.  I used barts original pe2usb to make the bootsector.

SaGE

Im looking deeper into the HP utility and found it uses an undocumented function in MSs fmifs.dll called FormatEx or FormatEx2, that the HP uses. if i can figure out how its implemented then i can use this method instead of spawning format.com

May be this can help about FormatEx http://www.sysinternals.com/SourceCode/fmifs.html

Now cos i dont have w2000, changing it to that platform may be difficult. Because Microsoft is always giving conflicting advice on what is compatible with wot. So the only way to test is to try it on 2000.

If i manage to update it, i hope there will be some willing 2k testers

@window2000 users

I managed to change on of the codes to one that according to MS  is usable on windows 2000. Id appreciate some feedback as to whether this has solved the problem. Thanks

Looks like he used the HP utility. That enables FAT16X. I heard a lot of bioss dont like it. But for compatabilities sake i added an LBA option that will make the format just like the HP utility one.

I spent some time experimenting with it finding it to be a very good program, that NEVER failed (in my limited testing) in making an USB pendrive bootable with FAT16, so that I do recommend it.

The command line sintax used is a bit complex, expecially to Windows users, so here is an explained example:
(please note that though it is not at all clear in the original info, supplying a sub-directory name is compulsory, so even if you just want to copy system files to the key, you need to input an existing directory name, it does not matter if directory is empty):

E:\USBKEY\mkbootfat>makebootfat -h
makebootfat v1.4 by Andrea Mazzoleni
Usage: makebootfat [options]dir

Options:
-o Select the output device
-b Select the boot sector image
-m Select the mbr sector image
-c Copy a file in the root directory
-x Exclude files
-X Enforce syslinux 2.xx limitations
-Y Enforce syslinux 3.xx limitations
-Z Enforce ZIP-Drive compatibility if possible
-F Change the MBR to imitate a FAT boot sector
-L Volume label
-O Volume oem
-S Volume serial
-E Drive BIOS number
-v Verbose
-h Help
-V Version

Now let's try to make it, the following must be on the same line, here is split just for the sake of commenting it:
makebootfat <-this is the command
-o usb <-this is the output
-b win41.bin <-this is the bootsector to be written
-m mbrfat.bin <-this is the MBR to be written (included in the package)
-c COMMAND.COM <-this is a file to be copied to the ROOT of the USB stick
-c MSDOS.SYS <-this is a file to be copied to the ROOT of the USB stick
-c IO.SYS <-this is a file to be copied to the ROOT of the USB stick
-v <-this prints verbosely report
C:\dummy < this is a NEEDED (empty) directory (or you could use a "good" one)

makebootfat -o usb -b win41.bin -m mbrfat.bin -c COMMAND.COM -c MSDOS.SYS -c IO.SYS -v C:\dummy
device_start 0 [sectors]
device_size 256000 [sectors], 125 [MB]
device_geometry 15/255/63 [cylinders/heads/sectors]
bios_drive HDD
fat_start 63 [sectors]
fat_size 255937 [sectors]
fat_bit 16
fat_sectorpercluster 4


Notes:

mbrfat.bin is included in the package, it is a kind of "Universal" MBR, it can be used, according to the MAKEBOOTFAT docs it is possible with it even to make a format compatible with all the three standards (NOT YET FULLY TESTED):
"The BIOS USB boot support is generally differentiated in three categories: USB-HDD, USB-FDD and USB-ZIP.
The USB-HDD (Hard Disk Drive) standard is the preferred choice and it requires the presence of a partition table in the first sector of the disk. You can create this type of disk using the -m option.
The USB-FDD (Floppy Disk Drive) standard requires the presence of a filesystem starting from the first sector of the disk without a partition table. You can create this type of disk without using the -m option.
The USB-ZIP (ZIP Drive) standard requires the presence of a device with a very specific geometry. Specifically, it requires a geometry with 32 sectors and 64 heads. It also requires the presence of a partition table with only a bootable partition in the fourth entry. You can create this type of disk using the -m and -Z option.
Generally these standards are incompatible, but using the -m, -F and -Z options you can create a disk compatible with all of them.
To use the -F option, the MBR image specified must follow the constrains:
It must start with a standard FAT 3 bytes jump instruction.
It must have the bytes from address 3 to 89 (included) unused.
And example of such image is in the `mbrfat.bin' file."

win41.bin is a Windows 98 FAT16 bootsector I made with bootpart:
http://www.winimage.com/bootpart.htm
(by Gilles Vollant, the same author of Winimage)

It can be also extracted by any hex editor or debug.exe from a FAT 16 disk formatted from within Win98, makebootfat will replace the partition info with the correct ones.

