Boot from USB Hard Drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter wrt
  • Start date Start date
W

wrt

My BIOS allows me to boot from a USB device.

I installed a USB Hard Drive and Restored an Image of C: to this device.

If have not been able to boot from this USB Hard Drive

The OS is Win XP Pro:

I have tried to setup my boot.ini file to load the OS on the USB Drive but
have not succeeded thus far.

I have made changes in my BIOS so that the USB HD is booted first but this
has not worked.

I have used the XP Recovery Console, making use of FIXMBR; FIXBOOT, and
BOOTCFG in particular and have not succeeded thus far.

Any help?

Is there a special ARC format for USB devices expected in the boot.ini file?

I have used Partion Magic 8 on my internal Hard Drives, is this perhaps the
culprit and if so is there a way of removing its "influence" without
resorting to a fresh install? I have already used FIXMBR.

Thank you
 
Okay, so that's the end of the story apparently.

Strange that the USB Hard Drive seems to be accessed when I attempt to boot
to it via boot.ini but it soon sends a message about "hal.dll" being corrupt
or missing; but that is not the case.

Any observations as to why XP doesn't support booting from a USB device?
 
wrt said:
Any observations as to why XP doesn't support booting from a USB device?
Click to expand...

A too long story... but it doesn't.
Rumors are that USB boot will be supported for WinPE (kind of recovery console for Longhorn).

- PA
 
hey wrt...

looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool

sorry but i have done all these things in the
same order.. :)

it seems to be very strange.... not even a message appears if i try t
boot from the device !?!?

i have also installed win 98 installed on the usb device..

the name "Trekstor" u know ??

after a time i come to 2 reasons ..

1. bootable XP dont work on usb XXX storage ??
2. the device doesn´t support bootable OS

but i have read the manual and it does !!

so even if i try to boot from my usb flash memory an errormessag
appears "couldn´t find OS" or something else...

k i dont have an OS on my flash memeory ..

SO IF YOU FOUND A SOLUTION ... PLEASE TELL ME !!!


-
streamx2
 
The biggest question to ask is if the motherboard supports booting to a USB device. Some USB
devices are not seen until XP actual loads the drivers for them during boot up. Check Motherboard
docs for this info.
 
Perhaps you should try posting in standard English. However, if I
understand you correctly and you are trying to boot into WINXP from a
removeable drive, the answer is you can't. The reason is in the software
not the drive. You can boot into a 'dos' based system from a removeable
drive (USB) provided the BIOS allows booting to USB.
 
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