Discussion on:

Video: Create your own bootable USB flash drive for Windows XP

A bootable Windows XP preinstalled environment can be a handy tool for many PC maintenance tasks. Traditionally, these environments have been created on CDs or DVDs. But, with the rapid increase in capacity of USB drives, these handy devices are now a viable alternative.

In the following IT Dojo video, I explain the process and pitfalls of creating a bootable Windows XP USB flash drive using PE Builder.

Original post and video: http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/itdojo/?p=108

Do you think a bootable Windows environment is an essential part of every IT toolkit? Do you think PE BartPE, WinPE, WinBuilder or another environment works best? Has a bootable Windows environment ever rescued you from a difficult support call?

I visited my daughter at college (for graduation) and finally had the "opportunity" to clean up her computer she'd been complaining about for so long and which none of her friends had been able to cleanse. I found over 750 spyware, virus, and adware infections and spent quite a number of hours combatting the more insidious ones. There were several that required me to boot an alternate environment to delete a directory or file because it was "in use" when deletes were attempted in either safe or regular mode. BartPE let me get to the files I needed to delete. I suspect I could have done this with the UBCD (Ultimate Boot CD) project and its NTS4DOS (or whatever it's called) utility, but reading the UBCD literature led me to BartPE and I took that route.

And you have the option to make a restore when windows restore fail, and change te admin password, need more???

Good suggestion, but BartPE is a free utility. Winternals ERD2005 is a component of the Winternals AdminPak, which costs over $1,000, unless you buy a volume license for your entire IT group. The Winternals Utilities include some essential tools that have saved thousands of dollars for my clients (and recovered data from dead hard disks that would otherwise be considered lost forever), so it was well worth the investment, but if all you need is a bootable XP environment, this works fine, and costs you nothing more than your own time.

I have also had great success with several of the free Linux bootable utilities (Knoppix, GPartEd, Ubuntu Live, etc.) which permit access to NTFS partitions from a Linux command line or GUI when XP just won't boot normally.

There are a couple of utilities that will take care of that within a Windows environment: MoveOnBoot and UnLocker.

I don't know if it can me run from a USB key as I do with other utils; what I often do is install small utils in a vitualpc and then copy the installed folder to a key and test. Anything that doesn't require registry entries to run or files copied to folders other than the install folder normally run without a glitch.

Cheers

As long as the system at least sort of runs I use Unlocker from this URL:
http://ccollomb.free.fr/unlocker/

Has not yet let me down.

yeah it's a good log i'm actually using it

In your presentation, you didn't mention where one gets the free programs you need for this.

Also, there are a number of poor souls whose computers came with XP installed and they didn't receive a CD with the system. Is there any way to either get a CD or extract what one needs from the recovery disk provided?

The usual Usenet response would be 'google is your friend', but I don't read this forum often, so here is the site:
http://www.nu2.nu/bootdisk/cdrom/

In response to someone who said that it represents an improvement on UBCD, try UBCDWin:

http://www.ubcd4win.com/

This has far more tools on it.

As far as people who do not have an installation disc, there is somewhere out there a package that will draw out the ingredients from your \i386 subdirectory. Finally there is the very useful 'autostreamer' which will incorporate each successive service pack into your existing or newly created installation disc, thus saving you the problem of doing the job by hand, making this a truly preinstalled environment for problem solving. The USB solution is best for those machine that can make use of it, since you can update definitions for AV and anti spyware packages, so long as you have put the packages on the drive outside of the ISO.

Finally, for CD-ROM use it makes sense to use the ISO to master a disc, rather than allow the software to plonk an iso and PE boot system on it. It's swifter. I did it and it's fine.

I can say here in the US a bootleg copy will get BSA and microsoft's attorneys after them for software piracy, besides I have already have these people who will not pay a professional rate to fix their PCs usually filled with porn, and 100's of viruses.

I have been a Tech for a store who taken an advantage of me by not paying me just gave me the junk that no parts were available, and had collected 20 TV sets from people who just said they could not even afford the parts, and gave me their old sets to scrap out.

SO when it comes to microsoft software the issue is do they want to buy a legitimate copy, just because they went to XYZ Auction and bought a used computer AS-IS no warranty its a risk taker, I even had awhile back a woman fished a Notebook from the trash and it plain would not boot up! Battery dead for starters and no O/S I would love to give her $20.00 and go buy a legit copy myself.

. . . has been many times my lifesaver. I fix up to 12 malware infected computers in private homes each week. Way TOO MANY older machines can not boot from USB but already from a CD so a bootable CD with tools is a must for me. USB drives are nice'n handy but...

