Lab 5-6 Create a Bootable USB Flash Drive for XP

 

  1. If you do not have a Flash drive, work with someone who does. I have some small ones, but they won’t help. It should be at least 512 MB
  2. Ensure your BIOS will allow booting from USB.
    1. Check the BIOS with the USB device plugged in.
    2. Sometimes it won’t show that option unless you have a USB on the system, plugged in.
  3. Go to www.nu2.nu/pebuilder to download BartPE and PE Builder.
  4. Make sure you have the following:
    1. Windows XP CD-ROM with SP1 or higher
    2. Flash drive that is at least 512 MB that is clean (nothing on it).
    3. Server 2003 SP1. This is available at \\csn\pub\software. We need two files that are on the SP1 CD.
  5. Download PEBuilder
  6. Start pebuilder.exe
  7. Agree with the license

 

Extract Files from Server 2003 SP1

  1. Go to the software folder on CSN\pub and copy Service Pack 1 over to your hard drive.
  2. Create a folder named WS-SP1 and put the file here drive to make it easy.
  3. Rename it WS-SP1.exe
  4. Open the command prompt and navigate to c:\WS-SP1
  5. Type the command WS-SP1.exe –x (x=extract…we’re going to extract some files)
  6. A dialog box will ask you to choose a directory to extract the files to. It should be your current directory (c:\WS-SP1)
  7. Click OK. It’ll extract the files to this folder.
  8. A bunch of files will be loaded into this directory. Find Windows6.0-kb936330-X86.zip
  9. Open this folder (it should open as a compressed folder)
  10. Move the file Ramdisk.sys into the c:\pebuilder3110a\srsp1 (create the srsp1 folder if needed).

 

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  1. Copy this setupldr.bin file to the srsp1 folder by typing

 

Copy setupldr.bin c:\pebuilder3110a\srsp1

 

  1. Expand the ramdisk.sy_ file to the SRSP1 folder by typing:

 

Expand –r ramdisk.sy_ c:\pebuilder3110a\srsp1

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Start PE Builder

 

  1. Run the PEBuilder program (if it isn’t already running)
  2. Pop your Windows XP disk into the drive, or point to the ISO.
  3. Point to either the CD ROM drive or the ISO at source. (1)
  4. Make sure the output is c:\pebuilder3110a\BartPE. (2)
  5. Media output is none. (3)
  6. Click Build.

 

 

  1. Accept the creating of the directory.
  2. Agree (you’re clicking your life away, but don’t worry about it).
  3. It’ll do its thing. Watch.
  4. Oooh.
  5. Ahhh.
  6. Wait for it to finish before starting the next part.

 

Prepare your USB Drive

  1. Now you need to prepare your USB drive for receiving the image. Plug it into a USB port.
  2. Note the drive letter it has been assigned. Let’s say it got letter F:
  3. Open the command prompt.
  4. Navigate you way to the folder that contains BartPE. (It should be c:\pebuilder3110a)
  5. Type pe2usb –f f: (as long as f: is your drive letter)
  6.  

 

Answer the following questions.

 

  1. What control panel do you access to create a boot recovery disk in 98?

 

 

  1. List the files on the recovery disk below.

 

 

 

 

 

  1. What options are you given when you boot using this disk?

 

 

 

  1. What is the purpose of a recovery disk?

 

 

 

 

  1. Do you need a boot disk for Vista or XP?

 

 

 

  1. Why or why not?

 

 

 

 

Creating a Bootable USB Drive using WinPE (aka MiniNT…)

 

  1. Boot into Vista
  2. Get a USB key or USB flash drive. Depending on your need such as data storage or want to put in a lot of custom scripts or applications, it’s better to buy a USB memory key with at least 512 MB in size.
  3. Download and install the Windows Automated Installation Kit (Windows AIK) by going to http://tinyurl.com/minint which also contains Windows PE 2.0. Alternately you can find it in \\csn\pub\software\Windows AIK
  4. Format USB flash drive from within XP.
  5. Open a command prompt and execute the following commands to create a partition (explanation in bracket, which should be ignored):
    • Diskpart (text-mode command interpreter to manage objects such as disks, partitions, or volumes)
    • list disk (displays a list of disks and information about them)
    • select disk 1 (assuming the USD key is detected as disk 1 from the list generated by “list disk” command. This setting must be correct or else you may accidentally wipe out the hard disk instead.)
    • clean (removes any and all partition or volume formatting from the disk with focus)
    • create partition primary
    • select partition 1 (the only primary partition created by command above)
    • active
    • format fs=fat32 (use FAT32 file system)
    • assign (assigns a drive letter or mount point to the volume with focus)
    • exit
  6. Setup and customize Windows PE by following below instructions:
    • Click on Windows Start menu, open All Programs (if applicable), and then Windows AIK program folder. Select and click “Windows PE Tools Command Prompt”.
    • Type the following command:

Run Copype.cmd x86 c:\winpe_x86

If you want to create a 64-bit version of bootable USB flash disk, change the architecture from x86 to amd64. You may want to change the name of the folder too.

    • You can customize WinPE by copying any tools possible needed and available to the C:\winpe_x86\iso folder. The utilities may include imaging tools for capturing images such as imagex, wimscript.ini and etc.
  1. Insert the USB key disk into the machine where WinPE is installed.
  2. Run the following command in command prompt to copy WinPE and its contents to the USB flash drive:

xcopy c:\winpe_x86\iso\*.* /s /e /f e:\

c: and e: represents drive where the WinPE files are located and USB flash drive respectively. Change the drive letter if it’s not the same.