Bootable & Writable USB Pen Drive with MSDOS?

[spidey]

Ok, how do I create a bootable & *writable* USB pen drive?

I have a laptop without disk drive, and I want to dump my graphics card
firmware to a file. I am able to boot from the pen drive, but I'm not
able to write to it. And I cannot access the NTFS drivers.

I even have tried to use NTFS4DOS which would allow me to write to the
hard drive. If I use "copy con: ...." I can create a file on the
filesystem, but if I run anything else the NTFS4DOS dos not work.

Any ideas? I'm using Windows XP and my pen drive is a Kingston 256mb.

 

[Harry]

spidey wrote...

Ok, how do I create a bootable & *writable* USB pen drive?

I have a laptop without disk drive, and I want to dump my graphics card
firmware to a file. I am able to boot from the pen drive, but I'm not
able to write to it. And I cannot access the NTFS drivers.

I even have tried to use NTFS4DOS which would allow me to write to the
hard drive. If I use "copy con: ...." I can create a file on the
filesystem, but if I run anything else the NTFS4DOS dos not work.

Any ideas? I'm using Windows XP and my pen drive is a Kingston 256mb.

I am confused. Your Subject line mentioned MSDOS, but you mentioned
Windows XP here. So what OS is actually on your pen drive?

If your pen drive has XP, then boot to XP and you *should* be able to
access the NTFS file system.

If your pen drive has MSDOS, then where does the NTFS come from;
note that MSDOS cannot exist on NTFS.

Maybe you should clarify your problem a bit.

 

[spidey]

I am confused. Your Subject line mentioned MSDOS, but you mentioned

Windows XP here. So what OS is actually on your pen drive?

Well, I guess I want only the command prompt, not the whole windows XP,
otherwise the program I'm using to dump the firmware won't have access
to the firmware. As far as I know XP doesn't have a command prompt
booting mode, and it actually uses MSDOS to do it. But I may be wrong.

So what I want is a bootable & writable USB Pen Drive with command
prompt only, and it may be MSDOS or XP, if possible. But not linux. And
it has to be able to write as if it were a regular floppy disk.

 

[Harry]

spidey wrote...

Well, I guess I want only the command prompt, not the whole windows XP,
otherwise the program I'm using to dump the firmware won't have access
to the firmware. As far as I know XP doesn't have a command prompt
booting mode, and it actually uses MSDOS to do it. But I may be wrong.

So what I want is a bootable & writable USB Pen Drive with command
prompt only, and it may be MSDOS or XP, if possible. But not linux. And
it has to be able to write as if it were a regular floppy disk.

If your dumping tool is a 16-bit program, you can run it from MSDOS,
and you can ignore all the potential problems associated with the
attempt to create a down-sized XP on a 256MB pen drive (assume the
later is possible, or is it?)

In this case, just find some utilities from the web to create a bootable
pen drive (which needs a bootable MSDOS floppy disk in the creation
process).

If your dumping tool is a 32-bit program, you needs a 32bit Windows
environment on a 256MB pen drive. That is a tricky task, but still
doable.

In this case, you will need the following:
- BartPE, will allow you to create a bootable CD and launch a
stripped down version of XP. You can added your dumping program
to BartPE before creating a bootable BartPE CD.
http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/
- FlashBoot, which can transfer a bootable BartPE CD onto a flash drive.
http://www.prime-expert.com/flashboot/index.php

Personally I have created a bootable USB from a ghost8 floppy using
flashboot. I have not tried transfering BartPE from CD to my USB key.
But the UI from flashboot says it can.

You can try the demo version of flashboot, which can create a bootable
USB key which can boot up once only.

Good luck.

 

[Mike Redrobe]

So what I want is a bootable & writable USB Pen Drive with command
prompt only, and it may be MSDOS or XP, if possible. But not linux.
And it has to be able to write as if it were a regular floppy disk.

The problem is getting the bootsectors on the usb drive,
use this:

http://h18007.www1.hp.com/support/files/hpcpqdt/us/download/20306.html

 

[Peter]

Ok, how do I create a bootable & *writable* USB pen drive?

I have a laptop without disk drive, and I want to dump my graphics card
firmware to a file. I am able to boot from the pen drive, but I'm not
able to write to it. And I cannot access the NTFS drivers.

I even have tried to use NTFS4DOS which would allow me to write to the
hard drive. If I use "copy con: ...." I can create a file on the
filesystem, but if I run anything else the NTFS4DOS dos not work.

Any ideas? I'm using Windows XP and my pen drive is a Kingston 256mb.

