{"id":1118,"date":"2008-07-16T08:00:17","date_gmt":"2008-07-16T08:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2008\/07\/ms-dos-revisited-building-a-handy-utility-disk.htm"},"modified":"2008-07-16T14:16:00","modified_gmt":"2008-07-16T14:16:00","slug":"ms-dos-revisited-building-a-handy-utility-disk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2008\/07\/ms-dos-revisited-building-a-handy-utility-disk.htm","title":{"rendered":"MS-DOS revisited: building a handy utility disk"},"content":{"rendered":"

A couple of years back I was writing about trying to squeeze Windows PE onto a 128MB\/256MB USB thumb drive<\/a> and how times change – these days I have piles of unused 128MB, 256MB and 512MB USB sticks that have become redundant because I have larger portable data storage devices available.<\/p>\n

Then, as I was preparing to image a PC, I found myself using 1.44MB floppy disks and it all got very frustrating. Just enough to boot the system used half the disk and that was without any utilities – the version of Symantec Ghost that I used recently<\/a> won’t even fit on a floppy disk. So, I decided to put one of my old USB sticks to use as an “ultimate boot disk” – much easier to update than the CD-based versions we were putting together a few years back.<\/p>\n

Despite having a pile of smaller USB thumb drives doing nothing, I decided to use one of the 1GB sticks that EMC were giving away at the Windows Server 2008 launch (plenty of space for expansion). <\/p>\n

The first step is to make the drive bootable – I used the HP USB disk storage format tool v2.1.8 (SP27608) to format the drive and put a basic Windows ME boot subsystem on it (using a disk created with the Windows XP disk format tool as a reference image) but there are other options<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Why Windows ME? Well, because it’s easy – Windows XP creates ME boot disks – and because it was a prerequisite for the the next stage – network booting using Brad Driver’s universal TCP\/IP network boot disk<\/a>. There are many sites on the ‘net that offer network boot disks (including bootdisk.com<\/a>) but the one I chose manages to include a huge range of drivers and it fits on 1.44MB floppy.<\/p>\n

Basically, the disk boots a very basic operating system before expanding itself to a RAM disk and reloading the command shell. USB device support is still experimental (at v6.2) but after much experimentation I worked out that I could use the makedisk<\/code> script provided with the download but in order to avoid a loop of pressing CTRL+ALT+DEL to restart the computer I needed to edit the config.sys file so that the line shell=n:\\command.com \/e:4096 \/p<\/code> used c: instead of n: for the command interpreter (my drive was formatted as USB-HDD, this may not be necessary for other USB boot options) and I also removed the hidden attribute from command.com to avoid a file not found error (that didn’t seem to affect the operation of the disk in any other way). After this, the NIC is auto-detected and an appropriate network driver loaded, obtaining TCP\/IP information from DHCP and logging on to the network.<\/p>\n

With network booting working well (at least on the IBM ThinkPad T40 that I tested against – older machines may not have the necessary BIOS support), I added an autorun.inf file<\/a> for when I use the drive within Windows. This file includes the following items and really just sets the drive icon and description<\/a>:
\n\"Custom
\n[autorun]
\nlabel=USB Network Boot Disk (1GB)
\nicon=shell32.dll,12<\/code><\/p>\n

Finally, the whole purpose of this disk is to run some utilities. At this point you can name your own poison but I created a C:\\Tools folder (C:\\Utilities is too long for 8.3 file naming, although C:\\Utils could have worked) and started to pile in my favourite 16-bit .COM and .EXE files – I’m sure the list will grow substantially over time. There may be some issues with memory management but there is plenty of space to add a variety of tools and theoretically there could be multiple boot options too.<\/p>\n

