Hi everyone,

I have an HP Compaq dc5750 Microtower PC with Windows XP sp2 and I've made a recovery dvd with its "HP PC System Recovery" software.

This is the resulting dvd:

$ ls /mnt/dvd/
FullImage.lst Master.log WIN51 WIN51IC WIN51IP WIN51IP.SP1 XGA
hpboot.sys NetUserDiff.lst WIN51.B2 WIN51IC.B2 WIN51IP2 WIN51.RC1
HP_RECOVERY NTFS WIN51IA WIN51IC.RC1 WIN51IP.B2 WIN51.RC2
I386 PRELOAD WIN51IA.SP1 WIN51IC.RC2 WIN51IP.RC2 WINBOM.INI

I'd like to have a bootable usb stick instead of a dvd, so I copied all the files from the dvd to the usb stick, then I used Windows XP's "recovery console" to make the usb stick bootable as follows:
map
(this shows that my usb stick is on the letter G:)
fixmbr G:
fixboot G:
Then I try to reboot with the usb stick, but it fails telling me that "ntldr is missing".
I try copying ntldr from the root of C: but when I try to reboot with the usb stick it goes into an endless loop that always reboot the system...
So I understand that I better delete that ntldr.

On a pc running Linux I have a small utility called "geteltorito" which extract the boot sector from bootable cd/dvd/iso so I used it to extract the boot sector of my recovery dvd. I've opened it with an hex editor and I see it's an "XSS CDROM BOOT LOADER FOR SOFTTHINKS ©XSS 2001" but I don't think it can be put on an usb stick...

Someone could please help me telling how can I make a bootable usb stick which is an exact copy of my bootable dvd?
(I'd prefeer using standard unix tools, but it doesn't matter if it could be necessary to use an utility for Windows...)

Thank you for answering.

You CANNOT . (at least NOT an EXACT copy )

You can make it boot allright, but it probably WON'T WORK as the DVD did.

It is VERY likely that you will need to change the way it works in order to be able to have it working "as" the DVD does.

PRELIMINARY WORK:

1. To make it boot (I assume you have besides Linux a working XP) you can use this batch:
   http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?...c=2362&st=0
   to change in the bootsector the invoked loader from NTLDR TO SETUPLDR.BIN (or a hex/disk editor)
2. You need to copy from \I386\ the files SETUPLDR.BIN and NTDETECT.COM to the ROOT of the stick.
3. You need to modify the SETUPLDR.BIN in ROOT as explained here:
   http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=17504

OPTIONAL, but SUGGESTED:

• INSTEAD of using your currently partitioned (MAYBE) and formatted stick, you should run RMPREPUSB and partition/format the stick:
  http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=7739
  (this way we make sure the stick is properly partitioned/formatted)

ALTERNATIVE:

• INSTEAD of changing the name of the bootloader, you may want to rename the copy of SETUPLDR.BIN in ROOT to NTLDR.

What you are trying to boot is most probably a PE 1.x (or a "direct" XP install, which I doubt).

There may be other changes needed, just try the above and report.

jaclaz

This was enough to make my usb stick bootable.
However, as you said before, even if it was running fine, the recovery software didn't work properly because it continued looking for a real dvd for its tasks. But this is a different problem which should be off topic here...

Many thanks for your suggestions!