Discussion on:

Illustrated walk-through: Creating a bootable USB flash drive for Windows XP

How does this method stack up against other techniques you've used to create a bootable UFD? Have you had success taking this approach?

You can also put your own customized Live Linux on a USB flash memory device too. Just visit slax.org and you can download a live Linux creation tool that will run on Windows and allows you to add loads of modules (such as ethereal, Firefox, the gimp, open office etc.) to customize your own live "CD". You can create an ISO for burning onto CDs or USB drives - whatever you prefer.

From there, it's the same as described in the article: select the USB device in the BIOS or if it doesn't appear in the bootable devices list, plug it in and try again to see it appears in the list then.

I discovered Slax after I'd spent three straight days slaving away trying to manually build a live Linux distro. The results from using Slax made a mockery of my own manual (and laborious) efforts.

outstanding the simplicity of SLAX or KNOPPIX,
download and try from
www.pendrivelinux.com
if you can have better stuff, why use microsoft ?

Linux has a few issues with NTFS volumes, and in my case, I want to use this drive to rescue windows pc's on my network.

Since most XP installations are NTFS and with all of the linux solutions taking a duct tape approach to the NTFS read/write issue - it stands to reason that a windows based usb boot drive is a better option. Not to mention, much easier to implement.

Not all of us are able - or even have the desire to waste hours tinkering with the linux command line.

Older ones, sure - I tried a portable mandrake that sucked, but since Knoppix 3+ I've had no trouble.

Slax ditto.

Thats what GNOME is for

Not to mention the fact that there are gazillions of BartPE-derivatives USB/CD tools packages. The most useful I've seen so fra is the world-famous Hiren's BootCD (that can easily put in a flash drive. Small, fast and powerful. 5 out of 5 stars in my count.

Grab Damn Small Linux, 49Mb of it, and burn, then boot the CDrom. http://pendrivelinux.com/2007/01/02/all-in-one-usb-dsl

Insert a USB stick into a USB port.
On a blank bit of screen, right click,
Menu apears.

Go down to the Utilities menu, left click,
A sub-menu apears,
select the entry for the boot USB and note there are two ways, USB ZIP device (for the older boxes), and USB-HDD (newer BIOS since ~1999)!

Booting from a USB Flash Drive is a great way to diagnose PC problems, I've been using Linux for this purpose (which works great), but it's good to know that we now have a way to do it in Windows!

I only have an OEM copy of windows. It says there can be problems and there right. It says at the end that there are 4 files missing. I tried it without them but the boot failed. I then found the files on my system and copied them to a directory and told the program to include this directory but it still says it can't find the files.

If you buy a none OEM they let you install it on one PC at a time but can install it on other PC's but just one at a time.

So if you upgrade a lot it be good not to buy a OEM Windows. That way you can move it to other PC's.

-Raymond Day

I finally installed Bart PE on my Verbatim Store'n Go 1GB flash drive.

Started all the process on my desktop with a micro 512 SD card in an adapter. Neither the desktop or my Notebook Compaq n6230 would boot to the UFD (both have USB boot enabled in the BIOS).

Next, I took the 1 GB stick and went thru the described process step by step . This time the stick attempted to load the RamImage (on the the laptop only) but generated the error: "cannot load c:\windows\system32\ntoskrnl.exe".

Went back to research the error, and slipstreamed the win XP sp2 into the installation as suggested (it took about 1 hr). Then I pointed BartPe to these slipstreamed source files.

Booted up the systems and again only my laptop recognized the UFD, although it took about 5 minutes to load the ramimage. After getting to the BartPE desktop, no network adapters were detected (Broadcom NetXtreme), so network was unavailable.

I also tried the DSL option. It took about 20 minutes to download, format the stick, install the image and to boot to Linux. Again no network support for me.

I'll keep both versions handy just in case.

Thanks for all the advise.

If you go the the Table of Contents under the Help menu, you'll find a section on adding storage and network drivers. I haven't found anything (yet) that I can't talk to after installing the appropriate driver.