It’s been a long time since I played around in MS-DOS and there is very little call for it these days (I should really be doing this with Windows PE) but every so often it’s good to return to your roots.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A couple of years back I was writing about trying to squeeze Windows PE onto a 128MB\/256MB USB thumb drive and how times change – these days I have piles of unused 128MB, 256MB and 512MB USB sticks that have become redundant because I have larger portable data storage devices available. Then, as I was … Continue reading MS-DOS revisited: building a handy utility disk<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[126,39],"class_list":["post-1118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-ms-dos","tag-useful-software"],"yoast_head":"\nMS-DOS revisited: building a handy utility disk - markwilson.it<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2008\/07\/ms-dos-revisited-building-a-handy-utility-disk.htm\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"MS-DOS revisited: building a handy utility disk - markwilson.it\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A couple of years back I was writing about trying to squeeze Windows PE onto a 128MB\/256MB USB thumb drive and how times change – these days I have piles of unused 128MB, 256MB and 512MB USB sticks that have become redundant because I have larger portable data storage devices available. Then, as I was … Continue reading MS-DOS revisited: building a handy utility disk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2008\/07\/ms-dos-revisited-building-a-handy-utility-disk.htm\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"markwilson.it\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-07-16T08:00:17+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2008-07-16T14:16:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/images\/usb-drive-icon.png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Mark Wilson\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@markwilsonit\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@markwilsonit\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Mark Wilson\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Estimated reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/2008\\\/07\\\/ms-dos-revisited-building-a-handy-utility-disk.htm#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/2008\\\/07\\\/ms-dos-revisited-building-a-handy-utility-disk.htm\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Mark Wilson\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/98f61365e7c39d6be942174b8c4de468\"},\"headline\":\"MS-DOS revisited: building a handy utility disk\",\"datePublished\":\"2008-07-16T08:00:17+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2008-07-16T14:16:00+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/2008\\\/07\\\/ms-dos-revisited-building-a-handy-utility-disk.htm\"},\"wordCount\":661,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/98f61365e7c39d6be942174b8c4de468\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/2008\\\/07\\\/ms-dos-revisited-building-a-handy-utility-disk.htm#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/images\\\/usb-drive-icon.png\",\"keywords\":[\"Microsoft DOS (MS-DOS)\",\"Useful Software\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/2008\\\/07\\\/ms-dos-revisited-building-a-handy-utility-disk.htm#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/2008\\\/07\\\/ms-dos-revisited-building-a-handy-utility-disk.htm\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/2008\\\/07\\\/ms-dos-revisited-building-a-handy-utility-disk.htm\",\"name\":\"MS-DOS revisited: building a handy utility disk - markwilson.it\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/2008\\\/07\\\/ms-dos-revisited-building-a-handy-utility-disk.htm#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/2008\\\/07\\\/ms-dos-revisited-building-a-handy-utility-disk.htm#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/images\\\/usb-drive-icon.png\",\"datePublished\":\"2008-07-16T08:00:17+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2008-07-16T14:16:00+00:00\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/2008\\\/07\\\/ms-dos-revisited-building-a-handy-utility-disk.htm#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/2008\\\/07\\\/ms-dos-revisited-building-a-handy-utility-disk.htm\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/2008\\\/07\\\/ms-dos-revisited-building-a-handy-utility-disk.htm#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/images\\\/usb-drive-icon.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/images\\\/usb-drive-icon.png\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/2008\\\/07\\\/ms-dos-revisited-building-a-handy-utility-disk.htm#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"MS-DOS revisited: building a handy utility disk\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/\",\"name\":\"markwilson.it\",\"description\":\"get-info -class technology | write-output > \\\/dev\\\/web\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/98f61365e7c39d6be942174b8c4de468\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\"},{\"@type\":[\"Person\",\"Organization\"],\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/98f61365e7c39d6be942174b8c4de468\",\"name\":\"Mark Wilson\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/i0.wp.com\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/uploads\\\/image-4.png?fit=800%2C800&ssl=1\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/i0.wp.com\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/uploads\\\/image-4.png?fit=800%2C800&ssl=1\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/i0.wp.com\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/uploads\\\/image-4.png?fit=800%2C800&ssl=1\",\"width\":800,\"height\":800,\"caption\":\"Mark Wilson\"},\"logo\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/i0.wp.com\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/uploads\\\/image-4.png?fit=800%2C800&ssl=1\"},\"description\":\"A Chartered IT Professional, with recent experience in technology leadership, IT strategy and practice management roles, Mark Wilson is an Enterprise Architect in the Advisory and Management Group at risual. During a career spanning more than two decades, Mark has gained widespread recognition as an expert in his field including both industry and national press exposure. In addition to certifications from Microsoft, VMware, Red Hat, The Open Group and Axelos, Mark held a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award for three years and is now part of the MVP Reconnect programme. Mark is also well-known on social media and maintains an award-winning blog.