OS Loader for USB Flash Drive

[SuperGlide]

This is probably a stupid question so forgive me:

I work on many computers that do not have a new enough BIOS to boot USB drives. I want to be able to boot a USB 512mb flash drive which has WinPE on it (BARTS) on computers with BIOS that don't support USB.

Since there are now USB DOS drivers to allow "seeing" the drive in DOS, why can an OS Loader such as Frounze's not able to boot the USB device?

Thanks........SG

[bubach]

Why don?t you do a normal DOS boot-disc and put the USB drivers and "start_my_os_from_the_usb_device.exe" in the autoexec.bat file?

[aladdin]

To be able to boot from USB u must have a BIOS that support booting from USB AND a USB stick that support booting from.

if your BIOS can't boot your usb flash drive u can try to use a usb boot loader from a floppy, and there is a project called RUNT that cant load your OS from a USB flash drive from a floppy disk.

I think this can help you http://www.ncsu.edu/project/runt/

[ASHLEY4]

There is not enough room in the Frounze's boot loader and the dos usb driver,use's dos int's.
Your best bet is to use freedos to boot your OS, with the dos usb driver on it.

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(@@)
ASHLEY4.

[SuperGlide]

@bubach - The "start_my_os_from_the_usb_device.exe" is what I'm trying to find.

@Aladdin - I don't mind using a floppy to initiate it. I will check out RUNT, Thank you!

@Ashley4- I can boot to dos with the USB drivers, I just do not know how to proceed to boot the USB device after that. The USB stick is bootable, I just need to boot it from a BIOS that doesn't support it.

Thanks to All.

SG

[ASHLEY4]

The answerer your ? is simple, if there is no bios usb boot support, for booting from a usb stick, then you can not do it.
But you can make it sem like it does, as usb stick etc, emulat a floppy or most likely a hdd, so once you have a usb driver (from your freedos floppy boot disk) it will see the usb stick as a hdd and you can load from it.

Y not boot from a cd ?.

\\\\||////
(@@)
ASHLEY4.

[SuperGlide]

@Ashley

..usb stick as a hdd and you can load from it.

Load from it? That's what I'm trying to figure out how to do. After booting from the floppy, I need the boot process to transfer to the USB device like the RUNT program that Aladdin mentions.

Y not boot from a cd ?.

If you mean initially before transferring to the USB then that's fine too. But if you mean instead of USB then that's because a CD is read only and software for Barts PE has to be adapted to run as read only......whereas if it is a USB drive the software that will run in Barts PE is almost limitless. Barts PE has already shown to be able to boot and run from a USB thumb drive.........just trying to make it work on all the many computers that I work on (non USB bootable BIOSes).

For anyone that may not know, Barts PE allows for an XP desktop runing strictly from CD. Great for working on or recovering data from a computer whose hard drive is hosed, or lost admin password, etc...

SG

[bubach]

U simply write a DOS program that via the DOS usb driver loads your kernel of the USB device into memory at your prefered location.
It?s like a normal bootsektor/second stage loader, but for DOS.
When your kernel is loaded, jump to it and forget about DOS ever being loaded..

hope that helps..

/ Christoffer

[SuperGlide]

@bubach,

Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately I do not have the expertise to do this. I was hoping y'all had an idea of just such an animal that already exists.


SG