BartPE, like WinPE, is just a minimal subset of WinXP (or W2k3). You have to install the drivers during the build process for the hardware you'll be running PE on.

I did read the drivers section, after your suggestion, in the TOC and placed the NIC drivers in the specified folder. Rrbuilt the image, but my network adapter is not listed. I know that this particular NIC is a pain to configure. It took me several tries finally to build a succesful Ghost network boot disk.
I'll try another driver.
You know any other step I may be missing?
Thank you for your input.

I may not understand the issue. Are you saying that PENETCFG can't find the NIC? If that's the case, try searching the posts at the BartPE forum: http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showforum=30
or post your own query there. I've never posted there 'cause I've always found the answers to my questions are already there.

Alternatively, you can check out what the folks at http://www.ubcd4win.com/ are doing. The "Ultimate BootCD for Windows" is based on BartPE, so it's useful to check both places.

Warning- UBCD4Win tries too hard to make things "idiot proof". The result is that something always needs a little tweaking to make everything work. Be sure to read the "News" section on the web site to find pointers to the tweaks that need to be applied to the current release.

Sorry I can't be more help.

ron

I've had much better luck with Universal Boot CD 4 Windows than with Bart PE. I haven't tried it with a USB drive but the CD version has been very reliable for me and the network support is very good.

Does any USB Lock RP http://www.advansysperu.com/
users know if a USB bootable device would be blocked by the aplication.

I have test XP and Slax and the linux OS is much smoother!! I used the 'KillBill' Edition that has Win built in and this allows Win32 exe's to run on Linux.
I still have to test this.

All the Slaxes are great. You can build pretty much any Slax you want and it couldn't be any easier to do.

The end result is superior to anything you can achieve with Bart PE, in my opinion.

Does SLAX support access to network shares from a bootable UFD?

How about CD burning when booted from a UFD?

I built a Knoppix bootable UFD and it works great, allowing access to network shares. However, I still have a few Windows applications I want to run occasionally when using it, so am considering generating a BartPE UFD during the summer break. However, if SLAX?s BillKiller allows Win apps to run AND also allows either access to network shares or CD burning I?ll be quite happy using that instead.

The Knopix UFD doesn?t allow CD burning because it thinks the UFD is a CD drive occasionally; I also can?t save configurations for (I guess) the same reason.

My thanks to everyone who has contributed to this long discussion.

KillBill edition has all the things you'll need to do what you describe, but you can make sure by building your own Slax distro.

Just get the base Slax, the MySlax Creator, and all the modules you desire.

Visit www.slax.org to get Slax and modules

MySlax was available on bonsonno.org until it was recently hosed by an attack, so you'll have to get it via t0rr3nt.

There's a great tutorial on www.pendrivelinux.com that will tell you everything you need to know to make a usb bootable Slax to your own design and specification.

Thanks, A_Selby!

From what I have researched recently, is IS NOT possible to make a XP system boot from a USB stick. I've tried BartPE etc. which works but I want to boot my own XP not some limited version for repairs.
I think there is a possibility to do so in following way:
1. Install a virtual computer on your system
2. On this virtual machine, possibly running on RAM disk, install XP and whatever product you need, like drivers and software, just beware of the size.
3. create an image of the RAM disk - image of the virtual partition
4. boot this image from usb stick similarly as BartPE does, xp then runs from ram
This is a theory however, it should avoid the 0x7b well known problem when rebooting the install from the usb.

first off, thanks for such a useful article. i've been using UFD-based Linux installs (PuppyOS specifically) for some Windows diagnostic work, but the potential problems with Linux and NTFS partitions have made me wary of using this method for really crucial rescues. i'm glad to have the option for a Windows-based one. also, it's nice to have a better understanding of the different BIOS scenarios for getting USB drives to boot. i have encountered a number of BIOS configurations that *seem* to support booting from Flash drives, but aren't very easy to configure to actually *do* it. in particular, i didn't realize that some BIOSes will only show it as an option if it's already plugged in at startup. =) sweet.

