I have the Windows XP Embedded Target Designer (it's legal, i am using it at/for work) and I want to boot it from USB. I am having NO luck doing so. I have downloaded hacked windows versions that WILL boot from USB, but i cannot seem to alter these files to boot WinXPe.

I have tried WinPE incase you were wondering, but I would like a GUI interface if possible.

Anyone have any experience in this and can give me some advice?

12/5/2005 3:00:07 PM

http://www.reatogo.de/

Its a build of BartPE with many plugins and other things that makes it an almost fully functional Bootable Windows OS.

As for booting from USB, if you install it to a USB HDD it might work, though i haven't tried it. Boots quick from CD though.

Booting from USB flash drives is slow as hell.


Altho, have you tried making an image of the working XPe device using ghost or whatever other imaging software and then imaging your USB drive?

[Edited on December 5, 2005 at 5:09 PM. Reason : .]

12/5/2005 5:04:03 PM

Noen is a good XPe resource (or we are lead to believe), so contact him and see if he can help.

Post your results here.

12/5/2005 5:29:31 PM

the "hacked windows" i was referring to was that BartPE. IT's a knockoff name of WinPE. Yes, i have tried that and that's what i tried to alter to fit my iso with.

I have tried Ghost and i have just dumped the image and nothing works. I have no clue what's going on..


PM sent to Noen

[Edited on December 5, 2005 at 5:38 PM. Reason : 8======D]

12/5/2005 5:31:33 PM

reatgoXPE does almost everything a normal windows build does. You might give it a try as its quite different from a base BartPE/WinPE build.

Altho if you do figure out the XPe thing post the results here so we can see what you did.

12/5/2005 5:49:58 PM

Quote :

"reatgoXPE does almost everything a normal windows build does. You might give it a try as its quite different from a base BartPE/WinPE build. Altho if you do figure out the XPe thing post the results here so we can see what you did."

I will try that one out....and if i do get XPe to work i will def post it here and PM for a download (when it happens).

12/5/2005 6:06:34 PM

I'm not 100% familiar with BartPE ... seen it but not used it. Are you able to boot to the USB stick at all? Or will Windows simply not load once it does boot to the USB stick?

12/6/2005 6:07:54 AM

Great thread. I too am looking for a bootable OS, except I want to boot it from a CD and have a functional system without a hardrive but with network support. The system I am using will be an old toshiba laptop PII 333Mhz or maybe its a 350Mhz, I dont have the machine in front of me at this moment but its about 6 or 7 years old, with 256MB RAM. Right now this system has WIN98 on it, would reatogo work on this hardware? I've also been reading through this website (http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/) for possibilities. I've also seen some DSL(Damn small linux) that can be used to boot up. I'm pretty good with Linux so I might try to give one of those a shot too.

12/6/2005 9:33:36 AM

bartPE/reatogoXPE should run on anything winXP would run on. It should run on a pII 333.

As for booting from USB stick, last time i checked on the nu2 cd forums there were many articles on it. Someone had actually written a program to take your BartPE/XPE .iso and put it on a bootable usb stick.

And it does work, however it is extremely slow and is not supported by all BIOSes.

12/6/2005 10:10:04 AM

Thanks Shaggy, I may go with the DSL at first and see how that goes. Deshman here is a link to booting up linux via USB, but like Shaggy said, if your BIOS doesn't support USB bootup then you're SOL.

12/6/2005 10:45:08 AM

ok, well i have BartPE booting from USB. I am trying to figure out what I need to change to boot real windows. I made a WinXP image on a CD with bartPE then tried to use that with a usb with no luck. A friend of mine hooked me up with and iso of a bartPE image that will boot from USB. PM for more details (download etc...)

Quote :

"Thanks Shaggy, I may go with the DSL at first and see how that goes. Deshman here is a link to booting up linux via USB, but like Shaggy said, if your BIOS doesn't support USB bootup then you're SOL."

to use DSL, I read somewhere that you have to burn it to a CD first and then somehow create a bootable USB while you are already in DSL. I will continue researching.

