I'm investigating the possibility of creating a flashdrive that has the .iso information for 3 CDs integrated on it. XP Home, Pro, and Hiren's Boot CD.

Would this be at all easy to do myself, with the limited amount of coding I know? The more I think about it, the harder it seems. Can someone point me in the right direction?

I figure that this can't be as easy as dragging the 3 .iso images to the drive and making/finding a small loader for the boot environment. That would require the boot environment to mount the .iso's since most of the info on an XP CD is uncompressed from .cabs during install, right? Would I need a thumbdrive with all of the files already uncompressed in order do this?


I basically want a thumbdrive that I can boot to, removing the need for all 3 of these CDs on my desk constantly. It seemed like a neat project at first, but now i've got some initiative.

8/22/2006 10:34:26 AM

Apparently this is how it's done for a CD:

Quote :

"There is a sample in EasyBoot User's Manual (Click 'Help' button on 'File' page, then choose 'Contents' menu) for making Windows 98/XP multiboot CD, here is detail instruction to add extra Windows 2000(Pro/Server/Advanced Server): ============================= 1. Prepare Windows 2000 files 1) make sub-directory 'wn2k' in "C:\EasyBoot\disk1" 2) copy directory i386 from Windows 2000 CD to C:\EasyBoot\disk1\wn2k 4) modify "C:\EasyBoot\disk1\ezboot\w2ksect.bin" by UltraEdit, change all 'I386' to 'WN2K' and save it as 'wn2k.bin' 5) copy boot files from C:\EasyBoot\disk1\wn2k\i386 to C:\EasyBoot\disk1\wn2ksave attachment w2k.bat to C:\EasyBoot\disk1\wn2k and run it) 6) modify C:\EasyBoot\disk1\wn2k\setupldr.bin by UltraEdit, change all 'I386' to 'WN2K' 7) modify C:\EasyBoot\disk1\wn2k\Textsetup.sif by UltraEdit, change 'SetupSourcePath = "\"' to 'SetupSourcePath = "\WN2K"' 2. make boot menu by EasyBoot use 'run w2ksect.bin' to setup Windows XP use 'run wn2k.bin' to setup windows 2000 use 'run setup98.img' to setup Windows 98 =============================== Get wn2k.bat here: http://dw.ezbsys.net/w2k.zip. Note: 1)You need a DVD-R to hold this large ISO image 2)This method applys to Windows 2003 Server(All 32bit versions), you can get w2003.bat here: http://dw.ezbsys.net/w2003.zip. 3) You can put another Windows XP as well, and here is wxp.bat: http://dw.ezbsys.net/wxp.zip. "

So how would I reference a thumbdrive in comparison?

8/22/2006 10:41:06 AM

#1, booting from USB is almost complete BIOS dependent, and it's completely different from booting from a CD/DVD.

try a search, because this question has been asked a couple of times in the past, if you cant find an answer I'll see what I can find this afternoon

8/22/2006 10:57:16 AM

I'm finding the threads for CDs, but I seem to be overlooking anything that explains what I'm trying to do.


Maybe someone can search better.

8/22/2006 12:21:21 PM

bttt


What do you have Noen?

8/23/2006 12:38:17 PM

you may want to look for info on booting linux from a usb. i know that info is out there because I had to do a little research on it for a project at work before someone who knows a lot more about linux than me took over (and yes he got it to work). something like that might help you figure out how to boot from the usb and run what you want.

8/23/2006 12:43:55 PM

http://www.prime-expert.com/flashboot/

it's good

8/23/2006 1:11:06 PM