Best Way to Create a Bootable USB Drive/ and or CD

pc1x1

[H]ard|Gawd
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Jan 1, 2008
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Hey Guys, looking for the most efficient way to create a bootable cd, and or usb drive, (I have a 8 gig one handy) I prefer USB drive, but would also like to know how to do it with the CD as well. I tried with IMG Burn, with a Windows 98 img file, and it worked, but not how I wanted it, it tried to install Windows lol. To update the firmware on my raid controller. . My motherboard does support booting from USB.

I have the firmware files as exe, thats been extracted, and just need to get to DOS or something so I can run the afu.exe, its for an Adaptec Raid Controller.

Thanks!
 
it keeps crashing, and I can only run it manually, install says not compatible with my Windows 7 x64. Without having to resort to Virtual PC, is there any other methods?
 
www.boot-land.net

Pretty much everything you'd ever want to know about creating bootable USB sticks, CDs, DVDs, anything really.
Thanks, Ill take a look over there shortly

Ok this version works, though when I formated my drive it now has 7.53 as size instead of 7.54, and it says 7.46 free when it has no files on it, so not sure why that happened.

The USB boot works, I downloaded the windows 98 files from the same site but it wont detect them as DOS files, any idea what I am doing wrong?
Ok seemed Windows Live Messenger was accessing it, preventing it from formatting. Reformatting now, I presume I can just drag and drop the firmware exes I need into it when its done correct?
 
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That should work in theory since DOS will see almost any file you've placed on the flash drive.
 
But it does have files on it - the MS-DOS system files were placed on the stick to make it bootable, and if you look at those hidden system files on that stick, they'll be about 178KB or so which is why you see the difference between 7.53GB and 7.54GB. :D
 
That should work in theory since DOS will see almost any file you've placed on the flash drive.
See below
But it does have files on it - the MS-DOS system files were placed on the stick to make it bootable, and if you look at those hidden system files on that stick, they'll be about 178KB or so which is why you see the difference between 7.53GB and 7.54GB. :D
The total Capacity changed though, like now that I reformated it using the new tool it says its 7.51 total, am I losing flash cycles?

Also I did the format, made it bootable pointed to the bootable files win98 from the same link as the tool, it formatted, etc, but when I did F12 boot from hardrive, the cursor just flashes and does nothing, the drive doesn't even blink. I am so annoyed : /.

We could try making a boot CD and or DVD, also does anyone know how to properly do it with IMGBurn?
 
Windows ME DOS files might work

Open-source DOS projects are the other alternatives, too
 
Try this one:

http://www.mediafire.com/?iiczyt1mmiz

It's the HP USB stick creator but it's been modified (aka hacked) to include the MS-DOS boot files (actually I think it's got the WinME MS-DOS "7" files). They're embedded in the .exe file itself - and I just made this RAR archive, and I just checked the .exe with Microsoft Security Essentials updated as of 10 minutes ago, it's clean.

You can upload it to VirusTotal.com if you want and scan it, or look at this scan info I just ran:

http://www.virustotal.com/analisis/...2763e7c1b57a839df9896c432ef95f0dd1-1278629630

Either way, the McAfee one is a false-positive, it's clean. I've used this to create multiple bootable USB sticks for a variety of reasons (firmware updates, BIOS updates, etc) and never had one problem. Here's what it looks like - and please, no hassles about the "Cracked by..." title bar text. It's a free tool anyway, the "Cracked" part should read "Hacked" or patched, actually, since the boot files are now internalized.

hpusbtool.png


You need to run it with Admin privileges, and I cannot guarantee it'll work on an x64 version of Windows, I don't recall ever having issues with it myself. Just make sure you select the internal MS-DOS system files and you'll probably be fine.

It'll format the stick, then place the IO.SYS, MSDOS.SYS on the stick making it bootable.

Good luck...
 
Try this one:

http://www.mediafire.com/?iiczyt1mmiz

It's the HP USB stick creator but it's been modified (aka hacked) to include the MS-DOS boot files (actually I think it's got the WinME MS-DOS "7" files). They're embedded in the .exe file itself - and I just made this RAR archive, and I just checked the .exe with Microsoft Security Essentials updated as of 10 minutes ago, it's clean.

You can upload it to VirusTotal.com if you want and scan it, or look at this scan info I just ran:

http://www.virustotal.com/analisis/...2763e7c1b57a839df9896c432ef95f0dd1-1278629630

Either way, the McAfee one is a false-positive, it's clean. I've used this to create multiple bootable USB sticks for a variety of reasons (firmware updates, BIOS updates, etc) and never had one problem. Here's what it looks like - and please, no hassles about the "Cracked by..." title bar text. It's a free tool anyway, the "Cracked" part should read "Hacked" or patched, actually, since the boot files are now internalized.

hpusbtool.png


You need to run it with Admin privileges, and I cannot guarantee it'll work on an x64 version of Windows, I don't recall ever having issues with it myself. Just make sure you select the internal MS-DOS system files and you'll probably be fine.

It'll format the stick, then place the IO.SYS, MSDOS.SYS on the stick making it bootable.

Good luck...

Thanks Bahamut, good thing you were summoned... ah the lolz :D.

Anyhow your suggestion was perfect, minus the fact I couldn't use the software that has cracked by on the title, lol. However I did research it, and found DavidXXW, where I believe this utility emerged from, and was able to get a copy of DOS 7.1 using the official HP one.

I don't know why the other bootdiscs weren't working but this one did (first link included HP Utility, and a folder called BOOT, and from my understanding its the same as DavidXXW embedded in his file.

http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/8909-Make-A-bootable-USb-drive-For-Flashing-From-DOS

I was able to flash my raid controller, thanks very much, couldn't done it without you guys!
 
DOS boot CDs have the limitation of needing to be modified instead of just a simple file copy. The flash drive approach tends to be more direct I think.
 
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