booting from usb pendrive

[septiroth]

how can i formate my usb pendrive to be bootable? i dont see a copy system files switch in the xp version of format command or in the right click menu in my computer. my bios supports booting from usb hdd....

 

[vaporize]

i know this does not answer you question but i was wondering, what if you left your pendrive in the usb when you retart the computer. does it show the message that the drive does not contain any system files? i remember when i left any floppy in my drive it would tell me to remove it first before it can boot.

 

[bacillus]

try copying the image from a win98 boot floppy without the system files to the usb drive!
you'll also have to change the boot order in bios!

 

[foxkm]

This is very possible as long as your bios supports booting to USB devices. Many current bioses do not. You should simply be able to boot to dos off a floppy drive and sys the drive letter of the pen drive (given that your bios is smart enough to treat it like a hard drive) and then be able to reboot. If worse comes to worse, you can probably copy command.com, io.sys, msdos.sys to the drive, do a attrib +h +s +r on the .sys files, then get a utility called bootpart to "restore" a dos boot sector on the drive.

Good luck..

P.S. I haven't had DOS booting off my 64 mb pen drive, but I had OS9 booting off my pen drive on my iBook.

 

[septiroth]

no go....bootpart needs dos to rewrite the boot sector
i have xp
my bios DOES support the drive
three options
usb-fdd
usb-zip
usb-hdd
when booting from usb-hdd, it says corrupt boot partition
from the other two, it just says disk boot failure

 

[IPLaw]

I've been very interested in booting off of a USB pen drive as well (so I can run diskless linux). Apparently, when the bios lists 'usb-hdd', it refers to a hdd connected by a usb cable, not a usb pen drive.

 

[corkyg]

This technical paper by Dell may have some relevant info . . .

Flash Boot

 

[septiroth]

http://forums.sudhian.com/messagevi...ighlight_key=y&keyword1=usb&FTVAR_MSGDBTABLE=