Booting off a USB pendrive?
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Thread: Booting off a USB pendrive?

  1. #1
    Registered User Penman's Avatar
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    Booting off a USB pendrive?

    Hi

    Anyone know of a way I can setup my Sony USB Pendrive to boot up with CDROM/USB drivers AND let me run Norton Ghost off the CD or pendrive? Any information and I mean ANY is welcome

  2. #2
    Geezer confus-ed's Avatar
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    The motherboard needs to support it.

    If it does there'll be an option in bios, to choose what sources it can boot from, simply choose the one you want, cd is most likely to be there, being able to boot from usb is only relatively new so don't be too surprised if it isn't there ....

    Whatever source you use just needs formatting correctly.

  3. #3
    Driver Terrier NooNoo's Avatar
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    USB Resources
    As a general rule, USB is NOT supported in DOS. There are companies and individuals who are producing USB stacks for DOS, but nothing practical yet for the everyday DOS user. I hope to include all of the software and information available on this page since this topic does tend to pop up a lot on discussion boards.

    USB support forums for DOS.
    New! Come here if you are having problems getting your device to work.

    Downloads:
    I have not used any of this software personally (except for the USB CD ROM boot disk and duse.exe), so I can not vouch for their functionality. Use at your own risk!

    Iomega USB / Firewire Boot Diskette - New! This boot diskette supposedly supports Firewire and USB Iomega ASPI devices. I have not tested this diskette so use at your own risk.
    ''Motto Hairu' USB Driver - This is a set of USB Drivers which includes USBASPI.SYS driver below. A lot of people have had success with these drivers. Here is a translation of the readme.txt file.
    USB CD ROM Driver - USBASPI.SYS; Another USB CD ROM Driver. A visitor told me about this and said he was able to use Ghost and this driver to backup his hard drive to a CD-RW. Add a device reference to this driver (device=usbaspi.sys) in your config.sys and then run MSCDEX or SHSUCDX in autoexec.bat to bind the driver.
    USB DOS CD ROM Boot Disk -New! (Recently updated this disk to include DUSE 4.4!) A Windows 98 Bootdisk I made using the DUSE.EXE driver below. I created this diskette for those folks having troubles getting DUSE to work with their USB CDROM drives. Download and double click this program to create the diskette (you will need to have a blank disk handy).
    USB CD Rom Setup - Modification for Windows 98 boot disks. Modifies a standard Windows 98 boot disk to use the usb_cd.sys driver below.
    USB CD Rom Driver - usb_cd.sys; driver included in the above package. Add device=usb_cd.sys to config.sys
    USB Mouse Driver #1 - USB Mouse driver fror OHCI devices.
    USB Mouse Driver #2 - USB Mouse driver for UHCI devices
    USB4Pas.zip - A USB library/routine for sniffing USB packets under Pascal / DOS. Source
    Cypress USB Mass Storage Driver -New! Version 4.4 of DUSE.EXE now supports USB 2.0!; WOW! What a great find. This 'universal' device driver will work with USB Zip Drives, Hard Drives, CD-ROM drives, floppy drives and something called MO drives. I was actually able to read the contents of my USB CD-RW disk with this driver. Read the instructions included with the package.


    Links:
    USB4DOS - A USB stack for DOS developers. Not for the common, everyday DOS user. Quite pricey at $1000.00 US.
    USB in DOS -New! A website with sample assembly code that shows how to scan the USB interface for attached devices. If anyone is interested in possibly writing their own USB driver, you might want to start here.
    that page is currently down, this is a google cache copy

    This could get you somewhere so booting from a cd or a floppy then using the pendrive while in dos seems to be possible.

    usb4dos DUSE
    Never, ever approach a computer saying or even thinking "I will just do this quickly."

  4. #4
    Intel Mod Platypus's Avatar
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    Originally posted by NooNoo
    that page is currently down
    Yes, darkehorse? Been down for a while, hope we haven't lost him for good...

    I don't think he's been using that site for long, hopefully just hosting troubles.