//Desh

12/6/2005 11:34:28 AM

I forgot to post the link I was talking about. Here it is
http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin/forums/ikonboard.cgi?act=SF;f=17

Here is the FAQ from the DSL website on how to install on a USB pen drive


How Do I Install to a USB Pendrive?
First, boot up your computer from the DSL livecd, frugal, or USB-frugal. Note that it is not possible to do a USB install, or any other kind of install from a DSL Embedded system.

In the Fluxbox menu, go Apps >> Tools >> Install to USB Pendrive and choose either USB-ZIP emulation or USB-HDD emulation, depending on what is supported by your computer's bios.



I thought I had read somewhere that you can install it on a USB device with NERO and burning the ISO on the USB device..

12/6/2005 12:36:30 PM

ok, i might be on to something here...i think you might need WinXP WITH Service Pack 2!!! If this works it will be the greatest day of my life, or maybe just this week.

12/6/2005 4:49:03 PM

Ok I was able to start my device with just a CDROM and no harddrive using a Knoppix CD. Only problem is, i was WAAAY off on how much memory I thought it had, turns out it's only got 96mb of RAM, which is enough to load Knoppix at run level 5, but not enough to load KDE. Back to the drawing board...

12/6/2005 7:47:32 PM

ok, well my work said that the BartPE version of WinXP that i made was not going to cut it. So i'm back on the hunt to find out to either boot XP, 2000, or XPe.

12/7/2005 12:00:47 PM

http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/09/09/windows_in_your_pocket/

12/7/2005 3:10:02 PM

^ i have already read that...it doesn't seem to be that easy.

EDIT: I dont' want to use BartPE.

[Edited on December 7, 2005 at 3:56 PM. Reason : BartPE]

12/7/2005 3:55:28 PM

I'm still not sure what you are trying to do. Anyways, here's how to boot Norton Ghost from a USB Stick. The "C" prompt will be the USB stick ... you might be able to trick Windows into installing on it from there.

1) Download and Install the HP Flash Utility at http://h18007.www1.hp.com/support/files/hpcpqdt/us/download/20306.html

2) Download WIN98 Non-Windows Based Image Files W/ImageApp:
http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm, extract the .img file from the zip

3) Download Virtual Floppy Drive from http://chitchat.at.infoseek.co.jp/vmware/vfd.html, put the extracted img file as the “A” drive

4) Run the HP Flash Utility, FAT file system, Create a DOS disk, use files on virtual A drive

5) Change your USB drive letter to the “B” drive
*Note, A or B drive in HP Flash Utility will NOT work, as Windows has some funky write-protection on those two drive letters.

6) Run the Ghost Boot Wizard, Standard, LPT/USB support, Use MS-DOS, Get MS-DOS, (Will automatically get files from virtual A drive), Next, Next, B Drive, Do Not Format, Next, Next, OK, OK, Finish

7) Go into the autoexec.bat file, replace the
“if %config% == FROMFLPY goto FLPYBOOT”
With “if %config% == FROMFLPY goto GHOSTFND”

12/7/2005 5:52:16 PM

^

what I want to do is boot either XP or XPe (XP embedded) from a USB key without the aid of 3rd party software like BartPE. I dont mind if I have to use something like FlashBoot to set up the MBR or BootSector.

just to clarify to anyone who is confussed. This is EXACTLY what i want to do:

-I want to boot from USB (my bios supports USB boot so NO emulation is needed)
-I want to ONLY use files from the USB drive.
-I do NOT want to use a CD to pull data from (just like the above).
-This can either be read from the USB or a RAMDISK.
-It must support NTFS (hince why i want to use XP or XPe)

hope this clarifies for everyone. If i figure out how to do this...i will share with EVERYONE and maybe even a download link.

[Edited on December 7, 2005 at 6:45 PM. Reason : clarification]

12/7/2005 6:19:56 PM

Deshman, did you get it figured out yet?

Also, this may be a dumb question, but when using the BartPe, do you have to have the original XP install disk or can you use the XP recovery disk that comes with your PC? Or can you find the files somewhere on your harddrive?

http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

12/12/2005 2:22:36 PM

i think that you can use the recovery disk. I was able to use a MSDN disk that has XP Home, Pro, and Tablet with SP2.

And I have no made any futher progress booting stand-alone WinXP Pro from Flash without the help of BartPE.