i've used Bart'sPE to make some custom boot CDs. it's a really fantastic program and can be customized pretty easily if you spend some time with the documentation and the configuration files. the main obstacle is finding applications that allow read-only functionality. www.portableapps.com is a good place to start.

secondly, while i've used Knoppix and PuppyLinux live-CDs for accessing NTFS partitions, they can be really slow to boot on some machines, or not an option if the optical drive is dead. i wanted to recommend PuppyLinux (www.puppyos.com) as a compact but very powerful Linux option for UFDs. you can use an image that's only 80MB and has most of the programs available on a live-CD (Firefox, GAIM, GIMP, more) as well as NTFS read/write access. the DE is a little weird to get used to (i don't think it's Gnome or KDE, but it's similar to Knoppix), but aside from that it's really small and really useful.

it may be that Damn Small Linux has the same basic feature set with the same image size, i've not used it and i can't be certain. but i know one of the primary motivations for the creator of Puppy was to have as many apps and as much flexibility as possible in the smallest amount of space, something he apparently wasn't finding with other Linux distros.

good luck with the bootable Vista!

He needs to edit that error...

I spent hours on end trying to make custom UFD for XP, no luck, using instructions all over the net since last year. I just bring along my external USB DVD drive. Some things not mentioned are you need at least 512MB sticks, and I keep hearing it has to be less than 2Gb in size. Thats probably why mine did not work, my smallest sticks were 4gb.

can anyone verify that 4gb+ UFDs wont work?

Why were the Windows Server 2003 files copied. I placed them in the folder specified and ran BartPE and they were not used. I checked the resultant build and the files had the original Win XP version numbers.
Anybody have an idea?

I expected to have to copy the W2k3 files to the BartPE directory, but the instructions didn't say so.

What's the story here?

Steve

If you don't have those 2 files in the srps1 dir under /pebuilder, the pe2usb process barfs.

http://www.hiren.info/download/freeware/usb_format.zip

All you need is the DOS boot files (i.e. COMMAND.COM, ...).

Hi all, does anyone tried to also include an ISO image into the pendrive? I want to start imaging pcs @work with the pendrive, rather than using CD/DVD. I think this is halfway to heaven, but I would like someone to help me with that if possible.

Thanks !!!

If I use this method to create a bootable flash drive with Windows XP, after booting to the drive can I install non-standalone Windows applications on the flash drive just like when I run windows XP from my hard drive on my PC? For example, I may want to use a program that does not have a standalone version to troubleshoot a system that won't boot. Using a PE CD doesn't allow this....does this bootable usb solution allow it? Thanks.

It's not working for me. I followed the steps but when I tell BartPE to build,it tells me it can't find the files. (yes,I did copy them,they are there) I tried with a windows cd, with a virtually mounted cd, I've tried telling it where the i386 folder us, I always get the same answer

After I followed all the instructions, up to installing PE Builder, I noticed that my folder c:\pebuilder3110a did not have the sub folder 'BartPE' as shown in figure F. I created the subfolder manually and proceeded. When I run PE Builder, it terminated with the following Error: CopyFile() "D:\i386\setupreg.hiv" to "C:\Pebuilder3110a\BartPE\i386\system32\setuphiv" returned error 32: The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process.
What could have gone wrong?

Hi,
I have tried creating Bart bootable flash drives on a few occasions, it has always been
OK except for one issue:
When XP boots a HDD, (which is what XP considers a flash drive to be!) It changes 8 files which lock the OS to the Hardware in use.
If you then try and use the flash drive on a
different set of hardware, XP crashes because
the hardware has changed.
So, does this proceedure get round this?
What really needs to happen is to fool XP, or
PE, into thinking that the flash drive is a CD, then no files are written to or changed on the boot device, since PE uses a RAM disk
for all write functions, this should not cause any other problems!

I have done this and used my USB drive on several computers.

