Discussion on:

Boot Windows XP from a USB flash drive

Well, the HP tool doesn't seem to be available, can anyone help out here? Thanks in advance.

The main problem with XP on a stick, is that XP considers it to be a Hard drive, so once the stick
is booted on one pc, it is locked to that PC, if you try and boot it on another PC it just crashes, unless the configuration is identical to the original machine. I keep meaning to investigate, as the last time I had a look at it, only 8 files are modified, so if they could be kept unmodified and replace the modded files, then it should work on any PC.
Just haven't had the inclination or the time
to do it!!

Edited

Message was edited by: beth.blakely@...

I am seriously interested to put XP on a stick together with soma applications. However, I am unable to print figures B, C and D with a readable resolution.

Is there a place where I can find these figures in a readable form?
Thanks,

Aad Proeme

If you copy and paste the images into a Word document, and then zoom the Word document to 200% (or more if you need) you will be able to read the words.

Bart PE is a fantastic tool. I have used it extensively in several different builds. Bart also has a makeboot utility on their site that is supposed to work for this flash problem, but I have not tried it yet. Check out this article http://www.bootdisk.com/pendrive.htm
Another great (essential IMHO) addition to a Bart build is Norton Ghost. With that you can image the host operating system drive off to another machine and retrieve it or replicate it to another (more or less) identically configured machine. This has saved me a lot of tooth gnashing.

Hi,
I have recently discovered XXClone, does
what Ghost does, but more like ImageX. The
nice thing about it is, it works on a live system!! If it works? it will be a fantastic
tool.

Partimage Is Not Ghost, or PING, found at http://www.windowsdream.com is an excellent tool for straight up drive cloning. The cool feature is that you don't have to steal GHOST to do it, PING is released under a free license. It creates an exact copy of your partition, whole hard drive, and even snags a backup of your BIOS in the process. You can store it to an optical drive, separate partition or an PXE/RIS environment. It even provides a free tool to setup your own RIS environment.

I know I sound like a salesman. But I like to promote the tools that I find are excellent. (Notepad++ is another one... googlesearch it.) (or UltimateBootCD or UBCD4win) (or theGIMP or Audigy)... I could go on, but I'll spare you all.

My computer came with Windows XP service pack 2 installed. So i don't have a cd. How can I continue with the boot????

At my knowledge if you don't have a genuine Windows XP that came with your PC you could contact the seller where you bought it and ask for it. If it is not possible, the other alternative is to call Microsoft and ask a suggestion. For the third suggestion I'm not sure at all, if the installation temporaries files of Windows XP is still on your PC it could be use for that purpose. This should be verified with expert.

There was an article on exactly how to do this in PCWorld about 1-2 years ago. I couldn't find it on their web site, but I found this instead, which basically requires that you have an i386 folder on your C drive; this is usually the case when XP comes preloaded. Check out this link: http://www.howtohaven.com/system/createwindowssetupdisk.shtml

torrent Windows XP SP2. I suggest thepiratebay.org because people post comments on if it has viruses or not.

If your XP system was installed at the factory (OEM),by one of the big guys like DELL, HP/COMPAQ ,ACER OR WHOEVER, and it has a "C:\I386" file, then chances are you can create your own CD for restoring the operating system when problems arise. Read this page carefuly.
The I386 folder is this one: C:\I386.
Goto "My computer" right click the "C" drive and click "explore". If you have an I386 folder "There" your in business. IT MUST BE THAT ONE ONLY & NOT ANOTHER ONE IN ANOTHER FOLDER ANYWHERE ELSE. & NO, YOU CAN NOT TAKE ONE FROM AN XP CD EITHER!
THIS FOLDER IS THE KEY & A MUST HAVE!
Now read on.....
http://www.howtohaven.com/system/createwindowssetupdisk.shtml

HMMM

Yes I guess HP got mad,,,or is it a conspiracy???

No Hp tool form the article link,,,bad reporting??

I got an error message when i was running the pe2usb command. the message is as follows:- the volume is too big for FAT16/12
Error: Format (drive letter): failed.
I am using a 8gb UFD.

Did you read the article? It blatantly states that the largest drive usable with FAT16 is 2gb!

rofl.

Yes the link from the article was broken. I did a Google search and found it in 1.3 seconds.

123

1234

I just built the USB boot disk. I too couldn't find the specified app so I used the ols right click on My Computer and click on Manage, selected my USB drive and selected format. My ddive works fine. Good Luck. BTW I'm using WIN XP Pro as the OS to build from

Anyone successfully booted from USB 2.0 Thumb drive mind telling me how long it takes to boot?

I would like to know the speed difference between standard HD vs USB2.0 Thumb

Google it?

hi my name is moses i can send you the sp no so you can search on hp site the sp numder is sp27213
or you can call me on my mobile
my mobile no +919423109928
or my mail id : m_bhonsale@yahoo.com

HP USB Disk storage format tool version 2.1.8

highlite copy & paste in an open browser

http://files.extremeoverclocking.com/file.php?f=197

Is it possible to install windows xp on flash drive from windows 7?
I failed on boot. It says to insert proper boot device and reboot.

http://h18000.www1.hp.com/support/files/serveroptions/us/download/23839.html

Thanks for that, for anyone else's benefit this is an approx 45Mb download.

Thanks for taking the time to post the help

I just spent the betterpart of an hour on HP's website. It has a new name. search for HPUSBF.exe

BTW it is 527KB

Here is the URl for HPUSBF.exe

http://h18007.www1.hp.com/support/files/server/us/download/24434.html?jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN

is called

HP USB Key ROMPAQ Setup Utility
version 1.00 A (31 Mar 06)

The new version of HP Format Util is 2.00.006 Rev B and file name is "SP27213.exe". Size is 1.97mb
URL is "http://h18000.www1.hp.com/support/files/serveroptions/us/download/20306.html"

ok thanks for that other url...

btw - can linux be booted by usb as well?

