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Bootable USB keys

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Since I raised the subject I've had a mail from a couple of people on the subject of making a bootable key.

I described the steps making a USB key bootable using the Vista / Windows PE version of Diskpart. Here are the commands

  • select disk 1 {or the number of your USB key, be careful !}
  • clean  {Like I said, be careful ! This erases the disk}
  • create partition primary
  • select partition 1
  • active
  • format fs=fat32
  • assign
  • exit

Now at this point you have a disk which will try to boot using BootMgr in the style of Windows PE/Vista/Longhorn server. Several people have asked about making a key which boots in the style of Server 2003/XP/Windows 2000/Windows NT. I can't make the Vista/PE version of disk part run on Windows XP, and the older version won't prepare a USB key. So you need to do this from Vista or the Vista build of Windows PE. Once the drive is formatted it has a Vista Boot sector - this won't boot NT / 200x / XP operating systems. You need to use the BootSect utility:
Boosect /nt52 E:
stamps a Window 2003 Server boot sector (one which uses boot.ini) onto drive E:. I haven't tried it but you should be able copy NTLDR, BOOT.INI and NTDETECT.COM onto a USB key as a way of starting a machine which with a corrupt boot environment.

For now, as far as I can tell, there's no way to set-up such a device under XP/Server 2003. I'd welcome any correction on this.

 

Technorati tags: Microsoft, Windows, vista, deployment

Comments

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    I am installing Windows Server 2008 on a new server that has no video card and no DVD drive. It's an

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Hopefully the title is self evident. The servers are taking a real pasting right now, so you might find

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    I like 64 bit vista. It's proved be excellent at performance, reliability and application compatibility

  • Anonymous
    January 02, 2007
    The comment has been removed