\",\"sameAs\":[\"http:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/\",\"https:\\\/\\\/www.instagram.com\\\/markwilsonuk\\\/\",\"https:\\\/\\\/www.linkedin.com\\\/in\\\/markawilson\\\/\",\"https:\\\/\\\/x.com\\\/markwilsonit\",\"https:\\\/\\\/www.youtube.com\\\/channel\\\/UCWHlZCoHRTocdvtrOJ2IL4A\"],\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/author\\\/mark-wilson\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"MS-DOS revisited: building a handy utility disk - markwilson.it","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2008\/07\/ms-dos-revisited-building-a-handy-utility-disk.htm","og_locale":"en_GB","og_type":"article","og_title":"MS-DOS revisited: building a handy utility disk - markwilson.it","og_description":"A couple of years back I was writing about trying to squeeze Windows PE onto a 128MB\/256MB USB thumb drive and how times change – these days I have piles of unused 128MB, 256MB and 512MB USB sticks that have become redundant because I have larger portable data storage devices available. Then, as I was … Continue reading MS-DOS revisited: building a handy utility disk","og_url":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2008\/07\/ms-dos-revisited-building-a-handy-utility-disk.htm","og_site_name":"markwilson.it","article_published_time":"2008-07-16T08:00:17+00:00","article_modified_time":"2008-07-16T14:16:00+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/images\/usb-drive-icon.png","type":"","width":"","height":""}],"author":"Mark Wilson","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@markwilsonit","twitter_site":"@markwilsonit","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Mark Wilson","Estimated reading time":"3 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2008\/07\/ms-dos-revisited-building-a-handy-utility-disk.htm#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2008\/07\/ms-dos-revisited-building-a-handy-utility-disk.htm"},"author":{"name":"Mark Wilson","@id":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/98f61365e7c39d6be942174b8c4de468"},"headline":"MS-DOS revisited: building a handy utility disk","datePublished":"2008-07-16T08:00:17+00:00","dateModified":"2008-07-16T14:16:00+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2008\/07\/ms-dos-revisited-building-a-handy-utility-disk.htm"},"wordCount":661,"commentCount":0,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/98f61365e7c39d6be942174b8c4de468"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2008\/07\/ms-dos-revisited-building-a-handy-utility-disk.htm#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/images\/usb-drive-icon.png","keywords":["Microsoft DOS (MS-DOS)","Useful Software"],"inLanguage":"en-GB","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2008\/07\/ms-dos-revisited-building-a-handy-utility-disk.htm#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2008\/07\/ms-dos-revisited-building-a-handy-utility-disk.htm","url":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2008\/07\/ms-dos-revisited-building-a-handy-utility-disk.htm","name":"MS-DOS revisited: building a handy utility disk - markwilson.it","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2008\/07\/ms-dos-revisited-building-a-handy-utility-disk.htm#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2008\/07\/ms-dos-revisited-building-a-handy-utility-disk.htm#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/images\/usb-drive-icon.png","datePublished":"2008-07-16T08:00:17+00:00","dateModified":"2008-07-16T14:16:00+00:00","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2008\/07\/ms-dos-revisited-building-a-handy-utility-disk.htm#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-GB","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2008\/07\/ms-dos-revisited-building-a-handy-utility-disk.htm"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-GB","@id":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2008\/07\/ms-dos-revisited-building-a-handy-utility-disk.htm#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/images\/usb-drive-icon.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/images\/usb-drive-icon.png"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2008\/07\/ms-dos-revisited-building-a-handy-utility-disk.htm#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"MS-DOS revisited: building a handy utility disk"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/","name":"markwilson.it","description":"get-info -class technology | write-output > \/dev\/web","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/98f61365e7c39d6be942174b8c4de468"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-GB"},{"@type":["Person","Organization"],"@id":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/98f61365e7c39d6be942174b8c4de468","name":"Mark Wilson","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-GB","@id":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/uploads\/image-4.png?fit=800%2C800&ssl=1","url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/uploads\/image-4.png?fit=800%2C800&ssl=1","contentUrl":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/uploads\/image-4.png?fit=800%2C800&ssl=1","width":800,"height":800,"caption":"Mark Wilson"},"logo":{"@id":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/uploads\/image-4.png?fit=800%2C800&ssl=1"},"description":"A Chartered IT Professional, with recent experience in technology leadership, IT strategy and practice management roles, Mark Wilson is an Enterprise Architect in the Advisory and Management Group at risual. During a career spanning more than two decades, Mark has gained widespread recognition as an expert in his field including both industry and national press exposure. In addition to certifications from Microsoft, VMware, Red Hat, The Open Group and Axelos, Mark held a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award for three years and is now part of the MVP Reconnect programme. Mark is also well-known on social media and maintains an award-winning blog.