Does your laptop NIC support PXE?
If it does, you can setup PXE and boot your laptop to DOS that way.

 

[Harry]

spidey wrote...

I have a laptop without disk drive,

"disk drive" -- for quite a momment, I thought you meant HDD
(hard disk drive). Then finally I realized you meant CD Rom disk drive

 

[J. Clarke]

Well, I guess I want only the command prompt, not the whole windows XP,
otherwise the program I'm using to dump the firmware won't have access
to the firmware. As far as I know XP doesn't have a command prompt
booting mode, and it actually uses MSDOS to do it. But I may be wrong.

So what I want is a bootable & writable USB Pen Drive with command
prompt only, and it may be MSDOS or XP, if possible. But not linux. And
it has to be able to write as if it were a regular floppy disk.

You're dealing with a number of different issues.

The first is that you say you want to dump the firmware for your video
processor. Presumably you have a utility to do that and that utility
specifies that you use a specific operating system. If so, that is the
operating system that you need to be using and if it has limitations then
you need to put up with those limitations.

Booting to an XP command prompt won't bypass the hardware abstraction
layer--XP does _not_ run on top of MS-DOS--the only MS-DOS that is there is
a partial emulation that is accessible from a command window. So doing this
will _not_ allow you to run an MS-DOS dump utility that will not run in a
command window. There is a limited command line mode that you can access
by booting from the CD but it isn't going to give you the capability that
you seem to be looking for.

If your dump application says "MS-DOS" then you need to be running MS-DOS or
PC-DOS or possibly DR-DOS or one of the other DOS clones, _not_ the XP
command line.

Now, if you go to install MS-DOS on a pen drive, it may or may not work
depending on how your BIOS presents a pen drive to the OS--if it is
presented as a standard hard disk then you should have no trouble--if it
does not and you need a device driver to support it then you're likely
screwed.

I note that there is a freeware product called "NTFS4DOS" that has no
documentation, release notes, or anything else that I can find. It may
work or may not--given that the Linux folks, who have a hellacious lot of
expertise in operating systems, are pretty much giving up on write-access
to NTFS I wouldn't trust any non-Microsoft product that purports to write
to it to not corrupt the file system.

I do not understand why you need this capability in any case. If your
purpose is to download the firmware off your video board, surely the amount
of storage on your pen drive is sufficient to that task. Just download the
firmware and then if you need to access it from XP for some reason reboot
to XP and read it off the pen drive.

 

[Harry]

Harry wrote...

spidey wrote...


"disk drive" -- for quite a momment, I thought you meant HDD
(hard disk drive). Then finally I realized you meant CD Rom disk drive

Wait a sec.

If you have HDD with XP, you can just simply boot to XP on HDD,
run the dumping utility, plug in your USB key, and copy the dumped
video card firmware from your HDD to your USB key.

Note that when boot to XP, you can run both 16bit and 32bit program
(i.e. your dumping utility).

So what is your problem anyway?

 

[spidey]

Harry escreveu:

spidey wrote...
If your dumping tool is a 16-bit program, you can run it from MSDOS,
and you can ignore all the potential problems associated with the
attempt to create a down-sized XP on a 256MB pen drive (assume the
later is possible, or is it?)

Actually, I already have a bootable pendrive. It boots MS-DOS 6.22 and
my utility (flashrom) works. But for some reason I cannot write to the
pendrive filesystem.

I actually did use flashboot, but there is also a freeware from HP
here:
http://h18007.www1.hp.com/support/files/hpcpqdt/us/download/20306.html

I even tried NTFS4DOS without success - it seems to lose the file
system when flashrom runs.

 

[spidey]

J. Clarke escreveu:

You're dealing with a number of different issues.
The first is that you say you want to dump the firmware for your video
processor. Presumably you have a utility to do that and that utility
specifies that you use a specific operating system. If so, that is the
operating system that you need to be using and if it has limitations then
you need to put up with those limitations.

True. It runs on MSDOS. I have already a bootable pen drive that does
that. My system boots ok with it. But for some reason it does not allow
you to write to the filesystem. So I cannot save the firmware.

I note that there is a freeware product called "NTFS4DOS" that has no
documentation, release notes, or anything else that I can find.

It works - sort of. We can do simple file manipulation using MSDOS
commands, but every time I run any command a little more complex (copy,
for instance), the filesystem is lost until it loads the OS again after
quiting the application. When my utility (flashrom) is loaded, it is
not able to write anywhere for some reason.

