Hi I was wondering if anyone knows of any working methods to get Windows XP SP3 onto a USB flash drive rather than having to burn to a CD. Have looked on google but all the methods I've found don't work. I'm in the process of building my own custom bootable flash drive, I've tried also partitioning it in 2 as well with gparted but the 2nd partition can not be read. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
I use RMPREPUSB to format the pen drive, and WinSetupFromUSB to create a Grub bootloader and ISO. Works every time.
I just tried RMPREPUSB, the usb boots but when I go to do the setup it loads all the devices then it BSOD's with error code 0x0000007B.
I follow a set process: 1. Extract a stock XP CD e.g. VLK XP Service Pack 3 2. Use NLite to customize it and bundle in the hotfixes etc 3. Use DriverPacks.Net to add in the mass storage, CPU, LAN and wireless drivers (I don't bother with the display drivers, they take up too much space) 4. RMPrepUSB the drive and configure bootloader (or you can use Corsair Flash Drive Tool from blog.corsair.com.) 5. THEN use WinSetupFromUSB to actually put the setup onto the pen drive What you should then get when you boot from the pen drive, is a "Windows XP/2000/2003 Setup" menu option and it's configured like this in menu.lst: title Windows XP/2000/2003 Setup map --unmap=0:0xff map --unhook savedefault find --set-root --ignore-cd /usbdrive.tag configfile /winsetup.lst Within the setup menu (winsetup.lst) there are two options: first one does the mini setup, the second one mounts the ISO prior to booting up Windows for the GUI install. The entire point of using WinSetupFromUSB is that it knows what modifications need to be made to GRUB, to the ISO image, and to the drive mounting, for the setup to work. In a million years, dumping a stock ISO image onto a pen drive will never work. If you literally want just a 1GB pen drive to do nothing but set up Windows XP, then follow this process: (Please note, it is CRUCIAL that you follow the file copy procedures this without deviation, otherwise the pen drive may not boot and you'll have to reformat it. Play with the other settings if you like...) 1. Mount an ISO image for Windows install (or BartPE / whatever as long as it's Windows bootable), OR insert a bootable disk into the CD/DVD drive. 2. Launch RMPrepUSB and set the following options: FILESYSTEM AND OVERRIDES FAT32 or NTFS Boot as HDD (2PTNS) Size: MAX=4145 or less seems to work for me DO NOT specify the copy files option at the bottom. 3. Select Prepare Drive 4. As soon as the formatting has completed, and while the pen drive is blank, copy setupldr.bin from \i386 of the CD/DVD, to the root of the UFD, then rename it to ntldr. 5. You will need a custom ntdetect.com to copy to the root of the UFD. (This is one created in a hex editor; Using the WinXP standard ntdetect.com causes a BSOD on bootup - it's very widely documented on the internet). 6. Copy the target files and folders from the CD to the pen drive, renaming \i386 to \minint if this is a WinPE/BartPE disk (you can also use JUNCTION to alias i386 as minint, but I won't go into that here). Bingo, the pen drive will fully support Windows XP setup but not much else. You may be able to retrospectively apply GRUB to the pen drive and add other boot options, but I've never tried it.
Ok I'm able to load the XP setup now if I boot the computer from the flash drive, for some reason it dosen't work when I try boot it in VMware though. Dosen't detect any drives except the flash drive though strangly, the boot disc I copied the files from has my raid drivers intergrated so I don't see why it only can detect my flash drive on the setup. Windows 7's setup worked in VMware but after it installed my flash drive dosen't boot anymore, maybe it decided to extract files to the flash drive? I'm certian I chose the 40gb partition on the setup but now my flash drives popping up with some stupid Windows 7 bootmgr boot menu crap instead of the grub4dos one . Geuss this means I have to recreate the whole thing from scratch again arggh it takes like 4 hours!!
Ah, then you need to download PLPBT.ISO and mount that as the CD to boot from. This will give you a menu asking what to boot from, THEN you can mount the pen drive in VMWare, then you can install from the pen drive.
But if I mounted the flash drive after I've done a install of Windows 7 won't it still just boot up the Windows 7 bootmgr still or can you choose to boot grub4dos rather than bootmgr? Is there anyway to stop Windows 7 from extracting files to the flash drive and rather extracting them to the hard drive instead after I do an install?
Sorry, I don't get what you mean. In VMWare if you tell the VM to boot from CD first with PLPBT ISO mounted, it'll always boot from the ISO - and whatever version of Windows you're running in the VM is irrelevant. Just remember to mount the pen drive BEFORE selecting the USB drive from the PLP menu! I use this process frequently to test the pen drive. If I can set up Windows from the pen drive, then it's working. In hardware terms the same logic applies - If you're telling your computer at the BIOS level to boot from USB devices THEN the CD/DVD drive THEN the hard drive, you'll never have an issue. I'm using an encrypted laptop and even then have the boot order set as above. If the bootable pen drive is plugged in I get a GRUB loader which'll take me into UBCD4WIN, DOS, various bootable ISOs (for imaging/recovery), XP Setup if I like.... or there's "Boot from the hard drive" as another menu option.
I just tried booting my flash drive using plpbt in VMware and it came up with 4 options, boot HD partition 1 and 2, floppy and cd-rom. Came up with an error when I tried booting partition 1 and just froze with a _ on the screen when I tried partition 2 and yes the flash drive does normally boot fine without plpbt. I don't really need plpbt anyway I don't mind using the boot menu or just changing the boot sequence in the BIOS, this program would be useful if it lets you boot USB's on older PC's that don't have the option though. Anyway I'll try explain what happens when I install Windows 7 again, what happens when I try to install Windows 7 is it extracts a whole bunch of files to my flash drive which stops the grub4dos menu popping up and instead the Windows 7 setup boots straight away, I actually filled the flash drive up completely at one stage and when I tried installing Windows 7 to the 40GB virtual hard drive it poped up with a message saying I don't have enough space on my flash drive.
Ah - so you're using the pen drive as the source for the Windows 7 setup... Sorry, I've not had the chance to play around with that.
That's ok I geuss I can just use the offical Windows 7 DVD download tool in the meantime. I've been playing around with Plop and I ended up downloading the floppy image and booting it with grub4dos but when I try to boot a CD with it just takes me to a "grub>" prompt, I tried typing boot but it said I need to load a kernal first but don't know how to, do you know how to boot a CD with Plop in a real life situation? (not VMware). Something I've noticed about VMware is things don't necessarily work the same way as they do when you do a real boot rather than a virtual one in VMware on a flash drive.
Here is the solution Here is the solution Please refer the following URL to make a bootable windows xp drive refer komku.blogspot.com
Komku-SP-usb.exe download this software from google website.... steps to install/make bootable USB drive are available on komku.blogspot.com