Install XPe from a Thumb Drive?

[Stacey]

Hi,

I've seen allot of posts asking how to boot to a flash drive (I.e. has
XPe installed on it), but what I want to do is boot to a DOS Bootdisk that
will load DOS usb drivers using the config.sys and then install XPe on a PC
from the setup files stored on a thumb drive. Is this Possible? The BIOS on
systems I want to install XPe on don't support booting from a USB drive and
they don't have CD-ROMS installed on them so you have to open up the PC and
put in the CD-ROM drive and boot up to it to install xpe. It would be so
nice to be able to install xpe from a thumb drive...

Thanks for any advice!

Stacey

 

[Slobodan Brcin \(eMVP\)]

Stacey,

If DOS bootdisk is regular floppy disk then you can do it.
But if DOS is on USB and BIOS don't have USB boot they you are out of luck :-(

Regards,
Slobodan

 

[Stacey]

Slobodan,

Thank You for your reply! Now that I know it can be done I will have to
do some reading to try and figure out how to do it.

Thanks Again!

Stacey

 

[Mark K Vallevand]

We can install XPe OS from USB flash drive. Here is how we do it:
- Create bootable USB flash drive. We use XPe for this, but DOS works, too.
- Write a binary copy program that can write a binary image of the Compact
Flash.
- Use the program to save an image of the Compact Flash in a file on the USB
drive.
- Add scripting to the bootable USB to use the program to write the image
from the USB drive to the Compact Flash.

If you are using a HD, you'll be better with some kind of backup/restore
that runs from the USB drive. An image of the HD will be big. Under DOS,
maybe Symantec Ghost would be be a good choice.

--
Regards.
Mark K Vallevand (e-mail address removed)

Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
- Benjamin Franklin


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[Stacey]

Mark,

Thanks for the reply! Trouble is that most of the machines I will be
installing this on do not support booting from a USB device, so I was hoping
to be able to bootup the PC using a DOS diskette and load the USB drivers
using the config.sys and then some how be able to install XPe from the thumb
drive.

I'll keep researching it, since Slobodan said it could be done...

Thank you for your reply!

Stacey

 

[Heidi Linda]

Just a thought - do your machines support network boot?

 

[Stacey]

Heidi,

All of the machines are remote and use dial-up to communicate with the
network.

Thanks for your help!

Stacey

"Heidi Linda" <Wrote> Just a thought - do your machines support network
boot?