The Ultimate Boot CD has been a lifesaver for me as well...and after spending lots of time trying to setup my flash drive as a bootable device, I was able to this quickly with UBCD's tool, UBCD2USB.bat, which not only made my USB bootable, but installed all of the tools on my USB. I am in the process of fixing a hard drive, and booting from my USB with the UBCD has helped, whether it is on a USB or CD.

A problem booting with Windows is that every system is different. Between the number of CPUs and whether it's AMD or Intel, video cards, mobo, etc., if you were working for a company that has 100 PCs of the same model, I'd say great but this will be useless if you're a consultant or your company only buys a few models at a time. We have at least 8 different Dell models - from P3 to P4 to dual core and soon quad cores. From AMD to Intel. Then we still have a few Xeons and clones.

I have used the same bartPE disk on P2's, P3's, P4's, AMD's chips, Servers, etc. The only thing I have ever had to do is add RAID drivers to the CD.

Bill

The previous poster mistakes the environments we talk about for full fledged Windows while it actually is M$'s pre-install environment. It's only the base for all the tools that actually do the job.

My trusty old PE boot CD got trashed a few weeks ago. I couldn't find the .iso image I made of it long ago. No sweat, I'll figure out how to make my own... 3 days and 27 pots of coffee later, I have what I consider the ultimate bootable environment. I can boot this image from CD, USB stick, and USB hard drive. No problem. Geek note: Although it's cool to have a bootable stick, it's not nearly as practical as the CD or USB hard drive option. That said, I CAN boot off my stick and then recognize another USB hard drive after boot, but it's more convenient just to boot off the hard drive. If the bios can support booting off the stick, then it can boot off the drive too... My quest started with Bart-PE/Nu2menu, but after having trouble getting the XPE (REAL XP Environment) working correctly, and having trouble getting the stick to boot reliably, I stumbled onto Reatogo. Try: www.reatogo.de Then get: PE2USB. This jewel uses Bart-PE at it's core, but is much easier to configure, has the ability to create drivers for anything installed on the local machine (my verizon broadband drivers are on my image, giving me internet access anywhere on anything) and makes it relatively easy to create your own plugins. My newest image is crammed with over 560megs of goodies. Full registry, network, Real windows explorer shell, Windows Wireless Zero Config, all of it. You can't really tell it's not a regular hard drive install of XP. Things I did learn: 1. It's a LOT of work to get it all right, and you do burn a lot of coasters..2. Booting from USB stick or USB hard disk is painfully slow on most machines due to the fact that at boot time the USB ports usually work at USB 1.1 speed. The CD always boots much faster. 3. If you're in this business, you can't live without one of these. Being able to edit the registry, easily copy/move/recover files, change passwords, extract OEM product keys, scan for viruses and spyware, FTP things to and from the internet etc. etc. is essential. Plus, the Atta' Boy' factor is thru the roof!

I've been through it all, CD/USB Stick booting fine, but for the life of me I cannot get my Western Digital 120GB Passport external USB hard drive to boot. What's the trick?

PS, I know how to enable USB hard drives in the BIOS boot order, but for some reason I cannot get the drive to format as a bootable device.

??

In the case of my 250gig passport:
1. Create the bootable image and make sure it works the way you want it to. I use Microsoft VirtualPC when I'm playing around with the images..
2. Partition the USB hard drive with an 2gig-or-less bootable partition. That's where the image goes.
3. Use PE2USB to transfer the image. (Just google it..)
Done.

Do you care to share the details of how to do that so we might not spend two weeks and untold hair loss to figure it out. Sounds very interesting and useful. Thanks!

Well, I thought I just did. The first key is Reatogo. It's free. The second step is downloading plugin programs and preconfigured autohelp plugins for commercial programs and getting it all together to build. If you want USB booting then get PE2USB. Also free, just google it. Once you get to www.reatogo.de, just start clicking links. You'll find a wealth of info in the discussion forums. It's a learning curve, so start learning! Let's see if you can beat my 3-day 27 pot record... (Admittedly, I'm a perfectionist...)

nuff said

Do you have Dos tool that does the "extract OEM product keys" function? What's it called? Does it allow editing of the key?

Are you willing to share the iso file of the ultimate boot environment that
you discussed here?

I just spent the majority of the day trying to restore a friends Dell GX150 which is running an OEM version of Win 2000, and he doesn't have an install disk for the OS. I have a VL version but there's no way, that I know of anyway, to change the Win2k PID key, like you can do on XP. I don't feel comfortable doing anything illegal with the license keys, so I'd like to be able to reinstall Win2k using the PIDkey that's on the sticker on the case.