To get it from bootpart the syntax is following:
bootpart <OS> <filename>

Where OS can be (case insensitive):
DOS622
MSDOS            MS-DOS 6.22    I.D. MSDOS5.0
WIN95              Windows 95      I.D. MSWIN4.0
WIN95OSR2
WIN95SR2
WIN95OEMSR2  Windows 95 OEMSR2 I.D. MSWIN4.1
WIN98
WINME              Windows 98 or Windows ME  I.D. MSWIN4.1
NT
WINNT
WIN200
WIN2K
WINXP              Windows NT/2K/XP and 2003
VISTA
WINVISTA          Windows VISTA  (BOOTMGR instead of NTLDR)

OPENDOS          OpenDos    I.D. NWDOS7.0

In my case I entered:
bootpart win98 c:\bootfiles\win41.bin

the "-b" switch it is a "generic" switch:
"-b, --boot FILE 
-1, --boot-fat12 FILE
-2, --boot-fat16 FILE
-3, --boot-fat32 FILE
Specify the FAT boot sector images to use. The -b option uses the same sector for all the FAT types. The other options can be used to specify a different sector for different FAT types. The FAT types for which a boot sector is not specified are not used. This option is always required."

if you try it with USB Pendrives bigger than 32 M and up to 256 Mb (I think) it will default to FAT16 (same as switch "-2") with 512 Mb it will switch to FAT32(same as switch "-3"), what I got running:
makebootfat -o usb -b win41.bin -m mbrfat.bin -c COMMAND.COM -c MSDOS.SYS -c IO.SYS -v C:\dummy
on a 512 Mb stick was:
device_start 0 [sectors]
device_size 1024000 [sectors], 500 [MB]
device_geometry 63/255/63 [cylinders/heads/sectors]
bios_drive HDD
Invalid code start 3E in the boot sector (for fat32 it must be at least 5A).
re- running as:
makebootfat -o usb -2 win41.bin -m mbrfat.bin -c COMMAND.COM -c MSDOS.SYS -c IO.SYS -v C:\dummy
I got:
device_start 0 [sectors]
device_size 1024000 [sectors], 500 [MB]
device_geometry 63/255/63 [cylinders/heads/sectors]
bios_drive HDD
fat_start 63 [sectors]
fat_size 1023937 [sectors]
fat_bit 16
fat_sectorpercluster 16

which is allright, as the win41.bin was a FAT16 bootsector, and the key resulted formatted as FAT16, re-running it as follows, with win4132.bin ( a FAT32 bootsector):
makebootfat -o usb -b win4132.bin -m mbrfat.bin -c COMMAND.COM -c MSDOS.SYS -c IO.SYS -v C:\dummy
I got, exactly as if I used the "-3" switch a FAT32 formatted USB keydrive:
device_start 0 [sectors]
device_size 1024000 [sectors], 500 [MB]
device_geometry 63/255/63 [cylinders/heads/sectors]
bios_drive HDD
fat_start 63 [sectors]
fat_size 1023937 [sectors]
fat_bit 32
fat_sectorpercluster 8

Please note that this option (FAT32 on a 512 Mb USB key) did NOT make a bootable volume. I suspect that there is something not right in the FAT32 identifier (hex 0b) and structure. By running (in Qemu) sys.com, it changed (between other things) the identifier to LBA mappped (hex 0c) and the volume booted.

On the other hand, running:
makebootfat -o usb -3 win4132.bin -m mbrfat.bin -c COMMAND.COM -c MSDOS.SYS -c IO.SYS -v C:\dummy
on a 128 Kb stick, I got an error:
device_start 0 [sectors]
device_size 256000 [sectors], 125 [MB]
device_geometry 15/255/63 [cylinders/heads/sectors]
bios_drive HDD
Unsupported disk size.

Be warned that if you try to install a FAT32 bootsector with the "-b" switch:
makebootfat -o usb -b win4132.bin -m mbrfat.bin -c COMMAND.COM -c MSDOS.SYS -c IO.SYS -v C:\dummy
on a 128 Kb stick, you will have:
device_start 0 [sectors]
device_size 256000 [sectors], 125 [MB]
device_geometry 15/255/63 [cylinders/heads/sectors]
bios_drive HDD
fat_start 63 [sectors]
fat_size 255937 [sectors]
fat_bit 16
fat_sectorpercluster 4

i.e. a FAT16 volume with a FAT32 bootrecord (NOT very useful!)

http://www.mdgx.com/secrets.htm#FDISK
FDISK /FPRMT bypasses the FDISK startup screen, but enables interactive FAT16/FAT32 support. This can be used to force FDISK to create FAT32 partitions smaller than 512 MB, normally not possible by default.

On V2  (and GREAT TOOL - thx much)

Seems I´m only getting a message straight after boot

TXTSETUP.SIF missing ...... aborting setup

The file is there in the minint directory, am I missing something ?

Boot from the stick and calling the right loader seems to work -
so at least using PEToUSB I´m getting somewhere ;-)

Thx

Klaus

i used to get that message when i tried the ramdisk approach. I never figured out wot was causing it, thats why i use the HDD minint way. maybe someone else has some suggestions??