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/markwilsonuk\/","https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/markawilson\/","https:\/\/x.com\/markwilsonit","https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/channel\/UCWHlZCoHRTocdvtrOJ2IL4A"],"url":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/author\/mark-wilson"}]}},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":413,"url":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2006\/01\/booting-windows-pe-from-usb-flash.htm","url_meta":{"origin":1118,"position":0},"title":"Booting Windows PE from a USB flash drive","author":"Mark Wilson","date":"Tuesday 24 January 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Something that I've been playing around with for a while now is booting Windows Preinstallation Environment (Windows PE) from a USB flash drive and a few weeks back I finally found enough time to have a proper look at this and make some progress. There's lots of anecdotal evidence of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Microsoft Windows PE\"","block_context":{"text":"Microsoft Windows PE","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/tag\/windows-pe"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1285,"url":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2008\/11\/installing-windows-from-a-usb-drive.htm","url_meta":{"origin":1118,"position":1},"title":"Installing Windows from a USB drive","author":"Mark Wilson","date":"Thursday 13 November 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Last week I downloaded the milestone 3 build of Windows 7 and installed it in a virtual machine. Then I heard how Windows 7 has been tuned (compared with Vista) to run on lower-specification hardware so I decided to install it on my aging Compaq D510SFF, which is not going\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Microsoft Windows 7\"","block_context":{"text":"Microsoft Windows 7","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/tag\/windows-7"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5784,"url":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2015\/08\/unable-to-boot-from-usb-flash-drive-on-a-lenovo-pc-to-install-windows-10.htm","url_meta":{"origin":1118,"position":2},"title":"Unable to boot from USB flash drive on a Lenovo PC (to install Windows 10)","author":"Mark Wilson","date":"Monday 3 August 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Yesterday, I wrote about not having to wait for Windows 10 to be advertised to my PCs and downloading the software directly\u00a0instead. Unfortunately, things didn't turn out to be quite that simple. Overnight, both the Windows 8.1 PCs in our house decided that Windows 10 was ready (I clearly need\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Technology"","block_context":{"text":"Technology","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/topic\/technology"},"img":{"alt_text":"Installing Windows 10 via Windows Update","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/images\/windows-update-downloading-win10.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1492,"url":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2009\/07\/running-windows-from-a-usb-flash-drive.htm","url_meta":{"origin":1118,"position":3},"title":"Running Windows from a USB flash drive","author":"Mark Wilson","date":"Thursday 23 July 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"I've titled this post as \"Running Windows from a USB flash drive\" because the same principles should be equally applicable to all Windows 7-based operating systems (and even Vista if the Windows 7 bootloader is used) but my specific scenario was based on Hyper-V Server 2008 R2. I got this\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Technology"","block_context":{"text":"Technology","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/topic\/technology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1049,"url":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2008\/04\/comparing-internal-and-usb-attached-hard-disk-performance-in-a-notebook-pc.htm","url_meta":{"origin":1118,"position":4},"title":"Comparing internal and USB-attached hard disk performance in a notebook PC","author":"Mark Wilson","date":"Wednesday 16 April 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Recently, I was in a meeting with a potential business partner and their software was performing more slowly than they had expected in the virtual environment on my notebook PC. The application was using a SQL Server 2005 Express Edition database and SQL Server is not normally a good candidate\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Microsoft Virtual Server\/Hyper-V\"","block_context":{"text":"Microsoft Virtual Server\/Hyper-V","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/tag\/hyper-v"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2990,"url":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2011\/08\/cloning-a-windows-system-disk-using-nothing-but-free-software.htm","url_meta":{"origin":1118,"position":5},"title":"Cloning a Windows system disk using nothing but free software","author":"Mark Wilson","date":"Wednesday 31 August 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"As part of the process of replacing the hard disk in my server at home, I needed to clone the operating system between two drives. As my Windows Server installation consists of two partitions (my C: and a 100MB system reserved partition), I couldn't use Microsoft's disk imaging tool (imagex.exe)\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Technology"","block_context":{"text":"Technology","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/topic\/technology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1118\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}