Boot from USB Hard Drive

[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

 

[Pavel A.]

Ok so your BIOS can boot from USB, but XP does not support it

 

[wrt]

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?

 

[Pavel A.]

Any observations as to why XP doesn't support booting from a USB device?

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

 

[streamx2k]

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

 

[David Vair]

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.

 

[Edward W. Thompson]

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.

 

[Guest]

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/storage/usb-boot.mspx