Making a USB stick bootable

2016-10-30
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Computers > Hardware >

Problem: A USB stick cannot boot with any of Porteus, the boot-repair LiveUSB, or SystemRescueCD. It used to be bootable with Porteus, and before that it could boot with other Linux LiveUSB distributions.

Solution: unsolved

See also:

Workaround ∞

A heretofore unknown grub bootloader USB, Super Grub2 Disk, was dded onto a stick, and works to chain-load a secondary drive which has its own bootloader.

Perhaps if I could use it for USB stick preparation I could then install another distribution overtop of it.

After using Super Grub2 Disk, putting Slackware 14.2 on it worked just fine.

Putting Porteus on it worked once but I hard powered-off in the start of my first bootup and thereafter could not get the thing to work.

Fucking fuckity fuck fuck.

Things which failed ∞

  • LiLi USB Creator
  • UNetbootin

  • In Linux

    • Deleting the partition
    • Creating the partition slightly smaller than maximum.
    • Using various methods.
    • This worked with one other stick..

  • In Git on Windows

    • \dd bs=4M if=/dev/zero of=/dev/STICK
      Perhaps alternately I could have used one of the programs in Testing USB storage which wipes a drive to test it..
    • Format it in Windows
    • Then LiLi USB Creator (Windows) with SystemRescueCD 4.8.3 x86
    • It takes forever to write the MBR, is it copying the files at that time?

Strangely, my original single working stick didn't boot until I completely powered off my machine and started back up again, so there's something else going on. Future testing has to include this complete power down.

flagging the partition as bootable ∞

I'm not sure at what point I tried this, probably after farting around with partitioning in Linux but before zeroing it and formatting.

How to Create a Bootable USB Drive Without Using Any Software

How to Create a Bootable USB Drive Without Using Any Software

Let us assume that the flash / USB drive is the D: drive and the DVD installer located on drive F :. The first step, we will navigate Command Prompt to set installation DVD as its active directory.

  • By default, Command Prompt's active directory for Administrator permission is on C:\Windows\System32> . We will navigate Command Prompt to set on DVD (F:) as its active directory. Just type f: then hit Enter, and the active directory changed to F:.
  • Type cd boot and hit enter. Active directory changed to F:\boot> .
  • Type bootsect /nt60 d: and hit enter. Creating boot sector on D: drive (USB flash drive).
  • Type exit and hit enter to close the Command Prompt. Until this step we have made a bootable USB drive sucessfully, and the flash drive is ready to be used as a boot media.

Notes ∞

To do ∞

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