{"id":413,"date":"2006-01-24T15:02:00","date_gmt":"2006-01-24T15:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2006\/01\/booting-windows-pe-from-usb-flash.htm"},"modified":"2007-10-17T08:28:46","modified_gmt":"2007-10-17T07:28:46","slug":"booting-windows-pe-from-usb-flash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2006\/01\/booting-windows-pe-from-usb-flash.htm","title":{"rendered":"Booting Windows PE from a USB flash drive"},"content":{"rendered":"

Something that I’ve been playing around with for a while now is booting Windows Preinstallation Environment<\/a> (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.<\/p>\n

There’s lots of anecdotal evidence of success (or otherwise) on the ‘net, but because Microsoft restricts access to Windows PE, many people are using Bart Lagerweij’s BartPE<\/a> as an alternative. I do have access to Windows PE and specifically wanted to get this working using the Microsoft version. Some people (e.g. Niko Sauer<\/a> and Dag at bootdisk.info<\/a>) have done similar things with Linux variants such as Knoppix<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It seems that not every USB flash drive is capable of acting as a boot device and not every PC BIOS supports USB boot. If there is no BIOS support, then it’s just not going to work (I think USB 2 is also a prerequisite). It’s also unlikely that a USB stick will work as shipped from the factory – it will need a boot partition to be (re)written and the easiest way to do this is with a USB disk format tool.<\/p>\n

I got a Dell Latitude D600 to boot MS-DOS last year using a Dell 128MB USB flash drive (which is a rebadged Lexar Digital Film device) but didn’t get much further because Windows PE was too large to fit on the device. More recently, I’ve been using a 256MB SanDisk Cruzer Mini that I bought from MyMemory.co.uk<\/a> for \u00c2\u00a39.99. I’ve use this to successfully boot an IBM Thinkpad T40 and a Compaq Evo D510SFF but can’t test on the Fujitsu Siemens Lifebook S7010D that I use for work because I don’t have access to the BIOS (thanks to my employer’s corporate information systems administrators).<\/p>\n

Here’s my process for taking a USB flash drive from new to booting Windows PE:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Check that the PC BIOS supports booking from USB-attached removable media and enable this.<\/li>\n
  2. Download and install a USB flash drive format utility – I used the HP USB disk storage format tool v2.1.8<\/a> (SP27608) but alternatives include the Dell USB memory key utility revision 1.0.6.25<\/a> (R69131) and Martin List-Petersen also recommends MBRTool<\/a>, which formats a USB flash drive in hard disk mode and installs a FreeDOS kernel (with FAT32 support); however he also reports that it seems to have trouble with USB keys of 256MB or larger.<\/li>\n
  3. Format the USB flash drive with a FAT16 file system, including ability to work as an MS-DOS startup disk and with quick format deselected.<\/li>\n
  4. Perform a test boot into MS-DOS using the USB flash drive.<\/li>\n
  5. Download BootPart<\/a> and copy this to the USB flash drive (I used v2.60).<\/li>\n
  6. Copy a Windows PE installation that is known to work from CD\/DVD to the USB flash drive.<\/li>\n
  7. Rename the \\i386 folder to \\minint.<\/li>\n
  8. Copy ntdetect.com from \\minint to \\.<\/li>\n
  9. Copy setupldr.bin from \\minint dir to \\ and rename to ntldr (no extension).<\/li>\n
  10. Reboot from the USB flash drive and run bootpart (you can now delete the DOS files on the stick and remove the boot. ini entry for MS-DOS (if really needed, personally I would leave it there).<\/li>\n
  11. Reboot from the USB flash drive once more and Windows PE should load.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Some notes I’ve read suggest that there is an extra step – i.e. that of copying winbom.ini from \\minint dir to \\; however, using a colleague’s pre-built Windows PE 2005 images I couldn’t get the normal PE one to work – only the one which was configured to to use a RAM disk (and that didn’t have a winbom.ini). The downside of this was that it took about an hour to boot! I thought this was because the reference PC only had 256MB RAM but tried on a 512MB machine and no difference. Obviously need to do more work in this area, but the basic principle of booting from the USB flash drive is now proven.<\/p>\n