Add to that the fact that there are a few integrated devices on his PC that aren't supported under XP Pro SP2, (one of them is the NIC) so I can't even upgrade him to that.

Any ideas on how to tackle this problem?

Thanks,
Techno....

. . . usually has all the drivers that ever were available for any given Dell.

Anyone here can help me with the following?

I got a 16 gig USB memory and I wanted to put miniPE on it. miniPE (or BartPE) will only go on a FAT partition, limited to 3 gigs. So I thought I?d do a FAT32 partition on the remaining space and use it for software that doesn?t fit on the 3 gig + backup very important files off the sick PCs.

But after I create the second partition I can?t format it or even assign a drive letter. I purchased Acronis Disk Director and wasted a lot of time with their support but no luck.

If anyone has any better ideas I?d really appreciate it. I?m sure there are lots of other folks out there who want to do the same thing.

Thanks guys.

maybe whatever you are putting the 16 gigs of stuff into will not take it.A smaller device may help and perhaps the women will be greatful.

Royston.

Well, well, This is now 'mainstream' enough to warrant an article?

Us 'Geeks' started off using dos-based drivers to load usb sticks, cdroms, hard-disk... in 2002.

As early as 2003, I had a Dos-based solution
that would allow re-ghosting a PC from USB.

For a time some of us worked on a stripped down Windows 3.1 that booted through USB.

The sticking point with the newer OS's was
that on loading, they reset the USB Stack,
leading to 'Disconnected from Boot Drive'
messages and lockups.

Bart came along eventually, and all credit to him (and others), he revolutionised the whole works.

Many people picked up on his methods and
produced their own products, stamped their
own mark on the process...

But to see it actually listed as a topic
on ZDNET... Wow. We've come a long way since
I sat up nights trying to get those DOS
drivers running...

To add my one-and-a-half cents, I never consider it a bad idea to learn and even try a new or different method... doing so keeps the ingenious part of my brain quite active for when I have needed it. And what is the most I can *lose* other than a buck fifty on coasters and some time of my own? So booting BartPE or UBCD CDs, HDs, and UFDs can ALL be practical; in my case, I use a combination of CD + UFD--the first to boot + std utils, and the latter to carry my AV, etc. with latest updates, thus no needing to burn a CD on a daily basis. The UFD is also bootable.

Cheers

when i go in the ms-dos and type pe2usb -f e:
the error said its missing a ramdisk.sys and when i googled it its fixed but now it needs the setupldr.bin
where can i download that file??

I use Live ISO's of Linux Distributions like Knoppix. It's funny that all those "professionals" use hacks like this tool. Microsoft should provide a rescue or live disk.

Slax?
http://www.slax.org/

your reply was a waste of time and valuable bandwidth.

How does "I use a bootable Linux ISO" have any relevance to this subject which is about Windows XP?

The business world can choose Microsoft or *nix. It chose Microsoft. That's why this is important, Mr Professional.

When the problem is malware that's hijacked the system, it's handy to be able to boot into a different OS. If you only have one tool in your box, you ain't gonna get much done.

Even if malware has hijacked it, all that matters is that you're booting off different media.

All that really matters is if the solution YOU use has the tools that YOU need.

Its not a question of *nix -vs- win -vs- whatever. You can (and should) have it all!. Check out http://www.justlinux.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=143973

I must consider, what I need in the certain situation.
I often use the Knoppix (my favorite tool). It helped me several times when copying files from NTFS partition on a faulted HDD - another Windows system did not recognise a partition (presented it as RAW), while Knoppix mounted it as Read-only and I was able to save cca 90% of data (except of bad blocks).
On the other hand, You are not able to make chkdsk of NTFS partition from any Linux (I did not find any). This is a job for Windows (or at least the recovery console). And if somebody is not familiar with Linux, such "Live Windows" are very valuable.

We use BartPE all the time when working on clients' machines where there are issues with Windows (2000 or XP) running correctly or where the main drive's integrity is suspect. Our first step is always to boot with BartPE and then run Drive Snapshot to image the boot and data partitions onto an external drive - then we can work on the system knowing that the client's data is safe and that we canm always fall back to the original drive image if something goes *really* wrong. The ability to boot from a USB stick (machine BIOS permitting) would be very handy.

This need to be updated to doing this with a USB drive not just flash. Something like a 320gig USB drive as to allow multiable image files on the drive for use in re-imaging many different computer setups.