[Edited on December 12, 2005 at 2:28 PM. Reason : still working...]

12/12/2005 2:27:58 PM

Deshman, have you seen this link? Not sure if it's what youre looking for.


http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/storage/usb-boot.mspx

12/12/2005 3:42:16 PM

I used this to format some usb key drives at work for an old dos software we have to run. Worked great

http://h18007.www1.hp.com/support/files/hpcpqdt/us/download/20306.html

[Edited on December 12, 2005 at 7:49 PM. Reason : y]

12/12/2005 7:46:07 PM

^ yes, i have used that...but that is just one leg in the journey of booting WinXP Pro from USB Flash

12/13/2005 9:24:37 AM

knoppix

12/13/2005 12:47:35 PM

I'm actually working with Knoppix for my project...

12/13/2005 1:24:49 PM

^^

Quote :

"knoppix"

thx asshole...maybe you can't read.

Quote :

" have the Windows XP Embedded Target Designer (it's legal, i am using it at/for work) and I want to boot it from USB. I am having NO luck doing so. I have downloaded hacked windows versions that WILL boot from USB, but i cannot seem to alter these files to boot WinXPe. "

....and Linux doesn't work with NTFS. So next time keep your dumbass comments to your self.

[Edited on December 13, 2005 at 2:24 PM. Reason : ;]

12/13/2005 2:23:51 PM

I can read my NTFS Drives w/ Fedora.

12/13/2005 3:19:43 PM

^how is that?

can you boot Fedora from USB?

nm, http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/rpm/fedora2.html

[Edited on December 13, 2005 at 3:27 PM. Reason : i need to do my own l3gw0rk]

12/13/2005 3:26:38 PM

I can read and write to some files from my Debain PC to my mounts on my XP box.

12/13/2005 3:32:19 PM

use knoppix you faggot!!!


[Edited on December 13, 2005 at 4:02 PM. Reason : ]

12/13/2005 3:50:45 PM

http://www.nliteos.com/

& BartPE are probably the way to go

[Edited on December 13, 2005 at 8:24 PM. Reason : .]

12/13/2005 8:22:08 PM

Quote :

"use knoppix you faggot!!!"

i can't express how cool you are!!1

Quote :

"& BartPE are probably the way to go"

Quote :

"I have downloaded hacked windows versions that WILL boot from USB"

this is the "hacked" version i am talking about.

...to those that are idiots:

i want to boot WINDOWS XP!!!1 This is NOT:
1. BartPE
2. any form of Linux
3. anything illegal

kkthx
//desh

edit: http://www.nliteos.com/ looks like it could help...thx alot!

[Edited on December 14, 2005 at 6:49 PM. Reason : thank you]

12/14/2005 6:47:37 PM

I'm trolling your thread since you were such a bad neighbor.

[Edited on December 14, 2005 at 9:51 PM. Reason : KNOPPIX!!!]

12/14/2005 9:51:44 PM

omg!!1

12/15/2005 10:13:29 PM

Desh? Did you get it figured out? I scrapped my knoppix/DSL plans and went with making a bootable DOS disk and edited the config.sys/autoexec.bat files to do what I needed. I still want to be able to boot to a USB device also. I've seen pages on how to boot to USB using a floppy to find the USB on systems that doesn't have the USB boot option in the BIOS.

This is what I used to get my DOS boot disk working. Once I configured my boot disk I burned it to a CD and now have a bootable CD that runs the scripts I want.


http://nightowl.radified.com/bootcd/started.html

12/23/2005 7:08:56 AM

I think both of you missed the BIG point. Which I PM'ed to Deshman long ago.

You absolutely need to have a motherboard capable of booting from a USB2.0 device. And there aren't a whole lot out there.

12/23/2005 11:38:28 AM

^ No shit. But I'm not going to put a lot of money in what I'm working on. The whole point is to use old equipment I have and make it work. I've figured that out and it works for me.

12/23/2005 5:49:32 PM

Yea, working with old equipment, the closest you are going to get to USB booting is the solution you are using now.

There is another alternative, but it requires buying new equipment too, so it's not even worth mentioning.

12/24/2005 2:33:57 AM