    I’ll post an update with the final configuration when I manage to make Windows PE more performant but, at present, the file system on my USB flash drive looks like this:<\/p>\n

    \\bootpart.exe (01\/08\/2005 02:06 44,544 bytes)
    \n\\winnt.sif
    \n\\winpex86.iso
    \n\\ntldr (25\/03\/2005 11:00 298,096 bytes)
    \n\\ntdetect.com (25\/03\/2005 11:00 47,772 bytes)
    \n\\minint\\bootfix.bin (25\/03\/2005 11:00 1,024 bytes)
    \n\\minint\\ntdetect.com 25\/03\/2005 11:00 47,772 bytes)
    \n\\minint\\setupldr.bin (25\/03\/2005 11:00 298,096 bytes)
    \n\\minint\\winnt.sif<\/p>\n

    The winnt.sif file contains the following text:<\/p>\n

    [SetupData]
    \nBootDevice = \"ramdisk(0)\"
    \nBootPath = \"\\i386\\System32\\\"
    \nOsLoadOptions = \"\/noguiboot \/fastdetect \/minint \/rdexportascd \/rdpath=winpex86.iso\"
    \nArchitecture = \"i386\"<\/code><\/p>\n

    Links<\/strong>
    \n    USB articles at bootdisk.info<\/a>
    \n    MSFN forum – Boot PE from USB flash drive<\/a>
    \n    Oliver Aaltonen’s USB booting tips<\/a>
    \n    Jacopo Lazzari’s USB pendrive how to<\/a>
    \n    The CD Forum – boot your WinPE or UBCD4Win on USB flash drive<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    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 success (or otherwise) on the … Continue reading Booting Windows PE from a USB flash drive<\/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":[103,39],"class_list":["post-413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-windows-pe","tag-useful-software"],"yoast_head":"\nBooting Windows PE from a USB flash drive - 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\/2006\/01\/booting-windows-pe-from-usb-flash.htm\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Booting Windows PE from a USB flash drive - markwilson.it\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"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. 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Early versions of PE didn't make this very straightforward, but Microsoft UK's James O'Neill has blogged about doing exactly this with Windows PE 2.0 in his article on getting started with Windows PE - it\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":705,"url":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2007\/02\/portable-applications-alternative.htm","url_meta":{"origin":413,"position":1},"title":"Portable applications – an alternative approach to mobile computing","author":"Mark Wilson","date":"Monday 19 February 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been playing around with the idea of running operating systems from USB flash drives for a while now but the main problem is USB boot support in the hardware I use (most notably the Fujitsu Siemens Lifebook S7010D that I use for work doesn't support it). A while back\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Mobility\"","block_context":{"text":"Mobility","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/tag\/mobility"},"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":413,"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":1117,"url":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2008\/07\/a-few-things-i-found-when-drive-imaging-with-symantec-ghost.htm","url_meta":{"origin":413,"position":3},"title":"A few things I found whilst drive imaging with Symantec Ghost","author":"Mark Wilson","date":"Tuesday 15 July 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I need to rebuild one of my PCs before lending it to someone for a few days but before I do that I want to take an image of it. If I had the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2008 set up at home then that would be reasonably straightforward but I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Operating System Deployment\"","block_context":{"text":"Operating System Deployment","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/tag\/os-deployment"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1118,"url":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2008\/07\/ms-dos-revisited-building-a-handy-utility-disk.htm","url_meta":{"origin":413,"position":4},"title":"MS-DOS revisited: building a handy utility disk","author":"Mark Wilson","date":"Wednesday 16 July 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"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\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Microsoft DOS (MS-DOS)\"","block_context":{"text":"Microsoft DOS (MS-DOS)","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/tag\/ms-dos"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1492,"url":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2009\/07\/running-windows-from-a-usb-flash-drive.htm","url_meta":{"origin":413,"position":5},"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":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413","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=413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}