Making a bootable USB stick
xp_n...@yahoo.com
N100 laptop using the following on-boot utility:
http://tinyurl.com/gkfxj
Since this laptop come without a floppy disk drive (required by the
above utility), I am trying to boot off a USB stick (a SanDisk cruzer
mini 256 MB ) containing the same file as in IBM's floppy disk.
For that purpose I downloaded HP's "USB Disk Storage Format Tool" (
http://tinyurl.com/hmavm ) and formatted my USB stick to be bootable.
I then copied the files from the floppy disk into the USB stick
(excluding the 3 system files since the format utility already placed
matching command.com, io.sys and msdos.sys in the stick as part of the
boot formatting).
I happily plugged the USB stick into my Lenovo laptop and configured
the BIOS to boot off it. I tried to boot. The system reports that it
cannot boot from it for missing system files...
Obviously something is wrong in the way this stick was formatted.
Perhaps what's good for "HP Drive Key" or "DiskOnKey USB Device" is not
necessarily good for a "SanDisk cruzer mini 256 MB" on a ThinkPad...
Has anyone ever suceeded from a USB stick on a thinkpad?
If so, how did you accomplish that?
Is there a special IBM tool recommended for that?
BTW, I found a nice list of various ways to make a USB stick bootable:
http://tinyurl.com/hxmal
Have you tried any of those on a ThinkPad? Which one would you
recommend?
Thanks!
Alex
John Smith
Yes, I can boot the Mini Cruzer 256mb formated with the HP tool on my
X24. Did you verify the installation by booting before you added the IBM
utilities? I used the software from
xp_n...@yahoo.com
> Yes, I can boot the Mini Cruzer 256mb formated with the HP tool on my
> X24. Did you verify the installation by booting before you added the IBM
> utilities? I used the software from
>
> http://www.apcstart.com/usb/rescue/
That did it. It turns out that the problem was using DOS 6.2 system
files instead of the Windows 98 ones (which can be downloaded from the
URL you provided). Thanks!
The USB stick now is bootable - and directly into IBM's MBR repair
utility.
The only problem is that because my laptop boots into Windows XP
without any problem (from the main, unhidden, partition) - I don't
think my MBR needs to be repaired...
Or does it?
The documentation for IBM's utility (at http://tinyurl.com/gkfxj ) says
that it "can be used to repair a corrupt boot sector on your primary
hard drive. This package can also be used to reenable the F11 function
as long as the service partition has not been removed from your hard
drive."
But how can modifying the MBR fix the F11 function?
Can someone explain this before I do something dangerous? :-)
Thanks,
Alex
George Hein
Only newer computers allow this.
I used a ThinkPad-T42, sometimes with original harddisk in DVD/CD bay.
This will not work with 600e, T20, 240 or 240x thinkpads, too old.
Several months ago, DSL(DamnSmallLinux) and RIP(RecoveryIsPossible)
mini-Linux distributions allowed for booting from USB-flash-cards. I
did it with RIP, located on USB-sda2-vfat. This involves a boot image
containing all files booted into memory and run from memory. USB can be
removed after boot.
I also tried to do it with full SUSE and Debian but failed initially.
Lately I noticed that when I copied a Debian partition to a different
partition, the kernel would boot completely due to partition info stored
in initrd.img by mkinitrd.yaird which is executed at install time.
However, if I temporarily changed /etc/fstab to point to another
partition and executed mkinitrd.yaird, I could create a new initrd.img
that would work. That gave me the idea that perhaps that was what
needed to run on USB as well.
I spent many hours on this and failed until I realized that somehow
Debian's annoying change opened up a way of fully executing the kernel
from USB.
----------------------------------------
DIRECTIONS:
----------------------------------------
(0) connect and partition USB flashcard or harddisk
(1) copy a working partition of debian onto a partition
(2) make temp change to your working debian /etc/fstab
e.g. " /dev/hda6 / reiserfs noatime 0 1 "
change hda6 to sda6 or whatever you want
RUN: mkinitrd.yaird -o /initrd.img.USB
UNDO YOUR CHANGE TO /etc/fstab
move this /initrd.img.USB to USB partition in / or /boot
(you may want to browse this img, go to bottom and see fstab information)
(4) install grub-boot programs onto USB
create device.map (BELOW)
creat menu.lst (BELOW)
(5) BE CAREFUL: RUN:
grub
root (hdx,y)
setup (hdx)
quit
where x= 1 if you have 1 hard disk in addition to USB
x= 2 2
x= 0 is what you are using for main/only disk
where y= USB partition# less 1 where your grub files are
(6) try booting, if it does not work, check to see if you have allowed
for boot from USB, GOOD LUCK
====================================================
To explain my GRUB-MENU-LIST:
I have several PC's + extra drives. I have them mostly setup as:
hda1- WinJunk
hda2- spare
hda4- backup data and RIP bootable for emergency (I bkup this to DVD)
hda5- swap
hda6- Debian-test
hda7- data
hda8- Debian-test or Debian-Sid-unstable
...
----------------------------------
#/boot/grub/device.map for USB
(hd0) /dev/sda
(hd1) /dev/hda
(hd2) /dev/hdc
-------------------------------------------------
#/boot/grub/menu.lst for USB on sda4
# grub.conf: grub : root (hd1,3) : setup (hd1) GRUB_PARTION=hda4/BKUP
#
#timeout 8
color black/cyan yellow/cyan
#default 3
#fallback 2
title W2K-vfat (USB-SDA1) executable, marked hidden from other WinJunk
# rootnoverify (hd0,0) does not work
# chainloader +1 does not work
chainloader --edx=0x0080 (hd0,0)/ntldr
title RIP-linux-vfat (USB-SDA2->memory)
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
chainloader +1
title FIX-RIP-reiserfs (USB-SDA4-Locus_of_GRUB-BOOT) [kernel locks up]
kernel (hd0,3)/boot/kernel root=/dev/sda4 vga=2 acpi=off
title Debian-reiserfs (USB-SDA6)
kernel (hd0,5)/vmlinuz root=/dev/sda6 ro vga=791 selinux=0 noresume
pci=assign-busses
initrd (hd0,5)/initrd.img.USB # or rename it
title RIP-linux-reiserfs-(HDA4)
kernel (hd1,3)/boot/kernel root=/dev/sda4 vga=2 acpi=off
title Debian-reiserfs -(HDA6)
kernel (hd1,5)/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda6 ro vga=791 selinux=0 noresume
initrd (hd1,5)/initrd.img
title Debian-reirserfs +(HDC6)
kernel (hd2,5)/vmlinuz root=/dev/hdc6 ro vga=791 noresume
initrd (hd2,5)/initrd.img
-------------------------------------------------
xp_n...@yahoo.com
thanks for the thorough work and for sharing it with us. At some point
I am planning to boot from Linux as well. I have heard good things
about FeatherLinux.
beihotmai...@hotmail.de
xp_n...@yahoo.com schrieb:
> Has anyone ever suceeded from a USB stick on a thinkpad?
Have you seen this? http://www.ngine.de/index.jsp?pageid=4176