Check out Damn Small Linux (http://damnsmalllinux.org/). It's only 50 MB to download and they also have floppy disk images that allow your computer to boot from a floppy which loads the OS from the USB drive regardless of whether or not the BIOS can boot from USB drives.

I follow the procedure and when I restart the computer with the flash drive I receive a hal.dll error

Getting this same error. I got it to work 1 time and i tried doing another USB drive and I am back to square 1... don't know what to do.

I was desperate to get my flash drive to work so I went investigating. I happened upon the boot.ini file that I copied in the beginning and opened. And, lo and behold it was trying to boot from the "Windows" folder which is what it would boot from normally. To get yours to work, you need to open that boot.ini file in notepad and where it says "\Windows" change it to "\minint" (or whatever your main folder is on your flash drive) if you used bartpe then the folder will be minint. change both of them in the boot.ini file. Mine would go partway then. It got to the point where it was starting to boot windows but then said that the "System" file in minint\system32\config\ was missing. So I went and looked and sure enough, it was missing. You can't usually copy this file with windows running because it is using the file, but if you boot from a live cd (I used Puppy Linux) then you can copy all the files out of the config folder onto your flash drive. the path is: C:\Windows\System32\Config I would recommend copying all the files out of that folder except for the system something folder that is in there. Then shut down your Puppy Linux and reboot to windows and copy the files that you just got to a folder on your desktop and then you can follow the great directions on this site. After my BartPE was done installing to my flash drive, I copied that system file and the system.log file to the \minint\system32\config folder. I tried to boot then, but it came to a blue screen system error and immdeiatly shutdown. On my next try I am putting the system file from a fresh install of xp on my flash dirve instead of the one I was trying to use that was from the computer that has had piles of junk put on it. I don't know if it will make a difference, but I'm trying it. I'll keep you updated on my progress.

What you need to do is move your BartPE and plugin-dir to a directory without spaces in it, NOT "Program Files" (notice the space?). You probably noticed the 'file not found' error in your startup of instpe.cmd. That means that instpe cant find the file to modify ntldr and boot.ini to correctly point at the included files. If you place both in a dir without spaces from the root, you're ok. Thank me, I am God.

hello there, well te idea of booting into the flash drive is limited, becoz windows have always been week in detecting drivers, plus the usb is to slow, so....it almost impossible...and the changes need to be in boot.ini like u sed.
butt u need to add a new line:
x:\file.bin="bart pe"
where x is ur drive leter and file.bin is the extracted/edited boot sector.
the trick is how to get that boot sectore?
gd luck

123456

Excellent post..
I was wondering, if i could do that,but it seems like yes, we can...

As an onsite tech, this tool would rock. However, as the author suggests, it's spotty at best. I followed all instructions and only got it to boot from 1/3 computers and then proceded to get the old HAL.dll error that I anticipated.

With that said, I will return to my tried and true method of a laptop with an external firewire hd enclosure or a bootable xp cd and the recovery console tools for machines that won't boot or are virus infected.

Even if this trick worked more often than not, I would really have a problem installing my apps through BartPE. If there isn't an existing folder in BartPE, you have to find a way to gather all the registry entries for each app you want to install. It just seems to be more work than it's worth, but I thank the author for the article and the effort.

If the BIOS issues weren't the biggest hurdle, I might try formatting the flash drive and copying over a fresh install of Windows98 with all my preinstalled tools. This would resolve many of the hal.dll and XP security problems, BUT since the BIOS seems to be the biggest pain in the @ss then it might not be worth the effort of testing that theory.

Great article Mr. Posey, thanks for the insight!

I use a combination here, my BartPE Win'XP SP2 CD and a CD with a collection of portable applications which includes ClamWin (updated regularly to current defs; CD's are cheap), 7Zip, Firefox, etc. You can find those, mostly in a pre-packaged setup, over at http://www.portableapps.com. Even if you don't have a stick, you aren't left out in the cold. If you do have a stick, these are dead easy to tuck on the stick. No registry entries to muck with.

Has anyone tried Ultimate Boot CD for Windows?

Quote from UBCD4Win's website:
UBCD4Win is a bootable CD which contains software that allows you to repair, restore, or diagnose almost any computer problem. Our goal is to be the ultimate free hardware and software diagnostic tool. All software included in UBCD4Win are freeware utilities for Windows?. UBCD4Win is based on Bart's PE?. Bart's PE? builds a Windows? "pre-install" environment CD, basically Windows? booted from CD. We include many free hardware and software diagnostic tools that allow you to fix almost any problem you will face with your computer. With network support, the ability to modify NTFS volumes, recover deleted files, create new NTFS volumes, scan hard drives for viruses, etc. this project includes almost everything you need to repair your system problems. This project has been put together to be the ultimate recovery cd and not a replacement OS (Operating System). Please visit the "List of Tools" page for a complete list of what is included in the latest version of the project.

There are requirements for building this CD which can and may make it difficult for everyone to build the project. Please understand that these requirements and restrictions are due to copyright laws, etc. When starting this project I wanted it to be as easy as possible. I wanted it to be a simple ISO file download just like the original Ultimate Boot CD. I had to weigh the ease of build and functionality very carefully. After much thought and research I decided that Bart's PE? was the best way to accomplish this task. That decision required a different type of build and more steps for the end user. Yes more complicated, but I prefer to think of these additional steps in a positive way. We provide detailed instructions, email support, and the forum for help. Inexperienced users will feel a sense of accomplishment and gain knowledge when they successfully build the CD.