USB support in DOS mode on win98

[Koharski]

okay, I am trying to make a bootable USB jumpdrive on windows 98. So far nothing has worked and it has been recomended to me to format it using DOS fdisk. Can somone help me figure out how to load USB drivers when I reboot into DOS mode?

 

[drag]

You generally _don't_. Well, at least I wouldn't.

There are much better things you can boot off a USB disk with. But if you want to boot from a usb with DOS maybe this will be helpfull:
http://www.weethet.nl/english/hardware_bootfromusbstick.php

I haven't tried that.

This is what I use:
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

If you boot from the cdrom there is a option to install to usb thumb drive.

 

[Koharski]

yeah, see I would use linux HOWEVER this computer isn't mine and I have been asked not tomess around with linux on it, (don't have a burner anyway).

so are you saying I can't get USB working under DOS?

 

[drag]

If you follow that guide I linked to you should be able to get a flash boot drive going with MS-DOS.

I haven't tried it, but it looks like it makes sense.

DOS has very limited USB capabilities, pretty much none. But apparently people are still working on it a bit.

 

[Koharski]

okay, heres my issue. Using that exact guide when I go to actually copy from my disk image to the flash disk windows goves me an "old disk utility error"

I can't quote the actual error, but it basically says that windows won't let my program write to the disk because it's made for an older version of dos.

this is what made me think that I should go into dos mode to begin with, but is there a better approach?

 

[drag]

I donno. If you don't have anything important on that flash drive I'd try to reformat it from the command line.

I bet your dos stuff requires fat32 or vfat or something like that while the drive is formatted fat16. Something silly like that.

 

[corkyg]

I think you are at a dead end unless the system's BIOS supports USB boot. Most older machines (Win98 vintage) do not.

 

[networkman]

Originally posted by: Koharski
okay, I am trying to make a bootable USB jumpdrive on windows 98.

From a machine running Win2k or higher, you could use the Lexar utility located HERE to partition and format a USB flash drive to be Win98 bootable with ease; I do it all the time to create Ghost bootable drives which I use for imaging at work.

As others have pointed out though, the Bios of the computer in question needs to support USB booting for this to work. I have some older P3 class Gateway computers at home that have USB ports and run Windows 98, but do not support booting from a USB drive at all.

Edit: RE - the Lexar utility I linked to -- it's worked on and in every PC I've used where the Bios support USB Bootable devices. It's not limited for use just to the HP/Compaq computer models listed.