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Thread ID: 74434 2006-11-22 18:42:00 USB HDD made bootable zainka (11508) Press F1
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501164 2006-11-22 18:42:00 I have an external USB disk which I want to make bootable . First, please NOTE that, my motherboard does support booting from USB devices, also my usb hdd shows up in the "boot order" table if connected at power on, and I can select it if wanted, but it wont booot . Ahh, one more thing, partition 1 (FAT32) is also made active .

Problem is . How can I make first partition a system partition while formatting??? Both win2k and WinXp lack this feature, Format command does no longer support the /S option (or it is hidden using another tag), and the sys cmd is not provided any longer either . Conclusion, Microsoft sucks, or, the feature is not needed anymore by their opinion .

When using winHex to read usb hdd (physical access) I see that there is a MBR recorded with some boot code (i . e . not only the partition table and disk id), and also the VBR for partition1 does also contain some boot code (however, i do not have the neccessary scills needed to decode it) . I have tried to copy neccessary MSDOS 7 . 0 or 5 . 0 (both tried) files to root with no success, this most possible because the VBR is not set correctly according to these OS .

From winhex I can see that one of the strings in the VBR botcode will if boot fails say that Ntldr is missing, which I thinks indicates that this VBR boot code expect a win2k/winxp OS .

Thus, I beleive the problem is that the partition is not formatted correctly to be able to use a msdos operative system and thus it wont boot . For now i think that the mbr is correct . If anyone can help with advices or tools to format partition with system files correctly (ie . fix VBR to ask for MSDOS), I would be very happy .

I have some PC programs on this HDD (will have, atleast) which I need to run in MSdos enviroment, and also, It needs to be portable to therefor an external usb disk .

Thanks in advance
Vidar (Z)
zainka (11508)
501165 2006-11-23 04:50:00 I have an external USB disk which I want to make bootable . First, please NOTE that, my motherboard does support booting from USB devices, also my usb hdd shows up in the "boot order" table if connected at power on, and I can select it if wanted, but it wont booot . Ahh, one more thing, partition 1 (FAT32) is also made active .

Problem is . How can I make first partition a system partition while formatting???

I have tried to copy neccessary MSDOS 7 . 0 or 5 . 0 (both tried) files to root with no success,


I have some PC programs on this HDD (will have, atleast) which I need to run in MSdos enviroment, and also, It needs to be portable to therefor an external usb disk .


DOS? Real DOS and USB don't work . So thats out .

Just install Win98 (which then gives it an O/S which it wants) on it and boot into a commmand prompt then run your DOS apps .
pctek (84)
501166 2006-11-23 04:58:00 Check this link out.

www.weethet.nl
ughnz (8297)
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