Boot XP from a USB flash drive and how to use the PE Builder

Windows XP can be booted using a USB Flash drive.. here its about how to boot using USB flash drive

Many people who have worked on computers for many years have comeup into a situations where they had a problem with Booting their PC ie left their PC unbootable. Well What if you can return the PC to a bootable state just with the help of a USB Flash drive? YES, it is possible to instal a bootable windows xp into a flash drive and then boot the PC using it and then you can use the applications that you have installed on the flash drive to fix the pc problem (like that of disk repair, anti virus, anti spyware etc). This article tells you how.

For a starter, every PC is not capable to be booted from a USB flash drive. computers manufactured in recent years are generally able to be booted from the flash drive, older systems might require BIOS update or may not boot from a flash drive atall and every flash drive will not get the job done. The main factor that limit the use of a particular flash drive are capacity and its speed, so speed is not really a limiting factor but booting will be slow if the flash drive doesnt support USB 2.0. The flash drives capacity is a limiting factor though, there are sixe limits on both the lower and the upper end. ie flash drive cannot be too large or too small. All we need is a something which can hold windows xp and few applications. Since Win xp will usually consume over a GB of disk space. so i recommened that your flash drive must be atleast 256MB of size. l

* Later I will show you how to use a free utility to trim the excess fat off of Windows XP and make it a whole lot smaller.

you can use the maximum size for the USB flash drive . At present, USB flash drives are available in various sizes of 2GB, 4 GB and 8 GB, more sized flash drives are gonna available by the end of the year. It would be nice to have 8 GB to play with, this flash drive that we use for this process can be upto a minimum of 2 GB. The reason is that you will have to format the flash drive using the FAT-16 file format , which has a 2 GB limit. we are stuck using FAT-16 because most of the computers do not recognize a flash drive as being bootable if the drive is formatted with any other format other than FAT-16.

Now that we have all the prerequisites, its time to start setup the flash drive.

step1: we can format the flash drive in the same way of that of a floppy disk. Anyhow, formatting a flash drive in this way will not work for this process. Moreover, using Windows to format a flash drive directly has been known to destroy some types of flash drives. so Instead, we must format the flash drive using the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool. To do so, simply open the utility, select the device followed by the FAT file system option and click Start.

• BOOT.INI

• NTLDR

• NTDETECT

These files by default are hidden, so we need to configure Windows Explorer to show hidden files (including protected operating system files) or else we need to use Command Prompt.

The PEBuilder utility that you downloaded earlier can take care of both of these issues. PEBuilder is designed to create a build of Windows XP (or Windows Server 2003) that does not take up as much space as a full blown installation. Once you create this new build, you can copy it to the flash drive. For right now, I will show you how to create a basic Windows build and copy it to the memory stick. Unfortunately, it's rather difficult to install applications once Windows is up and running. Therefore, after I show you how to create a basic Windows build, I will show you how to create a build that includes some applications.

Begin the process by opening PEBuilder. When you open PEBuilder, you will see a screen similar to the one that's shown in Figure A. Simply enter the path to the Windows installation files (the ones from your Windows XP with Service Pack 2 installation CD). Next, verify that the Create ISO Image and the Burn to CD check boxes are not selected and then click the Build button. PEBuilder will now create the new Windows build.

You must use PEBuilder to create a Windows build that will work with a flash drive.

Now, it's time to copy Windows to the flash drive. To do so, you will have to use a special batch file that's included with PEBuilder. Open a Command Prompt window and navigate to c:\pebuilder313\plugin\peinst. Now, insert an empty flash drive into the computer's USB port and then execute the file PEINST.CMD. You will now see a menu appear as shown in Figure B.

Use menu option 5 to install Windows to the flash drive.

Installing applicationsNow that I have shown you how to create and install a basic Windows build, I want to talk for a moment about how you can add an application to the build (prior to creating it). The PEBuilder program comes pre-configured to support a number of common Windows applications, but does not come with the applications themselves.The reason why installing applications can be a little bit tricky is because most Windows applications modify the Windows registry. The build that you are creating is basically a collection of installation files, and the build itself does not contain a registry (the registry gets created when Windows is installed onto the flash drive). As such, PEBuilder uses a sort of registry emulator.If you go to the C:\PEBUILDER313\PLUGIN folder, you will see sub folders for a number of different applications. If you open one of these application folders, you will see that the folder contains an INF file and a FILES folder. The INF file contains all of the information that would normally go into the registry, and the FILES folder stores all of the program's files.

To see how this works, let's install an application that I'm sure most of you are familiar with; Nero. Begin by installing Nero onto the machine that's running PEBuilder, as if you planned to run Nero locally on that machine. When the installation completes, copy all of the files from C:\Program Files\ahead\Nero to C:\pebuilder313\plugin\nero burning rom\files. In this particular case, the nero burning rom folder is the folder that has been set aside for the Nero application. The Files sub folder is intended to store Nero's system files.

Now, you must take care of Nero's registry entries. To do so, go to the C:\pebuilder313\plugin\nero burning rom folder and open the PENERO.INF file using Notepad. As I explained earlier, the INF file in an application's folder is used to store the application's registry entries. For Nero and all of the other applications that PEBuilder predefines, the INF file is pre-configured. You just have to make a few changes that are specific to your system.In this particular case, the PENERO.INF file is designed to support both Nero versions 5.x and 6.x. Initially, the lines for both versions are commented out. You must therefore determine which version you have and then remove the semi colon from the beginning of the lines that apply to that version. If you look at Figure D, you can see how the two versions are separated.

An application's registry entries are stored in an INF file.

Once you uncomment the appropriate lines, just replace "Your Name", "Your Company Name" and "Your Serial Number" with your name, your company's name, and your Nero product key. Save the file, and your set to go. The next time that you click the Build button, Nero will be included in the build.Putting XP in your pocketRunning Windows from a flash drive isn't an exact science. Sometimes the process just doesn't work and there is no good reason why. As more PCs start to support booting from USB devices though, USB boots should become more standardized, and the technique should become more reliable.