making bootdisk out of USB thumb drive so I can run fdisk, chkdisk

[TheWart]

hey all,

In all my years of computer troubleshooting, this recent issue has given me the biggest headache. I just bought a macbook, and so I wanted to try and sell my older windows laptop. Well, the CD drive is not working, so I have embarked on an odyeey to try and install windows over USB drive, and even PXE.

To make a long story short, I think my HD is messed up because of an aborted BartPE installation. Can someone please, please, tell me how to turn my 2gb thumb drive into a standard boot disk. By that, i mean the kind that just quickly spits you out on the command line so I can run chkdsk and fdisk.

I had a fully formatted BartPE disk ready to go, but when I try to use it I get a bluescreen, so now I need to format the HD and make sure everything is wiped out and the partitions aren't screwed up....hence my need for a 'vanilla' boot disk.


Any help would be GREATLY appreciated!

 

[TheWart]

Usually i don't follow up to my own threads, but I figured that of the 15 or so people that viewed this, perhaps a few might be looking for similar help.

What I ended up doing is downloading the Ultimate Boot CD and using the included USB stick tool to make a UBCD out of my thumb drive.

First thing I did was poke around when it booted up, and then started running the DBAN wipe tool. It says it is going to take 40 hours for one pass, lol. That's a DOD grade wipe for you I guess. I think I will manually shut the system down after it completes one cycle rather than wait for 3, because I need to get this resolved and don't have time for it to take 120+ hours just to wipe the drive.

 

[SickBeast]

You need the HP usb format tool. Just google it.

 

[TheWart]

Originally posted by: SickBeast
You need the HP usb format tool. Just google it.

I have that util....should I run that before I put the BartPE files on it?

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: TheWart

Originally posted by: SickBeast
You need the HP usb format tool. Just google it.

I have that util....should I run that before I put the BartPE files on it?

Yes, although I'm not familiar with BartPE.

I personally use Puppy Linux as my rescue software.

 

[amdhunter]

Maybe try this? I've installed Windows 7 on my laptop with this method. It might be useful to you to partition the drive or do little maintenance things...