Right, Im not sure if this has been posted before as I am new, but I have found an excellent way to use your bootable ISO (Windows setup CD's, Symantec recovery CD's or any other bootable ISO)

First, you must format the target USB drive to be bootable (using PE2USB or similar), then place the following files to the ROOT of the USB drive: ntdetect.com, ntldr, winnt.sif & the bootable ISO of your choice.

Now bear in mind that this would load the ISO into memory, (so dont expect ISO's of over 300MB to load in UNDER 5 mins)

Now, take your winnt.sif file & make it like so:


Then reboot your machine, and make sure that USB booting has been enabled & boot to USB, there ya have it, a really easy way to boot your CD's from USB!

I was starting to panic when the CD drive died in my laptop, and so did my IDE2USB link, and then I found this way, it is the best!

The ONLY thing I need help with is, how to make it a multi-boot, with a menu (like in boot.ini) to boot from different ISO's, if somebody could work this out (without GRUB) then it would be really appreciated!

Not really only those based on XP/2003 files.

It's a rather known method.

It can be used also for .img files, and the image can also be compressed.

The limit for such a booting is 512 Mb of size for the image (uncompressed), which is within the Microsoft RAMDISK.SYS/RAMDISK.SY_ driver.

There are other drivers, some with bigger capacity.

A list is here:
http://www.boot-land.net/forums/?showtopic=1507

The NTLDR (actually a renamed SETUPLDR.BIN) (and RAMDISK.SYS) must come from SERVER 2003 SP1 or R2.

Which version did you use?

We miss reports whether this works with XP SP3 files.

Some related threads:
http://www.911cd.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=10482
http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=19333
http://www.911cd.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=10482

This:
http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=18846

should cover your multi-boot question

jaclaz

Thanks for your reply, like I said in post#1,I was well chuffed to figure this out!

As for which version did I use? I really do not know! it was something that was made with USB_MultiBoot_9, and then I just edited the winnt.sif file for the current ISO file.

I think this is a very good way, as I said before, I no longer have any working CD/DVD drives in my laptop now, and if I needed to use the Norton Ghost 10 recovery to restore my PC, I would've been screwed, but now I have trimmed that ISO down to about 250-300MB, and it works perfectly!

Edit by jaclaz: Removed needless quote

So, it was just a post out of sheer joy for having found a solution to your problem?

I thought you were asking for help/details for a multi-boot setup or other ways to experiment with.

jaclaz

hi Folks, maybe I'm being rude here, but I have made quite a few bootable ISO's in various flavors in my lifetime and also done a lot of Internet research. Perhaps not enough and I know I'm probably jumping the gun here - BUT:

What the deal with PE or ISO to USB. Why can't we simply download a freeware app somewhere that says Browse to your ISO and Browse to your USB drive and - uhh, do it?

Every search I find on this leads me down a long road of exhausting posts, which are ALL very informative, and I actually KNOW how to do this and make one, pretty simple with Symantec Ghost, it makes it for you.. still - I find nothing out there that I can simply download, double click and exe and have two browse buttons, like I said above. I know this is possible, I guess I am just in dire need of something like this on a pc I am working on today with NO functioning CD drive. I guess this will give me something to do on my next vacation.. Build one! With the HP USb utility, I have ALREADY built one of these for myself, before Symantec came out with it integrated. But I don't always need just Ghost, nor BartBE. How about a nice WinBuilder plugin. And No, Pe2USb isn't cutting it.

Sorry, but thanks for letting me vent

Best Regards,
rbsterli

Look here http://www.boot-land.net/forums/?showtopic=5306

The package U_XP_SET contains Folder USB_XP_Setup with 3 Programs, which you can Launch via PStart.exe

• Make_USB.exe can make your USB-stick Bootable with LiveXP for Emergency
• BOOT_IMG.exe Copies WinBuilder LiveXP BootSDI.img Image file to C-Harddisk or USB-Drive
  and makes Entry for boot.ini Menu and GRUB4DOS menu.lst for Booting with LiveXP PE from RAMDISK.
  This is useful as Escape Boot Option in case Booting with Windows XP or XP Setup may fail,
  so that you can Repair your System or use Ghost for System Backup and System Restore.

BartPE RAMDISK ISO's as made by pe2usb.cmd
can be created with the batch program BOOT_IMG.cmd and Install on HDD or USB is supported as well.

Format your USB-stick with HP Format tool and use NTFS FileSystem

Thx this Thread helped me very well