Hi Clawton

I followed this article very close several times and I got as for as opening PeBuilder, doing exactly as the insructions say and when I would hit the build button all I get is an error:

Source files wrong version.
File version "E:\i386\ntdll.dll" is 5.1.2600.0 should be 5.1.2600.1045 or higher.

You must use Windows XP Service Pack 1 or Server 2003 version of windows.

I'm lost!

However I installed PeBuilder on Windows Vista to try and do this. You think maybe thats the problem.........

Bill

I've had no trouble making Bart PE bootable flash drives before... though I haven't tried this method yet.

I remember moving HDDs with Win2K on them between machines used to cause a BSOD on boot IF you used non-standard HDD drivers that wrote the mainboard serial to the registry. The solution was move the HDD back to the original system, change to generic drivers and then you were free to move your HDD from system to system. I wonder is your problem anything like that?

I have tried creating a PE Flash drive, and it creates just fine, and loads Bart to a PC via the USB port, but if you then try and boot a PC with a different configuration it gives a BSOD 7B. Boot it on the original HW and all is OK. This is what XP is supposed to do, to prevent it being used on different HW from that it was built on!
MS KB article 314082 refers, but it only gives help for booting from IDE or SCSI drives. How can you 'kid' PE that the USB
Flash drive is a CD rather than a HDD???

No BSODs for me. Are you sure you're not using proprietary drivers for any of your hardware?

Has anyone got any ideas as to what else might be causing grewcockd's problem?

I used PE2USB and a Bart CD (which works fine on all PC's I have tried it on). The PE2USB 'Make' works without errors, as does the first boot, but if I then take the Flash drive to a different type of PC I get the BSOD 7B. Put it back to the original type of PC and all OK.
To Me it looks like the standard XP problem of trying to use a HDD on different Hardware??

If you think it may be to do with the HDD drivers storing the mobo serial in the registry, use Standard IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers (the microsoft ones), instead of specific ones.
Just a stab in the dark... Could be that, or something like it, although I can't see why PE2USB would be doing something like that.

No!
The 'normal' cause of BSOD 7B is HDD drivers
at boot time, that is for a HDD boot, not
a USB boot. So is it the USB drivers that are causing the problem? PE boots fine from an
IDE CDROM, so I think it is either:
1) USB driver problem at boot.
or
2) The Flash drive is locked to the 1st set of hardware it is booted to.
I would love to solve this, as it has happened every time I have tried to create
an XP/PE bootable flash drive, no matter how
it is ceated.

USB drivers are standard, post Win98.
If you are building your portable WinXP from your existing in-situ installation, it is still possible that it is writing mobo info to the HDD drivers - not necessarily to boot from, of course, but to use to run a HDD once WinXP has booted off the UFD.
However, I assume you've already checked this out?

Anyone have any ideas as to what else it could be?

Error

Wooooooww!! itz solve ma problem! i realy enjoy that.

Thank u JodyGilbert!

There is an application out there called PeToUSB.exe and can be searched as PeToUSB_3.0.0.7.zip. The big advantage to this over pe2usb -f e: is you can assign the drive letter X to the usb device (it's default) and it will partition, format and put the files onto the USB device for you. Also one limit on using BartPE is that it is built on fat16 and has a 2 gig limit. You can work around this by partitioning to say 512 then use the rest for data if needed. I have this running on a 40 gig USB HD drive doing this and use the rest for user data recovery and some stand alone apps.

It works well. Ive been booting My Bart PE Disk off a UFD for a month now using this exact method. Good Job on the Doc, I could of used it a month ago. Any how that's life.

This is great. I have been putting this off for a very long time since it was so difficult to read through the miles of steps that others have posted elsewhere! Additionally it's GREAT to see at least one piece of valuable content so far for 2007. I really appreciate this!!!

How many people actually have a Windows CD? New computers have not come with a Windows CD since the late 1990's. I'm waiting for a utility that will take the necessary files from an existing installation of Windows and put them on a USB device.

