Hi, i have been doing some research on booting off usb key disks. I have had NO problem getting it to boot off my lexar jumpdrive 256MB drive, unfortunately the image has gotten too big for that drive. Now mind you, i didn't have to do anything, i just did a xcopy c:\winpe\iso\*.* /s/f/e g:\ or something like that to copy over the files. I did the same thing on the attache and it did not work. So i looked it up and came across the diskpart util on vista, of course i don't run vista right now so i loaded it up in a VM, but it had problems loading the key disk, ANY key disk without a 1.1 usb hub. So anyhow i ran through the diskpart on a employees computer and made the partition, made it active formated, the drive with fat32 and assigned it. Copied over all the files again and still get the error: error booting to device, or soemthing close to it. This is being tried on a hp xw4300 with usb booting support and also a Arsys microquest computer which is just a spare linux machine. Now i have seen something on the forums about it not working properly on the usb attache? only lexar? and something to do with patching of the ntldr? any ideas!? iv'e almost tried everything! and i hate wasting cd after cd since we don't have any RW's.

Thanks in advance.

P.s Sorry for the rambling



Edit: now that i am looking in the cd forum root maybe i should have put this under usb boot? Sry

Could be two things:

1. the diskpart works thru your VM, meaning your VM-Software is maybe emulating the USB-drive and that doesn't work properly - try install vista on a real disk or - just got that idea - try diskpart from within VistaPE CD

2. your BIOS handles your USB-Drive wrong - some BIOS handle them like USB-FDDs and it should be handled like USB-HDDs to boot WinPE. Look into the documentation of your BIOS if you can switch USB-Drive handling.

Are we talking of WinPE 1.x (i.e. XP/2003 based) or WinPE 2.x (i.e. Vista/2008 based)?

The diskpart from Vista will (obviously) install a bootsector invoking BOOTMGR.
If you need one invoking NTLDR you must change it (i.e. bootsect.exe /NT52)

But won't be easier to forget about Vista's diskpart and use an app that you can run normally on your XP/2003?

http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?sho...c=21702&hl=
http://ubcd4win.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=11375

jaclaz

Thanks for replying. When I said that i ran the diskpart util on one of my co workers computers, what i ment was that was a normal install of vista. I am using winPE 2.x base (vista 2008) so using diskpart to invoke bootmgr is exactly what i want to do. Now on the microquest computer it handles usb drives as FDD, on the hp computer i can set it to handle flash disks as hard drives which i have set. I have never had a problem bootin flashdisks from the hp, the microquest computer was just for testing purposes, of course i got the same error on both though

This may be part of the problem.

The stick needs to be partitioned and formatted with a MBR (i.e. HD-like) to boot on 99.99% of computers.
A very small number of BIOSes won't "like" a USB device formatted this way and "pretend" that to be a floppy-like device (i.e. not partitioned and with bootsector as first sector).

This said, try using one of the two suggested utilities, and confirm that you can boot a "normal" NTLDR+NTDETECT.COM+BOOT.INI (up to BOOT.INI choices) or, in the case of fuwi's batches, grub4dos.
Then either continue using grub4dos to chainload ditectly BOOTMGR (bypassing Vista's bootsector) or change the bootsector with bootsect.exe /NT60 or a similar utility.

The "standard" FAT32 bootsector for NT based systems appears to be "picky" about CHS/LBA geometry (more exactly about partitions crossing Cylinder boundaries) and, unless you fix it manually, it is possible that the result of diskpart results in an unbootable stick (that could be another part of the problem).

Just in case, if you want to try again with Vista diskpart, check this:
http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=21186
where there is a Registry fix for Vista to avoid the problem



jaclaz

Thanks for your insight. I am trying to use the fuwi's usb boot disk util, but what files does it recognize since when i point it to the c:\winpe\iso dir where my files are located it says no Bartpe files found. But since im not interested in useing bartpe right now that doesn't help me much. But after everything finishes when using the Bootable_USB-Stick_grub4dos.cmd can i point it to load the bootmgr? or is that what you were meaning when you said chain load. Maybe i should look at the interface before i ask but ill ask anyways. Also i did try and rewrite the bootsector using bootsect.exe /nt60 but still came up error booting device


Edit: I can boot into the freedos from grubfordos, i don't understand how i am supposed to get bootmgr to run from there. Also i don't use vista. All the systems im trying to boot from are winxp machines, but that shoudln't matter anyhow should it? because windows hasn't even begun to think about booting before im trying to get the usb disk to boot to winpe. My questions may seem all over the place, it just seems that as i get more into it, it gets more complicated, and i get a bit more confused i prob wouldn't have this issue if i was using bartpe!


Edit: Ok, after paying closer attention to detail and getting some mentioned utils in other posts (hdhacker, and diskwipe) i found out that that peksy usb attache pny drive still have a ntldr bootsector on there. Anyhow after getting to vista and formatting it with the proper boot ldr and it actually registering on hdhack as bootmgr i copied over the files and presto! it works... But there seems to be remnences of grldr because it searches all the hd0-5 displaying what boot manager it has on it, then says something like it cannot find grldr wait 5 secs to boot to last mbr. It loads winpe none the less but without the error would be better! I did however wipe the disk with diskwipe so the grldr shouldn't be there anymore! What gives?

The idea was to use grldr as primary or secondary loader and use BOOTMGR as secondary or tertiary.

If using grub4dos, read it's guide:
http://diddy.boot-land.net/grub4dos/Grub4dos.htm
http://diddy.boot-land.net/grub4dos/files/boot.htm#vista

What "diskwipe" tool did you use?
Does it wipes "Logical" or "Physical" drives?

The MBR is part of the Physical drive.

More simply, read here:
http://www.boot-land.net/forums/?showtopic=3453&st=8

Overwriting first 100 sectors will give you back a "pristine" stick, ready to be partitioned/formatted.

jaclaz

Thanks or replying. Seems your the only one to do so. I used roadkils diskwipe, it wipes physical disks as well as logical. I only used 1 pass since of course thats all it needs. Anyhow i then went back to the vista machine and made a new partition and set that active and assigned it. After that i went back to hdhacker and made sure the bootloader was set to bootmgr which it was. After that i copied over the winpe files and tried it out. On one computer is came up with a stop error of 0xc000009e which was something to do with a network driver or something. Oh well that was an older computer anyways i thought, and it doesn't matter, i don't feel like following the "injecting custom drivers in winpe installs" guide, so i went to the other newer system with a better bios for booting usb key disks and it worked fine. Slower than i remember it but it is working. Now that i have incorporated the shell swapper i just need to get familiar with configuring some custom shells to run for a prettier environment!

To be picky only 1 pass on the first n sectors, where:
n=64 for FAT16
n=69 for FAT32
n=79 for NTFS
100 is used because it's a nice, round number to make the 00 filled file 51200 bytes, and unlike wiping an entire drive, it does not increase sensibly the time needed.

(the problem with 1 Gb is minor, but try using a wipe program on a 500 GB USB hard disk and you'll get an idea of the usefulness of just wiping what's needed)

And, again to be picky , 1 pass (on all the drive) is all that is needed ALWAYS:
http://www.msfn.org/board/Hard-Drive-Secur...io-t125900.html

jaclaz

Thats right! only 1 pass renders data unrecoverable by all recovery experts, but i didn't have to go into it since you did! But yea i know what you mean on bigger drives a wipe to just 00's can be days since there is so many more sectors vs 1GB lets say the that there is around 8 sectors per cluster * however many clusters (which would be alot on a 500GB). But anyways thanks for your help, you will most likely see me if i have problems getting any of the shells to work with winPE