  5. #5
    Registered User techs's Avatar
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    You can try this utility for Dell. I have not had a chance to test it. go here.
    Penman - disregard my pm. I found the link and posted it here. Note: doesn't install under XP.
    Edit: Doesn't install under Win98 either. Don't know what is going on.Second Edit: Won't install under ME either.
    Maybe it only works on Dells?
    Last edited by techs; May 16th, 2003 at 12:54 PM.

  6. #6
    Registered User techs's Avatar
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    This one works.
    I found a utility that works. It can only be installed under Windows 98. It should work for win95-98-me to get to a dos prompt. When you get to the prompt the pendrive is C: and the other drives can be seen and worked with. (also has cdrom drivers). Go here and choose A1 usb flash drive- Click on Drivers and Software- Save and Install (note: it said I needed to install the drivers first even though I had other drivers which came with my pendrive-I installed them with no problem) then use the bootup12.exe program and it will make the pen drive bootable. Your bios must support booting from a usb drive.

  7. #7
    Geezer confus-ed's Avatar
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    Thumbs up Well good answer...but is that what he asked ? I thought cd or pendrive...

    Nice one techs .... but why did everyone run off to find a dos driver for usb?

    Don't the Ghost Boot wizard do all this for you ?

    & anyways "let me run Norton Ghost off the CD or pendrive" -doesn't that mean he'd be happy booting from cd?

    Here's how to make a cd bootable with Ghost

    I dunno why he just doesn't use a floppy...

  8. #8
    Registered User techs's Avatar
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    I dunno. Maybe he has a legacy free machine with no floppy and he doesn't have a cd-rw? Though the norton disk is bootable maybe he wants to use new virus defs?

  9. #9
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    been working on this ,,,as i have a pendrive and usb cd-rom on my laptop,

    have booted from a memorex bbq200 cd-r using the following lines in the auto/config ,,,,

    @echo off
    MSCDEX.EXE /D:mscd001

    and ...config :

    DEVICE=HIMEM.SYS /testmemff
    FILES=30
    BUFFERS=20

    device=USBASPI.sys
    device=usbcd.sys /D:mscd001
    device=RAMFD.SYS



    LASTDRIVE=Z

    the files are on noo noos link



    and on a simple boot up disk $$$$$FREE$$$$ from microshaft at http://www.addonics.com/support/faqs...stallation.asp


    this one doesnt see my pendrive.


    the first one does ,,,,,,but i hav,nt got a drive letter.


    the pendrive i have is USB2 ,,,128m ,,,,with two partitions ,,,,,so u can put SYS on it to boot ,,,,


    havn,t had time to sort it out yet (to much NTFS) ,,,,,can,t creat a boot disk?????


    hope those to links/ideas help ,,,,

    any one finding a driver for the pendrive , please inclose a link to the file needed in config.sys


    cheers alan

  10. #10
    Registered User techs's Avatar
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    If the bios supports booting from usb hdd then the software I listed will allow you boot from the pen drive and still see it in dos as well as see your cd-roms. I don't know where to get a driver to make the pendrive visible if you boot from a cdrom however. I think the pendrive support is in the bios itself and therefore no driver is needed if you boot off it.

  11. #11
    Registered User Penman's Avatar
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    Basically chaps I work in an education authority and the PCs we have to deal with range in age from 10 years old (I know it's a joke) to brand spanking new Dells. All of the 6000pcs seem to have a slightly different setup, some have FDDs some dont. Generally we use bootable CDs to image or a bootable floppy and a usb/firewire drive. Booting off pendrive was just another idea I had since I know all the analysts have them

    Thanks for the info, I'll post back and let you know how I got on!

    edit: oh and some of the latest Dell laptops dont come with floppies and thier DVD drives are usb/firewire... you can boot off them but your stuffed when it comes to trying to access the under dos at the moment! I managed to put together a bootable CD that worked with them, but it was pretty messy so I really wanted to try to use the pendrives
    Last edited by Penman; May 19th, 2003 at 08:54 AM.

  12. #12
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    Hello

    Seems you and me are in the same boat I have been trying to do this also. With our new laptops coming in with no floppy and sometimes no cd rom either.

    I would appreciate if you could tell me anything you can find on this issue. (Ghost USB Pen Boot).

    thanks

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