creating a bootable usb drive

A

AlZheimer

Member
Hi,
I’ve just downloaded EasyBCD 2.2 Community Edition, it was kindly shown to me on a forum. It looks really neat, but I’m getting confused and would be very grateful for someone to hold my hand while I wriggle around in binary chaos…

I’m busy trying to sort out a notebook that crashes in a loop as soon as XP starts (blue screen for 0.2 seconds with something written on it - reboot, ditto…)
The hdd isn’t dead, I want to format and reinstall XP on it. The notebook has no cd drive

Using disk part, I’ve cleaned, created the primary partition, activated, formatted (fat32), and assigned a letter to a usb stick

Using Winrar, I’ve extracted an ISO containing a complete version of XP SP3 onto the usb stick
I’ve modified the boot sequence in the notebook’s bios (the usb stick is recognized and displayed in the bios).
But when I boot the following message appears: remove the disk. Press any key to reboot.

That’s when a helping hand explained that the usb stick needs to be bootable, and another helping hand pointed to EasyBCD.

So far, I’ve followed the steps detailed on your support page ‘Creating a Bootable USB Drive’
I’ve selected the partition representing the USB stick and pressed the “Install BCD” button.
I’ve selected “Yes” but haven’t added any entries to the boot menu, mainly because I haven’t the foggiest of what needs adding…

I naively thought that it would work but nope, wishful thinking :]

If I boot with the usb stick I now get the following message:
Windows failed to start. A recent hardware or software change might be the cause. To fix the problem:

  1. Insert your windows install disc and restart your computer
  2. Choose your language settings, and then click “next”
  3. Click “repair your computer”

File: \boot\BCD
Status: 0xc0000098
Info: The Windows boot configuration Data file does not contain a valid OS entry


Any assistance will be highly appreciated

Thanks,

Al
 
Don't extract the ISO. Copy it to the USB, and add an entry to it. No guarantee it'll work though!
 
Hi,

Thanks for your response. I have in fact just sorted out my problem using RMPrepUSB to format and partition the stick and WintoFlash to load XP on it (extracted), the notebook is back up and running.

WintoFlash was supposed to do the whole thing, but the formatting and/or partionning bits seemed to bug for XP (well, I couldn't get it to do it). A great feature for half clued up people like me is WintoFlash's small tab that sequentially displays as options the different steps in the process. First, I managed to understand what the hell i was actually doing :smile:. Second, I was able to untick the format option, thus allowing me to do that part with another soft.
I'm rabbiting on a bit, please forgive me, but I'd like to encourage breaking down processes into simple, 'intelligible for all' steps. I like IT but haven't the time, the will and more than likely the brains to digest the constant flow of information required to stay updated in the big IT picture. Anyway, thanks

Al

Addendum

tumbling toddler lol that's coool, sums me up entirely, somebody get me a walker! :wink:
 
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