Bill, you do realize there is a trademarked company named IT Dojo in Virginia Beach, Virginia, right? And that naming your column that is probably Trademark infringement?

I'm not involved with it in any way (except that I've used them twice), but before you get into a legal battle over the name of your column, you might want to rename it...

Neat idea. Sounds like more trouble than it is worth if it only works on some computers with some USB sticks and you have to use trial and error to see if you have the right computer and/or USB stick. We need a more fool proof solution than that.

I also at first glance thought this was a great idea. I have been using the BartPE as a bootable Windows enviroment from a CD for a while. After weeks of messing around I got it to work (before this article) on a USB flash drive. The problem with this is in fact that it will not work on all computers. However the bootable CD will work on virtually all computers. It is not however as portable and you can certainly have more programs on your stick than a 700mb CD.

I can say however that this is an awsome tool for removing malware or windows crashes from a PC without having to mess around with the non-gui repair console. Boot to BartPE and load AVG, and a few other utilities such as registry editors and you can remove virtually anything without any problems.

There isn't a whole lot of mystery as to which machines will boot from USB, it's in the BIOS. If it's in the list of boot sources, or when you hit (usually) F12 to see a boot menu, you'll know. Sometimes it requires looking at the legacy hardware settings.

I've been using bootable flash drives for a couple of years and haven't had much for issues with it. Actually, HP had a utility out 3 years ago for creating a USB flash drive. Works great for imaging machine with Ghost.

Whatever you like, whatever your used to, it doesn't matter.

As a side thought: I wonder if it's possible to read a Windows forum without hearing about friggin' *nix? If you don't know anything about the subject matter, go to a different forum!

If you are a Desktop Veteran (or especially a Server Veteran), you can't do your job without knowing something about other Operating System environments. A bootable Linux disk can save your bacon when Windows decides to crap out on you (which it does fairly regularly). I use Windows all the time, and Macs pretty frequently, but when I need something in a hurry and don't have the time or budget to request a Purchase Order, the Open Source world often provides the answers I need to get the job done.

Well, I guess it depends on how well a person knows their subject matter. I have never had the need to boot from a different OS to save a Windows machine in over 12 years. And in a secure environment it?s a bit contradictive to use an open source code OS. It?s like putting out the welcome mat.

I don't really care how people do their job, or what they use to accomplish it, if I don't have to deal with the consequences.

My point is simply that it's a forum question about a Windows issue and somebody's answer is always to use *nix. For most people that is not an option. Besides, I can fix a Windows problem with Windows tools, I don't need *nix. And I'm willing to bet that most techs in a windows forum aren't looking for *nix answers.

If you think that *nix is the answer to Windows, hey, knock yourself out. But it would appear that the business world isn?t convinced yet.

At first I thought this USB Windows Boot device would be a true operating system install similar to the way you can create a working bootable operating system on a Mac computer. For example, you can install the Mac OS onto an iPod and then pick to boot the Mac off the iPod (or other USB device). This is a true Mac OS installed operating system. This can be useful if you are trying to determine if you have an OS problem or a hardware problem as well as managing files and scanning for malware.
Unless I am missing something, the problem with this method is that anytime you need to update your boot device you need to recreate the image and burn a new disk or USB image. Minor things such as virus updates would require a new image--or am I missing something...

That is a true statement. You do need to recreate it. In the capacity in which I use a USB boot device I have a folder in which a .bat file looks when I reformat and basically, recreate the USB bootable flash drive. I modify the files within this folder and launch the .bat file. The whole process only takes a minute or two at most. USB 2 is obviously faster. I've done a lot with .bat files over the years so dissecting the file to understand the process it was using was reasonably simple, but simple is a relative term.

This is not the best thing since sliced bread, but it's better than boot disks and bootable CD's which require the same recreation. Plus, flash drives are cheap with large capacities. I used to have to carry a bag with 3.5 floppies and CD's, now I have a 2gb flash drive in my pocket to do most of the same things...and more.

The tool I use to make the USB bootable was created by HP (of all people) and it works very well, even with large capacities. There are a few caveats to be aware of, but they are minor, and worth it. Your virus update scenario would require only a couple of minutes. And for me, that includes updating several locations across the US and Mexico.

The base files are only a couple of mb. Background knowledge of setting up a boot menu in DOS is pretty helpful, but not difficult either way.

In the end, your point is valid. This does not look like your HD OS, but that's MY tool. I think this forum is talking about a more advanced version.

Not windows or linux.
An IT professional uses all available tools to provide solutions and fix problems.

If you can't use Linux, you should not be in IT and if you can't use Windows you would not be working in IT either.