I do not understand why you need this capability in any case. If your
purpose is to download the firmware off your video board, surely the amount
of storage on your pen drive is sufficient to that task. Just download the
firmware and then if you need to access it from XP for some reason reboot
to XP and read it off the pen drive.

It is sufficient - but for some reason I cannot create/write anything
to it after booting.

And unfortunately the firmware is not available on the net, otherwise I
could just download it and work with it. It is a 64mb ATI Mobility
90000 (M9) and the laptop manufacturer doesn't have any firmware
available (in this case, Dell).

 

[spidey]

Harry escreveu:

Harry wrote...

Wait a sec.

If you have HDD with XP, you can just simply boot to XP on HDD,
run the dumping utility, plug in your USB key, and copy the dumped
video card firmware from your HDD to your USB key.

You need full hardware access, XP does not allow that. And the utility
I have does not run in Windows mode.

Btw I do have a DVD/CD-ROM drive. I do not have a floppy disk drive.
Also, I have a bootable pendrive, but my problem is that I need to dump
the firmware to it. However, the pen drive is working as if it were a
CD-ROM. I think I should be able to write to the filesystem.

It actually boots ok. If I needed to upload the firmware to the
graphics card I would be done by now.

 

[Harry]

spidey wrote...

I do not have a floppy disk drive.
Also, I have a bootable pendrive, but my problem is that I need to dump
the firmware to it. However, the pen drive is working as if it were a
CD-ROM. I think I should be able to write to the filesystem.

It actually boots ok. If I needed to upload the firmware to the
graphics card I would be done by now.

After you boot to MS DOS on your pendrive, and BEFORE you run
your dumping utility, can you create a text file on your pendrive?

E.G. On cmd prompt:
echo hello > hello.txt
dir hello.txt
type hello.txt

If it is writable BEFORE you run your dumping utility, your MSDOS
on your pendrive has no problem.
Otherwise, tell us how you created your pendrive step by step.

If your pendrive is non-writeable only after you ran your dumping
utility, go ask the manufacturer which produced the dumping utility.

 

[spidey]

spidey wrote...
After you boot to MS DOS on your pendrive, and BEFORE you run
your dumping utility, can you create a text file on your pendrive?

E.G. On cmd prompt:
echo hello > hello.txt
dir hello.txt
type hello.txt

Nope, I cannot write anything, I cannot create any file. It is as if
the pen drive were read-only (maybe it is...)

 

[spidey]

Peter escreveu:

Does your laptop NIC support PXE?
If it does, you can setup PXE and boot your laptop to DOS that way.

I don't know, I also don't know what PXE is. I will try to google it.

 

[Peter]

If it does, you can setup PXE and boot your laptop to DOS that way.

I don't know, I also don't know what PXE is. I will try to google it.

Short for Pre-Boot Execution Environment. Pronounced pixie, PXE is one of
the components of Intel's WfM specification. It allows a workstation to boot
from a server on a network prior to booting the operating system on the
local hard drive. A PXE-enabled workstation connects its NIC to the LAN via
a jumper, which keeps the workstation connected to the network even when the
power is off. Because a network administrator does not have to physically
visit the specific workstation and manually boot it, operating systems and
other software, such as diagnostic programs, can be loaded onto the device
from a server over the network.
PXE is a mandatory element of the WfM specification. To be considered
compliant, the PXE must be supported by the computer's BIOS and its NIC.

You can also create a boot CD, containing DOS with appropriate network
driver, and connect through network to yor desktop to dump whatever files.

With PXE you don't even need network drivers.

 

[Andy Lee]

Nope, I cannot write anything, I cannot create any file. It is as if
the pen drive were read-only (maybe it is...)

why not buy a USB external Floppy drive boot from MS DOD boot disk if
needed change boot dosk for util disk for video card and run prog from
it

 

[Rod Speed]

why not buy a USB external Floppy drive boot from MS DOD boot disk if
needed change boot dosk for util disk for video card and run prog from it

Makes more sense to get the pen drive working when its something
as basic as not being able to write to it when booted from it.

 

[spidey]

spidey escreveu:

Nope, I cannot write anything, I cannot create any file. It is as if
the pen drive were read-only (maybe it is...)

Guess what... a friend of mine gave to me a boot dvd made with Nero. It
has the "caldera" dos operating system. Now I have access to the
CD/DVD, HD and pen drive.

However.... I cannot write to the HD (it only has "ntfsread"
apparently) and when I try to create a file using my USB pen drive I
get "disk is write-protected"... wth? Is it impossible for me to boot
from a dvd and have write access to my USB kingston pen drive?

My next try is the ultimate boot cd.... Unless any of you have any
better ideas.