I too, would like to see this.

Download the HP mass formatter tool. It can make a boot partition on any USB drive using FAT 32 or NTFS.

I Googled "HP Mass Formatter" and found zilch. Where can I find the tool?

Not sure which tool he's talking about, but I found this one which seems to do the same thing:
http://h18000.www1.hp.com/support/files/serveroptions/us/download/20306.html

Thanks, will give it a try!

Sorry, it is more properly call the HP USB disk storage tool. Here is a link to a German web site that post it.
http://www.pctipp.ch/downloads/dl/32594.asp
I believe that I got my download off Tech Republic.

WinFuture XP-Iso-Builder is a tool for creating bootable CD that are updated and configured the way you want. It has a feature of creating a standard CD from the custom CD that ship with the systems or from the directory on the drive. It might be limited to the hardware it came with, I'm not sure.

http://winfuture.de/xpisobuilder3_en

This site typicaly teases you with links. You select the download you are looking for only to be directed to another page with a zillion more links then you have to find the link you originally wanted then you click it and then you go to another page with the same sh_t over again..I was disquisted with the whole process and left the site...waste of time.

If the Windows CD didn't come with the system but a recovery CD did, then the install files are already on the HD (somewhere).

PEBuilder can find them for you if use the Source-->Search Menu. But it may take awhile. (it may also be that you have to assign a drive letter to the partition where those files are)

Also, if it's an old machine (pre-SP1) they won't help you much. The source has to be SP1 or newer to build BartPE.

delete this comment, its a lag comment

The people who are willing to use their hours and that can actually understand this article will most likely have their own Windows CD. If you work with computers alot, it becomes a valueble tool.

And if you make/manage your own pc, you'll HAVE to have a copy. Like going into war without a weapon. Once a serious problem pops up.

Also MSNDC alliance offers XP for $15 a copy to students at most colleges, so if you have a kid in IT courses, ask him/her to talk to their IT instructor about it.

Hi every one: I think this article is very useful and will allow me to have a more managable recovery unit.

Thank you Greg for taking the time to share it with us.

This is the best article on booting XP from a flash drive I've seen, but what about booting Vista from a flash drive.

I haven't yet attempted to figure out how to get Vista to boot from a USB flash drive. When I do, I'll write an article on how it is done.

I'm paying attention to making a PE bootable for Vista when I have time, and hope to have it done within a month.

An important thing to download and then master is the WAIK ISO. Some of the 'advice' sites out there give directions in this regard that do not match the drive contents, so beware.

The best way to "boot" Vista is out the door!

...that so many of you have gotten this technique to work!

If you had success, can you post the brand name and size of UFD you used and the type and version of the BIOS on your computer?

I used to use a Win98 boot on my UFD, but since I couldn't see our NTFS drives, I jumpped on this. I use a Simpletech 1GB UFD and we have all Dell Optiplex and Latitude laptops. It's a slow boot process, but it does work. I've used PEbuilder fo a couple of years for bootable diag disks, but this can be a time saver.

I just created a drive using a generic Microcenter 2gb drive

http://www.freewebs.com/chinhan2k5/SRSP1.rar

and any one talk me why just simple create a dir with name srsp1, are there any logic relative here.

When I am done I have 4 files -- BartPE.iso, ntdetect.com, ntldr, and winnt.sif on the USB device. It then will not boot. I have tried this 3 times following the instructions exactly as the article says and I am getting the same results. SO -- what am I missing here?

I am having the same issue. I have read that the USB drives are a hit or miss. Some brands will work and some won't. Let me know if you hear otherwise.

Hi
I have exactly the same problem that BartPE creates an .iso file, and 3 other WinXP loader files. But I could not boot from it.
Were you able to fix this problem?
Thanks in advance.

Samir Desai
aerify7351@mypacks.net

I have tried a Transcend 2GB, a PNY 512 GB and a whatever 256MB. Upon trying to boot, I get a message that Boot Disk not found.

hi,
i have attempted 3 times by following the said instructions but get the same error message every time by booting from the UFD.

the error message is:
"File \i386\system32\ntoskrnl.exe could not be loaded. The error code is 4
Setup cannot continue. Press any key to exit"

btw i m using dell system. Kingston 512M UFD.

what can i do now?

It's not necessary to expand all of SP1. Simply open it with WinZip or WinRAR, select the two files, extract them to your SRSP1 (or wherever) and expand ramdisk.sys. Of course, if you have a server already running 2K3SP1, just copy the files from there...

Where is fancy bread in the heart or in the head?

I have trouble installing the Mcaffee virus scanner. It kept telling me that it can't find scan.exe when I tried enabling it on the plugins screen. I followed the instruction and it didn't tell me anything about this. Any extra info I should know?

seems like alot to go thru when you can get knoppix on to a CD and boots from the CD. I have used it several times to recover windows Pc and or user files if windows was to corrupted. http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://www.knoppix.org/&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=1&ct=result&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dknoppix%26hl%3Den%26rlz%3D1T4GGLR_enUS241US242

So is there any way by which I can format my windows XP using flash drive???
I'm in desperate need plz tell me as soo as possible at rsa_y2j@yahoo.co.in
Thanx

In my case, I want a bootable Windows Server 2003 flash drive. I'm going to follow your steps and see if I can make it work. Has anyone tried this? Thanks

After creating a boot image on UFD and trying to boot the laptop using the UFD; system tries to create a ramdrive.
After creating a virtual drive, when attempting to load BartPE I am getting error; File \I386\system32\ntoskrnl.exe could not be loaded. Error code 14, setup cannot continue? Any guesses what could be wrong?

I just cannot get this thing to work. I've tried 3 or so UFD two system which both support UFD booting. The only thing is I am running windows Vista, but I don't think that should make a difference, or should it? I have 4 files on the UFD: bartpe.iso, ntdetect.com, nldr and winnt.sif. Any suggestions?

Elmidwill,

When I tried to boot from my Kingston 1GB DataTraveler, I would get the following error: "No Bootable Partition in Table". I had seen a reference to making your memstick bootable by using a utility at HP but that's no longer available. I found another thread that mentioned using a Dell utility. This is the way I got the problem fixed.

1 --- Google CW1310A0.EXE site:dell.com
(Current URL is ftp://ftp.dell.com://diags/CW1310A0.EXE )
2 --- Expand and run DDDP.EXE. Click on "Install to USB Flash Drive" button.
3 --- Remove flash drive and reboot.
4 --- Plug in flash drive. Run pe2usb -f {drive letter for flash drive}

Here's the URL that led me to the solution:
http://blogs.oreilly.com/digitalmedia/2004/10/utility-to-make-usb-flash-driv.html

Since the Jack said that the Dell utility doesn't work for everything. He also states that it works for Vista.

Cheers,
ED

Great article....
Well done!!

BillD, This article is all about creating an XP bootable. Would you explain why you are referencing files on Windows Server 2003?
Also, is this XP bootable good for only Professional, or will other versions work as well, given the caveats you've already mentioned.

I keep getting these errors when trying to re-install XP: Missing lass.exe, stop:0X00000007, FS_rec.sys-address, F978451 DAT 3b7d8361 dates stamp
Any suggestions? funtym2008@yahoo.com

Have a prebuilder 313 on a CD. Can I create the PE2USB folder from 313? I need it to make the USB drive.

INF-file txtsetup.sif is incorrect or missing. status: 18
help me

Expand the ramdisk.sy_ file to the SRSP1 folder with the command:

expand -r ramdisk.sy_ c:\pebuilder3110a\srsp1

iT GIVES ME THIS ERROR
WHY???

Can`t open input file: ramdisk.sy_

the command prompt confused me, possibly because i'm on vista. is their any chance you could link me to/make a guide for how to do this while on vista? i wanna get rid of vista soo bad.